The Hugh Hewitt Show: Recent Episodes
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I wrote on Friday of being forward looking – to building good, not just finding and correcting fault. It seems I am not alone in this assessment.
Later on Friday, Imprimus landed in my inbox. This most recent issue features an address from Kevin D. Robert, President of The Heritage Foundation entitled “Populist Conservatism and Constitutional Order.” Here are some highlights in which I have added some emphasis:
The top-down, elitist brand of politics that has dominated the United States since the end of the Cold War—under Republican and Democratic administrations alike—has failed. Yes, we are materially richer than we were in 1991, and our largest corporations are more profitable. But we are militarily and strategically weaker, fiscally endangered, and spiritually enervated. As a result, public trust in the vaunted institutions that our elites control—political, scientific, journalistic, educational, religious—has evaporated….
Thus the only hope for a sustainable, democratically legitimate populist reform movement today is on the Right. The question is whether the leaders of the movement can harness the highly negative energy from which the populism emerges and channel it toward a coherent, positive politics of national renewal and reform.
My, but that sounds familiar. As he begins his summation and prescription for the future, Roberts says:
And the institutions we need to revive—marriage and family, church and community, private enterprise and public spirit—already exist. Like flowers in a garden choked by weeds, they just need room, light, and water to grow again.
Which has me thinking about the temptation that faces churches. The reform, revival and reinvigoration of church in America is most needed and a necessary part of “making America great again.” But we are tempted to focus on the negative of the past instead of building, or rebuilding, the future. Too many want to focus of “deconstructing the system” to find its faults rather than look forward to a better future.
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says:
Brothers and sisters, I do not regard myself as having taken hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Paul acknowledges that he is not perfect, but he does not dwell there, rather he endeavors to be good and to do good – to reach upward.
As we head to church this Sunday morning, let us not dwell on the bad, let us, with God’s help. build the good.
The post Called Upward appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
My feeds are full of reporting that after this election everything is changing, like the whole world has shifted on its axis. Leading the charge is this Politco piece.
Was it a temporary blip? No doubt. Presidents always drive news, and Drudge always finds it. But the site knows the audience well, meaning its post-election programming choices are also a good indication of where the emotional energy of anti-Trump America is headed: Instead of tuning in, the audiences that fueled the post-2016 resistance are checking out. A slew of other early media data points suggest the same thing.
There’s more and I think it deeper than Politico suggests.
Whoopi Goldberg may be in deep trouble for crying “wolf” (well, discrimination) one too many times.
I declared Scientific American dead in 2020. But the zombie has continued to walk around and plague newsstands. After an epic and profane rant on election night by the magazine’s grossly politicized editor, she has resigned that post. While never said out loud, I would have to think said resignation comes as a result of enormous pressure.
This is all happening too fast. It has been less than two weeks, and it seems like progressivism itself is falling apart, almost without resistance. For it to fall apart this fast there must not have been much there to begin with. Well-built buildings are almost impossible to demolish, poorly built ones fall quite rapidly. We are not seeing a movement fall apart, we are seeing a facade crumble – revealing that there is/was very little behind it. It seems that only Nancy Pelosi has missed the message that the emperor has no clothes.
What historians have to figure out is how this facade came to dominate the landscape. I’ll posit a first hypothesis. They played on our compassions – they claimed victimhood and we, being decent people, wanted to help. They manipulated us and told us we were mean if we dared to confront or confound them – so we let them run amok because we did not want to be told we were mean.
There are two things to consider going forward. One, progressivism is not dead it is; however, apparently going into hiding. It’ll be back. We must maintain our guard. Two, we let it go so long that we will have to be actually mean sometimes to restore order. Sometimes the child has to be spanked.
Sorting Through The Pile
Stories related – The fall of Scientific American cited above. Mandatory DEI statements are most common in Chemistry departments. (The head of this man holding graduate degrees in chemistry hangs low.) Students are demanding universities doing something about their climate anxiety. (Maybe they could just get over it?) But then some are suicidal after the election. (Suicide is not funny, for any reason, but the temptation to wise crack here is very strong.)
Speaking of not actually funny, but you have to laugh – This.
Ruh-Roh. Florida Attorney General Sues FEMA Director For Allegedly Discriminating Against Trump Supporters. More coverage here. Settle quickly and disband the agency. This stain is not coming out.
In the wake of such gross discrimination in the US, an ancient and very ugly one continues to raise its head in Europe. Europe led the charge into this progressive nightmare that we are rapidly trying to shed. Note where it leads, and keep shedding.
The post Quoth Dylan – The Times They Are A’Changin appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
This:
Three people were indicted on federal charges that accuse them of staging a cross-burning to generate support for a Black mayoral candidate in Colorado Springs in what prosecutors described as a hate-crime hoax.
We “fight hate” a lot in this country, but the fight has not produced anything positive. If anything, it has increased resentment, and here we see it has engendered fraud.
Here’s the problem with fighting, destroying, hate – it leaves a vacuum. Something is going to rush in to fill it. Fighting hate is not a bad thing, assuming there is actual hate involved, but you have to put something positive in its place. Too often fighting hate turns into hating hate, which means hate has won the day. You cannot beat hatred with hatred.
I travelled yesterday and while at my local airport in East Tennessee ran into a gentleman sporting a lot of LA Dodgers swag, which began a conversation. He was in the area establishing a relationship with a realtor because he wanted out of Southern California. He had a lot negative to say about California, as do all of us who have made the exodus do. But he knew little about East Tennessee – he just wanted out. I recalled moves I have made in the past that were necessary, but not sought; where the destination was necessary, but not a matter of desire. I did not enjoy them. One needs to go somewhere, not just leave where they are.
We spend too much time in this nation combatting the bad, but not near enough creating the good.
Our politics, on both sides of the aisle, has become consumed with battling what each side views as the wrong or evil. But in the fight, we have lost sight of what we are fighting for; we seem only to know what we are fighting against.
Trump’s election is reactionary. The loudest message from it is a rejection of the Biden/Harris administration and the pandemic that set it up. Trump’s first electoral victory was likewise reactionary, primarily against Hillary Clinton. His ascension within the party is based in no small part on his willingness to name and decry what is wrong in The Democratic Party.
Trump’s early appointments, with one notable exception, are good to excellent. But they are, for the most part, aimed at purging the gross abuses from the government. This is a necessary task, but it is only the beginning. The challenge for this administration is the question of what comes after the purge? What will they build to replace that which is purged, to ensure that the abuses do not return in the next administration?
Trump is a developer; he is used to demolition before construction. That requires a vision. He has successfully capitalized on the fight to regain the White House. Now that he is there, the time has come to articulate his vision for what comes after. I look forward to hearing about it.
The post Fighting Against Is A Loser, Fighting For Is How To Win appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Two stories of government amok continue to resonate, continue to demonstrate just how massive is the task before us – Peanut the Squirrel and the FEMA discriminatory practices. New details have emerged.
Little publicized – Peanut did NOT have rabies. Please recall, rabies was the reason cited for the animal’s destruction, so I did a deep dive into the necessity of such. This is purely a procedural thing. The only 100% reliable way to test for rabies is to destroy the animal and test its brain tissue. However, blood tests combined with behavioral observation is generally considered reliable in household pets. (With wild animals there is no control information against which to compare behavioral observations.) Regulations vary significantly by jurisdiction. In the end Peanut’s mandated immediate destruction lies in his designation as a wild animal – a designation made in spite of the fact that there is ample video evidence that the squirrel was effectively a pet – the “wild animal” designation made out of habit, not reality. (Not to mention the distinct possibility of retribution since Peanut did bite one of the officials.)
The Peanut case is a case of a bureaucracy being too bureaucratic. The wheels crank without thought or judgement – as if the animal, and the lives of the animal’s keepers, were destroyed by a machine. It is a story of the absence of humanity where it should have been present. This is a tale as old as man has organized.
But the FEMA story is quite different. The fired FEMA employee has gone public, and she is claiming, as I suspected from the outset, that she is being scapegoated for much wider behavior in the agency:
According to the recently disgraced Washington, “FEMA preaches avoidance” of potentially contentious situations.
And, supposedly, Trump supporters are disproportionately responsible for fomenting such situations.
Washington said her team had encountered “political hostility” from those in homes with “Trump campaign signage,” but nevertheless insisted that agency guidance is — and her own determination was — about safety, not political targeting.
Another former FEMA employee also told The Post that the processes that led to Washington’s discriminatory action are systemic — and that the bias against Trump supporters dated back years, sometimes justified as part of an effort to serve “marginalized” communities first.
Let’s conduct a thought experiment. The inevitable “Big One” hits Southern California, leaving South Central LA in ruins. The predominantly African American area is covered in gang-related graffiti and quite prone to street violence. Firearms are plentiful. Therefore, FEMA decides to avoid it out of “an abundance of caution.” How loud would be the protests? How massive would be the outcry?
But that blatant discrimination is an issue for the media that is clearly going along with the FEMA efforts at cover-up. But to hide behind “safety” as an excuse for political targeting is just pure bull manure, as is the whole “marginalized community” thing.
To the extent that this is discussed at all, I fear the discussion will bog down in the excuses, missing the thread. I fear all this will cloud what is a clear-cut issue – political targeting was practiced, regardless of the ~~reasons~~, er excuses. That is banana republic stuff and there is no excuse. At a minimum, the federal agencies have lost the thread of what they are supposed to be about. Even in the highly unlikely event that this was an isolated incident (just the only one where the abuse is in writing) the agency is complicit by enacting policies that enabled it and in failing to train their people that political targeting for any reason was forbidden.
The agencies responsible for the seizure and destruction of Peanut should compensate, in significant amounts, the squirrel’s keepers for their loss of income and affection. They should issue a public apology and undergo a very public process of reform – restoring the humanity to the bureaucratic machine.
FEMA is a very different story. Investigations should be convened in both the Senate and the House as soon as the new Congress is seated and the appropriate committees identified. In all likelihood, those investigations should recommend the agency be disbanded and its mission returned to DHS for management by new means. The FEMA administrator is a Senate confirmed, political appointment. That needs to be rethought. Any agency that might replace it needs to be completely scrubbed of political considerations.
Something is rotten in the heart of government. It needs to be removed. FEMA may be the starting point, but it is not the end game.
The post The Corruption is Very Deep appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
We watch movies over and over and over again. On free streaming TV there are channels that do nothing but play all the episodes of a given old TV show on a continuous loop. Some shows (e.g. Law and Order — The Andy Griffith Show) seem always available on broadcast TV. When it is done well, we love a rerun. But there is no such thing as a political rerun. This Trump campaign looked very different than the last, which was very different than the one before it. This Trump transition is already, just days into it, radically different than the last one.
Yet so many in media and the commentariat seem to think this is a rerun. I have, in the last few days, seen way too many Trump hit pieces that are remarkably similar to what we saw four-to-eight short years ago. The host thinks legacy media dead. Rerunning the old tired anti-Trump nonsense is a way certain to guarantee it.
First of all, Trump is a “learning machine.” That is a term the host coined long ago regarding Trump’s antithesis – Mitt Romney. But they both share this trait in common. They both rarely repeat a mistake. Trump is not going to give his opposition the same ammunition they had last time.
Secondly, Trump has the wind at his back. In 2016 he won the electoral college, but lost the popular vote. Republicans lost seats in both the House and Senate, while maintaining a majority. In this election Trump won the popular vote overwhelmingly, flipped the Senate from D to R and looks poised to gain seats in the House. Trump has a mandate this time – last time his position was very weak.
Finally, media has blown their credibility. They have grossly misrepresented reality, if not outright lied.
Media reruns are not going anywhere during this administration. People are not listening. The walls of that particular silo are now very, very thick. The only people paying any attention are those in the silo with them.
There is a thesis that Chernobyl killed the Soviet Union because it was an event of such scale and consequence that the Soviet government could not control the information flow and maintain the illusion of functionality. I think that in the not-too-distant future, historians will say something similar about covid. It was a grand illusion.
Trump’s return is a message to media (and the Administrative State), “We may have fallen for it in 2020, but we are wise to your game now. We are not playing anymore.”
Trump’s job is, in large part, to restore American confidence in its government. The roll out is going exceptionally well, which is a great first step to restoring that confidence. Confidence in legacy media is even lower than it is in government. They can reclaim it or die.
The post There is No Such Thing as a Political Rerun appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Rick Scott of Florida joined me this morning. Senator Scott, like Senators Cornyn and Thune, are longtime friends and great conservatives. The GOP will be led well by whomever succeeds Leader McConnell:
Audio:
11-12hhs-scott
Transcript:
HH: Someday, Democrats are going to learn. You can’t beat Ted Cruz in Texas, and you cannot beat Rick Scott in Florida. He joins me now. Rick Scott, congratulations on your reelection, and handy reelection. They poured a lot of money into trying to beat you. What was the final margin, Senator?
RS: 1.4 million votes.
HH: (laughing)
RS: I won Miami-Dade by 10 points, won Osceola, which is the Puerto Rican majority county. We won the county that Tampa’s in. We won the county that St. Pete’s in. We won the county that Jacksonville’s in, and of course, we won Miami big. So 5.9 million votes. You know, we are, Florida is the center of the Republican Party in America, and look, everybody from Florida is getting appointed.
HH: You know, Senator, I want to point out that you ran for governor twice. They tried to knock you off. This is your second run for senator. I don’t know how much money’s been spent against you, but do you think they’ll give up now?
RS: I think they should give up on Florida. I bet they spent $300 million dollars against me.
HH: Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s like you and Cruz. You bankrupted the Democratic Party. So Senator, let’s talk about tomorrow. I’ve had John Thune on. If John Cornyn calls, all three of you guys are great friends of mine and to the program.
RS: Yeah.
HH: Why are you running for leader?
RS: Well, I’m running because I think we have to have, you know, a dramatic change. We’ve got to get the Trump agenda accomplished. I’m a business guy. I know how to get things done. I talked to my colleagues. They know that we have to have big change. They want to get treated as equals. They want us to have an agenda. They want to be part of a team. They know I’ve got a great working relationship with Donald Trump and with the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. And I’m a business guy. Business guy. What do you do? You have a purpose, you build a team, you write a plan, you made your living…and guess what? You have success. So I think that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to have success. We’ve got to get this stuff done.
HH: You know, the business plan thing. Can I pause on that, becusae I’ve been trying to explain the budget and reconciliation process to people. Would you explain it to them? We get 100 days, and we get one budget reconciliation this year, and it’s got to be big. What would you imagine for it?
RS: Well, first off, you’ve got to revamp, we’ve got to, you know, reduce taxes. I mean, our taxes are too big. And you’ve got to change the size of government. We are spending 40% more than we take in. Our taxes are too high. I cut taxes, by the way, every year as governor. I cut taxes and fees 100 times. Guess what? My revenues went up. The economy got better. So what we’ve got to think about is how do we get people back to work? How do we reduce the cost of living for people? I mean, I just tell you, people are struggling. I mean, I stopped at a restaurant the other day to grab a sandwich, and a young lady said look, Governor, I moved when you were governor, and I could afford it. And she says I can’t afford to live here anymore. Everything’s gotten too expensive. You’ve got to fix this. That’s going to take dramatic change. And so what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to pass a budget, and we’ve got to get, we have to stop and say to ourselves why do we do, like why do we have the Department of Education? Why is the federal government involved in so many agencies? It’s so many things. Why do we, if they want to run everything, why do we have our states? I believe in states’ rights. I believe our governors and their legislatures ought to be responsible for education and so many things that the federal government has gotten involved in. and what they’ve done is all they do, is bog everything down. You can’t get a permit. You’ve got to, they’re telling you how to run your life. This is easy. That’s why we have our states. That’s how this was set up. So it’s the United States of America. It’s not the federal government of America.
HH: Senator, I believe that the Spending Clause would support conditioning federal education dollars on every state that receives them, that wants them, implementing a school choice program at least as robust as Florida and Arizona’s, and West Virginia’s and Ohio. I mean, there’s a standard. We can’t mandate the end of public schools, but certainly, do you think reconciliation could support that kind of a requirement on education spending?
RS: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. What we’ve got to do is we’ve got to say what can we do, and don’t be shy. I mean, listen, we should do everything we can do. We have, there are so many things we have to do. We have to have a military that scares the crap out of our enemies. We’ve got to balance our budget. We can balance the budget. Guess what? I balanced the budget when I was governor. Florida had not balanced its budget in 20 years before I became governor. I balanced the budget when I was in business. How do you do it? You say this is what my revenues are going to be, I’m not spending more than that. It’s not that hard. But you have to create a process for everything you want to get done. So we know, we know we have to get a budget done. We know we have to do reconciliation. Let’s go to the, when do we have to have these things done? Let’s move backwards. Who’s going to be responsible? What’s our timeline? What’s our measurement? And then do it. We’ve got to get the Trump agenda accomplished. We’ve got to get these judges in. We’ve got to get his nominees done. We’ve got to, this is not for the faint of heart. This is for somebody that wants to bust their butt every day to get this done.
HH: Now Senator Cornyn put out, and you retweeted, and I’m sure Senator Thune agrees, around the clock – 24/7, 365 to get Donald Trump his nominees, because we cannot have a replay of 2017. Can you explain that to people?
RS: Yeah. Well, here’s our schedule. I was shocked when I came up here. Here’s the schedule since I’ve been up here for six years, okay? And we have a vote at 5:30. We don’t know what we’re voting on, by the way, until generally Monday morning. We don’t know what we’re voting on, but 5:30, we’re going to have a vote at night. And then we leave here at 1:45 on Thursday. Now the Senate is a process. It takes so many days to do each thing we do. So the only way we’re going to get this done is if we commit to be here. That means, I think, for the first whatever time it takes, if it’s the first 100 days, if it’s the first 200 days. We should be here every day. We should be here every day, and get everything done. If the Democrats want to slow everything down, which that’s what they’ve done, that’s what they did with Trump the first time, if they want to slow it down, then they’re going to have to be here every day to do it, because we’re, my belief is let’s stay here until we get his nominees done, until we get reconciliation done. Let’s get all this done now. We know, we know this country has to be saved. Donald Trump, he ran on a campaign to do these things. We’ve got to have, we’ve got to have a leader and a Republican party up here that does it.
HH: Now Senator, I want to get deep in the weeds with a potential majority leader. The blue slip process is the blue slip process. It’s never going to change. But I do believe, California hasn’t had a good district court judge nominated during a Republican presidency for as long as I can remember. I do believe in nominating a bunch of people and appointing them for one year, and then they can retire. You can find retired partners. You can find retired judges to put up there, nominate, go into recess, and recess appointment them for a year. Is that legit in your view?
RS: Well, what Donald Trump has asked is would people support a recess appointments who are non-judicial. I actually believe that we can get judicial nominees done, because here’s the deal. The blue slip process works as long as people are respective of it. If you just say oh, I’m not even going to talk to you…
HH: Well, that’s the California senators. They wouldn’t even talk to the Leader and the Republicans when Donald Trump was…
RS: Then what you have to say is the blue slip process doesn’t work. What this is, is the only way it works is if, you know, when there’s a Democrat president, Republicans works to try to find a good judge. When the Democrats there, or a Republican, Democrats have to work. If they don’t, the blue slip process doesn’t work. You can’t have a process that just is used to completely stop the appointment of judges. The president has the right to appoint judges.
HH: Well said, or to nominate them, and they get a vote. Let me conclude by this, and Senator Thune spoke to it. No matter who wins, do you think the 53 will come together?
RS: I hope so. But we’ve got, when I say come together, though, we’ve got to come together on the Trump agenda. We’ve got to come together on getting nominees done. You know, this idea that we’re going to work two-and-half days a week is crazy. This idea that we’re going to be, you know, we’re not going to bust our butts every day for the Trump agenda, if that’s, it depends. It all comes down to, and I think hopefully, whoever wins, they will understand we have got to have big change. I’m running, and as you know, I ran two years ago, because this has got to change.
HH: Now I’ve got to get a quick question in. If Marco Rubio becomes Secretary of State, that would be a great appointment. Who becomes the next senator? Who would you recommend to Ron DeSantis?
RS: Oh, gosh. There’s a lot of good people.
HH: Mike Waltz is going to the White House, so he can’t be on the list.
RS: I know. Mike Waltz would be great. I mean, there’s great, Vern Buchanan, Byron Donalds, Kat Cammack, I mean, we’ve got so many, Cory Mills…
HH: Florida is like the Ground Zero of the Republican talent pool, isn’t it?
RS: Yeah, we’ve got great ones. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Jimenez, Maria Salazar. I mean, we have got so, we have got so much talent, it’s unbelievable.
HH: Senator Rick Scott, great to talk to you. I appreciate you taking time. Again, I just want to say congratulations. You’re right. I think they’ve spent $300 million dollars against you, and it bounces off. Pebbles against a battleship. Thank you, Senator Scott.
RS: All right. Bye bye.
End of interview.
The post Florida Senator Rick Scott On His Big Re-election Win And Run For Majority Leader appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
President-Elect Trump is making great appointments at a breakneck pace. Meanwhile, the usual suspects are getting set up to oppose every breathe he takes. That’s politics. What’s not politics as usual is the people that are experiencing genuine deep emotional distress as a result of the election, and people who are supposed to help with our mental health, breaking up family support systems. Elections are elections, politics is politics, but there is something much deeper wrong here.
The signs of issues on a soul rending level are even deeper.
Yesterday we looked at the deep and inhumane corruptions inside FEMA. Something has to be very wrong in the soul of people who withhold assistance from those in deep need for the sake of political advantage.
Then there is what happened in Amsterdam last weekend. It is nothing less than the return of the greatest evil to visit the West in the last 150 years. Andrew C. McCarthy’s piece of this last Saturday is a must read on that on a political level – it is a result of the importation of jihad. Something went wrong in the governments of Europe to permit it, but then such has gone wrong there before. But it is coming here, as well. From the “pro-Palestinian” protests of recent times, protests that threatened Jewish students on campuses around the land, to the vandalism of Jewish institutions, we are seeing it.
This situation, wherein government is corrupt, and hatred goes public and gets organized, has developed amongst claims of “compassion” and “diversity.” Somehow good has become bad. Evil has wrapped itself in sanctimonious clothing and we have let it in. That’s not about politics. We are lost on levels that politics simply cannot address.
The election just past is not the answer to what ails us, rather it is the removal of obstacles to that answer asserting itself. I have no idea of Trump’s faith status. He has alluded to Norman Vincent Peale, but without deep commitment. His personal behavior is, at times, quite the opposite of traditional Christian practice. He does not speak “Christianese.” But he also understands the value of faith at work in the nation. Even if he does not hold it to his heart, he will not oppose it in action – which makes him radically different than the outgoing administration.
If we really want to fix what ails us, we cannot sit back and count on the government to fix it because the government cannot address the kind of sickness so deep in the culture. Nor are the “culture wars” of the last few decades the answer – if they were, we would not be here now. The church needs to become very active, but in a whole new way. We don’t need to engage in issues, we need to engage with people.
Which takes me back to what I wrote on Sunday. “I pray for the necessary compassion to bring healing where there is hurt.” Let’s start there.
The post The Sickness In The Heart of America. appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
As media lines up with what have become boring, cliché stories about how crazy Trump will be in office, we are already beginning to find out why media’s Democratic teammates have been so desperate to hold on to power. They need that power to continue to cover up how deeply they have corrupted the federal government. Rumors of FEMA failure in the weeks since Helene and Milton have been filtering out, particularly from the mountains of East Tennessee and western North Carolina, since Helene cut through here. That area is so isolated, a condition further aggravated by Helene, that reportable fact has been hard to put one’s finger on. When I could get fact, I have reported it.
Well, facts are now readily available – and again, as we have seen so vividly in the under reporting of the pogroms in Amsterdam, in lying before the election and in denial of the election results – media is failing us. Legacy media is treating this story of absolute corruption in FEMA very lightly, you have to turn to alternative media outlets to get the whole story.
Here is the big news, as Daily Wire broke it late Friday:
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell announced Saturday that supervisor Marn’i Washington had been fired after she ordered federal employees under her supervision to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, according to messages shared with The Daily Wire by whistleblowers. These instructions were given both verbally and in writing, multiple government employees revealed.
Now, FEMA is desperately trying to make this story about one rogue employee that has been fired. But I don’t buy it. How did such an employee get hired? How did they hold their job? There are strict civil service rules against just such things. The entire system had to fail, or be corrupt, for things to get this far.
On Saturday, Mediaite carried a Fox clip of a private relief worker in western North Carolina telling the story of low-level FEMA people helping him but saying as they did, “We cannot have our fingerprints on this.” Meaning, of course, that the higher ups had also ordered them not to do much in the heart of MAGA country. What more evidence do you need of an agency utterly corrupt? It’s Congressional investigation time.
On Thursday we looked at the herculean task in front of the new administration to bring the Administrative State to heel. But when I wrote that we were talking about the sort of “normal ” temptation to power that infects all those that exercise it. This; however, is a very different sort of thing. Here is clear indication that federal agencies were operated in a purely political fashion – that government assistance was doled out based on political affiliation. This is government corruption of the very worst sort.
As awful as that corruption is, I want you to consider the human side of this story. Very real people were denied, or at least delayed in receiving, assistance – in an effort, obviously, to affect the vote after losing their homes to a storm. People’s suffering was exacerbated for the sake of winning an election! It’s not just corrupt – it’s cruel and inhumane. I have written many times about how operating out of hate corrupts not just the government, but the soul. Well, here it is in black-and-white. So desperate were these people to beat Trump that they prolonged human suffering to do so.
And I don’t know what’s worse – the corruption in the government or media’s efforts to hide it. This is the sort of thing that media ought to be chomping at the bit to uncover and tell, but NO, they are complicit.
The other day I wrote that reform of the Administrative State ought to be Job #1 on the Trump administration’s domestic agenda. I don’t know how to move it farther up the priority ladder from that, but I do know the urgency has, with this story, risen exponentially.
The post Absolute Corruption appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
So, when a squirrel ran across stage before Harris’ very belated concession speech and the internet erupted about Peanut the Squirrel’s ghost, it was cute and funny. But there has also been a bunch of stuff on social media that is just downright mean.
Like most everybody, my social media has included a lot of people upset about the outcome of the election. Much of it has been, in my opinion, overwrought. The temptation is to laugh and ridicule. I actually started down that path in a couple of posts this week and then backed off. I am glad I did. X handle “Libs of TikTok” put a post with this heading, “TDS should be officially classified as a mental illness at this point.” It features a woman in genuine and deep emotional distress. Watching it made it impossible for me to make fun of it – her pain was too real, even if imagined, to ridicule. It really, genuinely is a form of mental illness in a case like this.
To be conservative is to be the object of ridicule. It is the chief weapon in the arsenal of many, but not all, liberals. From “cling to their guns and bibles” to “deplorables” to “garbage,” ridicule can be an effective weapon, especially when you don’t have an actual argument. One of the reasons the Republican victory is so overwhelming this round is we are just tired of being made fun of. From the late-night chat hosts to the candidates themselves, we’re just sick of it.
But generally speaking we have something they don’t – Jesus. One of His apostles – Paul, said:
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.
Ridicule makes enemies, not friends. Making enemies is not good for your soul, nor for the world.
As I head to church this morning, I pray for the necessary compassion to bring healing where there is hurt.
The post The Difference Between Cute and Mean appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Amsterdam…pogroms…God save us all. After months of calling Trump “a Hitler,” when the actual ghost of Nazism raises its head in Europe, where is the outrage? Where is the massive coverage?
Google it. As best as I can tell, among legacy media, CBS did a piece and the NYTimes has an article, but the story is largely missing. Commentary Magazine is, of course, all over it. Instapundit got to it last evening, including a link to The Times of Israel with the most important thing to note:
Israeli officials said 10 citizens were injured. Up to 10 people were at one point out of contact with their families, but by 3 p.m. Friday all were accounted for following the hours of overnight violence, apparently perpetrated largely by local Muslims and Arabs.
Ah, there is your answer. When liberal policies (mass immigration from Islamic regions) lead to genuine evil, the liberal media does not want to acknowledge liberal failure. And so, evil prevails.
It has been eight years since Islamic immigrants in Cologne, Germany created havoc on New Year’s Eve. It is nearly ten years since we learned of the “no-go zones” throughout Europe where Muslim communities have simply taken over. Islamic lawlessness in Europe is not a new problem – but it has been an ignored problem – and now it has festered to the point that an evil the western world once swore it would never allow again has returned.
The media dysfunction during the election cycle just concluded was extraordinary, but this…this is irredeemable. Since Watergate, journalism has slowly changed from reporting to crusading. But crusading for good has now become camouflaging evil.
This will be a difficult problem to solve – very difficult. But ignoring it only allows it to worsen. How dare we?
Random Thought
Trump’s political genius should now be evident to even the casual observer. Simply by calling every bluff, he forced liberals to keep raising the stakes until they appeared simply ludicrous. I think many will try to write the story of this election as “Trump did not win, Democrats lost.” But he goaded them into every wrong step they took. As a developer he is high risk/high reward. Politicians are generally quite risk averse. (Hence, they refuse to tackle the return of antisemitism to Europe.) Just by being Trump, he forced them into risky territory where they were most uncomfortable. Whatever else you may think of the man and his policies, he is an undeniable political genius.
Working Off The Stack
- “Quincy Jones Should Be Remembered for His Jazz, Not His Jackson” Yes…YES…a thousand times YES! Undeniable proof.
- When I first saw this, “The CDC Planned Quarantine Camps Nationwide,” I thought “clickbait.” But nope, real deal. I’d make a wisecrack referencing the opening of this post, but it’s not the least bit funny.
- I still do not understand WMD charges for conventional terrorist activity involving conventional explosives. The acts of terror charges are sufficient – such additional charges are a political statement, not law enforcement.
- I have seen at least three stories this week, all from European sources, on the very ugly air pollution situation in Lahore, Pakistan. That many stories appearing in a short period speaks to an information campaign – which indicates someone is looking for money to “solve” the problem. (Yes, I am increasingly cynical on environmental issues. Somewhere since my boyhood it has transmogrified from genuine concerns to a massive wealth transfer scheme.)
And now…the weekend.
The post Media Fails Again appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday, the host and one of the guests (I think Geraghty, but don’t quote me on that) stated that PA moderate Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro has to be next-in-line for the Democratic nomination given the utter repudiation the far-left policies of the last four years received on Tuesday. But I think they grossly underestimate 1) How strong the hold of the far-left is on that party and 2) just how unwilling to face reality they actually are.
If you are like me, your social media feeds, and much of your news, has been filled with moans and wails and tears and mourning. George “never-saw-a-crime-he-won’t-ignore” Gascón, now the soundly defeated Los Angeles DA, described the loss as “heartbreaking” – as if elections should be about making anyone “feel better” about anything. But setting aside the natural grief, real candidates have started to line up for next time – already.
Despite Gascón being beaten like a tin drum in the hands of a kid with hyperactivity disorder, California remained California. They elected Adam Schiff to the Senate for crying out loud. Yes, that Adam Schiff – the former Congressman (oh so sadly, my former Congressman) who established his national reputation almost entirely by appearing on national media ad infinitum during Trump’s first term with what are now proven to be baseless and, in some cases, entirely false, claims about “Russia, Russia, Russia.” One truly wonders what inanity he will bring us from his minority, freshman, position in the Senate with Trump back in office. Gavin Newsom’s position as ~~Emperor~~, er, Governor of California was not on the ballot this go around.
AP reported yesterday:
California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump, on Thursday called for lawmakers to convene a special session ahead of another Trump presidency to safeguard the state’s progressive policies.
Make no mistake, this is pure political stunt. Newsom ran a shadow campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination all throughout the entire cycle just completed, and when Biden withdrawing from the race, both before and after he actually did, was making headlines, Newsom’s was the only other name that came out of the mouths of Democrats. Sure, Shapiro was touted by Republicans, hoping that Democrats had been overcome with reason, but those few Dems that dared buck the Harris tide talked about Newsom. Let’s be honest, Trump is a federalist. (See the SCOTUS appointments of his first term.) If California wants to continue its deep dive into dysfunctionality, Trump is going to let it go. The only reason Newsom would make a move like this is to grab some headlines and position himself for next time.
Newsom has shown some remarkable political talent to date, but his career has been entirely in California. This move shows a deaf ear to the reality of national politics. Democrats did not lose this election – they were crushed. Sometimes in football you look bad in the first half, but stay close, and then you go into the locker room, look at the tape, make a few adjustments, come out and win big in the second half. But this election was not that kind of game. This was the kind of game where you go into the locker at half and the effort is simply to motivate the team to take the field in the second half. You go out, take your lumps and reinvent the team before next week’s game. With this move, Newsom is acting as if all that is needed is a few tweaks.
Based on what I am seeing among Democrats out there – Newsom’s play could win him the nomination. But it’ll end there. The far left has had its periodic time in the sun and as in every such preceding period it has failed. Time to reinvent the team. The nation is through, very through, following California.
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Senate GOP Whip John Thune joined me this morning:
Audio:
https://hughhewitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/11-07hhs-thune.mp3Transcript:
HH: Joined by the GOP Whip in the United States Senate, Senator John Thune from South Dakota. Congratulations, Senator Thune. I knew you threw your back into it. You were out there with Bernie Moreno and Dave McCormick and many others. You didn’t lose one seat. Congratulations. How are you feeling?
JT: Good. Thanks, Hugh, and it was a big night obviously led by a big win for President Trump at the top of the ticket. And I think what you saw is the Republican coalition grew around the country as Americans of all stripes banded together and really came together to say enough is enough. We’re tired of the failed Biden-Harris-Schumer agenda. And we, you know, if you look at the numbers, we gained ground in 48 states, nearly every demographic compared to the 2020 Election, improved our margins in more than 2,300 counties across the country. So it truly was a big night, and we’re excited about our majority in the Senate and hopefully a majority in the House and what we can do with it.
HH: I am so happy about Bernie Moreno, because I’m a Buckeye. But Tim Sheehy, I know you were out there with him, because he’s close. I know you helped Deb Fischer hold off a late charge. I know that you were working for Dave McCormick. By the way, is Dave McCormick safe? Is that victory in the bag?
JT: I think it is. I think Casey needs to, he just needs to step aside and concede that race. And I hope at some point the media calls it. If you look at where the numbers are coming from, where, what they’ve got left to count, we feel really confident about Dave McCormick, and talked to him…
HH: I haven’t given up on Kari Lake or Sam Brown, yet. I’m just, I just want to focus on what is possible and what got done. We didn’t lose a single Republican, right? Rick Scott, Ted Cruz…
JT: That’s right.
HH: They were all under, Deb Fischer, not one went down.
JT: And all ended up winning by substantial margins. You know, those were, many of them were close races, but you know, Rick Scott came up big in Florida. Ted ended up winning by 12 points in Texas, and Deb ended up winning by about, over 7 points in Nebraska. So you know, on the main, Hugh, I think it was a resounding, convincing message from the American people, and pretty much all across the country.
HH: Now Senator, what really concerns me, A) the filibuster is safe, at least for a while. In fact, the Democrats are going to drop that stuff, because I don’t want the filibuster to go away. But I do worry about the 100 days. Joe Biden just spent money. And money just gave inflation. Can we get real stuff done in the first 100 days like extending the tax cuts, securing the border, school choice, things like that?
JT: Well, that, you know, it makes a huge difference on what happens in the House. As you know, Hugh, if we have unified control of the government, we have the House, Senate and White House, we can use a legislative vehicle called budget reconciliation. And we can do a lot of the things you’re talking about. And obviously, the first and foremost is extending the Trump tax cuts, which if we don’t do that ends up being almost a $2,000 dollar tax increase for everybody, all families across the country, not to mention the impact it would have on the economy on business if the taxes go up by $4 trillion dollars. But then, you’ve got energy issues. You’ve got border issues. You’ve got so many things that we can potentially, of course, address. And while not, you know, obviously there are limitations on how you can use that in the Senate, but that would be huge. And we have to make the most of those first 100 days, first six months as we’ve got a narrow window here to get a lot done for the country. And it’s why winning the House would give us a huge opportunity to do that, so I’m hoping that these last House races come in for us.
HH: If that does, I want to lobby you now, Senator, to finish the wall and also to regularize the DREAMers at the same time.
JT: Yes.
HH: …because I know DREAMers upset some people, but Lincoln is our party’s first president, and he was a “with malice towards none, with charity towards all” kind of guy. Let me ask you about nominations.
JT: Go ahead.
HH: The President-Elect is going to have a lot more experience this time, and he’s going to have a slate. How quickly can those move through, get into position, and start, especially on the national security jobs? We’ve got to get people there.
JT: We do, and that’s why we’ve already, you know, there have been conversations with his transition team, getting names up quickly so we can start vetting them quickly. Hopefully, they’re people who have already experience so that they’re, that that vetting process can go more quickly. But yeah, as soon as we get the majority, which would be January 3rd, we’ve got to get on the floor and start moving. And the challenge, as you know again, the 15 top positions in our government are 30 hours on the Senate floor. We don’t expect the Democrats to cooperate with us in any way. It would be nice if on the key national security ones, on Defense, State, CIA and some of those, they would. And hopefully, we’ll find a little bit of that on some of those key positions that need to get filled. But we’ve got to move quickly, and that’s the challenge, because you mentioned, we’ve got, you want to get a lot done legislatively in the first 100 days. The Senate is also in the personnel business, and some of these, just by virtue of the rules of the Senate, take a lot of time, particularly if you don’t have cooperation from the Democrats.
HH: Do you have a word for Governor DeWine on the sort of skill set that he ought to be seeking for a replacement for Senator, now Vice-President-Elect Vance?
JT: I haven’t talked to him this week, but I know, I did catch up with him, you know, it’s been a while now, but as we were thinking through this. And I hope that, I know the Trump transition team needs to be in contact with him. And obviously, we’ve got to get somebody named in your home state that not only is somebody who is going to be solid, principled conservative and wants to get things done, but also somebody that could win the reelection, because they’ll have to run in a special election here in a couple years. So if you’re available for that nomination, Hugh, let me know.
HH: No, no, no. I don’t wnat any Jobs. It’s the greatest thing in the world. I am the rarest thing inside the Beltway. I don’t want anything from the transition. I don’t want to go to the inauguration. I want nothing. Senator, let me ask you, though, about the Senate GOP. You’ve been led for so long by Leader McConnell. He’s such a giant. He saved the Constitution with the No Hearings, No Votes policy when Justice Scalia died.
JT: Right.
HH: Can the Senate, you’ll have a leadership election. It will be hard-fought. After it’s all over, will it coalesce? Will the GOP coalesce in the Senate to work with Speaker Johnson if he holds the majority to get things done?
JT: Yeah, we have to. There are just no ifs, ands or buts about it. And I think the one thing, at least I certainly hope in the Senate that when this is all said and done, Hugh, everybody recognizes what a narrow window this could be. I mean, two years is another election. And who knows who’s going to be charge of the majority. And so we have to really move, move quickly, move decisively, and try and get as much of an agenda through as we possibly can. And I think that happens in the Senate, irrespective how the leadership election comes out next week. You know, I hope it works in my direction, but we’re going to, in any case, if we can get a House majority, we want to work with President Trump to move an agenda that we have really a fairly, I would say rare opportunity historically to do. And there’s a lot to get done, as you know.
HH: Now Senator, we have 20 Republicans defending seats in the next cycle. It’s an off, the first election after a presidential win is really tough for the incumbent party. But we’ve got great people like Thom Tillis, et cetera, but you’re going to have to find someone to run the NRSC again. You know, I’d love to have Steve Daines do it again, but who’s, who do you think wants that job?
JT: Well, I know somebody that does, and who would be great. But you’re right. Steve Daines, man, what big shoes to fill. That guy just crushed it.
HH: Oh, my gosh, yes.
JT: And he’s up in 2026. He’s got to run for reelection in Montana, which doesn’t entirely preclude somebody from doing it again, but makes it a little bit more challenging. And I think he’s, you know, boy, he did his duty this time, but we’re going to have our work cut out for us in ’26. We’ve got a tough map, very different than this year. And we need the right person in the job. But there’s, I think we’ve got somebody that could be really good at that, and I don’t want to share that, yet.
HH: That’s fine. Just so long as you’re thinking about it.
JT: Yeah. Yeah.
HH: Let me close with this. In terms of the President-Elect, do you think he’s going to tap any of your people? I mean, we need an attorney general, and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Mike Lee are all brilliant lawyers. Is he going to deplete your ranks by asking someone to come serve in the Senate? Maybe he could take a Democrat and put him in the cabinet and get a Republican governor to add some reinforcements?
JT: Well, and we’ve talked about that with the transition team, and I know they’re thinking through, too, just how many vacancies we can actually tolerate in the Senate. And we’ve got some really, really talented people who would make great Trump administration officials in what I think are some really key positions. But if they go very deep, then it creates challenges. Then you’ve got to have, you’ve got to get the right people appointed by the governors. They’ve got to run right away. And so that has its own set of challenges as well. I know that there are, as you mentioned, and there are some great ones and there’s some really good spots where they would fit. But I know that’s a factor into it that the Trump transition team is taking into consideration as they think through some of these key positions.
HH: Last question, Senator. The realignment, half of Hispanic males voted for the President. A quarter of Black American men voted for the President. Is the conference briefed on this and the incredible implications of the realignment that happened?
JT: Yeah, I mean, not, I don’t, I think we’re going to have a lot more conversations about that as we kind of do the after action plan on this, Hugh. But it was a stunning, truly stunning American election if you look at where the votes came for in this country. And obviously, it speaks incredibly well of President Trump to just appeal to ordinary Americans, working-class Americans, people who get up every day and do the work. And he’s not somebody that necessarily appeals to the elites, but he brought a big coalition with him, and we continue to grow and build it, because politics is about addition.
HH: Oh, amen. Politics is about addition. Senator John Thune from South Dakota, thank you.
End of interview.
The post Senate GOP Whip John Thune On Whether Congress Can Move Fast With The President-Elect After Jasnuary 21, 2025 appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I think we are all familiar with the phrase “canary in a coal mine.” Covid should have served as such a warning signal about the overreach and abuses of the Administrative State. Those of us that deal with the Administrative State on a daily basis, knew what it was like, but covid was the first real taste the American people at large had of their ways. But we were all too embarrassed by the fact that we bought into it initially. We simply wanted to turn the page and put it behind us. The warning signs were missed. So, into the canary role stepped Peanut the Squirrel – undoubtedly a factor in the movement that re-elected Donald J Trump.
But Peanut is only the beginning of the story.
I have written countless times about the abuses of the Administrative State and how they focus, in particular, on the little guy because the big guys can fight back. But my stories still involve entrepreneurs, largely in manufacturing, and most people cannot relate. But everybody has a pet – everybody can relate to a pet squirrel. And the media knows a great human-interest story when they find one – so they go looking for more.
Yesterday, some conservative outlets started to report on the far larger than usual participation by the Amish communities in Pennsylvania voting than is historically the case. Turns out that earlier this year, in a manner totally reminiscent of the now infamous “Peanut raid,” officials raided an Amish dairy farm over violations of food safety guidelines. It appears the violations are in that grey zone between law and religious freedom. That’s important, but it is not where the real issue arises. Consider this caption to a photo in the underlying story:
Two Pennsylvania State Police vehicles can be seen at the Upper Leacock Township farm of Amos Miller on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024. Miller is an Amish farmer who has resisted following federal and state food safety regulations. State police said troopers were there to provide security for Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture employees who were serving a search warrant.
The big deal here is that armed – ARMED! – police were present at a regulatory, investigative visit to an Amish, you know the people that still use horse drawn carriages and are conscientious objectors when it comes to the military, farm. This was not a raid on a crack house – this was a search of some of the most peaceful people in the country.
In the story of Peanut, and now in this story, we find the Administrative State resorting to police state tactics when they are completely unwarranted. It is a raw, and frightening, exercise of power.
Both of these stories are from state agencies – thus they will not be under the direct purview of President-elect Trump. One of the biggest problems he had in his first term was the Administrative State within his own administration fighting against him. He will have a tall order in this term overcoming that, but he has the distinct advantage of a red tsunami at his back this time. But these two stories illustrate that more is necessary.
President Trump will have to use the enormous political advantage he now holds to urge, cajole and whatever else may be necessary to get the states into line as well. We are grossly over-regulated – this is an undeniable reality. But we are now seeing that over-regulation being used as justification for something far more insidious – the arbitrary and unjustified exercise of raw government force.
Taming the Administrative State should be the top domestic priority of the new Trump administration, and they need to make those efforts not only within the federal government but extend it to state and municipalities as well. They are going to need our help. In order for Team Trump to succeed in this effort we have to stand strongly behind them so that they have the political capital they need to reverse this tide. Stay vigilant, speak up.
The post Peanut As Canary appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Jim Geraghty this morning:
Progressivism, liberalism, woke-ism — they will never be the same. They won’t wither away completely. But the Democrats just learned the hardest of hard lessons: The electorate — not just straight white males — doesn’t want their brand of deeply divisive identity politics, deliberate conflation of legal immigration and illegal immigration, policies that reflexively recommend and enact permanent bodily changes for teenagers questioning their gender identity, and basically the entire agenda of the 2019 Kamala Harris presidential campaign….
At the Bradley Impact Fund conference last month, I told the joke about the advertising genius who’s brought in to revitalize the sales of a brand of dog food. He redesigns the packaging, runs a whole bunch of appealing commercials, and gets a bright, vibrant display for the brand right in the front of the supermarket. But as he’s shopping for groceries, he watches a customer walking a dog reach down to buy the other leading brand. Exasperated, the advertising genius goes up to the man and asks why, despite the new packaging, commercials, and display, he bought the other leading brand and not the ad man’s client’s brand of dog food. The customer shrugs and points to his dog, saying “He won’t eat it.”
Democrats, the electorate is just not going to eat your dog food. It doesn’t matter if you raise more money and spend more on ads and have more campaign offices and have more doorknockers and volunteers. The sales pitch isn’t really the problem; the product is.
I think there are two specific aspects of the product that Americans reject, almost violently.
The first is fully illustrated in the story of Peanut the squirrel, wherein the high and mighty muckity-mucks of Faceless, Unelected Bureaucracy X & Y & Z stuck there heads together and decided that one couple was not living the life they thought the couple ought to be living and simply took it away from them – worse they actually murdered it. A lot of Americans want EV’s, but a lot don’t, and they do not appreciate having the government tell them not having one is some sort of anti-social crime. Nor do they appreciate said government manipulating the marketplace to make it difficult for them to get what they do want.
The second aspect was the real dealbreaker. The American people do not appreciate being lied to. Most Americans have a very sensitive BS detector and when it goes off, they tend to get a little upset. From “Joe Biden is just fine” to the still unexplained circumstances by which Kamala Harris became the nominee, that detector was screaming like a Geiger Counter at a nuclear explosion.
Add to that a media that proved far more than willing to misrepresent stories to aid the candidate of their choice. Just one example of that was misrepresentation of the Bucks County, PA voting irregularities story – irregularities that were not, as represented by some, fabricated by Trump, but were as ruled by the court, very real and very problematic. One of the sadder aspects of the utter repudiation of the last four years that this election represents is we cannot kick the media out.
High-handed authoritarianism and deception are simply not ways that the American people want to be dealt with. Make your case – convince me. If you don’t, you lose. If you don’t like losing, then try harder to convince me, but you don’t get to force it on me and you don’t get to lie about it. This election outcome in a nutshell.
The post Not Buying It appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
As we covered yesterday, the federal government is just now getting its act together responding to Helene in Southern Appalachia. All those years I lived in Southern California the rule of thumb was to be prepared to survive on your own for three days after a major earthquake. The government was, though I doubt it is anymore, well prepared to respond to a quake. However, personal preparation was based on the simple assumption that the devastation would be so vast that it would simply take three days for them to get to you. Such a quake is an inevitability in Southern California – it could be next week, or it could be next century, but it is inevitable. What has happened in the wake of Hurricane Helene this far inland is not nearly so foreseeable, but the fact that it has taken the Feds nearly a week to get busy is inexcusable. The devastation in this situation is just as vast and the accessibility to victims is complicated more than in very urban SoCal, but we are not talking about trouble getting to people – we are talking about just now starting to try.
I have tried very hard to not get political about this – the human suffering is too great and needs to be the primary focus. But we are far enough out now that efforts are moving from rescue to recovery. As the government has failed to respond private efforts have been stupendous. But as of yesterday, local ministries are looking for people and material to recover the dead, not aid the living.
But worse than the government’s slow response has been active efforts by the government to limit private rescue efforts. Yesterday we covered the story of a helicopter pilot being grounded. Yesterday we assumed it was an isolated incident. But it’s not. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced flight restrictions and then had to “clarify” (Backpedal – rapidly.) It wasn’t just an isolated incident – it was a leadership fail.
The slow spin-up, misguided “orders” and countless other missteps are the biggest indication yet of the fact that we do not currently suffer under wrong, or even poor, leadership – but under its absence. While private rescue efforts have been amazing, I mourn what it might have looked like at the government responded by organizing those private efforts rather than trying to get them out of the way of its own, limited efforts. But you see it takes leadership to look over the horizon and see an opportunity. In the absence of leadership, the petty little bureaucrats guard their territory and helicopters doing amazing amounts of good get grounded.
It is not leadership to carry on about “climate change.” Read the data, not the coverage of “the science.” There simply is no correlation between the known changes in the climate, human-derived or natural, and extreme weather. Any “study” that tells you otherwise is based on statistical voodoo, not actual science. But it is even a worse failure of leadership to babble about an “issue” that took decades to develop when there is immediate and terrible human suffering – talk about arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic!
It is oh so tempting to start to blame Biden and his age-related incapacities. But having acknowledged his limitations, making him step aside as a candidate, this mess sits on the shoulders of the entire party and most especially on Kamala Harris. She is currently Vice President, and even if for political reasons they want to keep Biden in the Oval Office, it is her duty to make sure the government is functioning well – but no. She is too busy trying to separate herself from Biden to enter the fray – she is pretending like she is out of power. Hence, we have government by a committee of faceless staffers and in an emergency situation like this all committees do is slow down things that need to be happening faster,
I am going to make this far plainer that perhaps I ought. The federal response to Helene is late, bureaucratic, awful and has to date produced as much suffering and death as it may have relieved. Even if political wisdom says Kamala Harris should distance herself from Biden, after a day or two of witnessing this utter failure, simple human compassion should pull her into the fray. The only thing I can conclude is that the woman lacks both leadership skill and compassion.
Please bear that in mind as early voting begins.
The post In The Absence of Leadership appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
NATIONAL SECURITY & FOREIGN POLICY PROFESSIONALS FOR TRUMPThis year, the American people will make their voices heard at the ballot box. The 2024 presidential election comes at a critical time in world affairs. The policies of the Biden-Harris Administration have invited conflict, diminished America’s standing around the globe, and imperiled our national security. Over the last four years, peace throughout the world has been upended by America’s emboldened adversaries.The Biden-Harris Administration’s foreign policy has been marked by repeated failures. From a world at peace under President Trump, we are closer to a third world war than ever before under the Biden-Harris Administration. With multiple escalating wars around the world, an open border that allows terrorists to flood into the American homeland, and malign actors like China operating unabated, U.S. national security has been profoundly damaged by the failed policies of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.By contrast, the Presidency of Donald Trump focused on restoring peace throughout the world. This was supported by a strong American military and resolute international diplomacy. Though often confronted with fraught situations. President Trump time and time again, presented himself as a peacemaker.In October 2019, President Trump, through tough personal diplomacy, forged a ceasefire agreement between Turkey and our Kurdish partners in Syria. In September 2020, at President Trump’s invitation to the Oval Office, Serbia and Kosovo signed an important economic normalization deal despite longstanding disagreements. President Trump’s defining moment as a peacemaker took place on the South Lawn of the White House on September 15, 2020, when the historic Abraham Accords were signed by Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain, bringing peace to the Middle East. The agreement was later joined by Morocco, expanding its impact.When President Trump took office, the war in Afghanistan had dragged on for almost 16 years. By February 2020, a peace agreement was reached, ensuring no American soldier was killed in combat until the end of the Trump Administration. This agreement held strong because the Taliban understood President Trump’s resolve and U.S. forces were prepared to ensure their compliance. The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Biden-Harris Administration in 2021, led to the unnecessary deaths of thirteen brave American troops at Abbey Gate and left untold billions of dollars of high grade military equipment to the Taliban, making it the most well-armed terror organization in the world.Securing peace is in the greatest tradition of American foreign policy and the Judeo-Christian principles upon which our nation was founded. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be sons of God.” (Matthew 5:9) Such is the legacy of the Trump Administration. For these reasons, we the undersigned individuals, endorse Donald J. Trump for President in 2024. Our nation is facing the most serious and grave threats it has faced in decades. A revival of American peace through strength coupled with a strategy that puts the American people first is necessary to restore peace and economic stability throughout the world.Cabinet & EquivalentMichael Pompeo, 70th United States Secretary of StateSteven Mnuchin, 77th United States Secretary of the TreasuryWilliam Barr, 77th and 85th Attorney General of the United StatesEdwin Meese III, 75th Attorney General of the United StatesAmbassador Robert C. O’Brien, 27th United States National Security AdvisorVice Admiral John M. Poindexter, PhD, U.S. Navy (Ret.), 12th U.S. National Security AdvisorCongressman Ryan Zinke, 52nd United States Secretary of the InteriorRick Perry, 14th United States Secretary of Energy; 47th Governor of TexasRobert L. Wilkie, 10th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs; Former Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel & ReadinessJohn Ratcliffe, 6th Director of National Intelligence, Former Member of Congress Robert E. Lighthizer, Former United States Trade RepresentativeZalmay Khalilzad, 26th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Former U.S. Ambassador to AfghanistanNikki Haley, 29th United States Ambassador to the United NationsKelly Craft, 30th U.S. Ambassador to the United NationsJohn Barsa, Former Acting Administrator, U.S. Agency for International DevelopmentAdam Boehler, Former CEO, United States Development Finance Corporation Sean Cairncross, Former CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation and Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the White House Chief of StaffChristopher C. Miller, Former Acting United States Secretary of DefenseMatthew Whitaker, Former Acting Attorney General of the United StatesPeter O’Rourke Sr., Former Acting United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Veterans AffairsChad Wolf, Former Acting United States Secretary of Homeland SecurityRichard A. Grenell, Former Acting Director of National Intelligence and Former U.S. Ambassador to GermanyTom Homan, Former Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)David Malpass, 13th President of the World BankAbbey Gate FamiliesKelly Barnett, Gold Star Mother of Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, Abbey Gate 8.26.21Coral Doolittle, Gold Star Mother of Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, Abbey Gate 8.26.21 Darin Hoover, Gold Star Father of Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, Abbey Gate 8.26.21Cheryl Juels, Gold Star Aunt of Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, Abbey Gate 8.26.21Alicia Lopez, Gold Star Mother of Cpl. Hunter Lopez, Abbey Gate 8.26.21Herman Lopez, Gold Star Father of Cpl. Hunter Lopez, Abbey Gate 8.26.21Jim McCollum, Gold Star Father of Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, Abbey Gate 8.26.21 Steve Nikoui, Gold Star Father of Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, Abbey Gate 8.26.21Mark Schmitz, Gold Star Father of Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, Abbey Gate 8.26.21Jaclyn Schmitz, Gold Star Stepmother of Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, Abbey Gate 8.26.21Christy Shamblin, Gold Star Mother-In-Law of Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, Abbey Gate 8.26.21Senior National Security and Foreign Policy ProfessionalsAlexander B. Gray, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff, White House National Security CouncilTristan Abbey, Former Director for Strategy, White House National Security Council Dr. Mark Albrecht, Former Executive Secretary of the National Space Council and Principal Advisor on Space to President George H.W. BushAlexander Alden, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, U.S. Department of StateThomas Alexander, Former Program Associate Director, Office of Management & Budget and Former Acting Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, U.S. Department of DefensePedro Allende, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland SecurityMajor General Ronald K. Anderson, Senior Army Aviation Program Executive Nicholas Andersen,Former Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, U.S. Department of EnergyRear Admiral Philip S. Anselmo, U.S. Navy (Ret.)Jennifer Arangio, Former Senior Director, White House National Security Council, and Former Chief Advisor to the Acting Administrator, U.S. Agency for International DevelopmentMajor General Joseph Arbuckle, U.S. Army (Ret.)Brigadier General John C. Arick, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)Ernie Audino, Brigadier General, U.S. Army (Ret.)Major William P. Bagley, U.S. Air Force (Ret.) Dennis Bartow, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Policy, U.S. Department of DefenseMarlon Bateman, Former Chief of Staff to the Office of Policy and Planning, Department of StateRear Admiral Jon W. Bayless, Jr. U.S. Navy (Ret.)General Burwell B. Bell, U.S. Army (Ret.), Former Commander, United Nations Command; ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command; and U.S. Forces KoreaRobin Bernstein, Former U.S Ambassador to the Dominican RepublicPaul H. Berkowitz, Former Staff Director of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats and Former Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Asia, U.S. Agency for International Development LieutenantColonel Thomas Bethart, U.S. Air Force (Ret.) Erik Bethel, Former U.S. Director, The World BankThe Honorable Marshall S. Billingslea, Former Special Presidential Envoy and Assistant Secretary of the TreasuryKenneth Blackwell, Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights CommissionLynda Blanchard, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of SloveniaTom Blank, Former Chief of Staff, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Former Acting Deputy Administrator, U.S. Transportation Security Administration The HonorablePamela Bondi, Former Attorney General of FloridaT. Ulrich Brechbühl, 33rd Counselor of the U.S. Department of StateAndrew Bremberg, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in GenevaRear Admiral Peter J. Brown, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.), Former Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor to President Trump Lieutenant General Richard “Tex” Brown III, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)Scott Brown, Former U.S. Ambassador to New ZealandColonel William W. “Bill” Bruner III, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Former Assistant Administrator for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationBrigadier General Frank Bruno, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)Duke Buchan III, Former U.S. Ambassador to Spain and AndorraRear Admiral Jack Buffington, CEC, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former Chief of the Civil Engineer Corps and Former Commander of the Atlantic and Pacific SeabeesVice Admiral Toney Michael Bucchi, U.S. Navy (Ret.)Brian Bulatao, Former Chief Operating Officer of the CIA and Under Secretary of State for ManagementAlexei Bulazel, Former Director of Cyber Policy, White House National Security CouncilRear Admiral John T. Byrd U.S. Navy (Ret.)Ralph Cacci, Formerly PTDO Under Secretary for Intelligence and Security, U.S. Department of Defense and Former Chief of Staff to the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense
Juan Caro, Former White House Policy Advisor for Natural Resources and Energy Security
Ambassador Thomas L. Carter, Major General, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Former Permanent Representative of the United States to the International Civil Aviation Organization
Craig Caruana, Former Confidential Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition (ASN RDA)
Rear Admiral James J Carey, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Brigadier General, Jimmy L. Cash, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Brian J. Cavanaugh, Former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director, White House National Security Council
Joseph Cella, Former U.S. Ambassador to Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu Jason Chung, Former U.S. Director of the Asian Development Bank
Mauricio Claver-Carone, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, White House National Security CouncilChris T. Clem, Chief Patrol Agent (Ret.), U.S. Border PatrolDavid C. Coburn Major General, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Ezra A. Cohen, Former Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Security, U.S. Department of Defense; Former Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, U.S. Department of Defense; and Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, White House National Security Council
Elbridge A. Colby, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategy and Force Development, U.S. Department of Defense
SaraLynn Colley, Former Deputy White House Liaison, U.S. Department of Defense
Brigadier General James Coombes, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
David J. Copley, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iraq Affairs, U.S. Department of State
David Cornstein, Former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary
Monica Crowley, Former Assistant to the Secretary, U.S. Department of the Treasury
Christopher FF Cruden, Former Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Intelligence & Security, U.S. Department of Defense
Laura Cunliffe, Former Chief of Staff to the U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN
Captain Stuart J. Cvrk, U.S. Navy (Ret.) Paul M. Dabbar, Former Under Secretary for Science, U.S. Department of EnergyTera Dahl, Former Deputy Chief of Staff, White House National Security Council Kamran Daravi, Former Policy Advisor, White House Domestic Policy Council and Senior Advisor, Office of U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Health Diplomacy, U.S. Department of State
Captain Robert G Darling, MD, MC, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Rick Dearborn, Former Assistant to the President & White House Deputy Chief of Staff
Colonel Paul B. Deckert, JD, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)
John Deming, Former Press Officer, U.S. Agency for International Development and U.S. Department of State; Former Deputy Press Secretary to U.S. Senator John McCain; Former Member of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC), U.S. Department of State
Michael George DeSombre, Former U.S. Ambassador to Thailand
Robert A. Destro, Assistant Secretary and U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State
Major General John Deyermond, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Brigadier General James H, Dienst, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Thomas DiNanno, Former Acting Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of State
Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, Former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Rear Admiral James C. Doebler, CEC, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Douglas W. Domenech, Former Assistant Secretary for Insular and International Affairs, U.S. Department of the InteriorMichael Doran, Former Senior Director for the Near East and North Africa, White House National Security CouncilCommander Robert A. Dorries, SC, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
J. Steven Dowd, Former U.S. Executive Director at African Development Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Rear Admiral Marianne B. Drew, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Dormer Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Force Support and Families
Brigadier General Philip M. Drew, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Hugh Dugan, Former Senior Director for International Organization Affairs, White House National Security Council
Troy D. Edgar, Former Chief Financial Officer, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
John A. Eisenberg, Former Assistant to the President, Legal Advisor to the White House National Security Council, and Deputy Counsel to the President
Rear Admiral Ernest Elliot, SC, U.S. Navy (Ret.) Michael Ellis, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs, White House National Security Council
Randy Evans, Former U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg
Karen S. Evans, Former Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response, U.S. Department of Energy
Captain James Fanell, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations, U.S. Pacific Fleet David T. Fischer, Former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco
Fred Fleitz, Former Chief of Staff, White House National Security Council and Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency
David Friedman, Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel
Major General John T. Furlow, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Commander Jay Furman, U.S. Navy (Ret.) Jim Gfrerer, former Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Ambassador Ronald Gidwitz, Former Acting Representative of the United States to the European Union
Ricky Gill, Former Director for Russia and European Energy Security, White House National Security Council
James Gilmore III, 68th Governor of Virginia and Former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) K
MCalista Gingrich, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See
Scott L. Glabe, Former Acting Under Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Former Special Assistant to the President; and Staff Director of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee
George Glass, Former U.S. Ambassador to Portugal
Chadwick R. Gore, Former Acting Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement and Former Senior Advisor, Global Criminal Justice, U.S. Department of State
Peggy Grande, Former Executive Assistant to President Ronald Reagan
Trey Gowdy, Former U.S. Congressman from South Carolina
Dorothy Gray, Former Ambassador-Designate to the UN 74th General Assembly Loretta Solon Greene, Former Assoicate Administrator, Office of International Trade, U.S. Small Business Administration
Robert Greenway, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs, White House National Security Council
Jamieson Greer, Former Chief of Staff to the United States Trade Representative
Major General Lee V. Greer, U.S. Air Force (Ret.) P. Wells Griffith, Former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Energy & Environment, White House National Security Council
Steven Groves, Former Chief of Staff, U.S. Mission to the United Nations HM1 (SW/SCW)
Scott E Grucza, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Major General Timothy Haake, U.S. Army
(Ret.) Zead A. Haddad, Former Deputy Executive Secretary, White House National Security Council
Rear Admiral Dale N Hagen, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Cameron D. Hamilton, Former Division Director, Office of Health Security, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Bradely Hansell, Former Senior Director, White House National Security Council
Miles Hansen, Former Director for Gulf Affairs, White House National Security Council
Brigadier General James W. Hart Jr., U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Kevin J. Harrington, Former Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Strategic Planning, White House National Security Council
Jon R.P. Harrison, 8th Chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission
Colonel Derek J. Harvey, U.S. Army (Ret.), Former Senior Director for the Middle East, White House National Security Council
David Harvilicz, Former Acting Assistant Secretary for CESER (Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response) in the U.S. Department of Energy
Brian Hasting, Chief Patrol Agent (Ret.), U.S. Border Patrol
Vice Admiral Peter M. Hekman, Jr. U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Troup Hemenway, Former Senior Advisor for the Office of the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, U.S. Department of Defense
Margaret C. Hemenway, Former Deputy Special Assistant to the Secretary for White House Liaison, U.S. Department of Defense Dr.
Jerry Hendrix, Former Director of the Secretary of the Navy’s Advisory Panel
Rear Admiral Larry Hereth, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.), Former Director of Port Security
Bradford R. Higgins, Former Assistant Secretary for Resource Management, U.S. Department of State
John H. Hill, Former Assistant Secretary, Department of Homeland Security
Colonel Kelly E. Hines, United States Army (Ret.)
Robert Hipwell, BG United States Army (Ret.)
Joshua S. Hodges, Former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, White House National Security Council
Pete Hoekstra, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands
Admiral James R. Hogg, U.S. Navy (Ret.), former Commander U.S. Seventh Fleet and U.S. Representative to the NATO Military Committee
Major General Bob Hollingsworth, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)
Allison Hooker, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asia, White House National Security Council
John M. Horne, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to the Vice President
Kenneth A. Howery, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Sweden
Major General James P. Hunt, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Major General Donald L. Jacka, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Ken Jackson, Former Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Administration & Finance, Millennium Challenge Corporation
Major General, Alan D. Johnson, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Ron Johnson, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of El Salvador
Robert Wood Johnson, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom
Brigadier General Gary L. Jones, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Ivan Kanapathy, Former Deputy Senior Director for Asian Affairs, White House National Security Council
Rear Admiral Steven B. Kantrowitz, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Frank Keating, 25th Governor of Oklahoma; Former Associate Attorney General of the United States; Former Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of the Treasury
Lieutenant General J. Keith Kellogg, U.S. Army (Ret.), Former Assistant to the President & Chief of Staff, White House National Security Council and Former National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States
Thomas E. Kelly, III, Former Deputy Under Secretary of the Army
Steven B. King, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic
Lorrie King, Former Deputy Chief of Staff, Millennium Challenge Corporation
Lieutenant General Timothy Kinnan, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Former U.S. Military Representative to NATO
Heino Klinck, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia, U.S. Department of Defense
Andrew Kloster, Former White House Official and Acting General Counsel, U.S. Office of Personnel Management
Robert W. Kohorst, Former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia
Matthew Kroenig, Former Commissioner, Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States
Rear Admiral Charles R. Kubic, CEC, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former National Security Policy Advisor
Brigadier General Charles E. Kruse, U.S. Army National Guard (Ret.)
Christopher Landau, Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico
Rear Admiral Richard Landolt, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former Secretary of Defense Representative to Europe and Defense Advisor to the U.S. Mission to NATO
Robert Law, Former Chief of the Office of Policy & Strategy, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services
Dr. Paul R. Lawrence, Former Under Secretary for Benefits, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs
Brigadier General Jerry L. Laws, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Rear Admiral Mark “Beave” Leavitt (Ret.), former Deputy Commander Naval Air Forces, Naval Air Forces Pacific
The Honorable Christopher M. Lehman, Sr. Ph.D., Former Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Reagan
Commander Joseph L. Leonard, Jr., U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.)
Richard B. Levine, Former Director for Policy Develpment, White House National Security Council and Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Technology Transfer and Security Assistance
Major General Lee Levy, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Paul A. Liberatore, CDR, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Captain, U.S. Marine Corps
James Lloyd, Former Advisor, Homeland Security Council Staff
Major General John D. Logeman, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Rear Admiral Noah Long, CEC, U.S. Navy Reserve (Ret).
Mayor Jondavid “JD” Longo, Slippery Rock, Butler County, Pennsylvania and U.S. Marine Corps Veteran
Donald P. Loren, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Plans and Posture, U.S. Department of Defense and Former Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Mario Loyola, Former Foreign and Defense Counsel to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee
William Luti, Former Special Assistant to the President for Defense Policy and Strategy, White House National Security Council
Brigadier General Robert W. Lovell, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Derek Lyons, Former Counselor to the President and White House Staff Secretary
Rear Admiral John T. Lyons, U.S. Navy (Ret.) Brigadier General Ronald Scott Mangum, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Lana Marks, Former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa
William F. Martin, Former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy and Former Executive Secretary, White House National Security Council
Earl Matthews, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director, White House National Security Council;
Former Acting General Counsel of the Army Jeffrey McGuff, SSgt, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Brigadier General Michael P. McCraney, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Former Director of Public Affairs for the Strategic Air Command
Jamie McCourt, Former U.S. Ambassador to France and Monaco
Tidal W. McCoy, Former Acting Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas G McInerney (Ret.),
Former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force Kathleen Troia (KT) McFarland,
Former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Edward McMullen,
Former U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland & Liechtenstein
Rear Admiral W. F. Merlin, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.), Former Chief of Coast Guard Command, Control, and Communications
Major General John F. Miller, Jr., U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Former Chief of Staff, United States Atlantic Command
Brigadier General Michael W. Miller, Ph.D., U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
David Milstein, Former Special Assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel
Colonel Mark E. Mitchell, U.S. Army (Ret.), Former Acting Assistant Secretary for Special Operations & Low-Intensity Conflict, U.S. Department of Defense
Matthias Mitman, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary, White House National Security Council
Kevin Moley, Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva
Vice Admiral Charles W. Moore, Jr., U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former Commander, U. S. Fifth Fleet
Mark Morgan, Former Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection
Hunter Morgen, Former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy
James Morehard, Former Deputy Administrator, National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)
Platte B. Moring III, Former Deputy General Counsel, U.S. Department of Defense
Rear Admiral David R. Morris, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Georgette Mosbacher, Former U.S. Ambassador to Poland
Matt Mowers, Former Senior White House Advisor, U.S. Department of State
Dr. Mark Moyar, Former Director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation, U.S. Agency for International Development
Morgan W. W. Murphy, Former Press Secretary to the U.S. Secretary of Defense
J. Baylor Myers, Former Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Treasury Department
Vincent M. Nasti, Former Senior Federal Special Agent
Patricia Nation, Former Civil Rights Liberties Director, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Dan Negra, Former Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs, U.S. Department of State
Hon. Paul Ney, Former General Counsel, U.S. Department of Defense
Captain Scott O’Grady (Ret.), F-16 Pilot, Purple Heart Recipient, Bosnian War
Matt O’Malley, Former Director of Strategic Initiatives, Department of the Air Force Major
General Ray O’Mara, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Morgan D. Ortagus, Former Spokesperson, U.S. Department of State
Dr. Scott Pace, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary of the National Space Council
Paul Packer, former Chairman of U.S. Commission for the Preservative of America’s Heritage Abroad
Major Daniel J. Parent, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Brandt Pasco, Former Official, White House National Security Council, 2009-2011
Kash Patel, Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence
Sergio de la Peña, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs
Rear Admiral Russell S. Penniman U.S. Navy (Ret.)
James T. Penrose, IV, Former Signals Intelligence Directorate Technical Director for Counterterrorism, National Security Agency
Major General Richard Perraut, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Former Deputy Assistant Under Secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs
Pete Peterson, Former Candidate for California Secretary of State
J. Peter Pham, Former U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and for the Sahel Regions of Africa
Javier M. Piedra, Former Acting Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Asia, U.S. Agency for International Development
Dr. Michael Pillsbury, Former Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning
Sean Plankey, Former Director for Maritime and Pacific Cybersecurity, White House National Security Council
Feliks Pleszczynski, Former Director for International Economic Policy, White House National Security Council
Tom Plofchan, Former Senior Counterterrorism Counselor, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Former Counterterrorism and Intelligence Counselor, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Yleem D.S. Poblete, Ph.D, Former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance; Former Staff Director, U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Jason I. Poblete, President and Counsel, Global Liberty Alliance; ABA National Security Committee Steering Group
Christopher Pratt, Former Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, U.S. Department of State
Max Primorac, Former Acting Chief Operating Officer, U.S. Agency for International Development
Pam Pryor, Former Senior Advisor and Acting Assistant Secretary for the International Organizations Affairs, U.S. Department of State
Rear Admiral JJ Quinn U.S. Navy (Ret.) John Rakolta Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates
Rear Admiral A. Kent Riffey, Civil Engineer Corps, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Lee Rizzuto, Former U.S. Consul General
William D. Rodriguez, Rear Admiral (LH), United States Navy (Ret.)
Anthony Ruggiero, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterproliferation and Biodefense, White House National Security Council
Dan Runde, Former Bush Administration Official at U.S. Agency for International Development
Remzey Samarrai, Senior Advisor, Bureau for Verification Compliance and Implementation, Office of Nuclear Affairs, U.S. Department of State,
Camilo Sandoval, 3rd Chief Information Security Officer of the United States and Former Chair of the Federal Acquisition Security Council
Andrew Sanders, Former Director, White House National Security Council
Carla Sands, Former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark
Brigadier General Sharon A. Schaffer, JD, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Chris Schank, Former Director of the Office of Strategic Capabilities, U.S. Department of Defense
Captain Carl O. Schuster, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Rodney S. Scott, Former Chief, U.S. Border Patrol Rear Admiral Paul S. Semko, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Matthew Shipley, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
Brigadier General Stanley A. Seig, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Command Sergeant Andrew Sigmon, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Mitchell A. Silk, former Assistant Secretary for International Markets of the U.S. Department of the Treasury
Cliff Sims, Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Strategy & Communications
Manisha Singh, Former Assistant Secretary of State
James Skinner, Former Special Assistant to the National Security Advisor
Kiron Skinner, Former Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State Rear
Admiral Greg Slavonic (Ret.), Former Acting Under Secretary of the Navy, U.S. Department of Defense
Amber Smith, Former Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense
Kevin Smith, Former Director, White House National Security Council
Lara Smith, Former Chief of Staff of the Millennium Challenge Corporation
Joshua Steinman, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Cyber, White House National Security Council
Chris Stewart, (Ret.), Senior member House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Defense Appropriations
James N. Stewart, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs
Thomas Stewart, Former Department of Defense Policy Board Member, 2020
John P. Stopher, PhD., Former Principal Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force for Space; Former Budget Director, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Thomas Storch, Former Deputy Director for International Economic Affairs, White House National Economic Council
Michael Sweeney, Former White House Official
Heather Swift, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Naweed Tahmas, Former Special Assistant to the President, Office of Presidential Personnel
James M. Talent, Former U.S. Senator from Missouri
Donald R. Tapia, Former U.S. Ambassador to Jamacia
Rear Admiral Jeremy D. Taylor, U.S. Navy (Ret.) Former Director of Naval Aviation Plans and Requirements
Drew Teitelbaum, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Alex Titus, Former Advisor, U.S. Agency for International Development
Kip Tom, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture
Trevor Traina, Former U.S. Ambassador to Austria
Captain Gerald D. Trennepohl, U.S. Air Force (Ret.) William C. Triplett, II, Former Chief Republican Counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Former Deputy Assistant, U.S. Trade Representative
Ryan Tully: Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs
Eric Ueland, Former Acting Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights; Former Director, Office of United States Foreign Assistance Resources
John Ullyot, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Spokesman, White House National Security Council
Major General Paul E. Vallely, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Eddie Vasquez, Former Deputy Senior Director for NSC Strategic Communications & Senior Communications Advisor for International Negotiations
Captain Mark Vandroff, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director, Defense Policy Strategy, White House National Security Council
Ron Vitiello, Former Chief of U.S. Border Patrol and former Acting Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Russ Vought, 42nd Director of the Office of Management and Budget
Jake Vreeburg, Former Deputy Executive Secretary, White House National Security Council
Brigadier General Christopher S. Walker, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Rear Admiral James M. Walley, Jr., CEC, United States Navy (Ret.)
Erin Walsh, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Africa, White House National Security Council E.
Casey Wardynski, Former Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs
Lieutenant General Ronald L. Watts, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Patrick Weaver, Former Special Advisor to the Secretary of Homeland Security and Associate Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, White House National Security Council
Kenneth R. Weinstein, Former Chairman, Broadcasting Board of Governors, U.S. Agency for Global Media
Major General Kenneth W. Weir, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (Ret.)
Reed Werner, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia
Brigadier General Bill Welch, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Anthony Welcher, Former Vice President of Compact Operations, Millenium Challenge Corporation
Hon. Joshua Whitehouse, Former White House Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense
Christian Whiton, Former Senior Advisor, U.S. Department of State
Joseph Wier, Former Director and Defense Executive, White House National Security Council
Sergeant Major Charlene K. Wiese-Perisho U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)
Major General Richard O Wightman Jr., U.S. Army (Ret.)
David Wilezol, Former Chief Speechwriter, U.S. Department of State
Dr. Thomas M. Williams, Former Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs, White House National Security Council; Former Preforming Duties of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Rear Admiral H. Denny Wisley, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Brigadier General William Welsh, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
Pete Wilson, 36th Governor of California, Former U.S. Senator
Major General Jessica Garfola Wright, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Frank Wuco, Former White House Senior Advisor, Department of Homeland Security, Director DHS Executive Order Task Force, Senior Advisor, Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, U.S. Department of State
Stephen Yates, Former Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs, 2001-05
Dr. Christopher Yeaw, Former Chief Scientist, Air Force Global Strike Command
Major General Al Zapanta, U.S. Army (Ret.), Former Chairman, Reserve Forces Policy Board; Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior
Adrian Zuckerman, Former U.S. Ambassador to Romania
The post Letter From National Security Professionals And Gold Star Parents For Trump appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Iran bombed, via ballistic missiles, Israel yesterday. This puts the world on the brink of war – war that could go nuclear. Tim Walz found a unique euphemism for “I’m a liar” in last night’s Veep debate as he described himself as a “knucklehead.” All reports are Vance dominated and CBS soiled themselves. This is huge, even massive, news, but it is greatly overshadowed in my part of the world. These stories have pushed the devastation in the wake of Hurricane Helene out of the headlines, but it shouldn’t. The damage is too real to me.
The river that overwhelmed Asheville, N.C. is the French Broad River. It starts near Asheville and flows westward. is fed by the Little Pigeon and Nolichucky rivers, and then just about 5 miles from my home, a little more than 100 miles from Asheville, it joins the Holstein River to become the Tennessee River. Less than a mile down the road from me, the river flows directly at the roadside for roughly a quarter of a mile. The road, a road that dates back to Revolutionary War times, is above the river, cut out of a marble bluff. You look off the bluff and you can plainly see the flood plain – a flood plain now thoroughly and completed inundated – some houses on the plain under water and others with the river lapping at their back doors, their boat houses under water. What I witness there every day, just to go anywhere, is a controlled flood given that there are dams upstream releasing the water at a pace millions of times more than normal, yet not so much as to threaten any but the foolish few that insisted on building on the plain. (After all, it has not flooded like this in “near forever,” as a lifelong resident told me the other day.) Two miles from my home, in the opposite direction, is I-40 where signs now, and for likely a year to come, flash brightly in the eastbound lanes telling all that go there that the highway is completely washed out just 35 miles ahead. I am forever grateful to God Almighty that my wife and I escaped the genuine devastation of this storm, but that devastation remains unavoidable to us – the signs are all around. The anecdotes are heartbreaking.
The host pointed out yesterday that Hurricane Katrina dominated the news for weeks, but it hit a major metropolitan area and there was a racial slant that could be given to the coverage. Yet here is what people ignore. This area equally damaged and devastated is an economically vital region – home to a strategic source of high purity quartz used in semi-conductors – a source that may be dried up for months to come. Remember the chip shortages that crippled the automotive industry during the pandemic? This may dwarf that problem. Then there is this:
The gorgeous fall colors will still come this month to the Great Smoky Mountains in western North Carolina, but many of the millions of travelers who normally arrive this time of year at America’s most-visited national park probably will not, in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
The result is a triple tragedy for the region: extensive damage that has closed many roads and trails in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, thousands of homes and businesses in ruins and millions of dollars in lost revenues from tourism and recreation.
The full extent of the damages to the park and the communities surrounding it might not be known for weeks, but it is clearly a calamitous situation in the park that last year drew 13.3 million visitors, three times more than either the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park, according to the National Park Service.
Tourism simply IS the economy in the areas hardest hit by this storm – and this is the time when it is at its highest. The conditions of the roads are such that people cannot get here if they wanted to. The economy of the region will be distressed for a very long time to come, as well as people’s vacations.
The need around here is immense. The most immediate need is drinking water. Distribution points are being set up in the area, even as movement in it remains highly problematic. Did you know you can buy bottled water by the pallet or truckload on Amazon? You and a couple of neighbors could easily put together enough to buy a pallet and your church could quickly raise enough to buy a truckload. Please consider doing so. There is a distribution point in the heart of the damage – Cocke County Water Distribution Point: 613 West Broadway Street, Newport, TN. But access in Cocke County is difficult. Here in neighboring Knox County we also are collecting – Knox County Engineering and Public Works Department: 205 W Baxter Ave, Knoxville, TN – and have a “pipeline” set up to get it in the area. As you ponder donations to Team Rubicon and the Red Cross for the devastation, please also consider this very immediate and impactful donation avenue.
The war in Israel will continue for weeks or more. The election is still a month away. This pain is now, this need is now, please respond now.
The post Overwhelming The News appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
It is quite difficult to digest the news this morning. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon is a world changing event. There is a VP debate tonight. Our response to covid changed the moon. (I grow weary of stories that attribute this to “covid.” The virus did nothing to the moon – our actions in light of the virus did this. It’s us, we need to own it.) The suffering here in my neck of the woods – Southern Appalachia – post Helene is immense and federal response is slow. They are using mule trains to bring in supplies, for crying out loud. Where in the heck is the National Guard and airlifts??!?!?! The skies over my home should be full of helicopters with slings of supplies hanging from them on their way to the real devastation.
One must wonder where God fits into a puzzle like this. And therein lies some interesting stories.
Over the weekend:
Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery faced endless mockery on social media after she shared a Friday anecdote in which she complained a flight attendant wished her and others a “blessed” evening after a safe flight to San Francisco….
Jeffery took to her X (formerly Twitter) account to write: “Creeping Christian nationalism alert: @AlaskaAir flight attendant just wished us a ‘blessed’ night as we landed in SFO (!) to groans. Other adjectives that would have sufficed: great, awesome, fabulous, amazing, fantastic…
As my rowmate said, ‘this ain’t Montgomery, sweetie.'”
The world, and apparently the moon, is falling apart and this woman is worried about being blessed? (Now you know what “San Francisco liberals” are really like.) I find it fascinating that some people do not just oppose religion but are clearly phobic at mere hints of it. You see, being blessed implies a deity to provide the blessing and how dare this flight attendant even imply there is a God?! As the idiomatic phrase here in the South goes “Bless their hearts.”
And sometimes the phobia turns to hate:
An unhinged former staff member at the University of Kentucky floated the idea that the death and destruction Hurricane Helene unleashed on red states was divine retribution for their residents’ support of former President Donald Trump.
“Hurricane Helene…what if GOD is punishing MAGA populations for their hate and hypocrisy? Works for me!” Betsy Packard wrote Sunday in a heartless post on X punctuated with a winking emoji.
WOW! How do you even respond to such bitter hatred? Firstly, is God that indiscriminate? I know any number of Harris supporters that are suffering around here right alongside all those MAGA types. Interestingly, they are working together to survive. I saw a massive “Harris/Walz” sign in Bristol Tennessee weekend before last and I am quite sure given its location, it was swept away in the flooding. I also seem to recall any number of people invoking God when Trump survived an assassination attempt. So, whose side is God really on?
What’s interesting to me is that if you love God, are afraid of the mere hint of Him, or think Him an instrument of your hatred – He is always in the conversation. If there is no God, why do people worry about Him so much?
God is at work – even if we are resisting it.
The post God Is Inescapable appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The disaster in the wake of Hurricane Helene is more widespread than you may think. I am sitting here in East Tennessee on the western side of the Smokies. The French Broad River is less than a mile down the road and well over its banks. Less than 50 miles to my east the roads are simply gone, whole towns are destroyed, and cities are isolated, all roads in and out washed out or otherwise closed by post-storm conditions. And that is just here in TN/NC. In Florida, coastal towns lie in ruins. In Indiana some friends are reporting their power being restored only yesterday. In other words, there are affects from this storm all the way from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes. And even if you do not live in this massive zone, you are affected.
I-40 is closed in the Smokies, missing actually having been washed away in sections, and will likely be that way for weeks to come. I-40 runs from the Atlantic Ocean to Barstow, California and carries massive amounts of freight – freight that will now have to travel an additional 200-300 miles to detour around the closure. This, in turn, adds cost to the goods moved in this fashion along this route. You are going to feel this in the places far removed from the zone directly impacted by the storm. Shifts in ports will occur as ships seek ports better served with trucking. This will further reroute the freight traffic. In some areas the freight support system, truck stops, distribution centers, etc., will wither. Months from now people will lose jobs from the storm even if they never saw it. If you think the storm damage is regional, you are absolutely wrong.
The immediate suffering in the wake of this storm is immense. But the damage does not end there. As you plan your personal response consider ALL the damage, including the damage not yet realized.
And while we are thinking about secondary and tertiary effects, I found this story fascinating:
A new study suggests that the mental health crisis in the United States may be more closely related to a lack of a biblical worldview than to commonly cited causes like chemical imbalances.
The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University released the study Tuesday, attributing the rise in mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression and fear, to what researcher George Barna calls “worldview deficiencies” rather than “psychological or chemical imbalances.”
The findings are based on interviews conducted in January with 2,000 U.S. adults aged 18 or older, with a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
The report highlighted mental health struggles among younger generations, noting that 56% of Generation Z and 49% of millennials regularly experience anxiety, fear or depression. Generation Z refers to the youngest group of American adults, while millennials are defined as those born between 1984 and 2002. In total, one in three adults from these generations has at least one diagnosable mental disorder.
Barna sees a direct correlation between mental health challenges and the lack of a biblical worldview, which the Cultural Research Center defines as “a means of experiencing, interpreting, and responding to reality in light of biblical perspectives.” The CRC evaluates an individual’s biblical worldview based on their answers to a series of belief-related questions.
The removal of faith from the public square has had effects far beyond what we might anticipate – including in your pocketbook. In an age of heavily subsidized health insurance, we are all paying for the mental health crisis.
We tend to think in the immediate and the proximal, but we need to learn to think outside the box of our personal experience. We need to respond to these, and so many other crises, in ways that consider and mitigate the secondary and tertiary effects. You may feel better have chased those awful prayers away from the City Council meeting, but the city is suffering. You may think that you can send a sawbuck to Team Rubicon and believe you have responded adequately to Helene, but the need will continue far beyond the clean-up. You are not just helping “them.” You are helping yourself.
The post It Affects You appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
A couple of weeks ago the Pope said something far less than wise that the worldwide media hopped all over. Retired Archbishop of Philadelphia, and friend of the show, Charles Chaput, penned the best response I have seen. I am not Catholic, and as such I do not want to get into this debate per se, but I do want to comment.
The Archbishop described the issue this way:
According to news reports, Pope Francis suggested that, “[Religions] are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all. Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God.” He went on to say, “If you start to fight, ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t,’ where will that lead us? There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths [to God].”
The archbishop works very hard to provide an apologia for this apparent abandonment of the Catholic church’s preeminent position amongst religions while at the same time defending that position. I would sum up the archbishop’s interpretation of papal intent in this way – “All religions seek to scratch the same itch, but only Christ can end the itch altogether.” (That’s called “evangelical Protestant blunt speak.”) I have no idea if that is what the pope was trying to say or not, but it is an idea I have heard expressed over and over and over again. Within my own expression, Presbyterianism, I have heard explicitly what the archbishop is trying very hard to say that the pope is not saying – that there are many paths to God. Hence, I hold my Presbyterianism at arm’s length. But let’s go back to the archbishop’s understanding of the pope. Accepting it at face value one is led to ask, “What is it about Christianity that makes it stand apart so?”
This is, in fact, a question I ponder often. I think there is a theological answer and a practical answer – kind of like theoretical science and applied engineering. The theological answer is, of course, Christ Himself and His sacrifice. Christianity is unique in that its path to God is sacrificial, not merely difficult, but sacrificial, and that the sacrifice is made by God, personally. But this morning I want to focus on the practical answer to the question.
Christianity starts with the fundamental assertion that mankind is corrupt – not misguided, or flawed, or addicted – corrupt. Corrupt to our core, not in need of a new idea or a new path, but in need of a total rebuild. It is like the difference between remodeling a house and tearing one down to the foundations and starting over – other religions being the former and Christianity being the latter. Christianity does not seek to guide us in a new direction – it seeks to remake us, from the ground up. (That remaking is in the image of the Almighty and hence we get back to the theological answer to our current question, but, again, for another time.)
In our pursuit of “relevancy,” and perhaps even in pursuit of the theological answer, we have abandoned this fundamental and unique assertion of Christianity. And that abandonment explains so much. Consider my post from this past Thursday. Too many Christians are content with a makeover when what they really need is a remaking.
As we go to church this Sunday morning let’s ask ourselves what it is we seek there, if it is not total reconstruction then I would suggest we give that a try.
The post Finding God appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Jim Geraghty yesterday wrote about the recent nuclear sub sinking in China. It has not been big news here because we are too busy breathlessly covering two candidates sticking their tongues out at each other ad infinitum, but it actually is big news. Geraghty begins his piece with an examination of the large number of industrial/environmental disasters that have happened in China in recent years, and they are legion. It reminds me of the same scenario in the Soviet Union that culminated in Chernobyl. He moves on to draw parallels to Soviet naval disasters, which is a reasonable parallel. But then he makes an interesting turn that is worth examining in more detail.
Says Geraghty:
Autocracies are bored by safety regulations. Autocratic leaders just want what they want, often power and military force and grand demonstrations of their greatness, and they don’t care about what they have to sacrifice to get it, whether that’s the safety of the workers and sailors beneath them or the long-term environmental consequences.
This is one of the many reasons why red-green alliances make so little sense. How blind must you be, as an environmentalist, to look at the regimes in Beijing and Moscow and think, “Yes, these are the responsible stewards of the environment I want as my ally?”
He has a point there, but I think he is missing the bigger picture. There are two 40,000 feet takeaways from all that he describes so well. Takeaway One, failure is the endpoint of totalitarianism. Simply put, things are just too complicated for that level of tight control to ever work. Takeaway Two, the so-called green movement, in its highest levels of leadership, never has been about actual environmental stewardship – it is simply a means to totalitarian levels of control.
Ask yourself this – was the Russian Revolution ever really about creating a utopian socialist state? Oh sure, it was on the streets, but do you honestly think Lenin and his gang cared what form of government they ended up with or do you think they just cared that they were running it? And even if they were idealistic to some extent, the pretense ended in the Politburo with Stalin. The transition from Gorbachev to Yeltsin to Putin can be viewed as shucking altogether the trappings of utopian thought and settling into old fashioned dictatorship. Every utopian scheme in history has ended in failure and that failure has been rooted in the fact that enforcing the so-called utopian conditions requires totalitarianism. And totalitarianism fails because there are some things beyond our control.
In its current state environmentalism is a utopian scheme designed as a facade for a power grab. It is, if you think about it, audacious. They desire to dictate to every nation and place around the world how much power they can have and the source of that power. If they were to achieve that it would make the likes of Hitler or Stalin or Mao look like amateurs. And if they were to achieve it without resort to military force it would make the rest of us look like fools.
Is China at an endpoint? I don’t know – very different situation. It is possible that after Xi they will loosen the reins for the sake of maintaining control – there is historical precedent with them. Only time will tell.
In the end the lesson to be drawn from the failures that plague China is not that red-green alliances are senseless, but rather that they exist because they are close kin. Both are the sheepskin covering the wolf of totalitarianism – a wolf doomed to failure, taking all of us with it.
ADDENDUM: Every week I read and set aside things to talk about. But often I cannot get to them because there is more pressing news., just as the host leaves so much for the producer to cover in his podcast. I think that at least until we are past the election, I will add this “curated” (Hey! why not join the recent “word-of-the-day” trend?) addendum to Saturday posts and give some quick links to what’s in the pile before I just discard it altogether.
- As January 6 comes up over and over and over again, this is worth a read.
- Something on the Zelensky visit you may not be aware of. Man was that a disaster, all the way around. Proof why the old adage, “politics ends at the shoreline” still holds.
- This piece hits some of the same themes as my post above and is worth thinking about. It really hits home with me given my recent transition from greater LA to the countryside of east Tennessee.
- This was inevitable and I hate it. East Tennessee is college football crazy – totally nuts for it – and the Vols are awfully good this year. It’s fun to watch. But if it starts to resemble pro ball too much the fun will be gone.
The post The Endpoint appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on corruption charges. Looks pretty bad. FoxNews is speculating it is “political retaliation” for his criticism of the Biden administration’s management of the border. Politically motivated prosecution? From this DOJ?! Nah – it couldn’t be. (He said in a heavily sarcastic tone.) But as long as we are speculating…
This Biden/Harris DOJ is, in fact, quite prone to lawfare as we have seen regarding Donald J. Trump. The Obama/Holder DOJ was also quite prone to leaving crimes unprosecuted when it suited their agenda. When it comes to recent Dem administrations, the use of the Justice Department in pursuit of political aims seems pretty routine. Which makes it fair game to wonder and speculate about political motivations regarding this particular headline grabbing indictment.
It should also be noted that the Democrat Party in this particular presidential race has already proven itself to be willing to go to almost any length to try and win. They unceremoniously have thrown a sitting president on the scrap heap of history. Biden’s old-man-sitting-on-the-porch stubbornness complicated things and there is very little I have ever agreed with in his political career. But he is POTUS and deserves better. This party has produced a replacement candidate from thin air without benefit of anything resembling democratic process. It is hard to imagine what they won’t do. All this, again, fully justifies speculation.
Now, to be fair, the evidence against Adams seems pretty damning. There is little doubt in my mind, based on what it publicly available, that he is very guilty of the crimes he has been accused of. That’s not the question. The question is why now, and in fact why at all, given that so many crimes have been overlooked by Democratic prosecutors in the recent past. Well, I think FoxNews’ speculation answers the question of “Why at all?” But the “Why now?” question remains open.
Well, given the vacancy that is currently the White House, the administration needs to be seen doing something. Given the void that is the Democratic candidate’s campaign, they would just as soon prefer people not look at them too hard – they need a distraction. So why not throw the mayor of NYC to the dogs? I mean if they can do it to Biden, Adams is child’s play. They also gain some much-needed cred to appear to be going after one of their own. You’ve heard of the “October surprise?” Let’s call this the “September distraction.”
Harris’ latest faceplant of an interview demonstrates, once again, that if Harris has a chance it lies in looking anywhere but directly at her. Honestly, the legacy media is working its butt off to try and get this woman elected and she manages to blow it at every opportunity. Oprah Winfrey could sell refrigerators to ~~eskimos~~, er, excuse me, “indigenous people in the northern climes,” and even she could not get Harris over. (Quick aside – I had no idea the term “eskimo” had fallen out of favor, but as I typed it my spellchecker tried to wave me off. A little research and I find that because the term does not adequately distinguish between the various arctic tribes it is now considered pejorative. Just another reason to be suspicious of AI.)
I expect the Adams coverage to be huge, absolutely huge – way outsized to the scandal proper. Ignore it. Watch Harris and watch Trump. They are the essential question of the time – Adams is a distraction.
The post The Eric Adams Distraction appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Sometimes it’s too easy. Harris misquoted scripture yesterday – really badly. I could carry on for quite a while making fun of her ignorance of faith and her general illiteracy. But to be honest, I’ve met people at church that made the same mistake. Biblical illiteracy exists even among the faithful. Far more worrying is the fact that Harris and Democrats generally have no understanding of genuine evil – something even the illiterate faithful understand.
A minor example – California has massive, genuine problems. From homelessness to crime to the fact the state is dead broke and busted they have issues. So what have they spent the last 24 hours trumpeting as a major accomplishment – they banned plastic bags altogether. That’s it. People defecating on the street, stores having huge chunks of their inventory wiped out in minutes by gangs of thieves and they are worried about litter!? That is a fundamental failure to see not just problems, but evil. Leaving people living in the streets indicates a massive lack of compassion. Allowing thievery to go unchecked is an endorsement of crime.
But nothing compares to the Biden/Harris stance on the current conflicts in Israel. They keep talking about “a deal.” Now, bear in mind what happened on October 7. It was not warfare – you do a deal to end a war. What happened on October 7 was Jeffrey-Dahmer-level evil – you don’t deal with that, you cage it, or better yet, you destroy it. To deal with evil on that level is to act as if it has it has any legitimacy, as if it can be justified in some fashion. There is no legitimacy, no justification for the acts of October 7; therefore, there can be no deal.
Fortunately, genuine evil is rare. But it is very real. What’s horrifying is that all of us are capable of it. We are trained from birth not to go there, but absent that training I hate to contemplate the state of the world. What’s most frightening about Harris is not her ignorance, it’s her failure to recognize such evil on those rare occasions when it does show its face. And in failing to see it and decry it – to deal with it even – she encourages it, fosters it.
The danger of a Harris administration goes far beyond out-of-control inflation or bad roads. The danger of a Harris administration will encourage evil – it will permit and encourage more events like October 7. It is easy to make fun of Harris, but such downplays the fact that she is dangerous.
ADDENDUM. Hyper-left Slate published a piece yesterday by a writer that attended an old-school tent revival that claimed prophetic power for Trump. It would be easy to dismiss it as the “crazy right,” which it is. Such people are a distinct minority. Yes, they have raised their heads too high in events like Jan 6, but in general they are left in the quiet corners of far rural and wilderness America. But given that I just decried the Left for failing to recognize evil, I should not make the same mistake.
Claims of prophecy are generally associated with a particular branch of Christianity called Pentecostalism. Like most movements it is a spectrum. The vast majority of Pentecostals are good people that practice their faith with a lot of glossolalia and faith healing. But they can, in the thrall of what they believe are miracles, go too far. I have personal stories involving people dear to me of the conviction in faith healing resulting in death and disability. At some point, faith too can cross the line into the promotion of evil.
For the record, Jan 6 or potential events like it do not represent true Christianity. Such events are wrong, and can be evil.
The post Knowing Evil appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday, the host interviewed Nella Dominici who is running for the Senate in New Mexico. She claimed Albuquerque was among the 20 most dangerous cities on earth and sure enough. The host was stunned and immediately made the connection that such was a consequence of the open border policy of this administration. Those darn consequences….
Got me thinking about how too often decisions are made for the sake of political expediency without consideration of the consequences. Wisdom is subordinated to that expediency.
The border policy of the current administration is largely reactionary formed more out of opposition to Trump’s tough on immigration policies than it is on anything resembling reason. Trump was mean; therefore, immigration controls are mean, and compassion demands we throw the border open without restriction. That seems to be as far as the think has gone. And yet – the open border has created a massive crisis in crime, from human trafficking to the scourge of fentanyl, there is no compassion in this policy. Instead, we are replicating in the country, in cities like Albuquerque, the same horrendous conditions that those trafficked are trying to escape. The political expediency that created the border policy has resulted in some very real nightmares.
Obamacare was politically expedient. It seemed wonderful – all that medical care more-or-less for free. It was packaged as a sort of insurance scheme, but it is just socialism. And yet, it has been a disaster. Seriously – how much paper is there in medicine now. At least half the mail my wife and I receive in any given month is health care related. It’s ridiculous. But if you really want to now how bad socialized medicine can get – read this out of the UK. Here’s my favorite quote, “There is a reason for this tradition of public dishonesty regarding health provision. It is because the NHS is a political organisation that delivers a mediocre health service as a sideline.” ‘Nuff said.
Abortion sells to Democrats, hence, “Vice President Kamala Harris said she backs eliminating the 60-vote filibuster requirement in order to reinstate Roe v. Wade, which would federalize abortion access nationwide, during a Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) interview Tuesday.” Much as I oppose abortion, eliminating the filibuster would be a disaster. If you think the nation is divided now, imagine a nation where legislation swings wildly depending on a one vote margin in the Senate. Obamacare just discussed was accomplished by a workaround the filibuster, and absent that filibuster we would see such extremity time after time, only to have it reversed in the next election.
Three issues – examples of what happens when you craft policy around attracting votes, not leadership wisdom. The way it is supposed to work is the candidates and those in office are supposed to convince us of what is wise so that we support it. But instead, what we witness in these examples is a party simply pandering to the unwise. I find it quite interesting that 1) one party seems far more interested in pursuing this course than the other and 2) it is a fundamentally lazy approach. It’s hard work to learn about an issue and think deeply about the consequences of a stance, then teach and convince people. It’s a lot easier to just follow the latest silliness cruising around the internet. That also means that for the party that practices this laziness it is far more about obtaining office than doing things in office.
Thus we have to ask why they want the office so badly. I am sure there are as many answers as there are candidates, but regardless of the personal reasons, it is a basis for corruption. Let’s be clear, I am not saying any particular candidate is corrupt, but I am saying that when your priorities are to have the office as opposed to use the office, you are more prone to corruption. Such selfishness is the basis of corruption – when your perceived personal gain is your motivation is when things start to go downhill.
Life is funny that way, expediency leads to laziness which leads to corruption. Why it’s almost biblical.
The post Expediency (Usually Political) v. Wise appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Apparently, Joe Biden is hosting international leaders at home in Delaware while Jill is running cabinet meetings and Kamala is using government money to help foreign leaders campaign for her. Now, each of those links is far more breathless and sensationalist in their presentation than I usually like to link to – but trying to find more journalistic presentations of those facts is nearly impossible. Nonetheless, presentation and commentary notwithstanding, the facts remain the facts. The facts are, 1) legacy media is in the bag to cover up for this mess in Washington and 2) the elected top of the executive branch is on autopilot, relying entirely on appointees to run the government while they pose for cameras and run for “re-“election so they can keep preening for cameras. It would appear that Harris’ “campaign of feels” is how she intends to govern.
Let’s think about this. Congress had punted their power to the executive branch in the form of countless, faceless agencies. They did this to avoid having to actually learn about things and make decisions which might irritate their voters. And now the Executive is simply stepping away from power, again to avoid learning things and making decisions to become media stars and leaving the actual work of government to the unelected. The Judicial is trying to force the Legislative back to work by virtue of decisions like Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, but it seems like no one wants anything to do with the business of actually governing.
This leaves us with government by “apparatchik.” That is a term rarely heard anymore because of its close association with communism, but it has a secondary meaning, “a blindly devoted official, follower, or member of an organization.” That is the perfect description of unsupervised government agency employees. The old adage, “When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” applies to those agencies. Thus, if you are charged with governing just one small area you are going to govern it to death. Further, because success is measured by growth, you are going to work to expand your jurisdiction as much as possible – but you are always going to look at it through the lens of your original mission.
Now, I think maybe we should not govern so much. Much of this situation has arisen because we decided “the government ought to do something” about a lot of things that the government has no business doing anything about. But we’re not stepping back from that over-reach anytime soon. Which means we need the supervision of electeds more than ever. Only elected officials can have the view that can balance the narrow focus and power struggles between agencies.
We saw in very real terms what happens without that supervision during the pandemic. Health agencies won, at least temporarily, control over everything – they won the inter-agency power struggle. Thus, considerations about educational or economic harm played no role in decision making – the narrow focus overwhelmed. Our elected officials deferred rather than exercise the power we elected them to hold. The accountability to the people that is the bedrock of our republic broke down. We will be picking up the debris from that trainwreck for several decades.
It seems apparent to me that the Harris campaign is determined to institutionalize the way of government that prevailed in the pandemic and threatened to destroy everything. They are running away from actually governing as fast as they can. Trump, his faults notwithstanding, will at least try to govern. We can afford nothing less.
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People such as I – reluctant Trump voters – are a well-known phenomenon by now. We are people that find Trump does not come close to our ideal candidate, but he is the best we have, certainly preferable to the alternative, and so we vote for him without much enthusiasm. It’s a little different this time as far as the whole enthusiasm thing is concerned because the alternative is not just a poor choice, but an execrable one. The last two times Trump ran I think we reluctants were a significant portion of the Trump vote and represented one end of the Trump voter spectrum. But this time I think the spectrum is expanded and we are no longer one of the poles – I think that belongs to “the deniable Trump voter” – someone that will vote for Trump, but never admit to it.
Crowd size for Harris rallies is indicating that enthusiasm for her is very low. The unforced errors of the Harris campaign are astonishing. Walz stating, “We can’t afford four more years of this” may be the biggest gaffe in the history of candidate gaffes. And yet, it is largely unreported which to me says people are simply not paying attention. Roger Kimball’s latest:
Every honest commentator, and even some dishonest ones, acknowledges the supreme oddity of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
As has been oft remarked, the oddity begins with the campaign’s origin. Exactly how is it that Kamala Harris even became the candidate? By what process was Joe Biden, the undisputed winner of the Democratic primary, ousted, eliminated and defenestrated from contention? The rumors and stories are plentiful, but the actual facts—to say nothing of the dramatis personae behind the facts—remain obscure.
He goes on to describe the oddity in cringe-inducing detail.
So, the Harris/Walz campaign is odd, astonishingly gaffe prone and absent enthusiasm, how is it she is polling evenly with Trump? – Deniable Trump voters.
This occurred to me yesterday as I went through a less-than-pleasant restaurant experience. It was a common error sort of thing, but it was the second time in a week that the issues had arisen for my wife and I at this particular restaurant, so I figured we needed to say something. But our server acted as if she resented us pointing out the issues, she certainly resented having to apologize. (To be fair, a lot of restaurants have now switched to a service model where the food is brought to the table by someone other than the person that takes the order, so the order taker can easily think an error in order delivery is someone else’s fault.) The unwillingness, almost to the point of inability, to own and correct even the simplest mistake was stunning to me.
Biden/Harris, come Harris/Walz, is clearly a voting mistake – a huge, national insecurity inducing, immigration uncontrolled, grossly inflationary mistake. But if there are people in this nation that will not admit to a simple mistake in the delivery of a meal to the table, how many people will admit to a mistake as consequential as voting for this bunch? But those consequences make it a mistake they are unwilling to repeat. Such are the people that constitute the group of deniable Trump voters.
The exit polls are going to be fascinating this year.
The post The Deniable Trump Vote appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Regular readers know I am a comic book aficionado – collecting them since just a few years into the so-called “Silver Age.” (For the Cleveland Browns fans out there, that means I have been collecting since the mid 1960’s.) It is not uncommon when attending a comic book movie to hear some youngster in their 20’s declare themselves an “expert” – I have to work very hard not to laugh out loud. When I attend such a movie with friends not nearly so steeped in the lore it is common for them to ask, “Is that how it really happened?” And then I have to laugh. This is, after all, fiction. I am pretty sure there is no one on the planet that when they get angry, turns green, grows to 15 feet tall and can lift tanks with one hand. There is no “real” involved.
The question is, of course, ingrained in us since film often deviates significantly from its literary roots. But in the case of comic books, which only rise to the level of literature on occasion, the same story gets told hundreds of times over with different variations, making deviations from source material difficult to figure.
In case you are unaware, the internet is plum full of total nerd information – whole groups dedicated to deciding if Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson is the cooler Batman. (Yes, for the Ohio State Buckeyes fans out there – Dick Grayson is all grown up, no longer Robin and has donned the cape-and-cowl in some stories.) Those fictious hypotheticals the nerds on “Big Bang Theory” used to discuss endlessly are a very real phenomenon. Which is background for why this article (yes an entire article) exists:
Every once in a while, there are these… I guess the best description for them is “thought experiments,” that become popular on social media. You know, like, “What superhero would be the most likely to do X?,” and more stuff like that. What amazes me about them, though, is when you will see fans step in and try to argue against certain picks, because the picks don’t fit their headcanon, and I just think that that is unreasonable.
Headcanon, in case you’re curious, is the term for your personal take on a particular character. Comic book characters, in a lot of cases, have now been around for a LONG TIME. Superman has been around for EIGHTY-SIX YEARS. The Marvel Universe has been around for over SIXTY YEARS. Comic book characters have gone through so many different approaches over the years. It is why I did a piece a while back noting that there inherently is no such thing as a coherent Marvel Universe, because there CAN’T be, as the Marvel Universe has been written by hundreds of different writers, very often writing stories that inherently contradict each other. In other words, they can’t ALL be real, and thus, there is no such thing as a “Marvel Universe,” there’s just the fiction that we create in our minds to keep it all coherent. Because of that, the idea of headcanon is very valuable for comic book readers. If there are multiple different versions of a comic book character, then it is completely logical that you should pick the one that you like the best, and read the comics with that in mind.
I have been sitting on this article for a few days – saving it for today, Saturday, and I was going to make a fun romp through the world of nerdom. But the more I have thought about it, the more it has occurred to me that in a world where the same news story comes out so differently from MSNBC than it does from FOXNews, we live in a very real world where you almost have to form a “reality headcanon.” There are videos on the internet that paint Donald Trump as the greatest man since, at least Reagan, if not Lincoln. And then in the same place, there are people telling us he is “PURE EVIL!” What are we supposed to think?
One thing is for sure – it is not a matter of, as stated above, picking “the one that you like the best.” This is not fiction – we are not reading about politics to be entertained. This is reality and we are deciding who to vote for to run the executive branch of the federal government for the next four years. There is a job to be done and how well, or how poorly, it is executed will have very significant consequences for each of us as individuals and for the world. It is the difference between a mortgage at 3.X% and one at 6.X%. It is the difference between war and peace in the Middle East. While we may have to create a reality headcanon, it better be one about what actually works, not what we like.
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Here is the least surprising lede to any story I have ever read:
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s favorability among likely New York voters has cratered, and former President Trump is viewed more favorably by voters in the historically blue state in a new poll.
The fact that this is news drives home something I have discovered since relocating from California to Tennessee – people in red places don’t necessarily get it. I tell stories here in TN about life in CA and people look at me as if to say, “That’s not possible!” No, it is distinctly possible, and very real and everyone needs to understand it because a Harris administration will drive the nation in the same direction as the blue places.
So, I guess I’ll tell some stories.
Covid – people in Tennessee cannot imagine what life was like in California during that unfortunate event. It was like jail. Though we did not move to TN until 2023, we purchased our house here in the Volunteer State in 2020, very early in the covid event – putting our offer down in June of 2020 – just three months after everyone in California was shackled in their homes. We moved back and forth many times in the subsequent period and coming to Tennessee was simply and joyfully a taste of freedom – there was no need to check the latest regulations before stepping out the door – you could go to the store any time you wanted without concern, and best of all you could physically attend church. I could go on for hours about the differences. With the levels of regulation in blue places comes an attitude in the populace, and therein laid the biggest difference. But I think I will turn to a more concrete story.
I provided consulting and engineering services to many, many organizations – among them were local government and governmental agencies – including the equipment yard of a suburban Los Angeles city. This was a small $750 job. However, this particular city required I obtain a business license in that city to get the work – at a cost of $1250. But before We go there, they also required that, since I was a “contractor,” I have a very specific liability insurance policy for $5M. Now, I did have an Errors and Omissions policy more than adequate for the job at hand, but I did not have a contractor’s liability policy because I was not a contractor. So, I did not want to do the job under these circumstances, but the yard guy I was dealing with had no place else to turn, so, I got a contractor friend to bid the job for me, thus marking up the work. But he too was required to get the business license. So, we were $2500 into business licenses alone, plus the contractor’s mark-up, plus the extra 5-10 hours in related paperwork. We ended up billing a little less than $5K for a $750 job.
Do you understand where inflation comes from now? I am not making this up, but I won’t name names because I want the people that now operate the business to be able to retain the work.
This is life in a blue place. This could be life for everybody, even in deep red places like Tennessee, under a Harris administration.
ADDENDUM: Yesterday we looked at examples of left-wing hysteria. One of the more interesting aspects of hysteria is it completely warps one’s perceptions of reality. Obviously, this has happened to Nancy Pelosi. It is not at all helpful when you try and disguise reality.
The post Naturally appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The host’s monologue and Fox column this morning are his very sober case for Trump/Vance. I cannot assail his reason – I agree with him. My issue is that a significant portion of the nation seems to have moved “past” reason and rationality.
Hysteria:
behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess
We’re swimming in a sea of it. Certainly, the lengths to which the Democratic Party was willing to go to get rid of Biden and put Harris on the ticket indicates a level of “unmanageable fear.” Had it been manageable they might have had some sort of process that made it, at a minimum, appear to be democratic in some fashion. But, alas, no. But that is minimal compared to:
The host opened the show a couple of days ago with a Joy Reid (MSNBC) clip. I have the link all set up here, but I can’t do it – I can’t drive traffic to her. The language she uses to describe Trump’s immigration policies can only be described as hysterical.
This:
A Sept. 6 post on X that has since amassed 146,000-plus views features a screenshot of a “Diversity and Inclusion Statement” students at Stanford must provide when applying to enroll in the marketing class offered by the Department of Management Science and Engineering.
Loyalty pledges? Really?! A tactic used by both the Nazis and the Soviets has found a place in academia? Sounds hysterical to me.
But there is no hysteria like environmental hysteria.
Researchers from Switzerland and other countries discovered that of the roughly 14,000 known chemicals in food packaging, 3,601 — or about 25 percent — have been found in the human body, whether in samples of blood, hair or breast milk.
That is an utterly hysterical statement. Read further and they only point to one of those 14,000 chemicals that is a suspected hazard. The study contains no hypothesis about a mechanism of transfer, it simple assumes that if it is in the packaging, that is how it gets to the body. It never mentions levels present – dosage is very important when it comes to toxicity. This is reporting that simply makes people hysterical because…chemicals! (Guess what, your body is composed of chemicals – all of it.)
And hysteria leads to conspiracy paranoia.
Fossil fuel companies have invested more than £4bn in sports sponsorship “in an attempt to divert attention from their role in fuelling the climate crisis and harming human health”, according to a new report.
Green think-tank New Weather Institute (NWI) analysed more than 200 active deals, claiming “sport is increasingly one of the areas oil and gas companies are using to greenwash their reputation”.
Oh no – oil companies are advertising!?!?!? Not that!
The Harris campaign is not based on reason or rationality – it is based purely in hysteria – environmental hysteria, diversity hysteria, anti-Trump hysteria….
That’s the bottom line in this election – hysteria v reason. Trump is the only reasonable choice, but the polls would indicate that far too many people are engaged in the hysteria. Their hysteria may be disguised in a reasonable looking shell, quoting media very interested in creating and spreading hysteria – but secondhand hysteria is still hysterical.
For the third time I find myself needing to cast a vote for Donald J Trump. I have been, all along, a reluctant Trump voter. This time my reluctance is far easier to overcome than the previous two opportunities. This is not a choice between more or less reasonable. This is a choice between reason and hysteria. We simply cannot succumb to hysteria.
The post The Age of Hysteria appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum joined me this morning from Israel on the morning after Hezbollah’s pagers exploded:
Audio:
09-18hhs-burgum
Transcript:
HH: Whether or not you are watching on the Salem News Channel or listening to any of my radio outlets across the country, stay tuned, because the big story is in Israel, where yesterday, the Mossad, or somebody exploded 3,000 pagers in Hezbollah headquarters and throughout the country. And in Israel, we are lucky to have North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who is visiting the Jewish state. He joins me by phone from Israel. Good morning, Governor Burgum. Thank you for being with me. What are you doing in Israel?
DB: Well, good morning, Hugh. Well, here on a quick three-day solidarity mission to show those in Israel that many of us in the United States are literally standing with them, and not just figuratively, but literally stand with Israel in Israel as we approach the October 7th anniversary. And of course, I feel in the context of elections back home, protests on college campuses, there’s just so much misinformation and misunderstanding about what’s going on in this country. And having this morning just toured a kibbutz where one of the atrocities was rained upon just a mile and a quarter from the Gaza border, and then also just left the Nova concert site where just unthinkable…I mean, I just, it’s heartbreaking when you look at the pictures and the photos of 300, memorials for 370 young people. To think that we’ve got young people on campuses protesting the murder and slaughter of the kind of thing they probably would think they might be doing this weekend. So we told…
HH: There are, nights ago, Governor, you’ve been traveling, a Jewish student at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, where I went to law school, was beaten for being a Jewish student. So it’s begun again. It’s extraordinary to me. I hope it doesn’t go on at North Dakota State.
DB: No, not happening in North Dakota, for sure. And, but I tell you, and you mentioned at the top of the hour, I think Americans are forgetting. They’re focusing on Gaza. They’re, you know, they have a few soundbites, but this is a country that since October 7th last year has had close to 8,000 missiles launched at this country in the last year. And since, you know, this thing that went by in April, April 14th, where Iran itself directly attacked Israel with hundreds and hundreds of missiles. And again, the United States, in partnership with others in the region, knocking down most of those, and then the current administration saying well, call it a win, I mean, as opposed to saying no, we just got attacked not by one of the tentacles, but by the head of the whole octopus, which is Iran who is funding all of this. And then, of course, talk to anybody in the U.S. Navy, and we’ve got restrictions and interruptions to our global supply chain in the Red Sea because of what the Houthis are doing. And we landed here on Monday, and the day before, they were blowing sirens at the Tel Aviv airport, because a ballistic missile had come from Yemen. I mean, we’re talking a thousand kilometers away aimed at the Tel Aviv airport. So this is a, there is not just a conflict going on here. I guess people get semantic, don’t want to call it war. But if you were living in the U.S. or Canada and somebody had rained down close to 8,000 rockets on you in the last year, I mean, since August, that’s about one an hour if you spread it out, the 4,600 that have come since the April attack. You know, we’d probably say we’re at war. I mean, I don’t know how you would think about that. I would, I would say like hey, we’re in a conflict right now, and I think Americans and perhaps the Biden-Harris administration don’t even fully understand that, because they keep talking about restricting sending weapons to Israel at a time when they need our full and unequivocal support. I mean, this is, if you would see the atrocities of what Hamas inflicted here, there would be a clearer side of right and wrong, and who’s on the right side from any moral authority in terms of this conflict.
HH: Now Governor Burgum, next hour, I’m going to play a tape we’ve laid down of you and I talking about American energy. And we’re going to talk about Israel in that context in their desalinization and their energy production, and how Iran is being funded by us. But I want to focus in this first segment of the show on what happened yesterday. What do the Israelis tell you about what happened yesterday, because it’s on the front page of every newspaper in the United States. It’s leading every broadcast, because it’s so remarkable that Israel can carry off, as is suspected, Mossad, an attack on 3,000 senior Hezbollah leaders in order to disable is, probably in anticipation of an invasion of Hezbollah-held Lebanon. What do you hear on the ground after one day about that remarkable operation?
DB: Well, we had an opportunity to have some conversations with senior government officials last night, more coming tonight. This is certainly a topic here as well, and everyone’s quite mum the word about who and exactly how from a confidentiality. But I think Hugh, you would understand this better than anyone, but to have that kind of precision, to be able to take out thousands of people precisely, because you’re only wearing a Hezbollah pager if you’re part of the Hezbollah command structure. And remarkable, of course, it’s been reported that the Iranian ambassador, I put that in air quotes, was wearing a Hezbollah pager, because it certainly seems to me that if you’re, you know, maybe you’re not a diplomat if you’re actually wearing a terrorist group’s pager and part of their command structure. So that, that’s again a remarkable, remarkable thing. But I mean, this is the stuff that will go down in history. I mean, in all of this, this could be the most successful counterterrorism attack every in terms of its precision of hitting the people you want to hit, and having the least amount of collateral damage. I mean, it’s just remarkable, and I, again, when you think about all the rockets that have been fired from the north into Israel, and the 100,000 people that have been displaced in Israel because of that with the battles going on with Hezbollah from the north, which you know barely makes the paper at home because everyone’s focused on Gaza and Hamas, but this is just a remarkable thing. And I think it’s a sea change. And what a shock for these terrorist groups to understand that there’s that level of precision, infiltration and capability that exists on the other side of them.
HH: Now Governor Burgum, we have two very different candidates. You’re close with President Trump, full-throated support for Israel, telling them to win the war. He’ll support this operation. Vice President Harris says oh, Israel has the right to defend itself, but it can’t do what it’s done in Gaza. We haven’t hear anything, yet, about the pagers. She’ll probably condemn that or not speak to it. Do you have a good sense of the difference the Israelis feel between Trump and Harris today? Have you picked that up at all?
DB: Well, certainly there’s an understanding. But if you’re a senior leader in Israel, as they say, you’ve got very few friends in the world right now. The United States is a friend, and you’ve got to be a friend, whether it’s your best friend or the, which would be President Trump’s administration, or your second-best friend, which would be the U.S. with somebody else. But clearly, they understand that there’s two different futures for them after next January 20th, and after this election, because as you said, I mean, it’s, you know, Harris doesn’t even put a comma in the sentence. I support Israel but I don’t think that they should receive 2,000-pound bombs. I mean, she’s putting conditions on the relationship all the time. When she tells, hey, when she says ceasefire, all that Hamas and Iran hear is oh, now there’s pressure on Israel to surrender. And so I’ve said this on your show. Maybe I’ve said it on others a year ago. But I feel like they keep negotiating for the terrorists on behalf of the terrorists. Unless you’re putting maximum pressure on Iran and full support for Israel, if you’re doing the opposite and you’re putting conditions on Israel, and trying to create space for Hamas to exist, then you’re negotiating, that’s the position they want. You’re negotiating for the terrorists as opposed to for our allies.
HH: True. Now Governor, to close off our first segment, you’re a good friend with President Trump. I only interview him or moderate debates with him. I’ve only had one private meeting with him in my entire life. But you know him very well. How did the second assassination attempt impact you, because it just seems to me the man is a target because the left has fired hate. We have one minute to our break.
DB: Well, I think again, if you, you know, Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris are running on a couple of themes, and one of those themes was that President Trump is a threat to democracy. If you say that a thousand times, put it in ads, you know, repeat it over and over again, then you know, you’re going to have followers that believe they’re going to be heroes if they can take him out. And I think that there’s political violence, and then there’s violence in language. And I think those kinds of words, which against someone who is supporting the rights of states and supports democracy, unthinkable.
HH: I’m going to come back with Governor Burgum in the next hour with a piece on energy that I taped, again, this morning with him at like 5:00 in the morning. So don’t miss the next hour, Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, in Israel. Thank you, Governor.
— – – – –
HH: Before that, I was able to tape a piece with him about American energy this morning. He’s in Israel. Governor, I wanted to read to you the draft of a column which will come out in Fox tomorrow one paragraph. It reads, “Energy is freedom is one of my favorite sayings not only because it is true, from putting gas in your car to driving revenues to the U.S. Treasury, revenues which depend heavily on American productivity, which is built on the cost of energy. The only way to really bring down prices is to bring down the cost of their production and the cost of their transportation to market. The U.S. must absolutely drill, baby, drill, but throw everything at the new generation of nuclear power plants and the export of liquified natural gas. AI depends upon it, supercomputing depends upon it. Trump is committed to all of the above. Harris in 2019 was absolutely against fracking and has lied about her being the tie-breaking vote to allow fracking, the bill she refers to, had provisions on off-shore oil leases, not fracking. We know Harris’ values have not changed from her own mouth. In fact, she is a disciple of the climate change crisis and all the deindustrialization that comes with it, whether intended or not. We have to produce domestic energy at two to four times our total current output.” Do you agree with all or any of that, Governor Burgum?
DB: I agree with it, and if I was editing what you just wrote, I wouldn’t have changed a word, because maybe I would have added a few exclamation marks there as well, because again, you mentioned the AI. I mean, we’re in an arms race with China. China’s opening up two more baseload power plants a month or more. They’re the world’s largest polluter. They’re, all these plants are opening up are coal plants, 400 gigawatts. The United States, under Biden and now Harris, are trying to shut down our baseload. They’re destabilizing our grid at a time when we need more electricity than ever. And not for electric cars, because we can decarbonize liquid fuels. We’re doing that in North Dakota. But we need electricity to power computing in this country, because it’s going to be essential to Defense. It’s essential to health care. It’s essential to everything we’re doing. And I don’t think they fully understand that. It’s one of the reasons you’re seeing Silicon Valley come over for President Trump, is because they know they can’t sustain the market caps of those companies unless we’ve got the electricity to drive the next generation of computing in this world and maintain our lead.
HH: Governor Burgum, you’re in Israel, and obviously Iran is Israel’s greatest threat. I think the United States is funding Iran by allowing them to export oil, and therefore funding the war against Israel on seven fronts. Do you see it that way? Or is it a different problem set?
DB: No, it’s 100%, Hugh. You couldn’t be more right. With not enforcing the sanctions was one thing, because now, they’ve got, Iran’s production is up. And of course, who are they selling most of that to? They’re selling it to China. So not only are we funding a war here, we’re also, China, the world’s largest importer of oil and gas, China’s increasing their strategic petroleum reserve at a time when they’re getting ready for World War III. Joe Biden and Harris, they drained ours in half ahead of the midterms to get a few votes. And then of course, as you noted, I mean, they, by executive order, Biden-Harris shut down natural gas export production for new facilities to get and help support our allies around the world. They shut down production in Alaska, which could help Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. So their anti-U.S. energy policies are bad for the environment, it’s funding dictatorships abroad, it’s helping Putin, it’s helping Venezuela, helping Iran. Iran is the world’s largest funder of terrorism. You’re absolutely 100% right, Hugh.
HH: Have you had a chance on this trip, Governor Burgum, to visit a desalinization plant, and not just Israel, but Saudi Arabia, the UAE, others use, because they take a lot of power, but they’ve got to have the water. We don’t do that in this country.
DB: No, we’re blessed in the United States with massive amounts of fresh water, among all the other natural resources we have. But absolutely, power generation here is key. And energy security is key. And you mentioned nuclear, that’s something, again, we’ve got to put the pedal on, something that they need here. But again, with the Abraham Accords and other things that moved forward under Trump, you could envision a world where Saudi Arabia and Israel and others all collaborating and going along where we could have energy security for Israel right here in this region. But right now, you know, the policies that are happening are, like I said, they’re funding terrorism. And Hezbollah is, you know, the estimates I’m hearing here on the ground is that they could have ten times the resources in terms of rockets, men, people, capability than Hamas did. I mean, they’re one of the premiere recipients of funding from Iran. But it’s not just the oil money because of lack of sanctions. I mean, let’s remember when the Biden-Harris, they paid $6 billion for five hostages. And when that happened, I said wow, we’re going to have more hostage-taking. Less than a month later, October 7th, over 250 hostages. I mean, because we made it a more profitable business for terrorist groups to take hostages. After that, unfreezing the assets of Iran over and over again, like $100 billion dollars’ worth. President Trump had that all shut down. He had the sanctions working. He had that country on their needs financially, and they couldn’t fund the seven-front war that they’re doing right now against Israel.
HH: The oldest rule in the book is that which gets rewarded gets repeated. We paid for hostages. More hostages get taken. Gilead Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas years ago. Now, they’ve taken 250 people, many of them Americans. Governor, before I let you go, you’re a Silicon Valley before you became, went back to North Dakota. And so you know those folks. I don’t know if Elon’s your friend or not. But former President Trump said he’s going to make Musk the head of an efficiency commission. That’s great, but I also know we just have to shrink the federal government and consolidate, in the production of energy, just to be specific. The Department of Interior is actually more important than the Department of Energy when it comes to the production of energy. But the Department of Interior, the Department of Energy, the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Forest Service, which is in the Agriculture Department for some reason, they all have a lot to do with energy. Have you talked about upping our energy production across all these agencies with President Trump?
DB: Yes, and I have, and with his team. They understand that, and I can share the perspective from North Dakota. We’re engaged in over 30 legal fights with the federal government across all the agencies you mentioned. You can throw in a few more – Bureau of Indian Affairs, that are affecting our tribal energy production, U.S. Fish and Wildlife. You know, go on and on and on. It’s been a whole of government approach by the Biden-Harris administration to shut down and restrict U.S. energy and U.S. critical mineral production, which we need if we’re going to be competing in a world where we need critical minerals for batteries and for other advanced electronics, for cell phones. You know, they’re shutting down access to the 240 million acres of land, it’s not federal land, it’s public land. It’s land that belongs to the people. Theodore Roosevelt put it away for the benefit and the use of the America public. He didn’t put it, he didn’t set it aside so no one would ever set foot or develop it. He said development needs to be as much about, I mean, the land needs to be as much about development as it means about preservation. He saw it as we could do both. Sustainable development. He’s an original conservationist. The Department of Energy today is not one of those groups that we’re suing. The Department of Energy is running around, throwing out, you know, massive grants in swing states trying to influence Senate elections and other things. I mean, they’ve got a grand budget coming out of this legislation that they passed that’s bigger than the agency’s former budget. I mean, $800 million dollars going to Montana to help Tester win, you know, for a power line that we should have been able to build for half of that, but it’s going to community impact grants, which to me, sounds like pork, you know, going to the people that might somewhere be located near a power line.
HH: I think Tim Sheehy’s going to win. I’m pretty sure Kevin Cramer’s going to win reelection in your state. But the Department of Interior, I just want my audience to know, and you know it as a governor. Within the Department of Interior is the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They all have impact on the ability to produce energy. The EPA is its own agency. They have permits that produce energy. The Forest Service has land that allows people to do energy. And the Army Corps of Engineers, of course, is the Department of Defense. It’s a nightmare to produce energy in the United States. The left wing has made it virtually impossible. Are you winning these lawsuits?
DB: We are. And we’ve won specifically against the BLM. This is the first administration since Harry Truman, the Biden-Harris, first one since Harry Truman, didn’t hold the lawfully required once-a-quarter lease sale so the American public could bid on the opportunity to development minerals on federal land. They did not hold them. And we sued them in court. We won. And now, we’re battling lease by lease with them. And again, it’s, the whole thing is ridiculous. It’s like kids in kindergarten who are, you know, they said well, 735 bids for leases, they approve 35 after the court ordered them to. What about the other 700? They came back with, well, there was a word misspelled. There was, I mean, they’re actively, actively still engaged, even though we won the lawsuit, in trying to prevent development. And by the way, you mentioned in your opening statement of this segment. When we develop resources in North Dakota with horizontal drilling, we can go down two miles, over two, three, and now four miles laterally and pull minerals out from underneath federal land without every setting foot on that federal land. And the federal government gets a royalty sometimes as high as 18-and-a half percent. We send a check, help reduce the deficit, never touch federal land on the surface. Everybody benefits. And they’re suing us trying to prevent us from sending money to the federal government. That’s the upside down world we’re in right now, Hugh.
HH: You know, I really believe, Governor, energy is how we solve the debt. Not the deficit, the $35 trillion dollar debt, is by quadrupling. I think President Trump was trying to say at the debate, and I want to get your comments on the debate before you go. I think he was trying to say they have gotten back, they being Biden and Harris, have gotten back to the level of domestic energy production I was at when I left in 2021. Now, they’ve gotten back to that, we need to be four times as productive as we are right now. And if we are, he didn’t say this, I’m saying it, if we are, those royalties will eat away at the debt. Why don’t people understand this?
DB: Well, I’m so happy you do. You could be the governor of a natural resources state, Hugh, because you get exactly what the opportunity is. And states, because we take a portion of this. So does Alaska. So does Wyoming. So does Texas. You know, the five biggest states together have all created either legacy or permanent funds. Those states have put away $330 billion dollars just most of that in the last decade doing this. I mean, you start talking about the federal government. Not only could we reduce the debt you know, then once the debt is paid down, then all of a sudden, we could be like Norway and like Saudi Arabia and start building up a sovereign wealth fund.
HH: Governor, we are out of time. Please say hello to my friend, Michael Oren, if you see him or to any of the people I’ve interviewed, like Prime Minister Netanyahu if you see him. Travel safely. I’m so glad you’re there showing American support for the Jewish state, because Israel is the equal of any of our allies, and we have to stand with it as Doug Burgum is doing. Governor Doug Burgum, thank you for joining me this morning very, very early for me, very, very busy for you. And I appreciate Doug Burgum a great deal. Thank you, Governor.
End of interview.
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Wikipedia defines “elegance” this way:
Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity.
“Beauty” is a word that most people do not think of when it comes to acts of war, but “simple” and “effective” certainly are, and there is a certain kind of beauty that arises from an act in any field that is truly simple and effective. Mathematicians discuss “elegance” all the time. If you know math, when you see an elegant proof, it takes your breath away. “Elegance” is an interesting concept when applied in fields other than art and fashion and such.
Statistical modelling, the mathematics that underlie “climate science,” is not elegant math – it is brutish and complex and imprecise, rendered possible only be the rise of massive, and inexpensive computing capability. It’s ugly. Such is one of the reasons to suspect it – its accuracy is not apparent at a glance. The correctness of elegant math is apparent on first reading.
“Elegant” was the first word that came to my mind when I caught news of yesterday’s pager explosions in Lebanon attacking the Hezbollah command structure. Yes, it was deadly and created a significant casualty cost, but in the world of warfare it projected massive power with minimal kinetic effort and extremely precise targeting. The precise bombing of a Hamas leader in Iran back in July was impressive, but this was an order of magnitude more so.
There are some that will call these attacks “terrorist acts.” They defy such labeling in their very elegance. Consider how brutish the airplane attacks of 9-11 are in comparison. Those attacks, while attracting great attention killed indiscriminately and relied on borrowing the instruments of that destruction. They were attacks born of being the weaker party in the confrontation. But these carefully targeted, elegant attacks, presumably by Israel, are born of strength. Can the acts of the stronger party really be considered “terrorism?”
After taking a minute to appreciate the elegance of yesterday’s attack, my second thought was how it contrasted the brutishness of our current presidential campaign. Presidential campaigns are not war, but they are rhetorical battle, and this one is being conducted with a particular bluntness. So brutish has it been that everyone suspects the violence aimed at one of the candidates has roots in that cudgel-like rhetoric. The means by which Harris’ candidacy arose was particularly inelegant. There is no elegance in this campaign whatsoever.
We live in a brutish, technological time – a time defined by the inelegant math of massive computing on the internet, not the elegant math, arithmetic really, that landed men on the moon. As such the inelegance of this campaign is predictable as politics always reflects the cultural moment. But it is a shame.
As we said, Harris is the political equivalent of a shillelagh – a cudgel disguised as a walking stick. She has smashed and beaten and cudgeled her way into this position and as a candidate is not only inelegant, but ineloquent. Her word salads – massive in word count and devoid of content – are execrable.
Donald Trump’s “brand” is as a bull in a china shop – also brutish. But he has four years in office that stand is stark contrast to the Harris campaign and her time in the Veep office. Rather than rule by pen-and-phone, he governed within the boundaries of the constitution and convention. His rhetoric may have exceeded, in its bluntness, much that preceded it, but his governance was well within normal bounds and elegant in comparison to governance of Obama or Biden/Harris. The turmoil that swirled around his administration was created by his opponents, not him.
After watching Israel’s (presumable) brilliance yesterday I wonder if Donald Trump would not be well served by rebranding a bit. The results could well be breathtaking.
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Since relocating to East Tennessee I have found it hard to get people to understand California, particularly when it comes to covid. They just cannot get their heads around what it is actually like. Image has a lot to do with that. California is a beautiful place, but it is also a place of great contrast. I have described in these spaces before a trip to the Bay Area where when driving down the freeway I could look right and see a gorgeous view of the bay and Golden Gate then turn my head to the left and see a massive homeless encampment. So many contrasts make it hard to develop an actual picture, we tend to pick an image rather than try to reconcile the contrasts. Like that beautiful Victorian house that looks so lovely sitting on the corner, then you get near it and find the porch rotten and the back facade without paint. With the coming of Kamala Harris to the POTUS race, the problems of California have come to us all.
Here is the first thing you need to know – Willie Brown is California politics. He controls the money and the power. And he accounts for Kamala’s career in politics. Mark Hemingway has given us the “Cliff Notes” version:
I’ve covered Kamala Harris’ relationship history more extensively before, but here’s a summary of the facts as we know them: When Harris was a subordinate in the San Francisco DA’s office, she started dating Willie Brown, the most powerful man in California politics, who was 31 years older and married. After the current DA passed over Kamala Harris, a woman who failed the bar exam and is not exactly known for her mastery of the law, Brown was instrumental in alienating the existing DA, and was personally involved in raising money and running Harris’ successful campaign to get elected district attorney. Once in office, Harris let a number of Willie Brown’s friends off the hook when they were facing serious charges — including an egregious case where she let a city contractor and Willie Brown donor skate after endangering people’s lives after defrauding taxpayers by using cheaper, structurally unsound recycled concrete to build bridges and other important structures. This was all reported on in detail by local San Francisco media when it happened, who aren’t exactly in the business of pushing right-wing smears.
Willie Brown calls Gavin Newsom a “protege.” Harris and Newsom may have taken different career paths, but they are both stewed in the same pot – the Willie Brown pot – Harris’ stew is just a bit spicier. Everybody knows what is wrong with California is wrong with Newsom, but it is just as wrong with Harris given their very similar origin stories. Like Kang and Immortus – same guy, just from different timelines.
Consider this story about reparations falling off the budget priorities in California:
Black Californians are threatening to withhold their vote from Kamala Harris after the State’s Democrat lawmakers decided not to give them slavery reparations “This is going to impact your friend, Kamala Harris, who’s running for president.”
That reparations have been so actively discussed is California looney enough, but here when it does not result in payoffs, we see Harris and Newsom bundled like insurance – revealing the reality. Harris is, as Newsom is, California looney. I have documented in these spaces over and over again how bad things have gotten in California. The latest:
- The Bay area has massive crime and massive homelessness featuring human feces in the street. And yet they are worried about statues.
- Union Square in San Francisco is the heart of the city – so the 49ers #1 pick was shot there over the weekend.
Which brings me back to the contrasting images so difficult to reconcile. Harris personifies this in her stance on the current conflict in and around Israel. She is all about Israel’s right to self-defense, but “at the same time” too many Gazans are dying. So, I guess she was for Israel until she was against it? And now, in the dead hostages, this non-position position has born fruit.
We don’t need images, we need policy. We certainly do not need Brown/Harris/Newsom California gone national.
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Theory is an interesting thing. We tend to associate it with smart. After all, based on theories we have tamed the atom and sent men to the moon. Physics has got this theory thing down. But other fields of study not so much – especially when it comes to living things. Take my wood working for example. In theory, you cut the wood to shapes, you glue the shapes together, thing built. But wood you see is made of living stuff and executing the same cut with the same tools on two different pieces of wood can give two very different results. The grain is different, the dryness is different, therefore the cutting edge will interact with the piece differently. Further, because no two pieces of wood are ever exactly the same, there is no theory to tell you exactly how to set up the cut – there is no repeatability. You have to feel the wood and the cut, reacting as you feel things being pulled this way or that. Wood working theory can only take you so far – to really do it well, you have to do it – generally poorly at first. There is value, great value, in the labor of actually doing a thing.
This applies to most things in life – physics being the exception, not the rule. And yet we live in a world of well-educated theoreticians – people that have gone to school and studied a thing (often ad nauseum), but never actually done it. Some people take all that “book learning” and go out and try to use it – they also labor. They learn how much they do not know and then have to spend a lot more time learning. So, you can study a thing then labor and hopefully your studies have shortened you learning curve from the labor. Or you can dive right into the labor – but either way, the most useful knowledge is gained in the labor, not the theory.
But, in this modern age, there are those that never bother with the labor. As the Bible says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” Such people typically end up in some regulatory agency somewhere – telling people how to do a thing without actually having ever done the thing.
Labor Day was started to celebrate the labor movement in this nation. But I think over the years it has become something very different. These days it is a celebration of those that actually know what they are doing.
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I would commend the 37th Psalm of all of you. It’s a long one. Here is just the opening 11 verses:
Do not get upset because of evildoers,
Do not be envious of wrongdoers.
For they will wither quickly like the grass,
And decay like the green plants.
Trust in the Lord and do good;
Live in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the Lord;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
He will bring out your righteousness as the light,
And your judgment as the noonday.Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him;
Do not get upset because of one who is successful in his way,
Because of the person who carries out wicked schemes.
Cease from anger and abandon wrath;
Do not get upset; it leads only to evildoing.
For evildoers will be eliminated,
But those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land.
Yet a little while and the wicked person will be no more;
And you will look carefully for his place and he will not be there.
But the humble will inherit the land
And will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.
The post This Sunday appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
or…Tyranny for Thee, But Not for Me
Yesterday I wrote:
Of course Kamala Harris is vacuous. If she had an idea in her head, she’d try to lead and that’s the last thing the minions of the administrative state want. They want their anonymity while exercising autocratic, sometimes tyrannical, levels of power. After all, you cannot fight what you cannot find.
“Tyrannical” is not a word I throw around lightly.
Tim Walz behaved quite tyrannically during covid:
When the coronavirus was first spreading, Walz was an enthusiastic promoter of social distancing rules. He described the crowds in public, outdoor spaces as “a little too big.” He even defended Minnesota’s ridiculous hotline for COVID-19 snitches. That’s right: Walz’s government maintained a method for people to report their neighbors for failing to abide by social distancing rules. Walz insisted in a recent interview that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness”; denouncing one’s neighbors as insufficiently loyal to government policies is a fundamental aspect of socialism, however.
Even before they are office the tyrannical reach begins:
The rule covers both physical risks, such as severe weather events, and “transition” risks, such as new green legislation or reduced demand for climate-unfriendly products. Companies’ discussion of such hazards will be riddled with speculation. Which severe weather events will increase due to climate change (and by how much, and where)? Which climate-related regulation, litigation, or shifts in consumer attitudes will in fact arise? In the words of dissenting commissioner Hester Peirce, firms will emit plumes of “climate disclosure spam,” much of it nothing more than “high-priced guesses about the present and future.” (Calculating the cost of complying with its rule, the SEC conjured up a low-ball estimate of $2.3 billion a year.)
Some companies will also have to measure and disclose the greenhouse-gas emissions from their own operations or from the energy they purchase. These are so-called Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, respectively. There are also Scope 3 emissions—those that arise from the activities of the company’s suppliers and customers. The SEC considered requiring disclosure of Scope 3 emissions but thought better of it—which brings us to California.
Enacted late last year, California’s SB 253 and SB 261 don’t even pretend to cater to investors: they govern both public and private companies. Their goal, as one of their authors freely admits, is to pressure firms “to significantly decrease . . . emissions.” They order disclosure of Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions, and they reach all large firms that do any business, however minimal, in California.
There is a lot of regulatory and scientific babble in that – but basically there are now rules, some from the Securities and Exchange Commission and some from the State of California, that require companies to measure not only their own carbon production, but their suppliers, and further to project costs they might incur as a result of “climate change” which is ludicrous since we are not even sure what, nor the extent of, climate change that might occur. That $2.3B compliance cost estimate is way low. These rules would require even single facility company with a dozen suppliers to add a full time staff person – multi facility companies, one staff person per facility, plus the corporate overhead staff – not to mention the IT infrastructure costs which would be immense. And that then will flow down to your suppliers who will have to do the same thing. And all of it to speculate based on speculation, based on limited data sets.
This is indeed tyrannical, but then:
The Environmental Protection Agency, which polices chemical contaminants, has been subjecting employees at its Chicago offices to water contaminated with metal and Legionella, the bacteria that causes the deadly Legionnaires’ disease.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported this week that at least five water fountains or kitchen faucets were found to have Legionella. Two kitchen faucets also busted the acceptable limits for lead and copper.
In Michigan, meanwhile, another federal building was found in 2017 to have a high risk of fire, and experts said it needed a sprinkler system. Seven years later, the problem remained unaddressed, an inspector general found.
And in Bethesda, Maryland, surveyors found stone crumbling off the sides of the headquarters of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2019. They called it an “immediate and potentially imminent danger.” Four-and-a-half years later it still hadn’t been fixed, according to the inspector general.
When the General Services Administration, the government’s chief landlord agency, does get around to fixes, it takes an average of nearly three years to put a plan in place. That shatters the Occupational Safety and Health Administration deadline.
Public Buildings Service “data shows that there are nearly 36,000 actionable, open-risk conditions at almost 2,000 GSA-managed assets nationwide,” the inspector general said. “The same data shows that there are more than 5,000 open-risk conditions that were not corrected or did not have an abatement plan in place within the 30-day period required by OSHA regulations.”
Yep – all that tyrannical pressure on us, but none of it counts when it comes to them. Look, there are very few companies on the planet that have 2000 facilities, but if this level of violation was found in one that did, the penalties would be in the billions of dollars, the employees would have grounds for additional billions in lawsuits and people would be jailed. In fact, the penalties, litigation and criminal action would happen for a company of a dozen facilities.
In Harris/Walz we are looking not at public servants – far from it. I wish I could say we were looking at autocrats, but Harris and Walz are not that smart – they are a vacuum that the administrative state rises to fill. Tyranny by bureaucracy – that’s what we are looking at. Unless, of course, you are in the club – then the rules do not matter.
The post It Is About Control, But Not Of Themselves appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Last night’s interview can be summed up in a word – vacuous. Here is the transcript. If you did not watch, read. Before you deal with the highlights and the commentary, including this commentary, read. Know all of it. The biggest take-away from the transcript is the repeated insertion in it of “(LAUGH).” When you see it in print it becomes obvious that the cackle is her tell. Know when you hear that unpleasant noise or read “(LAUGH)” that she is very uncomfortable. She may be lying, or she may be admitting something she does not want to admit, but she is very uncomfortable. As to the vacuousness, this exchange says it all:
“The voters are really eager to hear what your plans are. If you are elected, what would you do on day one in the White House,” CNN’s Dana Bash asked Harris, who was flanked by her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“Well, there are a number of things I will tell you. First and foremost, one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class,” Harris said.
Let me summarize – Q: “What are you going to do?” A: “Things.” That may be the most non-answer answer in the history of non-answers.
Mom: “Where ya goin’?” Teenage me: “Out” meaning “I have no clue; I just don’t want to be here.” That’s where we are.
The media fail here is stupendous in its scope but given the direction media has been moving since the rise of Obama it is also unremarkable. It is almost predictable. When I answered my mom with “Out” there came a virtual avalanche of questions until she knew precisely where I was going and what time I would be home. And in so doing she often prevented me from doing something really stupid because, of course, I was not going to tell her I was going to do something stupid even if I had been contemplating it. The media has not the curiosity, or the courage, of the average mom.
I have no idea when VDH wrote this piece, “New Rules for Radicals — How To Reinvent Kamala Harris” but he nailed it. She cannot answer because her answers would be admitting she was going to do something quite radically left, in other words stupid.
Yesterday I wrote a post noting that her candidacy represents the continued rise of the administrative state. Over at RCP, J Peder Zane penned a piece that makes the point better than I did:
Our fixation on what Kamala Harris knows and believes is rather quaint.
It reflects a traditional view of leadership that Democrats have largely rejected. Instead of decisive figures who guide the nation, the party is driven by untold numbers of elected officials and unelected bureaucrats, academics, and media voices who share a leftwing ideology. Harking back to its earlier history, the party is once again a machine. Its candidates are not visionaries but apparatchiks committed to the program.
The name on the ballot is largely irrelevant. No one is really voting for Harris, but for the party she represents. Still, politics needs a face, so when President Biden’s turned too craggy, she was tapped as a more youthful, attractive spokesmodel. Like Biden, her vacuity is her appeal; she is another empty vessel that Democrat marketing whizzes can fill with blithe slogans – Joy! Freedom!! Goldilocks!!!
I think the phrase “view of leadership that Democrats have largely rejected,” sums it up well. Of course Kamala Harris is vacuous. If she had an idea in her head, she’d try to lead and that’s the last thing the minions of the administrative state want. They want their anonymity while exercising autocratic, sometimes tyrannical, levels of power. After all, you cannot fight what you cannot find.
I wrote Monday that our situation is deeply rooted in Trump hatred. Trump came to office promising to “drain the swamp.” The administrative state is the swamp, and they are fighting back. To do so they had to make sure there was no one above them that would dare have an actual idea. Well, last night’s interview demonstrated that they have found the perfect candidate.
The post Vacuous appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton joined me this morning and of course I asked him about the absurd “controversy” over former President Trump’s visiting Arlington National Cemetery on Monday at the invitation of the Gold Star families of the fallen at Abbey Gate. Senator Cotton wrote an excellent book on The Old Guard: “Sacred Duty: A Soldier’s Tour at Arlington National Cemetery.”
Audio:
08-29hhs-cotton
The post Senator Tom Cotton, R-AR, A Former Member of “The Old Guard” At Arlington National Cemetery On Former President Trump’s Visit Monday appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Harris’ flip-flop on fracking, as well as her wavering or lack of statement on other issues, would indicate to this observer that VP Harris does not see this election as being about issues. She seems quite disinterested in issues, dispatching campaign worker bees to deal with it. It does not seem she seeks the office to see to it that certain things are done, and certain things are not done – it seems she wants the office for its own sake. The media, I think, thinks this is about personality. But the politicos know it is about raw power. Power not in service to an agenda for the people, that would require a stance on issues, but power for the sake of the power holder. That does not mean Harris would set herself up as an absolute ruler, not in our administrative state, but it does mean that her constituency is that administrative state – not the populace.
The intent of democracy is to make the government accountable to the people, not the other way around, which was the case in the monarchies of old. Small government and local rule are the best way to accomplish that. Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War saw the federal government come to outweigh the states. FDR laid the foundations for the administrative state, and it has grown in bursts, punctuated by a few periods of stasis or even minor shrinkage, ever since. Barack Obama and his government by pen and phone turned a growth burst into a cancerous growth that now threatens the health of the democracy proper.
Consider recent history. Obamacare was passed by an unprecedented act of legislative legerdemain now known to all as “reconciliation.” It was an act of sheer will and clearly against the expressed will of the populace as a special election held just before saw Obamacare as the central issue and sent an overwhelming message that it should not pass. Next the judicial filibuster was eliminated – removing one of the great checks to the abuse of power in the Senate. And now we see an entire party jettison conventional democratic process in its selection of a presidential nominee – they did not even bother with the smoke-filled room debates at the conventions of old. None of this is outside the boundaries of the Constitution but is stretching the fence wire to its very limits, and strongly indicates a lack of respect for the spirit of democracy.
You see, the administrative state exists based on a simple presumption – that some issues are just too complicated for us mere peons. But here is the problem with that, the presumably smart people are still people and are prone to all the foibles the rest of us are and are thus tempted to accumulate power for self-enrichment as has been true for monarchs forever. All those things mentioned in the preceding paragraph, and more, that we have jettisoned in recent years, were not designed to “preserve the constitution” so much as they were designed to act as a check on the common human tendency to selfishness.
The Founders created our republic on the presumption of an educated and moral populace – and if my wider than most circles of friends and acquaintances is any indication we largely have that. Most people are fully capable of engaging on the issues, learning what they need to and acting accordingly. But the government has grown blind to that fact and tries to prove the point by making rules that are too complex for even a lawyer to deal with. Consider COVID and the labyrinthine rules adopted in some places. You remember when Michigan forced stores to rope off some aisles because shopping there was deemed “not essential,” or California arrested a guy for surfing – on the ocean – alone??
In matters big (the selection of a presidential candidate) and matters small (where to shop during a pandemic) the Democratic Party and its administrative state constituency have clearly indicated that they represent themselves, not the people.
Democracy itself is in the dock this election. Vote accordingly.
ADDENDUM (a few hours later): From Jim Geraghty this morning:
The people voting for her clearly don’t want or need policy details. They trust her judgment to figure it all out later, after she’s been elected.
If Harris wins the election, she’ll have an argument that she has a mandate to do whatever she pleases, as very few Americans demanded more specifics from her.
In other words – she wants to be queen, not president.
The post The Raw Power Election and the Slow Erosion of True Democracy appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Governor Larry Hogan did a fabulous job as governor of Maryland, and now he is running to be one of its two United States Senators. His campaign website is here: https://larryhogan.com/ Hogan joined me this morning:
Audio:
08-28hhs-hogan
Transcript:
HH: I’m joined by an old friend of the program. Governor Larry Hogan, former governor of Maryland, now a candidate for Maryland’s open Senate seat. He is at least tied. Me may be ahead. He should win, because he earned the job. He is a Ravens fan. We forgive him that. Welcome back, Governor Hogan. Good to have you.
LH: Good morning, Hugh. Thanks for having me.
HH: It is always a pleasure. Let’s start by making sure people know how to find your campaign. www.larryhogan.com, that’s it, right?
LH: That’s it. www.larryhogan.com.
HH: Now how is the financing? And do you need small dollar donors?
LH: Well, look, we, this really is a grassroots campaign, Hugh. We’ve got about 20,000 donors from not just all across Maryland, but across the country, and we’d love to have people, if they want to really make a difference, I think you know, investing whatever you can at www.larryhogan.com would help us tremendously.
HH: www.larryhogan.com for a small donation, whether it’s $3 or $30 or $300 dollars. www.larryhogan.com. Now Governor, I don’t know much about your opponent. I don’t know much about this race, because I’m up north, and I don’t get back to the Beltway until October. What is it being waged over, because you were like a remarkable popular Republican governor in a deep blue state. What are they mad at you about? They liked you when you were governor.
LH: Well, they still like me, Hugh. It’s, look, my opponent is trying to make this about just red versus blue. And you know, we’re arguably the bluest state in America, more than two to one Democrats to Republicans. And I was able to overcome that in the off years at the top of the ticket running for governor, pulling off the biggest surprise upset in America in ’14. And then in ’18, I was reelected as only the second Republican ever reelected in 248 years. And so it’s a tough, tough state. People do, I left office last year with a 77% job approval, over 70 with every demographic. So the voters do like me. They thought I did a great job at governor. They wish I was still governor. But they’re a little hesitant because of the national politics and their party registration. So my opponent tries to make it all about, you know, 51st vote for the MAGA agenda. And you know, I’m out there talking about the issues that people care about, about their concerns about the economy and crime and the border. And so you know, we’re feeling really good about where we are right now. I mean, look, a month or so ago, we were, polls out saying I was down 11 points. And now, I’m over-performing the top of the ticket by 32 points. We’re kind of exactly where we had hoped to be, and where we’ve been in the last couple of races. And you know, we think we’re in great position to pull off this Senate seat that we have not elected a Republican senator since 1980 when I was a chairman of Youth for Reagan, just to put it in perspective.
HH: When you were doing that in 1980, I was chairman of the Youth for Reagan in Massachusetts.
LH: Wow. Well, I’m sure you were doing a better job than I was. I didn’t win the state for Reagan.
HH: And so we are, well, no, we both lost our states, all right? We both lost our states. Let me go back and ask you, Governor. I think I misstated that. It’s actually ’76, I was running Youth for Ford. So I was in it before you were, but we lost the state anyway.
LH: Well, I was in that one, too.
HH: Okay (laughing) I’m just a basic Midwestern Republican. Rob Portman was my role model. He’s my classmate at Michigan Law School.
LH: He’s great.
HH: Those are my politics.
LH: Me, too.
HH: I love having Susan Collins as a kind of quasi-Senator for me because I spend so much time in Maine.
LH: Yeah, she’s great.
HH: You’re a moderate Republican. You’re a throwback. Is there room in the party for throwbacks like you and me?
LH: Well, I think so. I mean, I’m currently, you know, outperforming the rest of the Republicans by 30-some points. I’m actually outperforming Donald trump among Republicans. So I think there at least is a, I think there’s hope that we can potentially get back to a more Reagenesque big tent party that’s fiscally conservative, is strong on national defense, and standing up, you know, peace through strength, standing up for our allies and standing up to our enemies and caring about things like the deficit. And you know, I think we’re in an unusual time in politics, and we’ve got a crazy, wild 69 more days to go to see what happens. But I did not want to give up on the party. I think that I’ve got something to contribute. And also, I’ve always been kind of a maverick, and I’m willing to work across the aisle to get things done. And that’s how we’ve been successful in this deep blue state.
HH: And I think the Senate needs more Larry Hogan’s and Susan Collins’. I was sorry to see Rob Portman go. But now, I want to play for you, Governor, a big issue in Maryland is, people don’t know this, how expensive it is to live there.
LH: Yeah.
HH: It’s far more expensive to live there than it is in almost any other place in the country.
LH: Yeah.
HH: Yesterday, Kamala Harris ran an ad on affordable home ownership. I want to play part of it for you and get your reaction. Cut number 20. This is Vice President Harris on affordable housing.
KH: For most of my childhood, we were renters. My mother saved for well over a decade to buy a home. I was a teenager when that day finally came, and I can remember so well how excited she was. I know what home ownership means. And sadly, right now, it is out of reach for far too many American families.
HH: All right, stop right there. Governor, I’m astonished they’re running on this, but what do you say to that?
KH: Well, well, you know, I agree with what he’s saying, but I mean, they haven’t done anything about it, and in fact, have added to the problem. So affordability is the number one issue that we’re hearing out there. It shows up on all the polling, which they’ve obviously seen. But they’re not taking responsibility for the terrible economy and for the fact that interest rates are so high, and that housing is not affordable. There are an awful lot of people that are struggling to kind to kind of be the first-time home buyers, and it’s something I was, the reason I ran for governor is because we were, these kinds of issues. People were struggling, hard-working Maryland families, and small business owners and retirees, and we had raised taxes 43 times in a row. And that’s why I ran and turned our economy around. And I’m the only governor in America to get a Democratic legislature to cut taxes, and we did it eight years in a row by $4.7 billion. And we tripled the amount of affordable housing. We worked to try all kinds of programs to try to help make it easier for folks. And we tried to create more opportunity and create more businesses and more jobs to grow our economy. You know, we took our overall economic performance from 49th out of 50 states to number 6, biggest economic turnaround in America. And that helped all those folks. But she’s talking about the issue as if she’s not the one in charge. You know, the current administration certainly has a lot of responsibility for the economy we’re in, and the fact that interest rates are so high, and that everything is less affordable. And people can’t afford groceries, they can’t afford the cost of energy, they can’t afford housing. So it’s like, she’s acting like she’s a challenger rather than an incumbent.
HH: And her, she has offered up a publisher’s clearinghouse kind of policy – $25,000 dollars for every new home buyer. All that will do is raise new housing costs by $25,000 and repeat the housing crisis of the 2000 aughts.
LH: Yeah. Well, absolutely.
HH: Let me ask you, Governor, yeah, I mean…
LH: It’s absurd. I mean, it sounds great to say hey, we’re going to give you a free $25,000 dollars, and I’m sure to some people, they go isn’t that nice without thinking about the consequences, where the money comes from, what it does to the, it increases the cost of housing. And in addition to that, all of the regulations at the federal, state, and local level already add about 38% of the cost of a home. And so they’re making it unaffordable, and then they have another solution that will make it even more unaffordable.
HH: Now I have two quick questions before you go. The first is crime is a big issue. I think your opponent is in charge of a county where crime is out of control. Am I correct about that?
LH: Crime in Prince Georges County, right outside of Washington, is out of control, rising faster than any jurisdiction. Murders are up 100%. Carjackings are up 500%. In addition to that, she’s releasing dangerous criminals who are illegals that refusing, she’s the largest jurisdiction refusing to cooperate with ICE. They put a detainer saying this is a violent murderer, rapist, gang member, hold them. She refuses to, and lets them out on the streets.
HH: I just can’t believe she’s in this race because of that record. But my last question, you are the definition of genial. I like genial people. I try and run a genial show. Does that work in politics anymore, even for a Ravens fan? They’re not very genial. I mean, how does geniality work these days?
LH: You know, look, I think one of the successes for me in this blue state has been people feel as if I’m a regular guy. I try to treat everyone fairly. You can passionately disagree on the issue without demeaning someone or questioning their character or their integrity or their patriotism. And you know, I think the way you treat people and tone matters. And you know, I think people listen more when you treat them with a little respect.
HH: I couldn’t agree more, and I hope people go to www.larryhogan.com and help you get that message out. Forget the Ravens stuff. Put it aside, the most loathed franchise in the NFL. Do not hold that against Governor Hogan. He didn’t steal the franchise from Cleveland. But nevertheless, he will be a great senator. www.larryhogan.com, www.larryhogan.com. I’ll be right back, America.
End of interview.
The post Governor Larry Hogan On His Campaign To Become Maryland’s Next Senator appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I have a big stack of stuff to link to, but before I get there I want to make a short follow-up to Monday’s post. I discussed how Trump hatred seems to be overriding rationality in many people. I was recently involved in a conversation where someone was seething with hatred for people that were hating. It was as if the object of the hatred justified it. I tried to discuss with them that hate was hate; that the only counter to it was love, but they could not see it. I should comment that the object of their hatred was very wrong, very ugly and full of hatred. But they could not see that they were guilty of the same crime – their hatred blinded their reason to the point of blinding them to their own hatred. We must guard ourselves against letting our opposition turn into hate – and we must love who have already crossed that line. It is the only way to pull them back.
And now, links…
Kamala Harris is from California – actually the beating heart of crazy California, Berkeley. We should fear what would happen if she is elected. Utah is fighting hard against going there. And this is the saddest news I have read in a very long time. The home of the best sandwich I have ever eaten in my life may close due to California ineptitude.
From the world of science. I just found this story of archeologists at war with each other fascinating. Science is not safe from DEI. Which could very well be the source of junk science. That said, this carbon capture technique from UT Austin is not junk science, but I wonder if it is necessary science. It’s implementation of a large scale would be very, very expensive and if you truly understand the climate science (read this – seriously and if you don’t understand it, ask someone) there is a lot more we need to know before we go throwing money in that direction.
Speaking of DEI, this, “The Department of Homeland Security put out its Information Technology Strategic Plan for 2024-2028….Their #1 stated goal is advancing DEI.” Frightening.
Speaking of frightening there is this about school choice. But especially there is this:
I WONDER IF BIDEN/HARRIS WILL DO THE SAME THING AFTER OUR ELECTION? “It’s an unprecedented situation in the history of the 5th French Republic: the loser in the election effectively rejects yielding power to the winner. . . . This awfully inconvenient fact remains: Macron’s party got way less votes and MPs than the NPF, yet it is Macron’s party that’s still running the French government, and it is Macron himself making choices on who can or cannot assume power based on what he thinks would ‘weaken France’ or not. It’s insane when you think about it.”
Finally, understanding religion in the nation.
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Ran into an “old” (2018) RCP article by pollster Scott Rasmussen that he wrote just after attending a presentation by Arthur Brooks. It sounded a theme dear to my heart:
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years reminding everyone who would listen that the culture leads and politics lag behind….The answer, according to Brooks, is that for our political system to work effectively, we need to love those who disagree with us. If we are attacked on social media, for example, Brooks said we should not fight back. Instead, we should offer a warm-hearted response. He encouraged everyone in attendance to seek out those who disagree with them and find a way to respond with love. Thank your opponents for taking the time to comment on your work. Thank them for their opinion. Show them you really care.
I dearly love that perspective, and I think it is the long-term solution to what ails us. But that said, we are in a crisis – democracy is under direct threat.
Harris’ power grab is the most visible, but not the only egregious violation of democratic process on the ticket in the nation. Here in Tennessee, esteemed, incumbent Senator Marsha Blackburn is opposed by Democrat Gloria Johnson – one of the infamous “Tennessee Three.” The Tennessee Three are members of the Tennessee House, two of whom that were expelled, that tried a couple of years ago to essentially hijack the House. Upset that the body would not take up gun control regulation that they wanted passed, they lead public protest into the House halting altogether the normal operations of the body. It was, as Harris’ nomination is, a complete disruption of democratic order.
What we need to understand here is that this election in many places, including the race for POTUS, is not about disagreements on policy, it is about democracy itself. Here are two races in which the Democratic Party has said “order be damned, our way or the highway.” These people are functionally seceding. When you stop playing by the rules in a democracy you have left the body. It was at the point of secession in 1860 that incivility turned towards Civil War.
We cannot abandon Brooks’ proposition, but we also cannot wait for it to work and expect to keep the United States of America as we know it. We have a very proximal problem. We must respond with civility and with love, but we must respond strongly and loudly. The only way we can do that is at the ballot box.
Right now, the presidential election is a toss-up. This cannot be a simple victory for Republicans – it must be an overwhelming landslide – a loud and very clear message to Democrats that these kinds of shenanigans will not be tolerated. Furthermore, this has to happen in more than just the presidential and Tennessee senatorial races. Every Democrat, everywhere, is complicit in the Harris coup, as witnessed by its success. They all have to be beaten.
To do that we all have to be active, walking precincts, posting signs and talking to anyone we can engage with. That takes us back to Brooks. We cannot browbeat or filibuster. We have to engage with sincerity and concern – but we have to engage. We have to help people understand that in this election when you vote Democrat you are voting for the severe erosion of our democracy. The issue in this election is most fundamental.
The post Dealing With The Proximal and The Ultimate appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Consider
- There was a recent assassination attempt on a former president and current presidential candidate, and we know nothing save the Secret Service failed.
- The current POTUS is unfit for office.
- The current Democratic nominee has not received a vote on the national level in any form, nor, due to California’s jungle primary system, has she ever faced a Republican in an election.
- The entire mess now summed up by a single word – covid.
It is very hard not to think in conspiratorial terms, particularly when it comes to the machinations inside the Democratic party. Given all the unknowns in these situations it is ever so tempting to fill-in-the-blank with hidden hands and powers behind the curtain. Yet reason tells me that an actual conspiracy is impossible – too many people are involved; that many people cannot keep a secret.
So how do we explain all of this? How do we account for this massive, and relatively sudden, erosion of democratic order?
I have contended since we shuttered the nation because we were terrified of a disease about which we knew almost nothing, that the most frightening aspect of that episode was not the government’s efforts to seize power, but the nation’s willingness to go along with it. But in thinking about that episode, the key lies in that word “terrified.” Strong emotion overrides reason.
In my Sunday School class, we are studying the history of Christianity. Yesterday we looked at the role played by Christianity in the downfall of Soviet communism. The lecturer noted two very salient facts. One, despots throughout history have had to either compromise religion to their tyranny or offer some substitute religion that is. Two, efforts to quash faith in the Soviet Union were unsuccessful no matter the type of effort or strategy involved. This too speaks to the fact that the operation of a nation depends on more than straightforward rationality.
Which leads me to the current state of the presidential race and specifically Kamala Harris’ rise to major party candidacy without virtue of vote or campaign of any sort. The explanation for this mess must lie in some strong emotion that overrides the very rational conclusion that Kamala Harris’ candidacy is entirely illegitimate. I would posit Trump hatred as that emotion. I think the term “trump Derangement Syndrome” far too mild – this is a deep, to the point of rage, seething hatred. The kind of hatred that blinds those cursed with it to all but the destruction of its object.
Now, do not get me wrong, there are people in key potions that are capitalizing on these emotions, but that is politics as usual. We, the average voters, are the ultimate check-and-balance and therefore this failure is ours. It is deeply, deeply disturbing that our failure to fulfill that role is rooted in hatred.
The problem with hate is that we seem to recognize everybody’s but our own. We live in a world full of “Stop Hate” tee shirts. We have passed laws making hate criminal. Yet we find hate driving the actions of one of the two major political parties in this nation. Salena Zito notes that Harris’s campaign appearances are heavily orchestrated and never involve the actual public. On the show this last Friday, Ben Domenech, who was at the DNC, reported that the average delegate was not expressing the kind of enthusiasm that media was showing us. Such reporting should be a source of hope, and it does indicate that Trump is far more likely to win the election than the media would have us think. But it also points to the fact that way too many Democrats carry such a distaste for Trump that they are unwilling to protest.
I think what we need here is a parable:
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Yeah, I think that is the ticket.
The post How Did We Get Here? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Well, the speaker schedule for this week’s DNC is out. Things I note – Bill Clinton gets better placement that Barack Obama. Nancy Pelosi is scheduled, but nothing about Hakeem Jefferies. And Pete Buttigieg?!?! The worst performing cabinet official in history – really? But what I really note is the “theme” for Wednesday night – “A Fight for Our Freedoms.” Has her economic policy speech from last Friday already been memory holed?”
Seriously, there is nothing free in her economic proposals – nothing. They are a regulator’s dream, and regulators don’t like freedom – they like telling you what to do in deep and intimate detail.
Guessing abortion will come up Wednesday night – as if Dodd somehow rendered it illegal. It didn’t. Not even close. You are still free to get an abortion if you want – just not everywhere. Dodd was a decision that increased freedom, not decreased it – allowing people to decide for themselves about abortion rather than forcing them to think a certain way about them. If you support abortion on demand, and live in a state with abortion limitations, you are free to try and change people’s minds. When Roe and Casey held sway, those of us that have issues with abortion had no such freedom. Who is all about freedom again?
Pete Buttigieg is undoubtedly there to bring up Obergefell – a decision that like abortion limited freedoms as much, perhaps more, than it created them.
Freedom? Do you remember the pandemic? Why is it the places that created the most draconian restrictions during the pandemic were the blue places? Freedom? Doesn’t that include the right to choose to risk getting the disease – particularly to pursue income or education?
Freedom? – Guns. Need I say more?
Did you catch her speech to some football players yesterday? – “…you will be undefeated even if you don’t win every game,….” She does not even believe in the freedom to win a football game. (BTW, anecdotally, there were a few times in my youthful sports life that teams I was on were used as stage settings for other things, like photo ops for POTUS candidates. All I wanted was the freedom to practice and play, but I had to stand there and listen to someone I did not care about talk to people I did not know. Again, not sure about the freedom involved there.)
Freedom? – This woman has the nomination without receiving a single vote on a national scale – not a single vote. How exactly does her candidacy express freedom again?
Here’s the thing about genuine freedom – it includes the freedom to be wrong, to disagree and to fail. If those freedoms are not present, then there is no genuine freedom. Kamala Harris wants nothing to do with genuine freedom – only some perverse version of it that means we all bend to her will.
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I have been holding on to the Steven Malanga piece from City Journal for a while now. Ostensibly it is about how hard it is to find employees these days, but I think it gives insight into much deeper issues. He points to several issues creating a worker shortage:
But the workforce woes run deeper. Ever more adults are unemployable because of worsening social dysfunction, changing youth attitudes toward work, and university and public school failures to prepare students for labor-market realities. Drug legalization has made it harder to find laborers who can pass drug tests…A crime spike, meantime, will likely create a new generation of convicts…Soaring mental-health problems add to the ranks of the unemployable….unrealistic expectations about pay and benefits.
Not a pretty picture, is it?
Eventually he looks at how we got here:
How did millennials develop such shortcomings and gloomy views of work? One explanation: young adults don’t assess risk well. Though we live in one of the safest times in history, Generation Z believes that “risk is everywhere they turn,” writes political scientist Gabriel Rubin about an ongoing study assessing the origins of young people’s mental-health crises.
In their bestseller The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue that society has “unwittingly taught a generation of students the mental habits of anxious, depressed, polarized people.” Parents bear some blame, but schools at all levels are at fault, too, Lukianoff and Haidt maintain. Gen Z has grown up learning to “catastrophize.” Old wisdom—like the notion that what doesn’t kill you can make you stronger—gets turned on its head, so that any stress or conflict is seen as potentially devastating. Hence the demand for safe spaces and the agitated reactions to mundane workplace scenarios. Young workers wind up ill-suited to embracing economic opportunities because they can’t see work as fulfilling or even fun. “Yes, fun at work. Imagine that. Gen Z can’t,” business school professor Suzy Welch recently observed of her students. For them, she added, “Work is what you do when you can’t be doing what you want.”
I find this fascinating. For a long time, it was fashionable to accuse Christians of not trying to fix long term problems because of their eschatology – their view of how the world will end. The accusation was kind of like the current dismissal of “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting in that it revealed an utter ignorance of how Christians actually think. Christians hold most dearly that prayer is actually efficacious, and they hold their eschatology in a tension between with the immediate.
What he is describing the in the paragraph above is one, a massive level of self-absorption and two, an attitude of “why bother?” when the world is so close to ending anyway – hence everything is a catastrophe. And this perfectly describes how Christianity sets itself apart, particularly when it comes to eschatology. A Christian is taught to “regard one another as more important than yourselves.” This means that even if “the end is near” one’s focus is on making sure others are well cared for, not a self-serving bacchanalia prior to the end of existence.
We have worked so hard to push Christianity from our public discourse and consideration. Perhaps the thing I love the most about my retirement in East Tennessee is that Christian faith is still a part of civic life. The town square hosts the Stations of The Cross on Good Friday and everyone still says, “Merry Christmas.” From where I came from, California (Kamala Harris’ California) the first would result in massive litigation and the latter can get you chased out of public places. But what we are seeing is that these are symptoms of a much deeper ill. Removing Christianity from our lives, even nominally, has produced generations that are unemployable – threatening our economy. It is not just about the so-called “social issues.”
It’s Sunday morning – go to church and allow it to speak to you. There is much more at play than you might think.
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The economic “plan” that Harris rolled out yesterday is a nightmare. Said the Washington Post editorial board:
The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks.
And that, frankly, is being kind. Here is the outline of plan as released by the campaign. Here is some analysis from more conservative outlets – National Review and the Washington Times. My most straightforward analysis is that Harris thinks she can dictate to the economy how to behave. She honestly thinks POTUS has god-like power.
She proposes a “federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries,” read that “price controls.” How well did that work for Nixon, or the Soviet Union for that matter? Rush Limbaugh used to tell the story over and over and over again about how when he worked in a butcher and Nixon said the price of chuck roast was controlled to $X, chuck roast suddenly became a “shoulder roast,” which was not controlled. The Soviet Union does not exist anymore – ’nuff said.
Her plans for healthcare are laughable. Capping the price of insulin? – see preceding paragraph. “She will increase competition and demand transparency in the health care industry….” Whoa – back up the truck here just a minute. Wasn’t it Obamacare that created this uncompetitive opaque mess? Yeah, I think it was – so we are going to compound that thousands of pages of law and regulation with more law and regulation – really? Won’t that just increase opacity? And this, “Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will also work with states to cancel medical debt for millions of Americans,” is, like Biden’s continuing cancellation of student loan debt, an insult to those of us that actually pay our bills. Next time I get a bill from the doc, I’ll be sure and forward it to her campaign office.
Oh, and speaking of outright giveaways, this – “the Harris-Walz plan starts to expand the supply of entry-level homes, they will, during their first term, provide working families who have paid their rent on time for two years and are buying their first home up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance, with more generous support for first-generation homeowners.” That’s just insulting to every homeowner that has preceded them everywhere.
I could go on like this for a while, but in sum what she has proposed is red tape to try and control mistakes created by red tape. Rather that release too tight government control, she proposes to add more government control. She proposes to grow government like the most virulent cancer known to mankind. It’s a nightmare, particularly if you consider the other federal regs that would have to be folded into this mess. Let’s go through some examples.
James Carville is on the wrong side of the aisle, but he isn’t stupid, at least I did not think he was – until this:
Veteran Democratic Party strategist James Carville claimed that Republicans are more likely to be pro-Israel than Democrats because Jews have a lighter complexion than their Arab neighbors.
Now, at 79, it is possible Carville is joining Biden in age-related cognitive impairment, but I think revealed here is what has become a Democratic obsession with race, and in particular picking winners and losers among the races. Imagine all those rules and regulations Harris/Walz proposed yesterday run through a filter of racial concern and preference. You can bet your bottom dollar that as soon as more white people are getting that $25K than black people, something will change to make it even more complicated.
Out of California comes a story of ~~Emperor~~, er Governor Newsom “solving” the crime problem running rampant there. I just loved this, “The legislation allows prosecutors to combine the value of items stolen from different victims across various counties to help meet the threshold for felony grand theft and enforce harsher penalties for smash-and-grabs and large-scale reselling operations.” Dear Lord. This makes it easier? So now, instead of prosecuting a single crime, that was decriminalized at Democratic insistence, the poor prosecutor now has to convict the accused of multiple crimes across multiple jurisdictions. You see the game that is being played here? Add bureaucracy to “solve” problems created by bureaucracy. Aren’t we forgetting the definition of insanity?
And finally this,
The EPA continues taking down American businesses for what it calls violations of the Clean Air Act, the latest one being a small Ford dealership in Nebraska. While billionaires are shooting rockets into space, planning missions to Mars, and building EVs with batteries that require devastating mining practices abroad, the EPA has taken it upon itself to ensure small American businesses know who’s boss.
At least this time federal regulators didn’t nuke the business into oblivion with fines and such, something they’ve done and celebrated repeatedly. According to a US Department of Justice official press release, Moddy Motor Co. of Niobrara, Nebraska forked over a $39,741.95 fine and is on a one-year probation period after getting busted for selling tuners and delete kits for diesel trucks.
I could tell you this story over and over and over again, just with different regs and agencies. The bigs have the resources to fight back against the agencies and so any actions the agencies take against them get tied up in court and take years, even decades, to resolve. But the agencies have to show results. So they go hang the small fry and then they can create statistical reports showing how effective they are ~~not~~ being.
So, let’s circle back to Harris economic plan. There is this:
Stop Wall Street Investors from Buying Up and Marking Up Homes in Bulk. Community after community feels taken advantage of by Wall Street investors and distant landlords. Vice President Harris is calling on Congress to pass the Stop Predatory Investing Act, to curtail these practices by removing key tax benefits for major investors who acquire large numbers of single-family rental homes.
It’s not “Wall Street” that’s gonna take it in an unpleasant place here – nah. Wall Street is going to hire an army or two of lawyers and tie this nonsense up, but little guys, either the well-heeled individual that buys say a block of homes, or the small private equity REITS that can’t afford that army, are in trouble. There are no numbers proposed here, so we’ll be arbitrary. Let’s say you have worked hard all your life and acquired a few rental homes – say 10. They are in a low rent neighborhood, and they produce little to modest income for you but provide tremendous tax advantages on your income from your primary source of income. So, what they are proposing here is to eliminate those tax advantages. What are you going to do? Either you are going to sell the homes (to someone likely to raise the rent) and look for a different tax shelter, or you are going to raise the rent.
It is quite clear that no one on the Harris/Walz team has ever read a book or done anything practical in their entire life. They are compounding problems with more problems. They do not know how to do things – they know only how to create more and more and more bureaucracy – dragging the economy lower and lower and lower.
The post Has Kamala Harris Ever Read a Book? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
From Wednesday’s Axios piece about how Harris intends to “redefine” herself:
A big and fair question is: What does Harris really believe?
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Her bet: whatever she says in the small, three-month window of her snap campaign will be what sticks. Harris knows most people know little about her. So she believes she can define herself, even if it includes flip-flops and co-opts
Meaning she thinks the American people are suckers. She believes reality does not really matter, all that matters is what
Think about it. She thinks this is social media where you can adopt a new screen name and be a whole new you – and that we will fall for it. She seems to believe that reality doesn’t really matter – that all that really matters is the show she puts on.
Now, to be fair, showmanship has always been a part of a political campaign, but showmanship is basically about attracting attention and making the mundane look a bit more exciting than it actually is. Harris is doing something entirely different – she is fabricating, virtually from whole cloth an image for this election – a false front behind which she will do whatever she wants. It is like the difference between pro-wrestling or a reality show and complete fiction.
I have beaten on the fact that hers is a campaign of lies for week now and there are reasons
- It makes this all about image with substance taking the third row of seats in the SUV.
- It is just insulting assuming we don’t care enough to pay attention.
Campaigns have been slowly growing less substantial for a while now. Obama beating Romney in 2012 demonstrated that quite well. But this move represents a quantum leap. Democrats have been fighting on style, not substance, grounds for a while – whether it be Obama’s race or objections to Trump’s style, they have been putting style front-and-0center, but until now they clearly did so in service to an agenda. But Harris, as far as we know, has no agenda beyond being elected. Her agenda is set not by conviction of any sort, but by what she thinks will get her elected.
Pro wrestling’s roots are in the travelling carnivals of old that were basically floating con games. For decades fans were known to the performers as “marks.” Since WWF, come WWE, took it national the facade has dropped and the fans are now part of the fun. Promoters have learned that there is a lot more money to be made in the story than there ever was in the con. But Harris has gone back to the old days and seems to want to make us think things are real, when there is nothing there are all.
Pro wrestling had to drop the curtain for one simple reason, everyone knew it was storytelling, not genuine fighting and to continue the facade was just insulting the public. People don’t like to be insulted. Yet here is Kamala Harris insulting us on a daily basis as she tries to invent herself and she expects us to buy into whatever she decides. We love a story, but we hate being conned.
Harri’s entire campaign is a con. A very high stakes con.
The post Are There Really Issues This Campaign? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Currently reading a pretty good book – “Unsettled” by former Obama official Steven E. Koonin. It’s on climate. I am only about a quarter of the way through it and so far in agreement. But then today I ran into this:
Future climates will be determined by the climate’s response to both human and natural influences,….
And so the title of this post came to mind. We believe in evolution do we not? Does that not make humanity part of nature? (Heck, even if you believe God created humanity then humanity is still part of nature, being created and all.) So, unless we have evolved somehow into gods, how are our actions to be differentiated from natural actions? But I pick philosophical and linguistic nits – particularly compared to the real “Spare Me” that confronts us.
Big news among the liberal outlets in the last few hours is this headline:
Hidden-camera video shows Project 2025 co-author discussing his secret work preparing for a second Trump term
Everything about that headline – the CNN story that underlies it and the British-based “Center for Climate Reporting” video that underlies it is pure showmanship – making something ordinary look somehow not only extraordinary, but sinister. Full disclosure, I did not watch the video from beginning to end, it was too laughable, I skipped through it, stopping now and then just to see if there was anything substantive going on – there never was. The entire thing is SOP for a think tank. There are dozens of “Project 2025” type documents produced in Washington and environs every election cycle from dozens of think tanks on both sides of the aisle.
My favorite was the whole thing in the video about the “pubic” first phase of Project 2025 and the “secretive” second phase. The second phase, drafting sample language for legislation or executive order, sample speeches and detailed policy papers is, again, standard operations for any think tank and it’s not secret. It is just not published publicly, but I would bet a simple phone call to the think tank in question would get a copy in your inbox in very short order.
Which brings me back to the idea of showmanship. If two guys get together at Starbucks and decide they have some agenda, say to build a widget business, then they decide on a strategy on how to get there, are they forming a conspiracy or just doing business? Well, that depends on perspective. If you run a competitive widget business, you might see it as a conspiracy, but if you are an investor with the two guys, they are just doing business. Further, if you are the competitor, you might want to tell the world it is some sort of sinister conspiracy if for no other reason than to hinder the new business’ marketing of their widgets.
And that is all that is going on here. In this case the product is not widgets, but ideas for things to do in government. And the other side is painting the production of these ideas in conspiratorial terms for the purpose of hindering the marketing of them – both from the think tank to a potential Trump administration and in the efforts of the Trump team to get elected.
So now, every time I see a headline that says “Project 2025” I move on – just spare me.
The post SPARE ME appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The deceit of which the Harris campaign has been born is only multiplied by the deceit actually in her campaign. We cannot rely on a word she says. The host laid it out well in his Fox column this morning, “The U.S. will quickly become the land of no borders at all and a ruined healthcare system coupled with the rising energy costs that accompany a “true believer” on climate hysteria because, while her campaign team says she’s changed on her stated desire to ban all fracking, why would we believe that?” Why would we believe her? She hid Biden’s issues until it suited her rise. Axios explains that she is just going to reverse course on multiple issues, and claim her White House experience changed her mind. What can you believe with such reversals? The Axios piece also carries this most ominous warning, “She also wants a clean break from Biden’s often-backward-looking lens on democracy….”
I don’t know what is worse there, that she thinks she can break from Biden or that she wants to be forward looking on democracy. How the h&^% do you look forward or backward on democracy? I start by focusing needs on efforts to break with Biden. Let’s think about this for just a minute. Biden simply betrayed the American military and the allies of American democracy in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It’s not about lies, or changing directions, or any other spin or meme-casting you can invent – it was a betrayal, costing American lives and uncountable Afghan ones – many of them people we had promised our protection to. Betrayal, betrayal, betrayal.
If she wants to break with Biden, that is when she should have done it. So deep was that betrayal that anyone that stayed in that Administration owns it – it is inescapable. Resignation was the only honorable way out of owning that mess, and no one, including V.P. Harirs did so.
Then there are the stories of betrayal that cannot be verified – the persistent, but unsubstantiated rumors of deep, deep betrayal of Israel. Not only can Harris not escape those rumors; she will make them worse. The antisemitism, implied if denied, in her choice of running mate, and definitely present in the far left of her party can only raises suspicions.
Which takes me back to the whole idea of a “break from Biden’s often-backward-looking lens on democracy….” A functioning democracy rests of two important pillars – trust and transparency. There is no trust when there has been betrayal. There is no transparency when there has been this much lying. So I guess she actually is “forward-looking” on democracy – she wants to do away with it. In the post just linked I talked about the use of an “emergency” to seize power – first in covid and now in her candidacy. Which reminds me of how the Roman Republic died – on the anvil of an emergency.
The host’s column this morning asks how bad a Harris administration could get. Worse than he thinks – it could spell the end of democracy as we know it.
The post Deceit, With A Side of Betrayal appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Recent decades have seen the rise of the anti-hero. Beginning in the 1980’s, Batman was retooled from the semi-comic, brightly colored depictions epitomized by Adam West to the very dark, very brooding, very violent Batman depicted by Robert Pattinson in the most recent film. Wolverine took over the X-Men comics – a character with serious temper issues, now coupled with utter cynicism about the very nature of heroism generally in Deadpool & Wolverine currently in release. The most recent Disney Plus miniseries Loki saw the original Avengers villain save the multiverse. Our heroes now look very villainous and our villains have become our heroes.
Disney is now cementing the rise of the villain and the demise of the hero:
Josh D’Amaro, the chairman of Disney Experiences, revealed at the company’s annual D23 event that Disney World’s Imagineers are working to bring a long-awaited “Villains Land” to the Magic Kingdom in Florida.
“We love our Disney villains, right? Their evil ambition gives us endless possibilities to tell brand new stories, which is why I’m so excited to announce we’re building a Villains Land at the Magic Kingdom,” D’Amaro told cheering fans at Saturday’s event in Anaheim, California.
We now celebrate our villains, and I cannot help but wonder about the greater cultural impacts of that fact. This certainly reduces the moral impact of the fables we have told for centuries. They are reduced to mere stories where the need for a good villain is as important as the presence of the mighty hero to move the story along. But there are real world villains and real world heroes. I wonder if in making it about the narrative instead of the good-and-evil we make it that much harder to generate the energy and resolve necessary to fight real villains when they arise.
This also raises serious issues about the aspirations it generates in our youth. If both hero and villain are just pieces of the story and one desires to simply be in the story, might one not aspire to be a villain as easily as a hero? I have heard one too many actors talk about their aspiration to play some dastardly villain; how rich the role would be. Will not our youth carry similar aspirations, sometimes confusing real life with their stories?
We read the great epics of history, from Homer to Virgil and forward as a summary of the values and aspirations of the cultures that birthed them. I do not wish to be remembered by history as the culture that celebrated villainy – where the likes of Loki and The Joker have heroic tales told about them just as Thor and Superman. We should aspire to better.
The post The Death of Aspiration appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The lesson that the Democrats, and its allied media, should have learned in the last few weeks is that a big story, like the limited capacity of the occupant of the White House, cannot be kept under wraps for very long. Yet here we are back in the same old mold with Harris trying to be invisible while running for POTUS. I still think Americans won’t buy it because the illegitimacy inherent in how she came to be the Democratic nominee. But the Democrats and the media clearly think they have Americans bamboozled enough to pull it off. But there are a lot of stories “hidden” out there that will reveal Harris for who she is as surely as the debate reveled Biden’s limited capacity. Number 1 on that list of hits is California and its problems with crime. Bear in mind that prior to her election to the US Senate in 2017 Harris served two terms as the chief law enforcement officer for the State of California. A state that is riddled with crime.
She and Biden keep trying to tell us crime is down, but hogwash. California in particular has gotten completely out-of-hand.
Southern California suffered a minor quake yesterday. One of the major reasons my wife and I left there in our retirement was we no longer had confidence in the state, and local’s, ability to respond to just such an emergency. We lived there through the damaging Northridge quake which was hugely interruptive and economically costly despite being relatively moderate and both the governor and LA mayor at the time being extraordinarily competent. We were very worried the incompetent bunch of boobs in charge now would only make matters worse in such an event. So, as news of the quake broke, through the miracle of the internet, we tuned into local LA news outlets to 1) make sure our remaining friends there were OK and 2) to pridefully pound our chests were we proven right. The quake yesterday was not severe enough for either to be a genuine concern, so we were quickly tuned into the “normal” news out of SoCal.
And that is when this story popped up:
The owners of Solez, a recently opened shoe store in La Cañada Flintridge, say they are frustrated after getting burglarized for the second time in a week.
Now, what non-SoCalers need for this is context. La Cañada Flintridge is not just another small suburban community immediately outside of L.A. proper. My wife and I lived adjacent to that very toney little berg but not in it – it was way too expensive for us. Its denizens include former and perhaps future White House officials; I ran into Dennis Prager in a restaurant there a few times so I presume he lives there, and most visibly Kevin Costner was a resident until relatively recently. So while not quite as she-she as Beverly Hills, Brentwood or Bel-Air, La Cañada Flintridge is home to the rich-and-famous. Definitely not a place where you would expect smash-and-grab burglaries to be the order of the day. Yet here we are, a store there was hit twice in a week. That’s California, where the crime cannot be escaped, even by those with the means to go anywhere.
That’s Harris’ California. “She hasn’t been AG for quite a while now,” will inevitably come the retort. Yeah well, except California Democratic politics is a really small group of people. So, while California has reached its deepest depth to date under Newsom and with her in D.C. – they both, Newsom and Harris, learned their trade at the feet of Willie Brown – they are cut from the same cloth. As has gone California so will go the nation should Kamala Harris be elected president. After all, she hijacked the nomination, petty crime like this is just not an issue.
ADDENDUM (The next morning) – Only in California:
Protesters from the group IfNotNow Los Angeles walked onto the southbound 405 Freeway near Venice Boulevard around 9 a.m. PT Tuesday creating an instant traffic jam.
Now, they had this mess broken up in about fifteen minutes – but again, context is necessary. This is the fourth busiest freeway in the nation. Carrying, in just the southbound direction, roughly 250,000-300,000 cars per day. The 210 freeway, near my former home carried half that much. Interstate 40 – the major east/west interstate in the southern tier of the nation, near my home here in Tennessee carries only 100,000, and that only in the last year as work on other east/west corridors have slowed them. A fifteen-minute closure on the 405 in this portion of LA creates a massive jam that takes couple of hours to clear.
The post California – The Weight That Will Keep Pulling Harris Down appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I have never been willing to say that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen,” but I was willing to say it was irregular. Its irregularity was born of the covid “emergency” and thousands of decisions, small and large, to forego normal procedure – resulting in a severe lack of transparency that means the election will forever be ripe for suspicion and speculation. Even if the results are as they would have been under normal circumstances, one is forced to wonder. My hesitancy to declare the election “stolen” is born not of a lack of suspicion, but of a desire to restore and uphold our electoral process. Declaring that election “stolen” is declaring our electoral system as broken and in need of replacement – a replacement that I do not believe would be an improvement.
But if you think that election was suspicious and lacked transparency – consider what we are in the midst of, at least on the Democratic side of the election.
Like 2020, there was an emergency. In this case it was Joe Biden’s decline and incapacity – apparent to all but “revealed” suddenly creating an emergency. Upon the revelation of the emergency everything went behind a curtain, erasing any opportunity for transparency. Where information is not available, suspicion and speculation follow – such a situation demands that a new candidate be selected by the most transparent methods possible simply to avoid that suspicion and speculation. But no, we have gotten just the opposite. Even if we presume Harris stood unopposed and the delegate votes could be so rapidly and easily corralled, the vote proper was conducted “virtually” again reducing, not enhancing, visibility. Then finally there is her choice of running mate.
Kamala Harris “was” far to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party, until she wasn’t. So weak a candidate was she that she dropped out of the 2020 primary before a vote was cast. Her electoral ship simply would not float. And while she has simply declared herself more centrist than any prior evidence would indicate, and her party “appears” to buy this massive and complete about-face, she has picked a running mate as far left as she “used to be.”
The opacity of her ascendancy combined with her choice of running mate reinforcing a stance far to the left of her party, let alone the nation, leaves no choice but to suspect that events are something other than completely above board. Hence the term “coup” (Shorthand for coup d’etat) has come (originally by the host as far as I know but recently picked up by the Republican candidate in fundraising materials) to be attached to events inside the Democratic Party. Perhaps everything that has happened has been on-the-level, but we will never know due to the utter lack of transparency and complete lack of representation of the center of the party.
No matter how you cut it, no matter the outcome of the general election, the net effect of recent events inside the Democratic Party is to further weaken the faith of the nation in its electoral process.
Simply put, we cannot reward such. A vote for the Harris/Walz ticket is a vote for something less than the democratic republic we are supposed to have. Look, I get it, candidates emerging from smoke-filled rooms full of party power brokers has been the norm for most of the history of our nation – but not in recent decades. There is a case to be made that the movement towards binding primaries of recent decades has gone too far, but to suddenly and completely reverse course under the guise of an emergency that was not actually emergent is a move towards something that resembles a totalitarian state more than our republic. We cannot reward such.
Not calling the 2020 election “stolen” was to leave the window open for the restoration of faith in our electoral processes. But what we have witnessed in recent weeks has not merely failed to take advantage of an opportunity so carefully preserved. Rather it has served to further erode that confidence. Clearly, only we, the voters, can restore that confidence – by soundly defeating the Harris/Walz ticket sending a clear and loud message that such shenanigans will not be tolerated.
The post Weakening Our Electoral System appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I left us with a dilemma yesterday. “The solution to our institutional problems cannot begin with accountability. It begins with building accountable people.” How do we do that? Where do we do it? I do not know entirely, but I do know where to start.
In yesterday’s post I discussed my early career in Christian Ministry and my great disappointment at the discovery that it was simply an institution like any other. But it does not have to be. The solution to the problem lies at the root of the Gospel – a root we often ignore.
Accountable people are humble people. People that understand one simple fact, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are all failures. In our rush to attract people to Christ we have taken a shortcut and tried to make them feel good about themselves. But all the shortcut did is get us lost. The Gospel does not make you feel good about yourself – it makes you feel loved in spite of your shortcomings. That’s a big difference. Feeling good about yourself ignores your shortcomings. Feeling loved in spite of them gives you a solid foundation to stand on while you face them and struggle to overcome them.
Love, it seems, it not always expressed in the absence of relief or pain, but sometimes in its imposition – in confronting people with painful realities so that they might change the reality to ease the pain – all the while loving them and loving them hard.
Here endeth the sermon.
The post Building Accountable People appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Glenn Reynolds wrote a Substack piece this week about institutional incompetence. He started with the Secret Service in Butler and then proceeded to wander through a whole plethora of recent institutional failures – from the huge airline meltdown of a few weeks ago to Boeing, to…. He ends by citing a piece about “crunchy v soggy” systems that in a nutshell discusses personal accountability. Put bluntly, if people are not held accountable for their failures, then the failures will continue – expand even.
Makes sense to me. A lack of accountability has created things like…
…Emergency orders. Remember the last time we dealt in emergency orders? It was called covid and we are still recovering.
…Civics education that teaches little or nothing.
…Experts who aren’t.
…Journalists who aren’t.
…Stupid statements…abuse of power…outright illegality.
Given that I spent a career dealing with governmental agencies, I could spin tales of institutional incompetence for days on end. But my first encounter with it came before that career launched – on my abortive first career – in Christian Ministry. As I entered that world, I expected a place of high accountability and ambition – a place where people strived with all their energies to be the God’s people. Instead, I found just another institution, prone to all the failings of any other institution. It was quite disheartening, and it took me some years to work through all the ramifications of that discovery.
I initially concluded, as Reynolds does, that accountability was the missing element. And to a point he is correct – accountability makes the institution function better. But in the world of ministry, the institution exists solely to create better people – people that in the end will not need to be held accountable because they will perform. Accountability, because it serves the institution, not the individual, discards many individuals along the way. That is inappropriate for the institutions that bear God’s name. We may remove poor performers from places of accountability, but we can never discard them. There is more to this puzzle than simply holding people accountable.
In our secular institutions, corollary to this observation is the fact that many of our institutional failings can be attributed to people demanding that the institution serve the individual, not the purpose for which the institution was founded. Thus, when it is more important that the agents guarding the former president be representative (an individual concern) than that they are good at their job (an institutional concern) failure at the institution’s mission becomes inevitable. It is in the demand that the institution serve the individual that we can find the key point at which to begin to untie the knot of failure in which we find ourselves tied.
Simply put, people think too much of themselves. They demand that the institution serve them, rather than they serve the purpose for which the institution was founded because they think they are that important. The reasons our culture has developed this attitude are legion – from helicopter parenting to social media, which is not about sociability, but attracting attention to the self. One of the big reasons our institutions have ceased to exercise accountability is that people simply refuse to be held accountable – they leave, they move on, they live in their parent’s basement until they are 30. Try hiring these days.
The solution to our institutional problems cannot begin with accountability. It begins with building accountable people.
The post Institutional Incompetence Isn’t About The Institutions appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Meanwhile, from Kamala Harris’ California:
A moderate California Democratic state lawmaker announced Thursday that she is switching to the Republican Party while criticizing her former party’s leadership and policies.
State Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil said she had long been a Democrat, but she and the Democratic Party no longer have the same values since she was elected in 2022.
This, dear friends, is a big deal, despite its lack of national coverage.
First of all, this is a move to powerlessness in Sacramento. Democrats control everything in that town – everything. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the California State Senate 3 to 1. The Republicans can caucus in a small Starbucks. You have to ask yourself just how bad it has gotten to move from the party that controls the entire governmental apparatus in a state to the party of nominal protest. In this move Sen Alvarado-Gil has destroyed any chance she has for a decent committee assignment, let alone a chair or other plum appointment.
From a purely practical standpoint, this moves removes this woman from any chance she might have had to change anything. So tight is Democratic control that in order to “make a difference” you have to operate inside the party, to be outside of it is to be without voice. But what we learn in this move is that to disagree, even inside the party, is to be powerless. Clearly, you either toe the line or move on.
Now, Kamala Harris hails from this same far left Democrat ~~dictatorship~~, er state. She learned her politics there, both ideologically and practically. She has just executed a coup d’etat within her party – seizing control of it on a national level without a single vote being cast. It is, frankly, a move that makes the shenanigans of Tammany Hall look pale in comparison. Not that there are any significant moderate Democrats left (well Josh Shapiro, but then he got put in “his place,” didn’t he?) but one has to think we are going to start to see a few defections on a national scale.
In this story out of California we are seeing the first crack in the dike. These strong-arm tactics cannot last for long. When you see someone in a State Senate set down any chance for actual power they may have had, you have to know something is very, very sick inside that party. Turns out the infirmity is much larger than just Joe Biden.
The post A Portent? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The “Harris Honeymoon” we are currently experiencing has a vague familiarity to it. She, and now Walz, are talked about, rather frighteningly, in messianic tones – the same tones we heard used about Barack Obama back in the day. Remember when Obama dared claimed nearly messianic powers for himself – claiming (“with humility” – snicker, snicker, snicker) that his nomination would heal the sick and stop the oceans from rising? Obama’s CoS, Rahm Emmanuel, famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” That has guided the Democratic Party for some years now. And thus the “crisis” created when Joe Biden’s incapacity was “suddenly” discovered was used to produce a coup d’etat within the Democratic Party. That’s what I call irony. Harris’ seeming miraculous rise solves a huge crisis for Democrats and so she has that same messianic aura.
The host originally used the term “coup” in a Fox column a couple of weeks ago. Let’s remind ourselves just what coup d’etat means:
a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force.
“Illegal…by force…” The messianic aura that surrounds the Harris/Walz ticket is absolutely necessary to provide cover for how illegitimate their electoral status actually is. Without that messianic appearance they got bupkis. And so, we can count on a campaign that will present them as solutions to all sorts of existential problems that until now, we did not even know we had.
Sometimes, the messianic aura will appear in the proposed solutions. For example, did you know, “Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris once threatened to use databases of gun owners to send police to their homes to confiscate firearms.” Now, to be fair, she only proposed to do that with people that were forbidden to own firearms for good reason – but still. You got to think in messianic terms to have the hubris to even consider such a thing.
And, if you are the messiah, it does not matter how silly your “solution” to a non-existent problem actually is. Did you know that as Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz signed a bill, “signed last year requiring schools to provide free menstrual products in all student restrooms in grades 4-12.” Emphasis in that quote on the word “all,” including the boy’s room. If you indeed have messianic powers, then I guess boys can be made to menstruate too.
Until we had government messiahs, we could not cope with heat. Now we close parks when it gets hot unless people are too stupid to take it easy in the heat. It can be difficult to tell the difference between your nanny and the messiah, I guess. And I guess poor people need the messiah more than people of means because, well, they don’t have air conditioning. (Whatever happened to hanging out at the mall on a really hot day?) It’s amazing the actual Messiah, you know – Jesus, did not start tossing air conditioners off the cross while He was actually saving us.
But then the poor have it pretty good. I guess it is because I am now on Medicare because before I was, I had no idea that there were “Duel Special Needs Plans” for people that get both Medicare and Medicaid – in other words really poor people. Now I get ads for it all the time, even though I make too much money to qualify. I won’t bore you with the details – it’s all in the link – but I cannot BUY insurance this good (not that I want to) and these people get it for free! I guess the messiahs only work for some people.
And these are powerful messiahs indeed. When Jesus was in tempted in the desert, He refused to exercise His heavenly power over the earth. But these messiahs are going to save the planet from us displaying powers far beyond those of the actual Messiah.
And, of course, if you are going to claim to be the messiah, you have to go to war with the actual Messiah.
This messianic projection onto political figures has gone way too far. Captain America had it exactly right.
The post False Messiahs Require False Problems From Which To Save Us appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
When Kamala Harris sewed up the nomination via “virtual” vote, USA Today ran with this headline:
Harris makes history as first Black woman, Asian American presidential nominee
It would be funny were it not so sad. It is all about minority and identity, yet in the end describes her like every other person in this nation – a mutt. But then came the VP pick.
Anything resembling conventional political thinking said she needed a Veep candidate that would help her, on the far-left end of the Democrat spectrum, tack towards the center – just as she was a nod to that left wing from the kinda centrist Biden. Therefore, conventional political thought also saw PA Governor Josh Shapiro as ideal in that slot. But no, Harris went with MN’s Tim Walz who is somewhere to the left of Lenin. Seriously the man actually said, “One man’s socialism is another man’s neighborliness.” Yeah, well, save for all that use of government force to take, sure. Last time I checked, neighborliness does not occur at gunpoint.
OK, Dems decide to jettison conventional political thought and begin the general election by turning hard, hard left. Dumb, but not the problem here. J.D. Vance nailed the problem talking to the host yesterday:
Well, look, if it’s not Josh Shapiro, I agree with you. I think that they will have not picked Shapiro, frankly, out of the antisemitism in their own caucus, in their own party.
So, the party of helping the little guy, the oppressed, the minority rejects conventional political wisdom because the conventional wisdom candidate is a member of the most oppressed, enslaved, ghettoized, persecuted minority in human history. Recall that Solzhenitsyn quote from my Monday post:
We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.
This Veep pick reveals even more Democratic lies. They don’t genuinely care about the oppressed, the minority in any genuine sense only when it is politically convenient. In other words they are lying – AGAIN!…
…And again and again and again.
The post DEI For Me But Not For Thee appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator J.D. Vance, former President Trump’s running mate, joined me this morning:
Audio:
08-06hhs-vance
Transcript:
The post Senator J.D. Vance On The 2024 Race appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The host’s interview of Justice Neil Gorsuch yesterday should be read and listened to completely and repeatedly – as I am sure today’s interview of J.D. Vance will be. Going into break this question from the host, particularly on the heels of my post yesterday in which I strongly paralleled events in the Democratic Party to the Soviet Union, is worthy of consideration:
But what Tocqueville saw is not really working anymore. People don’t speak up. You talk about the threats to people who do speak up. I don’t know that we can get back to that climate of protection unless and until the courts stand up for individual citizens against this bureaucracy, and in a methodical kind of way. I’m rather pessimistic about this.
It has had me thinking about just how smoothly it has gone for Kamala Harris – almost too smoothly.
The host, as always, planned the interview meticulously, you can always hear his outline. He set up the comment I quoted above a few exchanges earlier by citing a 2016 Peggy Noonan piece, he summarizes this way:
She said Americans are basically either protected, they have assets, resources, they can afford lawyers, they can deal with the federal government, or unprotected.
Justice Gorsuch responds to the host’s Tocqueville reference by noting how people band together to fight the government – and there is therefore hope. To this observer I think everyone has a point, but there is also a response to the overbearing, intrusive and dangerous administrative state that is not being considered in the conversation.
The Soviet Union was, essentially, a protection racket – just like the mob has been known to run. “You don’t want trouble? – then play along with us.” Having, like the host, spent a career, though a non-lawyerly career, dueling with the administrative state I have seen them come at people in a very similar fashion.
Which brings me to the extremely rapid, and far too smooth, rise of Kamala Harris. Justice Gorsuch has noted that some people do band together to fight the extortionists, but even banding together takes a lot of courage, energy and most importantly leadership. The Communist party functioned by destroying any potential oppositional leadership and making joining the extortionists the path of least resistance. They further gilded the lily by making that party stand for all sorts of seemingly wonderful things, like a guaranteed job and housing – maybe it was shoveling manure and living in a hovel, but at least it was guaranteed. They made it feel like joining the Communists Party was banding together.
This entire business with Harris is giving me the same sort of vibe. The closest we have come to hearing any dissent has been the few days it took Barack Obama to hop on the band wagon, and even he never objected in that period. The whole thing just stinks of hidden and unsavory persuasive forces at work. All the while the Democratic Party hides behind this tissue of lily gilding issues like climate change, DEI and the first woman president of color. I fear too many people are Democrats because it is the path of least resistance, and they think they are banding together to fight the monster when all they are actually doing is feeding it.
In the end my post yesterday was about holding the truth when all those about you are participating in lies. We need to start there, we need to see through the lily gilding tissue and recognize what has happened for what it actually is – political thuggery – from Harris and from the administrative state. It is not civil, and it is not good – it is just bullying. When enough people see the truth, then we can band together and speak up.
The post “People Don’t Speak Up” appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch joined me this morning to discuss his new book, co-authored with Janie Nitze, “Over Ruled: The Human Cost of Too Much Law.” It is a superb read, an something of an alarm bell, and every employee of every government at every level ought to read it.
Audio:
08-05hhs-gorsuch
Transcript:
HH: Joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Good morning, Justice. Welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
NG: Good to see you, Hugh.
HH: It is a fabulous book, and I cannot recommend Over Ruled enough. I want people to know it’s two words, Over Ruled, and that you have a co-author, Janie Nitze. And let me begin by asking you about her. She must be a phenomenal person, because your footnotes, the kind of stuff you’ve got clerks to do, she did for you. Wow, what a job.
NG: Hugh, thank you very much for allowing me the chance to brag on Janie. She is one of the most remarkable people of her generation. Her family escaped Czechoslovakia in 1968. And I don’t know any young person who loves America or cherishes its freedoms more than Janie. First generation to this country, triple Harvard, physics undergraduate, statistics Masters, Harvard Law School top of her class, clerked for both me and for Justice Sotomayor, was appointed to the President’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight board, Senate confirmed, mother of three young children, and dissatisfied with daycare in her community. She started a daycare center all while writing this book with me.
HH: Well, she’s a fabulous writer-researcher, and I want to say, as I’m reading along in Over Ruled, I see a reference to Frank Allen, a professor of law at Michigan when I was there. And I thought well, I haven’t seen a Frank Allen reference forever. He finished teaching at Michigan in ’86. And I go and find out it’s a 1981 University of Pittsburgh Law Review article, Justice. I know you are not, you know, running around the stacks pulling off University of Pittsburgh Law Review articles. How long did she work at finding this stuff?
NG: We worked for four years on this book together. And it is the product of a lot of research and a lot of thinking. And it’s questions that both she and I have been thinking about, frankly, for a long time, Hugh. So it’s nice to see it come all together finally.
HH: Well, you and I are going to agree a lot, but I want to begin by offering you an invitation to Chapman Law School, because I would like to do Resolve, and have a discussion with you on this resolution that the United States Supreme Court does not work hard enough, fast enough, or with due concern for the precarious state of liberty that we find ourselves in. What do you think?
NG: (laughing) I just finished a very long term, and I’m pretty beat from it. Now I’m not complaining. I get about eight weeks in the summer off, and I’m, me and schoolteachers are about it. So I’m one of the luckiest people I know. But you give us the 70 or so hardest cases in the whole country every year to work on. There are nine of us. Can you get nine people to agree on where to go to lunch, Hugh? And appointed by five presidents over 30 years, and yet we managed to reach unanimous judgment about 40% of the time. So that’s the product of a lot of hard work and collegiality and respect, and I’m tired.
HH: I raise that question facetiously, but against this backdrop, Justice. There are 2.87 million federal employees. There are 19.23 million state and local employees. The administrative state is gigantinormous. I was a member of it, along with your mother during the Reagan years, and I have watched it grow. And I practiced against it. It is a giant blob, and you know these stories. We’re going to talk about some of these stories. I just want you folks in there thrashing away at that every day, because they are grown out of control.
NG: Well, that’s, you know, this evolved, this thought came to me over the course of being a judge now about 18 years, and how often I saw ordinary Americans just trying to go about their business, not trying to harm anybody, trying to do right by their neighbors, just getting whacked by laws unexpectedly. And as Janie and I dug into it, what do we find? We find that the U.S. Code has just about doubled since the 1980s in length. Everybody says Congress isn’t busy. Congress adds about two million new words to the federal law books every year, according to some sources. And of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The federal regulatory rules, the federal register, didn’t exist a hundred years ago, and now it expands by about 60-70,000 pages a year. It’s gotten so overwhelming that I have law professor friends who will say to you that every one of us is a federal felon. And then they will say in case you think I’m exaggerating, I’m not. And you look at the statistics there, there are as many people serving life sentences today in this country as there were serving any sentence back in 1970. One out of 47 Americans is subject to some form of correctional supervision today. So that’s the changing nature of our law in a nutshell, and just what’s happened in my lifetime and yours.
HH: Yeah, I want to say, Justice, I am serious about the need to take the machete to the administrative state, because I practiced against the federal government for 25 years. I’m retired now, and I’ve been teaching Con Law for as long. But I used to go up against the agencies, and the agencies are simply indifferent to the average American. When you told the story of Bobby Unser, when you told the story of all these variety of people, and we’ll talk about them, they have no chance. And I ran into that. I represented developers who had budgets for high-priced lawyers, but when you ran into a small landowner with an Endangered Species on their property, they were screwed. And I just sort of depend upon the courts to come back and restore some sense of liberty to the American people.
NG: Well, you know, there’s only so much a judge can do, right, Hugh? You hire me to apply the laws, and I’ll do that faithfully. And I like to say, you know, a judge who likes every decision he issues probably isn’t a very good judge. But I’m obliged to apply the law whether I like them or I dislike them. And I do so without fear or favor. That’s the judicial oath. This isn’t a solution that one old man in Washington can devise or affect. It’s got to be something that the American people care about, and they can do something about. And I hope we get a chance to talk about that, too.
HH: We do. I want to talk about all of it, and we’ve got plenty of time. But let’s start with Bobby Unser.
NG: Sure.
HH: Because Bobby Unser, in fact, let me back up. Do you recall the unprotected protected article that Peggy Noonan wrote in 2016 saying that Americans were divided?
NG: I didn’t. I’m sorry.
HH: She said Americans are basically either protected, they have assets, resources, they can afford lawyers, they can deal with the federal government, or unprotected. And when you talk about Bobby Unser or George Norris, or tragically, Aaron Swartz, you’re talking about people who just ran into the federal government and lost. And it’s sort of astonishing that there are that many people readily at hand to tell those stories about.
NG: Yeah, oh, some of them are funny. Many of them are sad. You mentioned Aaron Swartz. You know, here is an internet entrepreneur who made millions as a young person, and had his whole future ahead of him. He did believe very strongly in public access to materials like judicial records and old articles. And he went and he downloaded a whole bunch of material from JSTOR, including articles from 1942 in the Journal of Botany, according to his lawyer. And JSTOR wasn’t happy about that, as you can imagine. And in the end, he returned all the materials. And state prosecutors first brought and then dropped charges after JSTOR said they weren’t interested in pursuing criminal charges. Federal prosecutors, however, brought a battery of charges against him, and he had to spend a great deal of his fortune that he had made defending himself. He was lucky enough to have that. They offered him a plea deal, 4-6 months in prison, I believe, if I recall, and he said you know, I actually think what I did was right under the law, and I want to take it to trial, one of the very few people today who do that kind of thing. Plea bargaining is another new phenomenon in our lifetimes, Hugh, really. Now, 97% of cases plea out. Almost none did 100 years ago. At any rate, when he told the prosecutors he wouldn’t accept a plea bargain, they responded by bringing a battery of new charges against him, upset that he had refused their deal. And he now faced decades in prison. And shortly before trial, with his assets dwindling and embarrassed by the consequences that might follow, he committed suicide. And I just think we have to ask ourselves what do we do with a 24-year old in this country who maybe makes a mistake? Is that the right response? And maybe there were other ways to deal with it besides that. And most astonishing of all to me, after the whole thing played out, the federal prosecutors issued a press release saying they had behaved entirely perfectly.
HH: It is a, it’s an astonishing tragedy. It is not the only one that is told by Justice Gorsuch in his brand-new book, Over Ruled. During the break, I’m going to talk to him about Bobby Unser. And when we come back, we’re going to talk about there’s some good things. But Justice, just before we go to break, you quote Tocqueville a lot. I’m very glad. You used his third edition, so he’d had a chance to refine it a couple times.
NG: Right.
HH: But what Tocqueville saw is not really working anymore. People don’t speak up. You talk about the threats to people who do speak up. I don’t know that we can get back to that climate of protection unless and until the courts stand up for individual citizens against this bureaucracy, and in a methodical kind of way. I’m rather pessimistic about this.
NG: Oh, now that’s where maybe you and I are going to disagree, Hugh, because if we get the chance to talk about some of the green shoots and the hope that I see, and I talk about in the last chapter of the book, I hope we get there. But you’re right. Tocqueville was maybe the most astute observer of America ever, I think. And what he said, and what resonates with me, and what he saw in the 1830s, is that where a great English lord might oversee a big undertaking in England, or a French government might do so, in America, the people in their local communities were addressing their needs and their problems together, collectively. And he also issued a warning. He said that’s the core of democracy, is participation and involvement with one another, trust with one another, and mutual love and respect for the country from one another. And if that’s lost, if we start just worrying about ourselves and not one another, and not trusting one another, he foresaw a potential end to democracy. And he talked about it as we’ll all retreat into our shells, basically, and want, and become a flock of sheep, he described us as potentially being, looking for a shepherd to guide us.
HH: That has not happened, yet, but we are well on the road. Over Ruled details why. Justice Gorsuch’s book is a bestseller. It’s in every bookstore in America. It is made for laymen to read, not just lawyers, not law professors, but every member of the government with some authority ought to read it, because they’ve got to be aware that the power that they wield ruins lives. Over Ruled is full of those stories. I’ll be back with Justice Gorsuch, and I’m going to talk to him during the break. Stay tuned to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
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HH: I am back now with Justice Neil Gorsuch. During the break, this will all appear on the podcast and more of it on tomorrow morning’s radio show. Over Ruled is out there. Justice, you mentioned green shoots. So I want to give people the accurate representation of Over Ruled. One of the green shoots is in Kalamazoo. Now I don’t know if you remember your 1L study group. My 1L study group, all four of them, you know, Brian Mashler, John Deniston, Tim Butler, and Kyle Shaefer, Kyle came from Kalamazoo. And so as soon as I read about Kalamazoo, I wanted to go and read about Kalamazoo. First of all, do you remember your 1L study group?
NG: Vaguely.
HH: Vaguely? All we did was live together trying to figure out what Peter Westen was talking about in Crimes. Kalamazoo is a green shoot. Tell people about the green shoot in Kalamazoo.
NG: So here’s an example of what Tocqueville was talking about, right? Kalamazoo at one point was a very successful, industrial, middle American town in Michigan. And it hit hard times like much of the Rust Belt. Schools were struggling, families were struggling. And the city tried just about everything to attract businesses and family members to move to the community again. And then, they hit on an idea. And they got some anonymous donors, and then others to participate. What if they could guarantee anybody who graduated from high school there a free ride at any state university of their choice? Well, that immediately changed everything in Kalamazoo. I mean, kids were in tears, of course. Parents were overjoyed. But unsurprisingly, school scores went up, and people moved in. Property prices went up. That’s an example of exactly what Tocqueville was talking about. And it’s since been replicated, of course, in a variety of communities across the country. So that’s one example of many I talk about in the book of things that the American people can do to reverse this tide of so many laws encumbering our lives.
HH: You and I are both big proponents of federalism. Let me sneak in one more question before we come back from break. Aren’t some problems too big for federalism? And I’m thinking here specifically about Big Tech, Justice, because it doesn’t seem to me that local governments or even state governments are well-positioned to deal with the enormous problems presented by the concentration of wealth and the concentration of power in Big Tech.
NG: There’s no doubt that a strong national government is important to our liberties. But also, I think we have to ask how are we doing on the balance overall between state and federal authorities. You know, about a third of all money that states spend these days comes from the federal government. Ben Nelson, when he was governor of Nebraska, once quipped that he wasn’t sure whether he was governor of a sovereign state anymore or just a branch manager for the federal government. So I don’t disagree with you that of course, the federal government has an important role to play. I just wonder whether the balance we have today is entirely the way our framers meant for it to be.
HH: Do you anticipate that parts of the federal government will have to grow exponentially to deal with the new problems that present themselves beyond the capacity of the states?
NG: I don’t prejudge that question, Hugh. I don’t know, and that’s really a question for the political branches. I do think it’s worth asking how well we are doing in mediating between, well, let’s back up. Too little law is dangerous, right? We need law to have what Washington called an ordered liberty, in order to have room to make our lives and to do so safely. But too much law can impair those same freedoms. James Madison talked about this. He warned us against this.
HH: Stand by, Justice, we’re going to come back to Madison in just a moment, because Madison figures prominently in the Justice’s new book. Stay with us.
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HH: During the break, the Justice and I had just gotten to James Madison. And I’ve got a lot of Madison questions for you, Justice. But what were you going to say about him when we went to break?
NG: Well, you’re right. The book isn’t about the founders particularly, or law. It’s for ordinary Americans, and it’s stories of ordinary Americans, and it’s dedicated to ordinary Americans. But I do think the central question at the book is one James Madison posed us over 200 years ago. And he said that some law is absolutely essential to our freedoms and to our aspirations for equality, right? Washington called that ordered liberty. You can’t pursue your life’s dream without some rules of the road. But Madison said that the thing to fear most is too much law, because what happens then? When law becomes a maze, and they don’t, it doesn’t just reflect norms that people know intuitively, but things that trap the unwary, and he said a couple of things happen. That harms everybody’s liberty, but it also has an impact on our aspirations for equality under law, because the monied and the connected few, he said, will be able to find their way through the maze a lot more easily than the average American. And that’s my question in this book. How are we in mediating this irony in law between these two ends of the spectrum? And I look, examine that…
HH: You kind of answer it in the book. We’re not doing very well at all. Now your term just completed with the Loper Bright decision and the decision curtailing the powers of the SEC to be both judge, jury, and prosecutor, these are big advances in the return of liberty to individual Americans. That’s why I kind of jokingly began with why aren’t you guys there every, you guys and gals, there every day striking down federal regulations and rules, because you’ve got to go faster, because the government is crushing people.
NG: Well, as somebody once said that the Constitution is safe when we’re on recess. I don’t know about that, but let’s talk about Chevron, if you’d like.
HH: Please.
NG: What did it mean? It meant that when a law was ambiguous, and judges would find almost any law ambiguous, that the federal government’s interpretation of it always prevailed. It put a thumb on the scales of justice between the government and the individual. And how did that impact people? I talk about in the book the example of Marty Hahne from Missouri. He’s a magician, backyard magician.
HH: No rabbit, yeah.
NG: Exactly. And what did the law say there? The law said that if you’re a zoo or a carnival, or other animal exhibitor, you have to have a federal license. Well, the agency interpreted that last phrase extraordinarily broadly to mean that even if you do children’s birthday shows and have a rabbit, you need to have a license. And Marty found that out the hard way. He’s doing a show one day, and somebody comes up to him and flashes a badge and says do you have a license for your rabbit? And he says do I need a license for my rabbit? I didn’t know that. It turns out he found out from the agent that if it had been an iguana, he wouldn’t have needed a license. And if he had intended to keep the rabbit for stew, no problem there, either. But because he wanted to exhibit the rabbit, he needed to have a license. He later learned after Hurricane Katrina when they changed the regulations again, they said everybody who exhibits rabbits has to have a disaster preparedness plan dealing with everything from chemical spills to hurricanes. Well, Marty’s in Missouri. And he says well, we don’t have hurricanes, but we do have tornados. And my disaster preparedness plan, he told an agent, is well, if there’s a tornado, I’ll get the family in the basement, and then the dog, and then the cat, and then the rabbit. And that just about, that also alarmed the agent, because well, she didn’t care about the dog or the cat. But the rabbit had to go first. And then he, of course, had to submit to home inspections. And during one of those, the agent comes in and sees the crate where he keeps the rabbit and carries it to the shows, and says well, how do you know which way to carry the rabbit? And he said well, I carry it by the handle on the top. And the agent says well, that’s no good. You have to have an arrow pointing this way up. And Marty says where do I get those? And the agent says I’ll send you some. And two weeks later, Hugh, you’ve got 200 ‘This Way Up’ stickers in the mail.
HH: Well, that is very, that one is almost benign compared to Geroge Norris.
NG: Right.
HH: I used to deal with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a regular basis, Justice. All of it is a taking. Someday, someone is going to get a successful taking decision against the agency for declaring an Endangered Species on their property and thereby limiting what they can do with it. But in the meantime, their agents arrested George Norris. This fellow fell in love with orchids. Sounds like he made something out of this life. And when you tell the story of what happened to him afterwards as though he’s in a coma, doesn’t it make you, well, stand by. We’re going to go to break, and we’re going to come back about George Norris, and then the Justice and I won’t be interrupted again. Don’t go anywhere, America. All of this will be on the podcast today. Go get the book, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law by Neil Gorsuch, because everyone really needs to know the precarious situation we are in with the administrative state. Stay tuned.
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HH: So I am back now with Justice Neil Gorsuch, he, of course, an associate justice of the United State Supreme Court. He’s got this brand-new book out, Over Ruled. When we went to break, we were talking about my least favorite agency in the federal government, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, because I dealt with them for 30 years, Justice. They are completely beyond the reach of any kind of control. Political appointees don’t have any control over it. I know you write about the unitary executive. I know the most recent decision in Trump V. United States where you reaffirmed the unitary executive. But these bureaucracies, this treatment of Mr. Norris is not unusual. But it is unusual when a case gets to you. Does anyone have a consequence for an agent that abuses people like, well, Mr. Norris went to jail. I’m not sure we’d say he was abused. But his life was ruined because of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
NG: Yeah, he, he loved orchids, and he did import orchids apparently in violation of the federal law. He says of course he didn’t know that. And several agents came to his house, ransacked it completely. He was arrested, jailed, and spent time in solitary confinement, even, and he was an older man at the time. His wife said it left him completely broken. When he was in prison, some of his fellow inmates asked him orchids? What do you do – smoke them?
HH: (laughing)
NG: And you know, again, you just, whether it’s young people like Aaron Swartz or older individuals like George Norris who are trying to make their way in the world and not trying to do anyone harm, perhaps the make a mistake. Perhaps they need to be corrected. But do you throw the full power of the criminal law, which is our biggest artillery, at them? And if you do, how do you do it? Those are the kinds of questions I am encouraging people to consider in the book.
HH: You talk at length about the case that became the Archdiocese of Philadelphia V. Philadelphia, Pages 160-163. And of course, it was an interference with the Free Exercise Clause. Archbishop Chaput is a friend of mine, and we talked a lot about that case.
NG: From Denver!
HH: I knew about that case. And I knew you going to decide it that way. My question is, did Philadelphia pay any price for their obvious infringement on the free exercise of Catholic social services?
NG: Well, I hope they came to respect the religious liberties of those involved. You know, the framers put the freedom to exercise religion twice in the 1st Amendment – right to free speech, but they didn’t stop there. They didn’t think that was enough. They went on and added the Free Exercise Clause, because I think they understood that in their own time, the freedom of religion may be the canary in the coal mine. When liberties are being entrenched, the freedom to express yourself and your religious beliefs is often the first to go in history. History proves that. And the case you’re referring to involved the Archdiocese of Philadelphia that had been providing foster care to children for over 200 years. They were doing it hundreds of years before the state and the city got involved. And by the time that the case rolled around, you need to be certified by the city in order to participate and provide foster care parents. A newspaper reporter got wind that the Archdiocese didn’t always place, didn’t always accept as foster parents gay Americans. In fact, at least according to some, the Archdiocese had never had an application to be a foster parent by a gay parent that they knew of. And they said if they had ever gotten such an application or ever would receive such an application, they would refer them to another agency. They just didn’t want to do it themselves because of their religious beliefs. And for that, Philadelphia banned Catholic Social Services from participating in the foster care program, which meant that young children were going without loving homes. There was a crisis in Philadelphia at that time. They had announced literally a crisis in foster care, and they were trying desperately to recruit more foster care parents. And this was incredibly upsetting, as you can imagine, to foster care parents who had been providing loving homes. And I tell the story of Miss Fulton, for example, in the book, remarkable woman who had devoted her life to this. And all of a sudden, there were empty beds in loving homes because of this policy. And you’re right. The Court held unanimously that Philadelphia had violated the Free Exercise rights of those foster care parents and Catholic Social Services. And I hope that sends something of a message, Hugh.
HH: Well, the disagreement I have, Justice, with ‘I hope it sends a message’ is that the federal government and the state government, it’s grown so immense that it’s indifferent to messaging. I worked on the AQMD. Pete Wilson put me on that, a subsidiary of the Cal Air Resources Board, which is a subsidiary of the EPA. They’re indifferent to what they do. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is indifferent to what they do, because there aren’t enough Bivens cases in the case of the federal agents who overreach, or 1983 actions in the case of state and local people who overreach. How do you call back this leviathan that has been unleashed? The administrative state has become a leviathan. So I just, I really don’t know what we do about this.
NG: Well, this is kind of the last chapter of the book. What can we do about it? And I think there’s quite a lot we can do about it. You know, most basically, we have to teach Americans about their government. When only a third of Americans can name the three branches of government, 60% of us would fail the citizenship test my wife took, we’ve got a problem. We need to start there. We need to learn how to talk to one another again as well, and realize that people with whom we disagree love this country every bit as much as we do. So those are the kind of basic building blocks, and there are a lot of people out there working on those things today. And I detail some of their initiatives in the book. But then, what can we do at our state and federal levels in our government? Well, take a look at what a lot of states are doing today with respect to too much law. Idaho, I think it was, said that we were abolishing the entire administrative code of the state except for those provisions the governor deems important enough that we should keep. Texas has a sunset provision that will eliminate entire agencies without further legislative action after a period of years. So there are, and that’s ongoing in a lot of different states across the ideological spectrum, Hugh. This is not a Republican or a Democrat issue. There are commissions in New Jersey and New York as well looking at antiquated laws. Okay, on the federal level, let me give you an example of something that I think should give us hope. My dear friend, Steve Breyer, before he became a justice, worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee with Ted Kennedy in the 1970s. And they looked around at airline regulation, and they said we’ve got this incredibly powerful agency called the Civil Aeronautics Board, and you could not, for many, many decades, start a new airline without that agency’s permission. You couldn’t even offer a new route without that agency’s permission. And you couldn’t change your fares without that agency’s permission. And Breyer looked at that, and he said that’s crazy. We need more competition. People need more choice. There should be more freedom to enter the skies. Remember when it was very expensive and only a few Americans flew? That’s not what America should be. So he held hearings, and it turned out that the only people in favor of keeping things as they were, were the agency and industry, because, of course, they benefited from the barriers to entry that some of those regulations created. Breyer was told by some very famous economists there’s no way you could get rid of this agency. It was the iron triangle of bureaucracy and legislation and regulation and industry. They’d never let it happen, that it was a captured entity. Well, he and Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter signed into law, and eliminated an entire federal agency. And now, Americans flock to the skies in numbers that were completely unthinkable in my lifetime and your lifetime. Now we’re all cramped together, and we have to pay more money for our bags, but at least we’re able to fly.
HH: You know, Justice Gorsuch, when I read that part about Justice Breyer, I made two notes. The first note was in the same year that the deregulation of the airlines occurred, Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy and others passed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which created three federal agencies out of one. The Civil Service Commission became the Office of Personnel Management, which I ran briefly during the Reagan administration, was the general counsel of. It created the Merit Systems Protection Board, and it created the Federal Labor Relations Agency. So out of one came three. And none of them solved any problems. So I was just making a note. 1978 wasn’t a great year for the control of government whatsoever. But about Justice Breyer, I want to bring up he was kind enough to come on this show more than a dozen years ago when he wrote his book, Making Democracy Work. I wanted to get, and I know he’s your friend. But I would like you to sort of have a high-level response to what he told me. Originalism doesn’t work very well, he said. I think it’s pretty hard. I don’t think George Washington knew about the internet. I don’t think James Madison knew about television. And the world keeps changing. Did you ever have that conversation with Justice Breyer when you were colleagues? Or even to this day, I know he keeps chambers there.
NG: Oh, I’ve had that conversation on this couch behind me weekly for the last seven and a half years. And that’s a wonderfully fun conversation. I love Steve Breyer. I agree with him about almost nothing when it comes to legal interpretation. The fact of the matter is our framers gave us a written Constitution that we the people can change. And judges are not given a license to add to it or detract from it. Our charge is to interpret and apply that law in the cases that come before us. And I think it’s very dangerous when judges stray from that role. Now if I had to elect or appoint, I guess, a benign dictator for the country, it might well be Steve Breyer. He’s a lovely man and a very wise one. But nobody gave us a commission to rule the country. They gave us a commission to decided cases and controversies consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.
HH: You know, what I replied to him a dozen years, Justice Gorsuch, was they might not have known about the internet, but they knew about liberty. And I quoted to him Farmer Smith at the Massachusetts ratification convention, and I’m going to repeat it for the benefit of the audience. On January 25th, 1788, Mr. Smith rose and addressed the Massachusetts ratification convention, and he said, “Mr. President, I am a plain man. I get my living by the plough. I’m not used to speaking in public, but I beg your leave to say a few words to my brother plough joggers in the house.” And he referred to Shays Rebellion. And he said, “When I saw this Constitution, I found it was a cure for these disorders. It was just such a thing as wanted. I got a copy of it and read it over and over. I had been a member of the convention to form our state constitution and learned something of the checks and balances of power. I found them all there. I did not go to a lawyer to ask his opinion. We have no lawyers in our town, and we do well enough without it. I form my opinions, and we are pleased with our Constitution.” Justice Gorsuch, what do you think Farmer Smith would say about our code of federal regulations and our, just our general federal code nowadays?
NG: Oh, I think you and I can both imagine the answer to that. But I think you’re absolutely right that what Farmer Smith did know was that you have a right to speak freely, for example. And does it matter whether it’s in a newspaper in 1789, or on the internet today? You have a right to speak free from governmental censorship. And that doesn’t change. That principle doesn’t change. The facts in the world may change, but the law, the written law, the Constitutional law doesn’t change unless and until the people amend the document.
HH: Justice, I know we’re coming close to the end of our time, and I’ve saved a couple of the hardest questions for you. I know the rules. We do not discuss cases that may come before the Court. And rarely do we get into deliberations within the Court. But I am curious when you see the Jack Smith is once again in front of Colorado authorities being sued once again, and he prevailed in Masterpiece Cakeshop, but it was a narrow decision. Since them, we’ve had Creative 303. I follow these cases closely. Do you sigh? Do you shrug your shoulders? Is there nothing the Court can do? It’s like the, everyone who got a 404 permit after Rapanos, nothing changed? You guys told them to stop doing what they did, and the Army Corps of Engineers issued guidance doing what they’ve done forever. Do you think the Court is even capable of getting the federal regulatory system to change?
NG: Hugh, this is part of why I wrote the book, because nine old people in Washington can’t affect much change. That’s not our job. You don’t want us to do that. What you want us to do is decide the cases and controversies that come to us. Nobody appointed us philosopher-kings. We the people are the first three words of our Constitution. And they are profound. And the Declaration has three fundamental and remarkable promises in it, ideas in it. One, that we have inalienable rights. They don’t come from government. Second, that we’re all created equal. And third, that the just powers of government derive from the consent of the governed, that we are sovereign. And the only answers to our ailments today are going to come from the same people, like Farmer Smith that you mentioned earlier, who helped found this country. And the same courage to stand up, as so many of the people in my book did, and to whom the book is dedicated, whether it’s Marty, when it’s Aaron Swartz, whether it’s George Norris, whether it’s John and Sandra Yates, another remarkable story, these people stood up for what they believed the American dream was about, for those promises in the Declaration. And if we have any hope, and I believe we do, it rests with them.
HH: Well, okay, I’m going to close on a bad note. It took, finally, the SEC case got to the Court. And finally, the Chief Justice wrote the majority opinion, 28 pages. You wrote a concurrence, 27 pages. The second paragraph of our concurrence reads, “The 7th Amendment jury trial right does not work alone. It operates together with Article III and the due process of the 5th Amendment to limit how the government my go about depriving an individual of life, liberty and property.” Bravo, Justice. The 7th Amendment guarantees a right to trial by jury. Article III entitles individuals to an independent judge who preside over that trial. And due process promises that any trial will be held in accord with a time-honored principle. Taken together, all three provisions vindicate the Constitution’s promise of a fair trial and a fair tribunal. Now Justice, I think the Constitution is very strong. I just don’t think it’s applied very often, because the SEC having the authority it had, it was ridiculous, and it was ridiculous for 40 years.
NG: Well, look at what we did in that case, Hugh. So what we’re talking about here is can a man be tried and his property taken by what are called administrative law judges. They used to be called hearing officers until not but a minute ago, it seems. And these people, it turns out, are employees of the same agency that is bringing the charges against you. So can the agency be both the prosecutor and the judge when it seeks to take your liberty or your property, and do so without a jury and under procedures that are not exactly the same as you get in court? And the Court held no. The Court held that the 7th Amendment, and I emphasized, as you point out, Article III and the Due Process Clause, teach the same thing. It means that you get a fair and neutral judge to decide your case, and a jury of your peers to pass on the facts, if you like.
HH: So my last question, Justice. When you get together in the conference room, and the Chief is an old friend of mine, so I’ve been in your conference room. We were together in the White House years ago. Is there a sense of urgency that you’ve got to maybe take more cases, write fewer opinions, write them more quickly, and get the decisions out to check the federal government? Is there any sense that the American people are losing liberty?
NG: Hugh, what there’s an urgency for in every good judge is to take every single case that comes before him or her seriously. What may seem incidental to you is terribly important to the affected people on both sides of that V. And an old, wise judge once told me that your job, Neil, is to make half the people unhappy 100% of the time, because one side’s going to win, and one side’s going to lose. And you have to take each one of those decisions seriously. So Hugh, we give fair, and I believe all of my colleagues do this assiduously, they’re to a person excellent public servants, take the cases that, all the cases that come before us, seriously.
HH: I want to tell everyone, they’re going to find Gordon Liu quoted in Justice Gorsuch’s new book. They’re going to find a lot of men and women of the left quoted in Justice Gorsuch’s new book. It’s not an ideological book. It is a plaintive cry for people to wake up to what has happened. Justice Gorsuch, congratulations on Over Ruled. I hope you keep coming back, and I hope you will take up my invitation to Chapman, because I would like to talk about the docket sometime, and maybe getting you guys to get the machete out a little bit more when it comes to the CFR. Thank you, Justice, for joining me.
NG: Thank you so much, Hugh.
End of interview.
The post Justice Neil Gorsuch on his new book, with Janie Nitze: “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law” appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
1973 and 2004 saw the release of a film entitled “Walking Tall.” The films are quite different, but based on the same essential story, one man finds his local areas steeped in corruption and proceeds to clean it up. The clean-up is, because it’s the movies, very violent and very costly to the hero in friends and family. The movie was quite popular in ’73, mostly due to the rather inventive violence and the 2004 version helped launch Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on his movie career. Violence makes for great movies, but lousy real life. But the idea of one man (or woman) standing against corruption is one we should heed.
In the last few weeks, as the Democratic Party coup has unfolded before our eyes I have written many times about the lying on which the entire episode is built – from the actual condition of Joe Biden to Kamala Harris’ capabilities to the “process” by which she ended up with the nomination there have been lies on lies on lies.
I have mentioned before that perhaps the most important book written in the last several years is Rod Dreher’s “Live Not By Lies.” From the Amazon blurb:
For years, émigrés from the former Soviet bloc have been telling Rod Dreher they see telltale signs of “soft” totalitarianism cropping up in America–something more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four. Identity politics are beginning to encroach on every aspect of life. Civil liberties are increasingly seen as a threat to “safety”. Progressives marginalize conservative, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Technology and consumerism hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state. And the pandemic, having put millions out of work, leaves our country especially vulnerable to demagogic manipulation.
The title of that book is borrowed from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who penned an essay by the same title as he went into exile from the Soviet Union. Recent events have had me looking deeper. Ran into this quote from Solzhenitsyn:
We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.
Man does that ring true – at least in the Democratic Party. It seems a long time ago now, but the Trump/Biden debate that began all of this, came with massive commentary immediately after that went along the lines of “Trump told all sorts of whoppers, but boy-oh-boy did Biden look awful.” Isn’t it amazing how rapidly the “Trump’s whoppers” meme has disappeared? Their lies so dwarf anything Trump might have said that they just had to drop it.
And so I decided to read Solzhenitsyn’s original essay. This quote says it all:
When violence bursts onto the peaceful human condition, its face is flush with self-assurance, it displays on its banner and proclaims: “I am Violence! Make way, step aside, I will crush you!” But violence ages swiftly, a few years pass—and it is no longer sure of itself. To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally—Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit—and this suffices as our fealty.
And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!
In this media age, we all have grand plans to “fix things.” All we really need do is hold to the truth, personally. We don’t need to march in the streets or pen the perfect essay – we just need to hold to the truth. We do not need the violence of a Buford Pusser, just the hold the truth.
Just hold the truth.
The post WALK TALL – Kinda appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I honestly felt sorry for Joe Biden this past week. He launched his Supreme Court “reform” campaign and has barely been able to break through the noise. Even he describes the nation as “stuck” with him as president. Bear in mind, this man first sought the presidency in 1988. He has finally reached his heart’s desire and he has not only failed but failed so badly that he has been pushed aside like yesterday’s trash. One would have to be heartless and soulless not to feel some compassion for the man.
But then, Jesus did say:
For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul?
Late Friday I wrote of the emptiness that would be a Democratic victory under the circumstances they have created for themselves. I cannot speak to their eternal destiny, but they have most certainly done some sort of Faustian deal democratically speaking. And that too is an occasion for compassion.
Make no mistake, I fear a Kamala Harris administration – the danger to the nation would be immense, but that does not preclude my compassion for how utterly lost so many in the nation are, even to contemplate such a situation. Compassion is due anyone who sacrifices their soul for some end, but in this circumstance, it is truly pitiable.
In the end they have not sacrificed their soul for something, but in opposition to and hatred of something – a second Trump administration. I have yet to meet a Democrat that in private actually thinks Kamala Harris is a good candidate – their embrace of her is born of their total inability to embrace Trump who was, until this coup, their best option and they could not deny it. Imagine being so consumed with contempt that you would be driven to toss aside democratic procedure for the sake of winning. Compassion is truly due.
Jesus also said:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors, do they not do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Even the Gentiles, do they not do the same? Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Let’s not sacrifice our souls in the effort to win the election this fall. Let us seek God’s perfection.
The post Soulless America? A Call To Compassion appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Well, apparently the coup is sealed. (This headline is just flat out laughable.) Without a clue if the base will support her, the elites of the Democrat Party, who could not even be bothered to cast an actual, physical vote, have nominated Kamala Harris virtually. I am tempted to call this entire thing “weird,” but…
…“weird” appears to be a word now reserved only for Donald J. Trump. This in spite of the fact that, “70 Percent of College Students Say Speech Can Be as Damaging as Physical Violence.” Apparently, Trump barely avoiding assassination is not enough, now we have to do other “violence” to him. There can be no stronger evidence that the age of reason is behind us than “weird” being a political attack. No longer do we need discussion of policy or procedure, qualifications and character – nope, we’ll just dismiss the candidate as “weird.” I was involved in elections in junior high school that were more substantive.
So, who out there enjoyed the spectacle of an individual that if not actually male, certainly carries a number of male characteristics, pounding the bejeebbers out of a female competitor in the Olympics? Other than a few sadists, I have no clue who would enjoy that. I understand the controversy, this may not be about transgenderism, it may be about birth characteristics. But regardless of the origin of the issue the solid fact remains that the Italian boxer did not merely lose, she could have been beaten severely, suffering grievous harm, had she not withdrawn because her competition was stronger than she could possibly be under any circumstance or training regime.
What I do not understand is how the Algerian competitor felt any sense of accomplishment? There is no “thrill of victory” in such circumstances – there is only a vacant, meaningless win. Which takes me back to Kamala Harris’ nomination. In the unlikely event that she prevails in the general election she will be the least powerful president ever to hold the office – she will have almost no political capital, no rock hard base of support on which to rely. It would be a vacant victory in-name-only since she never really fought the fight to begin with.
It is a troubling world we live in where the victory matters to such a great degree that how it was achieved matters not. Honestly, why does she want to win so badly? Her positions are changing so fast, and so wildly, that she is clearly not driven by any sense of mission other than the victory alone. As things stand now, not only would her victory be hollow, but it would also be without any use after it was achieved.
Come to think of it, to call what has passed as a Democratic nomination process “weird” is a disservice to the word. “Vacant” and “meaningless” are far better words – and far more dangerous.
The post Win At-All-Costs Weirdness appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
As I write I am sitting in Gettysburg, PA. I have spent the day in the Civil War battlefield that surrounds this town and at the cemetery just within town where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous address. I was served by two great guides – one an old friend that came down from the War College at Carlisle and helped me to understand, far better than any of the interpretive materials around could have, the three days of that battle. The casualty numbers are staggering. The other guide was a docent in the cemetery that we merely happened upon. That docent recited, in a well-practiced and deeply evocative voice, the address. I did not think I could be more moved than when I heard Taps at the American Cemetery in Normandy, but this guy managed to do it. As I listened to Lincoln’s now immortal words, two thoughts occurred to me….
Lincoln’s conclusion:
…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
took on a new meaning as I contemplated a Democratic Party nominating process that did not involve the people at all.
But it was this passage that I found most moving:
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The humility of those two sentences is stunning when compared to the no-holds-barred lust for power we have seen in recent weeks.
As we all sit amazed at the developments of the last some days, we berate a media and a candidate that pivots and shifts faster than gnat in the kitchen, I wonder less about our candidates and more about our tolerance for the nonsense. The Pennsylvania Monument on the Union side of the battle lines features several panels listing the dead and wounded from a temporary, emergency unit. Men called to fight for their country for just a month – a month. I pondered that such is impossible in this modern world where so many don’t even have a clue how to fire, let alone care for, a firearm and I wondered if we are at all worthy of the legacy these men have left us.
Worst of all, that marvelous form of government that Lincoln so aptly described is not being taken from us, but is instead committing suicide as the media and well-placed Democrats are lining up behind their ordained – not selected, just ordained – candidate like a hungry dog looking for a meal. The lack of utter outrage from across the nation at these developments makes me think Mr. Lincoln is spinning in his grave.
There remain many, many Americans worthy of the legacy of the warriors of Gettysburg so marvelously encapsulated by Abraham Lincoln. But there are also many that have perverted that legacy into an unrecognizable pile of utter nonsense and proclaim themselves worthy – and they just simply are not. That made me mourn even more than the dead whose presence I stood in. Shame.
The post Are We Worthy? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
They say “anecdotes are evidence of anecdotes.” I get it, but as we have heard the phrase “San Francisco Democrat” a thousand or so times in the last few days — as we have read about why Christians should fear Kamala Harris — as we see articles titled “Kamala Harris and the Californication of America” my mind has turned to the countless times in my working life when I made the “hike” (by airplane) from SoCal to the Bay Area for one client or another. There has always been a vast cultural divide between Northern and Southern California, and a political one to some extent. You always felt it, but in my last years in the no-longer-golden state things got a bit insane.
About a year before covid turned California into a land of very silly, risk averse, pretentious morons I head up to San Francisco to visit several retail sites belonging to a client. As always, I headed to the store manager to introduce myself and discuss the business of the visit. I stuck out my hand and the man looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t shake hands unless I have seen you wash yours.” Bear in mind – this is pre-covid.
Now, I have participated in multi-million dollar lawsuit settlement negotiations – enormous stakes and bottomless enmity – and yet handshakes were the first, and often the last order of the meeting. I travelled to the Soviet Union during the Cold War and handshakes were the greeting of each and every meeting. In my much younger days, athletic competition, often quite intense, was always preceded with handshakes all around with the opposing team. But this annoying, self-important little store manager felt entitled to tell me that I was unworthy of a reasonable greeting unless he had personally witnessed my participation in his personal hand-washing ritual. I have literally been almost entirely around the world and handshakes were the order of the day, but not in San Francisco.
Yes, that’s an anecdote, but it is also reflective of an attitude somehow bred and fostered in that city-by-the-bay – a sense not merely of superiority, but such a sense combined with disregard for the simple human niceties and an absolute dismissal of the other guy. That anecdote is the most blatant example of an attitude that can be encountered throughout the region and expressed in any number of ways from the driving habits to being asked for tips before the service is rendered.
All the stories you have heard about how Harris treats her staff are not at all hard for me to swallow. I have numerous similar stories regarding visits to San Francisco, and its extended suburb – Sacramento. If you think no one in Washington listens or cares – just wait for Kamala. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
The post San Francisco Democrats in an Anecdote appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
So, Israel executes immaculate, pinpoint strikes in Lebanon and Iran, based on remarkable levels of intelligence and neither the White House or the State Department have anything to say about it? No sense discussing Biden’s ineptitude demonstrated by that fact as we all know that Harris is effectively in charge. She has nothing to say – nothing.
I guess that is better than reversing herself, as she is doing so rapidly on so many things. “Look, nothing up my sleeve – abracadabra – I’m not a hard-core leftie.” And, actually, she’s not. She is a leaf in the wind, flying this way and that, just going wherever she thinks the political winds will lead her to power. Well, at least if it stays left-of-center. And that, in my opinion is far, far worse than being a hardcore leftie.
You see, she does not care about facts or outcome. She is no policy wonk – she is a political fashionista – caring only about the political stance of the day that will keep her in good with her San Fran cronies that she thinks will carry her to power. She chooses her stances like Lady Gaga chooses her stage costuming.
I have for the last many days been focusing on the blatant lying that has been coming from the Democrats. Lying about Biden’s condition and capabilities, lying about a “process” to replace Biden as a candidate, lying, lying, lying. But Harris is incapable of lying as she does not have sufficient conviction on anything to differentiate between truth and falsehood.
It seems all she cares about is self-aggrandizement. Consider this from a man whose son served as an intern in her office as Attoney General of California:
As Attorney General, Senator Harris instructed her entire staff to stand every morning as she entered the office and say, “Good Morning General.”
Never once during the month-long internship did Harris introduce herself to our son (as he was only in an office with 20 paid employees) and staff was too intimidated by her to introduce him. The only acknowledgment was a form letter of “thanks” signed by Harris given to him on his last day of service.
Gregory was also given instructions to never address Harris nor look her in the eye as that privilege was only allowed to senior staff members.
Legal work was apparently secondary in that office to making sure the principal was properly addressed.
Kamala Harris is dangerous for this country, not because she is a leftie, but because of her naked, raw and overbearing lust for power.
The post Kamala Harris Missing Face appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The host’s Fox piece this AM addresses how truly bad things could get under Kamala Harris. They say her voting record is to the left of Bernie Sanders. He opens by drawing a parallel to the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. But those ceremonies were just the visible tip of the iceberg. Apparently, Paris resembles a police state these days. That’s what happens when you want to implement crazy – you have to get very forceful about it. Let;s consider some stories in the news that fit the picture.
First thing you’d want to do is render the military ineffective since it might be a counter force. Consider this from the investigative report of a recent B-I bomber crash:
“Many failures leading to this mishap were not a one-time occurrence or an aberration,” the report concluded. “The mishap occurred due to numerous factors, including a culture of noncompliance, widespread deviation from established policy and procedure, and several organizational influences and preconditions.”
The political top of the military does, eventually, filter down.
She and Gavin Newsom studied in the same school of insanity (San Francisco.) Newsom recently ordered (ordered mind you) “the state,” meaning various local governments, to clean up homeless encampments. He did not provide resources for the effort of any sort, he just ordered them to do it. Welcome to life under San Francisco Democrats – you give orders and expect the problem to end. No need to soil yourself with any actual effort.
If the rumors are true, and Biden’s endorsement of Harris was a knife in the back of those that were forcing him out. That means no one thinks she’s all that good, which means incompetence may just rule the day. Unintended consequences will be the order of the day.
Have you, like I, noticed a huge uptick of concern about heat-related illness? Have you also noticed the Democrat tendency to follow Europe’s lead? Well, here is a story out of the UK that draws a line from climate change to all sorts of social woes. Just how long will it be we see calls for government provided air conditioning? Just what we need, the government taking money from us to give air conditioning to someone else – someone we do not even know. This conjures in my mind the ridiculous image of a homeless tent with an air conditioner.
And speaking of following the European lead comes a story of deliberate efforts in Germany to control the flow of information to keep covid restrictions in place. The piece talks of the “covid farce.” Harris has risen to major candidate, please recall she has never received a single national vote dropping out of the primary in 2020 before a vote was cast, through a farce of a process. Just how much farce do you think we will ultimately haver to suffer under if Harris is elected?
And that’s the ultimate issue – we have lived under a farce for a while now and the Harris candidacy simple continues the farce. We need reality.
The post Kamala Krazy appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Ran right out this weekend and saw “Deadpool & Wolverine.” It is a marvelously (no pun intended) entertaining film, provided one has a high tolerance for profanity and quite perverse sexual verbal imagery. That condition to its entertaining nature begins to reveal the deeply cynical nature of the film – a cynicism that runs even deeper as the protagonist literally saves a universe for completely selfish reasons, there is no altruism involved. The box office for the film is huge, revealing a world that shares the film’s cynical view of life. As I watched the film, full of comic book insider references that appealed deeply to my geek soul, I was entertained, but the film left me with a sense of foreboding about the direction of our culture and nation.
How did we get to a place where our box office busting depiction of heroism is in such foul-mouthed, self-centered terms? How did we come to tolerate a heroic movie where we pull for the hero out of sympathy instead of the hero’s representation of a higher ideal?
But then I thought about the big reveal, referencing my post of this last Saturday, and the picture became clearer. Since the Trump/Biden debate we have not-so-slowly learned that the entire administration is based on subterfuge – designed to hide the president’s limitations. We have known for a while now that our government wastes enormous money creating departments, divisions, agencies and bureaus designed to make it look like the government was doing something about issue X, when in reality there is nothing to be done about issue X. But in recent weeks we have learned that the White House was actually functionally vacant and someone other than the president was calling the shots.
Cynicism seems a natural response to living to a nation governed by a tissue of lies.
Which brings me to Donald Trump. I have commented many times, most recently last Thursday, that while Trump has many flaws, he wears them proudly – no lies, no subterfuge, no pretense. And that, dear readers, explains a lot. Trump is indeed an atypical political figure, but that does not of itself make him an existential threat to our political order. And yet so many have acted as if he is such a threat. But when you consider the particular nature of his difference he may be. His utter lack of pretense stands in stark and more importantly, revelatory contrast to the curtain of lies behind which at least this Democratic administration has been operating.
My wife and I have talked many times in recent weeks about how we wake up each morning feeling ill-at-ease. But then we have been living under a lie. When I visited the Soviet Union many years ago, many citizens would, privately, confess to a similar sense. Rod Dreher’s now four-year-old “Live Not By Lies” has proven deeply prophetic. Life under lies is not happy – there is no certainty upon which one can rely. Younger generations have grown up steeped in the lies – they have no experience of anything better and thus cynicism becomes the order of the day.
This bit of scripture has been ringing in my mind all weekend, “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” In his book, Dreher’s prescription is to cling to our faith, even underground if necessary, and thus cling to truth. Fortunately, while we are indeed living under lies we are not yet suppressed – attacked, but not suppressed. Thus we can do more than merely cling to our faith, though we must do that. We can proclaim truth, we can let it shine. We cannot make the exchange that so many have, and we need to invite others to step back from it.
The post Our Modern Cynicism appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Because this, this:
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
My God, in whom I trust!”
For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper
And from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with His pinions,
And under His wings you may seek refuge;
His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.You will not be afraid of the terror by night,
Or of the arrow that flies by day;
Of the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.
A thousand may fall at your side
And ten thousand at your right hand,
But it shall not approach you.
You will only look on with your eyes
And see the recompense of the wicked.
For you have made the Lord, my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place.
No evil will befall you,
Nor will any plague come near your [c]tent.For He will give His angels charge concerning you,
To guard you in all your ways.
They will bear you up in their hands,
That you do not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread upon the lion and cobra,
The young lion and the serpent you will trample down.“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name.
“He will call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
“With a long life I will satisfy him
And let him see My salvation.”
The post In Times Like These appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
“Justice” is an oft-heard word in left-of-center Christian circles and it is the door through which many left-wing ideas have entered the church. In case you missed it, as I did, the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics were quite outrageous, and at least one part of it seemed mocking of traditional Christianity. According to the ceremony’s “artistic director”
Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of Paris’ grandiose Olympics opening ceremony, has defended the show in the face of a backlash and accusations of “wokeism” and mocking Christianity.
Jolly told an official Olympics press conference on Saturday that his intention had not been “to be subversive, mock or shock.”
His intention was rather, he said, to capture France in all its diversity.
OK, then be diverse, you know actually be different – don’t merely appropriate traditional Christian imagery for other ends. I mean if I cannot appropriate someone else’s culture, then justice would demand that they not appropriate mine. That is if we are talking about genuine justice.
The post Justice Is Not Just If The Scales Do Not Balance appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
September 11, 2001 – terrorists flew hijacked passenger aircraft into major buildings in NYC and D.C, killing thousands of people. It was a dark day in American history. But for fans of the so-called technothriller and specifically the creator of the genre, Tom Clancy, the events of that day had an eerie, depressing familiarity. Clancy had written a very similar scenario in his book “Debt of Honor.” Movies are dominated by bringing fiction “to life,” but movies aren’t exactly life and when fictional events become actual reality the impact is quite, quite different.
You’ve been reading the word “gaslighting” a lot lately. It is defined:
psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator
The term’s origin:
The term “gaslighting” was coined from the 1938 British play called Gas Light, in which a husband manipulates a wife into thinking she is crazy by slyly changing the intensity of the gas lights in their home when she is left alone. He does this in an attempt to make her believe she cannot trust herself or her memory.
A play turned into a movie in 1944. You’ve been hearing the term this week because of the continuing efforts of legacy media to try and make us forget Kamala Harris’ long record of bad governance and hyper-left positions and statements. The effort continued apace yesterday – here are two more examples. Once again, fiction becomes reality, and the reality is unnerving.
I have been searching since Monday to explain why, every morning, I wake up, sit at this desk and try to make sense of a world that just does not seem real and try to find a way to cope with the unreal reality of it all. Tarzana Joe’s poem from yesterday strikes at the feeling to a large extent, but still does not entirely hit the mark. The word I want to use is “discomfit” but that is insufficient as comfort is not the only issue. It’s not just that the events of the day are moving so rapidly and in such an unprecedented direction – there is a general sense of something being very wrong and something awful about to happen.
There was a certain unique horror on 9/11 having fictionally learned of the scenario a few years before. The general unease can be attributed to the gaslighting efforts of legacy media, but as I search for explanations neither of those fully capture the sense of wrong that underlies each day lately. But looking into movie/reality parallels has provided some further insight.
It is a staple plot of thriller and sci-fi to have the leader of a nation or the world, or whatever be a sleeper agent of some sort. Sometimes they are simply in the thrall of evil, a puppet – sometimes they are a shape-shifting alien, and in the most gruesome such stories they are aliens in human suits. All such stories climax in a big reveal, when the world learns that the leader is a false front of some sort. In those most gruesome versions, the suit fails in some fashion revealing a hideous monstrosity of an alien that bursts forth from the suit proving to be many times larger than could possibly fit in the suit to begin with. “The Manchurian Candidate” is the most sophisticated of such stories to hit the big screen, but such stories are countless – and if you dip into the world of comic books nearly infinite. The recent MCU streaming series “Secret Invasion” was a miserable failure of an attempt at such a story.
I have always marveled at such stories. How so many could be so fooled for so long. Of course, there is always the hero that figured it out long ago and is standing ready to battle the evil when the big reveal happens, but the general public are simply startled by events having never picked up a single clue. The levels of gullibility and inattentiveness involved tend to stretch the credulity of such stories.
But here is the thing, we just lived, in reality, through the big reveal. The human suit began to fail at the Trump/Biden debate of a few weeks ago. And over the ensuing weeks we saw it tear just a little bit more each day until the cackling monstrosity within – Kamala Harris – emerged. But now reality has departed from fiction. No hero emerged to immediately slay the monstrosity – instead in meeting with Netanyahu while Biden took a nap, the monstrosity consolidated power and the coup moved from an inter-party candidate matter to about the actual office itself.
Sure Donald Trump lies in wait and come the election could well slay the beast. But for now until November we have to watch the monstrosity continue to grasp and exercise power. We have to watch a significant portion of the population fail to see the monstrosity and still see the human suit. Gullibility still reigns for many, many people – and that is deeply unsettling. We now exist is a sort of purgatory where instead of the satisfying fight to the death we have to watch the protagonists yell at each other and call each other names for three months and pray that the good guy will win, knowing that if he does not the future is most bleak indeed. Further, given how many have not seen the monstrosity in front of their face, despite the big reveal, we are fearful that there is enough gullibility in the nation that the bleak future remains within the realm of possibility. In the stories, when the mask falls off of The Red Skull, you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Captain America is going to kick his butt. But no such certainty is present in the current actuality.
I’m not at all sure I like bringing my stories to life as much as I thought I would.
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The 202o election was irregular. Not satisfied with mere irregularity, the Democrats have now managed to fill the top spot on their ticket with a woman that has never ever received a vote in a nationwide election – ever. She did not need to bother with those pesky primaries, not even, unless something changes radically, an irritating floor battle at the convention. Nope, somehow she has managed to be coronated. And so, irregularity becomes a coup d’etat. And now Kamala Harris takes to the campaign trail without a hint of humility or an ounce of shame. You might think we had hit the bottom of the poll of shamelessness.
But no. The media has decided to find some sort of Mariana Trench in that pool. They are just flat-out reinventing Kamala Harris, contradicting, almost entirely, previous reporting they have done. It’s way past spin. Here are some examples chronicled by:
- An Austin, TX TV station
- PJ Media
- Instapundit.
One has to wonder, is this really partisanship, or just a total and utter failure to do any actual research? It’s a fail either way, but we can’t fix it if we don’t properly diagnose it.
Democracy is breaking down before our very eyes. One of the two major parties no longer functions in any vaguely democratic fashion and the media, the means by which the people are informed so that they can hold their government accountable is now largely in thrall of that government. The feedback loop to the voters is seriously broken. Being informed now requires a lot of careful media consumption and it is impossible using television exclusively. I do not typically watch TV news, ever, but events have been breaking so fast in the last couple of weeks that I have had to and it’s actually frightening. When the host says “Special Report with Bret Baier” is the only reasonable news program left on TV, he is not kidding. And I have to be honest, particularly when the news is breaking fast and furious and Baier has to settle for available panelists instead of reliable ones, even his anchoring can get a bit out there.
A couple of weeks ago I picked a fight with an adult Sunday School teacher over their use of the word “reimagine.” You hear that word a lot these days, but here’s the thing – life is not about what we imagine – it is about what is. But apparently our media now thinks it is about what they imagine, and worse their imagination can shift on a coronation.
There is an old lawyer joke, “What’s lower than whale poop?…” Well, there is now a corollary, “What’s lower than the Democratic party presidential candidate selection ‘process’?” The answer would be “Legacy Media.”
The post The Shamelessness Pool Just Keeps Getting Deeper appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The amount of noise going on right now is overwhelming. Events are moving at a breakneck pace and the media just keeps analyzing and analyzing – adding to the noise – not distilling and contextualizing events. If you feel like you are standing on quicksand, it’s because no one is showing you where the solid ground is. I think it would be useful to just present a “news outline,” a simple listing of the facts and stories that affect us.
There are three major story lines as I write this morning, each with some sub streams. While the stories cross streams, they are essentially unrelated.
I) A failed assassination attempt on a former and possibly future president.
a) This has led to the resignation of the director of the Secret Service, although the path to that resignation is circuitous and baffling.
b) Further information is quite sparse, most especially the motivation of the shooter and the specific failures of the protective operations.
c) Everything else is, at this juncture, speculation.
II) Israel’s Prime Minister spoke to Congress yesterday.
a) Many members of Congress, mostly Democrats, led by the current Vice President and now-presumptive Democratic nominee for POTUS were notably and shamefully absent.
b) Protestors ran amok in D.C. in the aftermath of the address, of all their acts of vandalism, burning the American flag is the most heinous.
c) He spoke because he is in the middle of a war that we need him to win, and therefore, we need to be helping. Everything else is a distraction.
III) There has been a coup inside the Democratic Party and a woman that has never received a vote in a nationwide election or primary now stands as the presumptive Democratic nominee. (Even Gerald Ford had to get through the primaries after Nixon’s second term expired.)
a) The coup was executed by the very far left wing of that party. Their agenda is entirely unpalatable to the American public.
b) They are relying on all the noise and the rapid pace of events to permit the nature of their quite irregular activities to go unnoticed.
That’s it in a nutshell. It is important to keep that picture in mind. As chaotic as matters are, they are not all that chaotic. Furthermore, the chaos is compounded by the media in large part because that is just what media needs to do to gather clicks and eyeballs, but also because the chaos provides cover for the quite unseemly actions. The campaign that lays ahead will be, quite purposefully, chaotic. The media is going to try and get us to focus on the sideshows and not the main stories.
The key to regaining our footing is to cut through the chaos and look at the facts and the main line of the stories. All these issues resolve pretty easily. Elect Donald Trump and you can bet the assassination attempt will be fully investigated and explained. Elect Donald Trump and Israel will receive our full and complete support. Elect Donald Trump and the Democratic coup is simply swept into the waste bin of history. Sure, with the election of Donald Trump tumult will continue, but our footing will be solid and we can stand strong.
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In the host’s Tuesday Fox column, written even though he is on vacation, the host said:
The American Left is nothing if it isn’t ruthless in its drive for political power.
Coming just a sentence after he accused Pelosi, Obama, Harris and “The American Left” of a coup those are truly frightening words. It has me thinking.
Most certainly as many pondered yesterday, the race card is; henceforth, going to be front-and-center of this campaign – at least if the Democrats have anything to say about it. But then I pointed that out, albeit it somewhat obliquely, on Monday when I noted Harris was using Eric Holder to vet her VP candidates. But I don’t think rerunning the Obama playbook is going to work this go around – it’s a different country now and we’ve had an African-American president – the glamour is gone. The gender card is probably a better play, but only if Hillary decides to play gender victim to Trump, which does not seem likely.
To me the real question is, in the face of the ruthlessness on display to date and that unquestionably lies in wait for us, how do we respond? I found it fascinating this morning that Morgan Ortagas and Mary Ketherine Ham declared the Harris/Willie Brown affair off-limits, as have many others on our side of the aisle. To be clear, I have no truck with any of the unfortunate epithets that have been attached to Harris in light of the affair. That is conduct unbecoming.
But given the ruthless nature of Harris’ pursuit of power, one must ask how far she is willing to go to get it. An affair of “the heart” hardly seems out-of-bounds if knifing Joe Biden in the back isn’t. The point is – I don’t care all that much about who Harris slept with and when, but I do care about putting a person into the White House that would stoop to anything untoward to get there.
I also know that bringing up sexual conduct in this cycle is a two-edged sword, given Trump’s history. But as I discussed yesterday, there is not a hint of subterfuge associated with Trump’s affairs – Harris is an entirely different can of worms.
One of the most beloved characters in the history of professional wrestling is Eddie Guerrero. His gimmick was “Latino Heat” and his willingness to do anything to win – anything. Hence his entrance music “Lie Cheat Steal.” He is so beloved because all those that knew him knew he was the very opposite of his gimmick – a sweet, lovable, family man. (I ended up on an airplane with his wife some years ago, and despite Eddie’s battles with addiction, the love was quite plain.)
In Kamala Harris; however, we are dealing with the precise opposite – someone quite willing to lie, cheat, and steal their way to the top while pretending to sweet innocence. There is nothing to love there.
The post Let’s Get Real appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I struggle to know how to react to the address just given by currently POTUS Joe Biden. I’m not sure what he was trying to say. I’ve seen hot takes that say it was a campaign speech for his last six months. It explained nothing about his decision to drop out of the election. Oh sure, it offered excuses, but they in no way jive with the circumstances and while it stopped just short of a stump speech for Harris, it might as well have been – casting the election in the existential tones that it did. (Our democracy is indeed threatened – by the Democratic party coup!) But all in all it was a nothingburger, missing whatever mark it was aiming for.
But what is stunning to me is the post-speech TV coverage, all those energy exuding talking heads trying desperately to make something out of it. On a day when Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee stood up the Prime Minister of a nation, a nation with which we are strongly allied, standing on the front line of the forces of evil, as he addressed Congress. — On a day when mobs supportive of those forces of evil vandalized landmarks and burnt American flags around the Capital building. Our media tried to make a story out of a nothingburger of a speech. But then the media cannot keep its story straight.
The speech was pathetic, the cries of a powerless old man, laying naked in front of the nation, trying to sound powerful and in charge. I pity Joe Biden. I fear for the nation.
The post More Pathetic Than Carter’s Malaise Speech? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday was a day of seeming miracles. The Democratic Party coalesced behind Kamala Harris amazingly fast – perhaps even miraculously so. After days of rock-hard stonewalling Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle did a rapid 180 and resigned. Things do not fully add up here – things are happening way too fast and way too suddenly.
Kamala Harris is a deeply flawed candidate. Confronted with an opportunity to replace the even more flawed Joe Biden, you would think Democrats might put a little more effort into the replacement. For things to come together this fast for Kamala Harris it seems like there would have to be some prep work. She seemingly pulled unity from chaos in roughly 36 hours – nobody is that good. The ducks had to be very close to in their row for them to line up that rapidly.
“Defiant” is not strong enough a word to describe Kimberly Cheatle’s congressional testimony on Monday. She clearly did not care. She was woefully unprepared – as if she already knew she was going to resign and she was just buying time until that eventuality. But what was she buying time for?
The events of the last ten days or so, beginning with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump moving forward to this morning are going to forever be the subject of conspiracy theories. We will learn more as time goes forward, but we will never learn all of it – it will never all add up into a clear and concise picture. Even if “the riddle” of each individual event comes to light, someone will try to connect the dots and it is possible there simply is no connection. But nature hates a vacuum and there is clearly a vacuum here, so into it will flow all sorts of stuff.
That said, I think it is fair to say that somewhere in this mess is corruption. I choose that word carefully. It can cover anything from a simple attempt to avoid accountability for ineptitude, to covering tracks for things worse, to hardcore, money-grabbing graft and/or murder. We don’t know, we probably will never know details with certainty, but I think we can say that somewhere in this out-of-focus picture is something wrong.
That leaves one with a great sense of unease and discontent. Our strongest desire in such situations is to dig, find the corruption and punish it. It seems like the only way we can find the emotional peace we desire is clear up the picture and correct the flaws. But that is unlikely to ever happen – there will always be some portion of this picture that will not come into focus and at least some of the corruption in this mess will hide in that portion. Earthly justice is often imperfect, and God’s justice is often delayed to far beyond our vision.
So what to do? How do we find peace? Well, the blessing of this country is that even if we cannot punish the corruption, we can take it out of a position to harm the nation. That’s what elections are all about. Our curiosity will never be satisfied, but we can find peace by making sure the government is comprised of a different bunch. You want to ease the discomfiture you feel right now? Work to elect Donald Trump, it is just that simple.
Now, let’s be frank and honest. Donald Trump has his own personal corruptions – they are well known – and that is the point. Not to mention that the team he will bring is itself in far better focus that the bunch currently operating behind a smokescreen of obstinance, obfuscation and flat-out lying.
The best king the ancient nation of Israel ever enjoyed – the one blessed by God and from which Christ was descended – was a murderous adulterer. And everyone knew it. And that again is the point. There was no fuzzy, indistinct picture behind which King David’s corruption hid. His corruption was in full view and known to all. I will not claim divine ordination for Donald Trump, even if God’s providence is most evident in his escape from death at a shooter’s hand. But I will note that analogous to King David, his corruption is known to all. And that is a huge difference.
We’ll never know what corruption lies behind the events of recent days, not fully. But we can elect Donald Trump and not have to worry about it anymore.
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Can you believe there is an actual Wikipedia entry that reads:
The law of holes, or the first law of holes, is an adage which states: “if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” It is used as a metaphor, warning that when in an untenable position, it is best to stop making the situation worse.
Like it needs to be explained!? But then the adage occurred to me as Kimberly Cheatle testified in front of Congress yesterday. She clearly needs it explained to her. She needs to either answer the questions on everyone’s mind, satisfactorily, or she needs to get the heck out of Dodge. But then, it is not as if her boss is going to ask for her resignation – all he wants is warm glass of milk and a nap.
But Kamala Harris is starting in a hole, and one of her first serious moves guarantees it will get deeper.
From Reuters comes this little gem:
Former Attorney General Eric Holder and his law firm, Covington & Burling LLP, will conduct vetting of potential running mates for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for the U.S. presidency, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Consider what the editors of National Review said when Holder resigned as Obama’s AG:
Achieving “justice” via the Justice Department may be an intrinsically unlikely prospect, but none of Holder’s recent predecessors — Janet Reno, John Ashcroft, Michael Mukasey, even the much-maligned Alberto Gonzales — exhibited his sheer contempt for the rule of law. Much to his preference was employing the law for political purposes; or, when necessary, dispensing with the law completely….
Nowhere was Holder’s rank partisanship more clearly on display than on issues of race: for instance, his refusal to prosecute the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation — despite video evidence of truncheon-wielding men warding voters away from a Philadelphia polling station in November 2008. Those whose political expression was inhibited in Philadelphia were not, Holder later suggested to the House Oversight Committee, “my people” — and thus apparently did not deserve the protection of the law. This from the lips of the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer. Meanwhile, Holder dismissed his critics as racists, eager to destroy him and the president because “we’re both African American.” This same “nation of cowards” was, by Holder’s reckoning, responsible for the voter-identification laws that his Justice Department has worked stridently — and largely unsuccessfully — to suppress in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and elsewhere.
What is left of Biden’s legacy is incompetence on bold display. If Harris has a chance of beating Trump it is going to be in the demonstration of competence and the absence of even a hint of racial preference. She ought to be publicly calling for Cheatle’s resignation, even if she currently lacks the power to ask for it directly. Hiring Holder for this job is putting race über alles.
I am beginning to think Donald Trump, whatever his drawbacks, is a political genius. He won the first time by dominating media, getting more “earned” airtime than any other candidate ever. This time he is also dominating media, but by being very, very quiet and allowing them to cover the failings of Biden-come-Harris as loudly as they covered him in 2016. He has put the onus on the now-Harris campaign to prove they deserve the office – that’s quite a trick when Biden/Harris are technically the incumbent. And clearly Democrats generally are cracking under the pressure.
The post If You Find Yourself In A Hole… appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Jim Geraghty opined this morning that Joe Biden may be in far worse shape than we suspect – even now. That got me thinking about how deeply the media has failed us in this mess. The signs were there, but no one dug, no one pushed, cajoled, convinced and otherwise investigated. If the media failures are discussed, there will be much talk of partisanship on their part, and perhaps discussion of Donald Trump as some sort of existential threat to democracy. Yet here we are, one party with their credibility past the gutter and into the sewer system proper, and Donald Trump looking saintly in comparison. But why stop with media failures? Geraghty also points out that while Trump is younger than Biden he will reach octogenarian status while in office, assuming he wins this fall, and that the same fate could await him. Both parties seem to suffer, to differing extents, from a lack of younger talent – certainly talent that can get through the primaries. So, the media has failed us, the parties have failed us, perhaps even younger generations have failed us…
…which means we have to look at our educational system. And so it goes, we drill deeper and deeper until we sink into a pit of despair. (Perhaps the “slough of despond” for the more literary among us.)
We talk and we talk, we analyze, we comment, we praise and we condemn. And yet, it’s trite, but nonetheless true – Politics is downstream of culture. The fact that our politics is now deeply in crisis (Oh spare me, assassination attempts, and late date resignations definitely signals criticality on our political life) means that something is very, very broken in our culture. We need to shift our focus. To continue the metaphor, the political portion of the river is now so polluted that it cannot be cleaned up – we have to stop the pollution upstream, at its source, and let the nasty flow to the sea.
The path forward from this point does not lie int he Rules Committee of the DNC or the Trump campaign. The path forward from this point is not in Congress. And it sure as h*%% is not in more social media commentary or meme passing. The path forward starts in your living room, at your dining table, in your church, wherever it is you encounter others and they encounter you. Don’t complain about “them,” be better yourself.
Let’s go back to the river metaphor. I had the gross misfortune to live in Cleveland, OH (Anyone familiar with the host knows I should simply put a period there, but there is actually more to the story) in 1969, when the river caught on fire. The politics flowing from that event have been extraordinary, but it should be noted that the Cuyahoga River is now clean and beautiful. No longer does fishing in Lake Erie consist of walking the beach and picking them up as it did when I lived there. This did not happen overnight. It took decades.
The problems this nation now confronts are far, far too profound to be resolved soon, even in the next administration. This is a project of generations. A path forward starts with resolve and patience. Volunteering for a day at something is not going to cut it. Let’s stop watching media tell us how bad it is – let’s stop speculating about who is “the mastermind behind all the deception.” (Robert Bork had it right – we slouched here.) Let’s get busy.
Let’s be better.
The post Finding a Path Forward appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the upcoming election is the complete and total lack of pretense. Had he relied on his recent covid infection, or even copped to age-related decline, there would have been a reason other than simply the naked desire for Democrats to win come fall. Of course no one would have bought any excuse offered, but that is beside the point; American politics has always operated under a veneer of public service yet here it is solely and purely about the pursuit of power. I saw a cartoon yesterday afternoon depicting Joe Biden with hundreds of knives in his back and I could not help but think how apropos that was. Just a week earlier there was an attempt to massively alter the Republican side of things with a bullet and now the Democratic side has been altered in Shakespearean fashion “Et tu, Obama?”
Presidential historian Tevi Troy put up a piece yesterday afternoon simply chronicling what an astonishing nine days we have just experienced. Read it, and bookmark it. It’s something you’ll want to return to as the presidential race now afoot attempts to alter the narrative to look far more gentile than it actually has been.
Let’s step into the wayback machine and head to 1991. I was in the Soviet Union, a part of an Environmental Technology Exchange delegation. We met with Alexei Yablokov, at the time Environmental Advisor to President of the Russian state Boris Yeltsin. We were on our way to Chernobyl and we discussed ways to clean-up the mess. It was a fascinating discussion. As ideas started to hit the table that might actually work, Yablokov called a halt to the discussion proclaiming that we did not understand – they wanted the mess to unseat Gorbachev, perhaps even create the fall of the Soviet Union. (Eight days later I was trapped in the nation for an unscheduled twelve hours as the failed coup attempt against Gorbachev played out.) It was an astonishing moment in its political nakedness. In retrospect, I should not have been so astonished. The historic gentility of American politics is the exception, not the rule.
There has been much written since then President Obama started bowing to foreign leaders about the death of American exceptionalism. We do not know who, ultimately, is behind the political knifing of Joe Biden, but we do know Barack Obama participated actively in it. (I would not put it past Harris to have orchestrated this whole mess, if you know the history of how her political career started, that would be entirely in character.) Once again Obama’s, and his allies’, efforts to turn our nation from an exceptional one into an ordinary one is revealed.
What has made America so exceptional is not our form of government – republican democracy has been tried lots of places and never worked nearly so well. What has made America exceptional has been the character of the people that occupied that government and the people that elected them. It began with George Washington very purposefully and publicly refusing king status and once president very carefully limiting both the powers and the accolades of that office. Such firmly established the tradition in this nation of office as sacrifice and service, not the raw pursuit of power and privilege. And yet here we are – the pursuit of power and privilege fully exposed without a hint of honor or service. Heck, this would be less naked if someone just made the very specious claim that “we cannot afford a Democratic loss because climate change will destroy the planet.” But no, they just don’t want to lose – it’s about their perks, not our nation.
The post Our Bare, Naked, Raw and Ugly Presidential Politics. appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The news of Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the election is about four hours old as I write. Been watching coverage for the last three. With the exception of Speaker Johnson, all the discussion is about process, or the lack thereof, to determine a Democratic nominee, Biden’s endorsement of Harris notwithstanding. Biden stated no reason to withdraw other than “the best interest of the country and his party.” So, no admission of diminished capacity. No one seems particularly concerned about his on-the-job performance over the next six months. This is all, and I repeat ALL, about politics – the forthcoming election – by Biden’s own statement.
That said, the Democratic party has now placed itself in the very position it claims is antithetical to its existence – it is the party of closed doors and smoke-filled rooms. I do not care what process they end up with, it will not be based on the votes of registered Democrats around the nation – it cannot be, there is not enough time. Whatever process they come up with, the decision about who will be their nominee will be made by a relatively small group of people – even if it involves all the delegates to the convention. The party that claims to be about Joe Lunchbucket and minorities everywhere will be deciding its nominee for POTUS within a very exclusive and hand selected group of people.
The party of progression is setting the political clock back at least 60 years. Rather than take their lumps and lose, which was increasingly looking like a forgone conclusion, they are subverting the modern understanding of how a republic like ours should function. So much for progressiveness.
They lied about Joe Biden’s capacity. Now the facts would say they are lying about their commitment to representing the little guy. I am forced to wonder what it is they do not lie about.
The post HOT TAKE – How Credibility Dies appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Joe Biden has, at this point, robbed himself of any opportunity to leave the presidency with dignity. Calls for his departure are now very public and from the highest places in his party. If he withdraws it will be known that he has been forced out. The public nature of all of it is rooted in his refusal to go reasonably, forcing others to go pubic to increase the pressure. If he stays in, he will most likely lose – no dignity there. If he stays in and wins, the cloud of suspicion over his performance is inescapable. The man has sacrificed every shred of dignity he has to retain an office he has desired for at least forty years. And at this juncture one must ask to what end? Simply to be president? His argument for why he should stay in has, to date, been about what he thinks he has done – not what he is going to do. The immense damage wrought by his infirmed incompetence makes pity hard to come by, but as a Christian man I am compelled to step back and look at the man and what I see is truly pathetic – deeply worthy of pity – consumed by a lust for an office he in incapable of putting to any use.
And so this Sunday morning I find myself in prayer for the man. He is tossed about by forces now beyond his ability to tame, maybe even fully understand. I pray for his peace and I pray for his dignity. His current position is unquestionably a self-inflicted wound, but that simply renders it more, not less, pitiable. I pray for wisdom on his part, at least one last little bit of it. And I pray for those closest to him, that they would help him descend into the rest and peace that all men deserve at the end of their days. They can give him dignity even if the world does not.
The post A Prayer For Joe Biden appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday, the world ground to a halt, almost literally, because of a software glitch. Two thoughts ran through my mind almost immediately as the scope of the matter became obvious – 1) There needs to be some mechanism to keep this from happening again, and 2) A bunch of litigators just got very, very rich. The lost money for the airlines alone has to be astronomical. But I am no litigator so I can’t really comment. But as I pondered some mechanism to prevent future occurrences I thought about government and that sent a chill down my spine. Our government in recent days has demonstrated an incompetence that makes yesterday’s computer glitch pale in comparison. I don’t know what the mechanism might be, but if government is involved, they’ll make it worse, not better.
Consider:
- A sniper found a nest which the crowd could see but the protective details could not and fired upon a former and possibly future POTUS. But by the grace of God the man would be dead. There is much to be determined about the specifics of what went wrong, when and by whom, but incompetence ruled that day.
- While it is impossible to ever fully prevent attempts upon the lives of any individual, the incompetence obvious in the aforementioned attempt is so obvious that it should have resulted in the immediate resignation of the senior officials involved. Those resignations may, or may not, have been accepted by those to whom they were tendered based on the facts that eventually emerge – but the fact that they were not reflexively and immediately placed on the table – and in the absence of such being offered voluntarily, immediately demanded – shows a depth of managerial incompetence incomprehensible not that long ago.
- And while we are discussing managerial incompetence, how is it there were no resignations offered in the wake of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan – Abbey Gate.
- Finally, there is this, “Iran is capable of producing fissile material — a key component in nuclear weapons — within ‘one or two weeks,’ US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday….” Of course, Blinken et. al. blame Trump and Trump undoubtedly blames the JPCOA. That’s immaterial at this point. Something is deeply incompetent in our government, administrative changes notwithstanding, if we have permitted what is likely the most malign nation on the planet – a nation that uses terrorist proxies – to come to within weeks of a nuclear weapon. Don’t even speak to me about lacking a means of delivery, they have suicidal terrorists for that. (Not to mention they launched missiles at Israel not that long ago.)
It has become trite meme material these days – “You had one job….” But it is not funny – at least not when it comes to national security and protective details of highly placed individuals. We can talk about bureaucratic complexities and the value of positive or negative reinforcement until we are blue-in-the-face but in the end such discussions are but a distraction from the bottom line fact of failure. Back in the day before he went multi-studio, the host had a sound board that featured Samuel L. Jackson in “Die Hard 3” saying, “I don’t like you cause you’re gonna get me killed!” That’s where we are right now. Government incompetence has placed the nation in grave danger.
Much of this stems from an administrative state that found Trump so repulsive that they went rogue. So don’t think another Trump administration can fix this. Not that they won’t try, but the roots of the problem are very, very deep. It should be a goal of a new Trump administration, particularly if Republicans get a clean sweep in the Congress as well, to reform the civil service rules. That will at least allow the process to begin in earnest. Civil Service has to be based on merit. There are jobs that have to be done and done well.
Right now, we are failing at them, and our peril is great – nuclear weapons great.
The post The Peril Created By Incompetence appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The RNC we are watching this week is amazing to watch. Agree or disagree, all the pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place and the thing is progressing smooth as silk. The crowd is engaged and enthusiastic; the energy is immense. Donald Trump appears the revered statesman and is exercising the discipline necessary not to counteract the vision. Meanwhile, the Democrats are falling apart before our eyes. Yesterday the three leading Democratic office holders other than the president told Biden he was harming the party. And can you blame them when he gets angry at a genuine American hero? It is a rare moment in history when we can see one party function so well while the other breaks down in complete dysfunction.
This is a tough moment to analyze because there are so many factors at play. But that said I think I want to concentrate on style. Particularly we are at a point in history where style has become quite consequential. Democrats, at least in recent times, operate by a sort of passive-aggression. That’s a psychological term-of-art, often misunderstood and abused. But the Mayo Clinic supplies a short list of “signs of passive-aggressive behavior”
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Resentment and opposition to the demands of others, especially the demands of people in positions of authority
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Resistance to cooperation, procrastination and intentional mistakes in response to others’ demands
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Cynical, sullen or hostile attitude
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Frequent complaints about feeling underappreciated or cheated
Does that not sound at least vaguely familiar? I thought about this as I have watched Joe Biden and Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. Biden’s irritability is increasing on an almost daily basis (sullen, hostile) and Cheatle’s unwillingness to resign in the face of very obvious failures (resentment and opposition to the demands of others, resistance to cooperation) seem almost textbook passive-aggressive behaviors.
Donald Trump on the other hand is an almost textbook example of aggressive-aggression – staring issues directly in the face and attacking them head on, often with a bluntness that is off-putting. Think of the old aphorism about a “bull in a china shop.”
Yesterday I wrote of our slide from excellence, through distraction, into incompetency. The whole thing about “procrastination and intentional mistakes in response to others’ demands” defines the policies of the Democrats for the last couple of decades and explains how we got here. They have failed to take care of the basics of operating a state, choosing to focus on their sense of victimhood. That’s how California can spend uncountable sums of money and yet the roads are in awful shape, crime runs rampant and the streets full of tents and human feces. That’s how the Secret Service can fail so miserably.
I find it fascinating how Democrats dysfunction has made Trump so palatable. By all accounts, which I assume will be proven out tonight, DJT is a chastened man, humbled by the events of last Saturday. He has shown signs of such humility before – the example that comes to my mind is his acceptance speech when he won the election in 2016. But he is still DJT. There is little doubt in my mind that as time goes forward, we will see the bombast that has made him so difficult for so many to stomach. But after four years of Biden’s dysfunctional gentility, America is ready for some bombastic function.
Passive-aggression is “nice.” But it does not function. Aggressive-aggression is not necessarily nice, but it is certainly functional. We are in desperate need of functionality right now and America knows it.
The post Function v Dysfunction appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Much attention has been paid since the events of last Saturday evening to the various failures in the protection of former President Donald Trump. Perimeter size, risk assessments, personnel assignments, jurisdictional assignments, and interjurisdictional communications have all been discussed. The discussion has been quite animated and at times conspiratorial in tone. I find myself unable to get worked up about any of it and conspiracies totally unnecessary. These failures were completely foreseeable and readily explainable.
When you found an institution for a specific purpose and then forcibly move the focus of that institution to concerns other than that for which it was founded, the institution will no longer be able to pursue its original purpose with excellence in mind. And so excellence descends into mediocrity. Once you have forced one competing priority onto the institution and the worst has not happened, it becomes easier to force additional priorities onto that institution and soon mediocrity evolves into incompetence as the institution loses sight, almost completely, of what it is supposed to be doing. We have seen this cycle repeated throughout our society.
Educational decline? Well, when educational institutions have to make sure their enrollment is “representative” rather than smart, that’s what’s going to happen. Does “science” seem more politics that pursuit of understanding? Well, when you impose political concerns on the institutions of science, that’s what’s going to happen. When the Secret Service has to make sure its hiring and promotion follows specific guidelines regarding race, gender and orientation then in order to meet those guidelines, people not very good at protecting the president will inevitably get into positions for which they are not qualified. When budgets are diverted to areas not directly related to the mission of the institution, stuff that matters will not get done. And thus an institution, the Secret Service, once known for its excellence, descends through mediocrity into incompetence and what happened last Saturday evening becomes inevitable.
We have been headed in this direction for quite a while now – at least since 2008 when we elected Barack Obama. Don’t get me wrong, I am not contending that Barack Obama was incompetent, to the contrary, he was quite competent. He was deft at changing the focus of our government from one of leveling the playing field in matters of race, gender, orientation and religion by ignoring such matters into a focus upon those matters to the point of excluding the primary focus of our government’s various institutions.
What’s truly sad is we watched entire nations fail and fall (the Soviet Union) based on similar issues. Read all about Chernobyl. The roots of that heinous and eternally consequential accident lie almost completely in the Soviet practice of forcing nuclear engineers to pay attention to things other than the proper and safe operation of the reactors.
Ronald Reagan used to talk about getting government out of the way. What we witnessed last Saturday evening was not the government merely getting in our way, it got in its own way.
Let’s not get all balled up in the details of who failed to do what and when – that’s a distraction. So long as the government is in its own and our way, excellence will never be able to prevail.
The post From Excellence to Mediocrity to Incompetence – The Slow Agonizing Death of Merit appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Todd Blanche, former President Trump’s lawyer in Manhattan, joined me this AM:
Audio:
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Transcript:
HH: We are going to talk with Todd Blanche. Mr. Blanche joins us from New York, or he might be back in Florida at the office of the Blanche Law Firm, Blanchelaw.com. Good morning, Mr. Blanche. Welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
TB: Good morning. It’s great to be here, and thank you for the opportunity to spend some time with you this morning.
HH: I want to begin immediately with the motions pending before Judge Merchan, the trial judge in Manhattan. They call them “justices” in New York, but I use “judge” for the benefit of the audience that isn’t aware of the weird titles up there. You’re a former Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York. I believe you are the lead counsel for President Trump in Manhattan and in other proceedings. Can you tell us when you expect Judge Merchan to rule on the motion that you made, 54 pages just days ago that Trump V. United States ought to render the proceeding’s nullity in Manhattan?
TB: That’s right. I do represent President Trump as lead counsel in the Manhattan case, and also the Florida case, which is a little bit more enjoyable to talk about this morning. And hopefully, we will in a minute.
HH: (laughing)
TB: But you’re right. We put a motion in. Look, the Supreme Court unequivocally said that a president, not just President Trump, but any president is entitled to a significant immunity when it comes to his job. And we had briefed that before the trial started in front of the judge, Judge Merchan. And he gave it, you know, I don’t know the legal term, but “back of the hand” is what he gave it before the trial started. And it turns out that we were right. And there was some key testimony that was offered by “the People,” which is what the government is referred to in New York, by “the People” at trial that is absolutely immune and never should have been said to anybody, much less to a jury in Manhattan, in communications that the President had with his advisors while he was president, documents that were used during his presidency were offered against him at trial. And so we, this conviction, in our view, should have never happened in the first place. But just under the Supreme Court’s decision, it should be dismissed, in our view, immediately.
HH: Now Mr. Blanche, the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts, was very explicit about the fact that evidence of advisors [advice] to the president cannot enter into proceedings against him. What specifically are you referring to? Is it Margo? What is it that you’re talking about that got into the trial record that the jurors heard that they ought never to have heard?
TB: A lot of evidence. A couple, I’ll just hit a couple of the key pieces. Hope Hicks was the communications director for President Trump.
HH: Yes.
TB: She testified about a key conversation she had with President Trump in the White House regarding the Michael Cohen scandal at the time. And the significance of that conversation was she said that President Trump had implied to her that he in fact knew about the payments before the election. Now we contested that, and we still do contest that. The only other witness who said that President Trump knew about that payment before the election was Michael Cohen himself. And so during summation, the prosecutor described Hope Hicks’ testimony as devastating, okay, because it corroborated Michael Cohen. That communication, under the current Supreme Court precedent as of two weeks ago, it should have never been allowed in. There was also a government ethics form that President Trump was required to complete. And there was a footnote in that ethics form that described the repayment to Michael Cohen. That document was used, admitted into evidence. It was used at trial as an admission by President Trump, and the prosecution again argued strenuously in their summation about how key that was. That’s something that should have never been allowed into evidence. I mean, we can go on and on. There’s testimony from President Trump’s, really like his secretary, Madeleine Westerhouse. She’s a really amazing woman, and she testified about really important details of the life of President Trump while president. That’s not supposed to be allowed.
HH: Oh, my goodness. That’s dispositive.
TB: And we said that…
HH: You can stop right now, Mr. Blanche, because Hope Hicks, for the benefit of the audience, was with Donald Trump before he became president. Throughout much of the White House, she took a period of time off, and then she returned. She’s the only person…
TB: That’s right.
HH: …I remember that came back to the White House. And so she’s still with the President’s team, in some respects. Madeleine was there until, I remember the Washington Post leaked a private conversation, got her fired. And she’s still a friend of mine, went to high school with my son, in fact.
TB: Yeah. Yes.
HH: But that’s dispositive. So there’s evidence in the record before the jury argued by the prosecutor in the summation that you can’t even answer that the jury heard, that the Chief Justice ruled without any qualification. They can’t use that evidence.
TB: That’s right.
HH: So you’ve got a slam dunk winner.
TB: That’s right. That’s right. And look, the other part, just not to dwell on this all morning, but there were tweets admitted into evidence from when President Trump was president about Mr. Cohen and about others, and before the trial, we said you can’t let these in. These are immunized. The President should enjoy immunity, and the judge, Judge Merchan, said absolutely not. You’re never going to convince me that that’s the sort of thing that can’t come in. Chief Justice Roberts said unequivocally that most communications, including tweets from the president, should be immune and should never be used at trial.
H: Yeah, that pre…
TB: So look, we have a good motion, so we’ll see.
HH: That is, that’s very interesting to me, because I saw that when Judge Merchan made his motion, made his ruling, that sentencing would be postponed until September 18th. He also wrote that he will be ruling on motions, and that sentencing, if it is still necessary. So he’s clearly open to dismissing the entire proceeding. Yesterday, Andy McCarthy, who I’m sure you know from United States Attorney alumni circles…
TB: Yes.
HH: …said on this program that the Erlinger decision also ought to force Judge Merchan to dismiss the case, because Erlinger reaffirmed a unanimity in every element of a conviction, and obviously the Judge’s instructions allowed for non-unanimity in the second crime theory. Do you agree with Andy on that?
TB: I do. Andy and I had the same job. We were both chiefs in the White Plains division at the Southern District of New York, and I think Andy’s a genius. And I respect his views, and I very much agree with him. Not only was there not a unanimous requirement for a key part of this case, but to those that followed the trial, that part of the case was really 90% of the evidence. So they spent two full weeks talking about this supposed, you know, conspiracy, misdemeanor conspiracy under New York state law to influence an election, and at the end of the day, the jury didn’t have to agree on what was improper or illegal about that effort. And we’ll never know whether they did agree, whether they had, you know, four or five different views about which crime was the other crime. And so the Supreme Court again has for decades been warning prosecutors, Apprendi and other cases, that you cannot punish, take away somebody’s liberty if you’re not going to make the jury find everything completely unanimous. So we’re cautiously optimistic that this case is going to be thrown out. It should be. It should have never been brought, and we’re fighting every day. And we’ll see what happens in September.
HH: Do you expect the judge to rule quickly given the assassination attempt on President Trump? And the situation in the country, it would be incumbent, if I were the judge, to move quickly on your motions. Your motions seem to be to be obviously going to be granted. Do you expect him to move quickly in light of recent events?
TB: I hope so. Look, the People’s brief is due in a week or so, two weeks. And he’s given himself, the judge gave himself a September 6th date of when he’ll announce a decision. But he’s not wed to that. He could announce it whenever he wants. Saturday was just a very sad day for this country, and it’s in part a reflection of the lawfare, in my view, that’s been happening against President Trump, including the D.A. in the Manhattan case. And I hope that Judge Merchan does it. I really do. We, it would go a long way, in my view, to healing some of the wounds that we have. And look, I have spent the past year being disappointed, so I don’t want to get too excited, but I really hope Judge Merchan agrees with our motion and throws this case out.
HH: I’m going to go to a quick break, so I want my affiliates to know I’m going to continue to talk with Mr. Blanche of www.blanchelaw.com as we go to the break. I’ll talk to him during the break. I’ll play it tomorrow, put it on the podcast today, and then he’ll be back. And in the second segment when we’re back on the radio network as well as the SalemNewsChannel, we’ll talk about yesterday’s big win in Florida, again, after Clarence Thomas wrote his concurrence. That was telegraphed, and it has long been my opinion that this is crazy what Merrick Garland has set up, because it is a unitary executive, also a position made very clear by the Chief Justice in his opinion in Trump V. United States. I’ll be back with Mr. Blanche during the break, and I’ll put this on the podcast, play it tomorrow. Stay tuned, America.
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HH: I am back now on the podcast with Todd Blanche. I’ll play it on Wednesday’s show as well. Mr. Blanche, Jed Rubenfeld is a Yale Law professor, has been a guest of mine. He urges that a USC1983 action, 42USC1983 be filed before sentencing, should sentencing be scheduled again because of the irreparable injury that will occur to your client, and I believe to the United States should sentencing occur. Has that crossed your mind? Is that out there? Does Professor Rubenfeld have a good argument, in your view?
TB: …with him on several occasions, and communicated with him during the trial. And there is nothing that’s not on the table for us if there’s going to be a sentencing. 1983 actions based on this type of conduct and facts, it’s a very steep hill. And I don’t know that it’s something that we feel like is guaranteed success, but we’re not looking for guaranteed successes. We’re looking for any opportunity to stop this. So there’s nothing not on the table. And I think what we would have to do in that case is walk across the street to the Southern District of New York and file an action, if that’s what it comes to. We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it. There’s procedures within New York that we can work within as well before sentencing, and so everything’s on the table. And we have a lot of really smart folks around President Trump that are giving advice and counsel to us and to the team, and we’re taking it all. And obviously, we’ll see what happens.
HH: My friend and old colleague from the Department of Justice, I was there in the Reagan years. Mark Levin was there in the Reagan years. I worked for Smith and Meese. He worked for Ed Meese, and then I went to the White House Counsel’s office. We have disagreements, but we get along very well. Mark wants to use extraordinary writs to the Supreme Court. I don’t think that’ll work. Jed Rubenfeld doesn’t work. I think it would look bad if you go to the Court early on an extraordinary writ and they decline to take it, which I think they would. What do you say to people like Mark who want you to throw everything at the wall, including the Extraordinary Writs Act?
TB: Look, Mark is great. You know, you’re right. I don’t necessarily agree on everything that he says, but I love the fight, and I love the ideas. There’s a lot of things to think about there, right? It’s not just this case. You know, we won a case yesterday, but we have other cases going on with President Trump. And you have to be, I think you have to be strategic about when you run to the Supreme Court. And so there’s a lot of factors, I think, beyond Manhattan that come into play with whether we use the Writ. But listen, there’s nothing not on the table, and I mean that. And I say that to the President when we talk about strategy. And he, of course, knows Mark and knows, and watches and hears a lot of options. And I think that, if you’re going the Extraordinary Writ route, by definition, you’re doing something extraordinary. So the chances of success are diminished. But we’ll see what happens. I remain, I still have faith in the system. It’s just taken a lot out of me this year, but I’m hoping that Judge Merchan does the right thing. And if he doesn’t, then there’s a quick relief in the appellate system, and that we don’t have to race to the nine justices to get relief. But listen, Mark’s right. This is a once in a lifetime prosecution. And it needs to be stopped. And so if that’s the only option to stop it, I think we’ll try it.
HH: Well, the cleanest way is if Judge Merchan himself takes the offramp the Supreme Court gave him in the two cases, Trump V. United States and Erlinger.
TB: That’s right. That’s right.
HH: I’m coming back on the air to talk with Mr. Blanche to talk about the Florida ruling yesterday by Judge Cannon, who is being, I think, in a way that is obscene, assailed by critics for what is a clear application of very valid legal theory, one that persuaded me long ago and one that persuaded the judge yesterday. Stay tuned.
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HH: I continue my conversation with Todd Blanche, lead lawyer for the former President in Manhattan and in New York yesterday, big win for Team Trump in Florida, Judge Cannon dismissing everything that Jack Smith brought as an indictment, because Jack Smith was improperly before the court. He is not an inferior officer. He’s not been confirmed by the United States Senate. This was a surprise and a shock to people like my friend, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post. But I’ve been arguing this forever. I teach Con Law, Todd Blanche, and this is obvious to me that unlike David Weiss, who’s a U.S. Attorney, and unlike Robert Hur, who is a U.S. Attorney and otherwise appointed appropriately and confirmed by the Senate, Jack Smith has no business in front of anyone bringing anything arguing that he’s independent of Merrick Garland. How surprised were you? And how satisfied are you with Judge Cannon’s ruling yesterday?
TB: I am, yesterday was a phenomenal day for the rule of law, in my view, for President Trump, for his family, for Walt Nauta, for Carlos, you know, the other defendants that were charged. Surprise is definitely the wrong word. Judge Cannon is a thoughtful, smart judge. She’s done, every step of the way, she’s been careful. She’s listened to everybody. She’s criticized soundly in the media because she takes her time and is thoughtful, which is extremely, not only unfair, but absurd, frankly. And you’re right. The argument here is so basic that it almost belies common sense when you think about the other result, which is that a private citizen, in this case Jack Smith, is given the power to take away somebody’s liberty, the power to sign indictments. And he’s not been nominated by the president. He has not been confirmed by the Senate. And we have a United States Constitution. And the United States Constitution says you cannot do that. And so while it seems almost obvious that there’s other courts that have gone the other way, if you read her 93-page opinion, it is a gem. I think it’s really, really thoughtful. It makes sense. It follows the law. And yesterday was just one of the, it was a great day for all kinds of reasons, obviously, with the Vice President being announced and coming off of Saturday, which was a horrible day. But I got to call President Trump yesterday morning and deliver the news. And it’s just, it’s amazing. But you know, we can talk about it all you want. It’s right. Her decision is right.
HH: Oh, it’s correct. I want to play for you, last night, Joe Biden was asked by Lester Holt about the decision by Judge Cannon. And he responded this way, cut number 25:
LH: In some other developing news today, if I can. Judge Cannon dismissed the documents case, as you may have heard, in Mar-A-Lago. Can I first get your reaction to that?
JB: I’m not surprised. It comes from the immunity decision in the Supreme Court ruled on, and Clarence Thomas in his dissent said that independent prosecutors appointed by the Attorney General aren’t legit. That’s the basis on which this judge moved to dismiss. And, but, I had an independent prosecutor look at me. They spent months on my going through, and I was totally cooperative. In and out of my house, I remember, I don’t know, the last time in there were like ten, twelve agents in my house for nine hours unaccompanied going through every single thing I had. That’s appropriate. And they looked at me and concluded I didn’t do a damn thing wrong. But my generic point is that it’s, well, well, the basis upon which the case was thrown out, I find specious, because I don’t agree with Clarence Thomas in his dissent.
HH: Mr. Blanche, that is so preposterous. I will note for the audience Clarence Thomas concurred. He did not dissent. I will also note for the audience that Robert Hur, the special counsel, and by the way, an appropriately-appointed special counsel, did not bring charges against President Biden because he was, “an well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” We have a minute to the break. What do you think?
TB: I mean, yes, I agree with you. Moreover, President Trump cooperated as well, and he was not being, no matter what anybody says, he was not being difficult or obstructive. And by the way, if anybody thinks that Judge Cannon wrote a 93-page opinion because of what Justice Thomas said in his concurrence, they haven’t read it. So certainly, Justice Thomas’ concurrence is consistent with her ruling, but she ruled that way because it’s consistent with the law, not the…
HH: Will you stand by, Mr. Blanche, I’m going to continue to talk with you. Don’t go anywhere. Todd Blanche of www.blanchelaw.com, you’ll want to read his bio, but he was an AUSA in the SDNY, and has been with Wilmer Cutler and Cadwalader. The man knows what he’s talking about. Stay tuned, America.
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HH: I am back now with Todd Blanche, President Trump’s lead lawyer in New York and in Florida. Mr. Blanche, I wrote for the Washington Post that Mr. Merchan, Judge Merchan, should never have taken this case given the appearance of impropriety, given his donations. Will that be part of our appeal in the New York appeals system, and then eventually the federal appeals system if you fail, if he does not do the provident thing and dismiss this case in light of Trump V. United States and Erlinger V. United States?
TB: Absolutely. Absolutely. We made two separate motions asking Judge Merchan to recuse himself. I’ve practiced law for over 20 years. I was a federal prosecutor for almost a decade, a supervisor for four years. I’ve been a defense attorney for 10 years. And you know, it’s not just about whether there’s an actual conflict, which I believe there is an actual conflict. But it’s also the appearance. And you have a courthouse full of judges. It’s not as if he’s the only judge. And I very much feel very strongly and passionately about the motions that we’ve filed about his conflict. And he didn’t agree with us, and of course, if there needs to be an appeal, which hopefully there never will be, that’s going to be one of the most significant complaints that he have to the first department and federal court if it gets to that.
HH: I think it’s a mortal lock for any number of reasons, including failure to specify the second crime in the indictment. I’ve been practicing since 1983. I am retired from the act of practice. I still teach Constitutional Law. I’ve never seen an indictment not specify a crime, and I’m not, I’ve defended exactly one criminal defendant. You and I do different things. I was an administrative lawyer. Have you ever seen an indictment not specify the crime with which the defendant is charged?
TB: No, and look, it’s not only that the indictment failed to specify, they wouldn’t articulate it until the trial started. So when you talk about a fair process, you’re talking about, putting aside he’s the former President of the United States of America, putting aside the fact you’re talking about conduct that happened in 2016, 2017, you’re still taking somebody’s liberty. And so the idea that you wouldn’t tell President Trump in the indictment, but then also wouldn’t tell him in a bill of particulars, wouldn’t tell him in any kind of motion practice, walked into trial Day One, and learned that the three separate theories that the People were going with, is, look, history will judge, and that’s what we all live with. But living through it right now, it’s not something I would have ever, I’ve never seen it, and I certainly never did it as a prosecutor.
HH: Last question for you, Mr. Blanche. I think Andy McCarthy’s the best commentator out there, but there’s some awfully terrible ones on a variety of networks. And I think they’re poisoning. Andy said it yesterday. Lawfare is killing the United States. Are you representing the President in front of Judge Chutkan?
TB: Yes, I am.
HH: Do you expect Judge Chutkan to take note of both the events, the tragic events on Saturday with the murder of one and the wounding of two, the wounding of the president, the attempt to kill him, and postpone all of this until after the election, and if necessary, read very carefully Judge Cannon’s, which does not bind her. Judge Cannon does not bind Judge Chutkan. But do you expect her to slow down and take her time in light of recent developments?
TB: I really hope so. Look, she’s going to get jurisdiction back. The mandate will issue in a few weeks, early August. And there’s a lot of choices that everybody involved has to make – Judge Chutkan and Jack Smith. And I hope that the right thing is done here. You’re completely right about Andy, but you’re completely right about a lot of others out there that want, still want nothing more than to see President Trump go down before the election. And that’s not who we are as a country. That’s not the way the justice system is supposed to work. That’s not the way it’s ever worked before. And we can still right this ship. And hopefully, Saturday was a wake-up call to everybody that if you want to beat President Trump, then take your message to the voters and tell them to vote. You should not use the court system, and that’s what they’ve done. That’s what this administration has done, and you can’t deny it. And you can’t deny it. You look at the indictment now in D.C. Most of that indictment is filled with information that is not allowed to be used, given the Supreme Court’s decision of two weeks ago. What are they going to do about that? They should do the right thing. Do the right thing.
HH: Mr. Blanche, can I keep you for 10 more minutes? I know it’s early. I know you’ve got to get to work. But can I keep you for 10 more minutes?
TB: Absolutely.
HH: All right, I’ll be right back after we come back to the network. I want the entire network to hear this live what he’s saying. Stay tuned, America.
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HH: Todd Blanche has agreed to stay with me. Mr. Blanche is President Trump’s lead lawyer and a very good one at that. Mr. Blanche and I were talking off-air, and I want the entire country to hear it live about the stakes in the D.C. case which will go back to Judge Chutkan in a matter of weeks. She has a complicated evidentiary procedure laid out for her by the Supreme Court in the Trump V. United States decision. It would take weeks, and it would impact the presidential election in ways terrible. And after the assassination attempt, it is time for Jack Smith, and especially, and this is what I wanted to get to you on the air. Merrick Garland controls Jack Smith. There is no way that after one reads Trump V. United States, the unitary executive is defended, that he is not controlled. Do you expect Merrick Garland to wake up and take control of this out-of-control proceeding, Mr. Blanche?
TB: I hope, I really hope so. And Saturday, you’re right, was a wake-up call. But the Supreme Court’s decision two weeks ago was a wake-up call. What’s been happening since that time and the reaction is a wake-up call. You have an indictment against a former president of the United States in Washington, D.C., most of which is now filled with information that should have never been presented to the grand jury, should have never been part of a charge against a former president. And you’re right that the Attorney General can stop this today. President Biden can stop this today. Jack Smith can stop this today. There is leadership that can all do the right thing if they choose to lead. And I really hope they do. It would be the right thing for this country. You’re right. The amount of work that has to happen now that the Supreme Court has ruled in the D.C. case is extraordinary. The entire indictment is based off of immunized communications and conduct by President Trump. And instead of, I would, they have an opportunity. They do. The Attorney General, Jack Smith, Biden, President Biden himself can say enough is enough, and we’re going to walk away. And I hope they do it.
HH: All right, my very last question, Mr. Blanche. I’ve had this conversation with two former United States Attorneys and with the former deputy counsel to the President. And none of us know the answer. The grand jury proceedings were full of immunized, after Trump V. United States, it’s very clear that the grand jury proceedings are tainted. Does Jack Smith, even if he is, or a new U.S. Attorney, if they comply with Trump V. United States, or Merrick Garland himself, do they have to start over with a grand jury and not present the grand jury? Or can they simply strike counts in the indictment in D.C.? Nobody I’ve asked that to really knows the answer to that. What do you think?
TB: So look, I’ve looked at the law very carefully, and it’s complicated, because it’s allowed. You can introduce tainted evidence or inadmissible evidence to a grand jury a little bit. It happens all the time. You know, a judge later makes a decision that something’s going to be suppressed. That doesn’t mean that the whole case is thrown out. But if the grand jury process was so tainted, and was so infected with inadmissible evidence, then certainly, you can make a motion to say the whole thing has to get kicked. And I will tell you this. I think that you know, to those that like to read briefing, I can expect you’ll see such a motion if Jack Smith doesn’t on his own go back and present that case to another grand jury or just walk away, which is what he should do.
HH: Todd Blanche, I appreciate your long time this morning with me. I think President Trump is very well represented, and I wish you luck in the weeks ahead on the benefit of the President, but also for the country that you succeed in New York, you succeed in D.C, and that the Appeals Court in the 11th Circuit uphold Judge Cannon’s ruling. Todd Blanche, thank you for joining me this morning.
TB: Thank you, and keep doing what you’re doing. It’s a great show, and I’m honored to be on it today, so thank you.
HH: Thank you.
End of interview.
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Biden’s mental lapses, lawfare dismissals, assassination attempts – very serious and very overwhelming news. But the world continues to spin and other things are happening. Let’s survey…
Do you wonder why manufacturing is leaving California? EV Sales are plummeting, so California decides to fine Tesla. And while we are speaking of California, The Claremont Institute is going virtual and leaving California. Speaking of going virtual, downtown Los Angeles is a ghost town. And yet, California with the state budget running a near $100 billion deficit, has $12 million to ~~waste~~, er spare. And the most laughable California headline of all, “Voters in California swing district react to Trump rally shooting.” “Swing” district in California? I don’t think so.
In the world of science, these people clearly have never seen the original “Jurassic Park,” or read the book. But then “science” isn’t much anymore and is very, very broken.
But then education generally ain’t what she used to be. Forcing me to comment that agenda’s other than the purpose for which an institution was founded tends to undermine the original mission of the institution. Don’t get conspiratorial when thinking about why Trump’s security failed so – just think about all the unrelated stuff the Biden administration has asked its agencies and departments to pay attention to.
Finally, speaking of Joe Biden – He is older than I am, so I know he was around for the experiment with wage-and-price controls of Richard Nixon. It was a failed experiment, so of course he wants to repeat it. And thankfully he is leading the way on “lowering the temperature:”
President Biden doubled down on his assertion that Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy” during an interview with NBC News on Monday, despite repeatedly calling on Americans to lower the temperature in U.S. politics in the wake of a failed assassination attempt against the former president.
Sunday morning, after the assassination attempt, I had hoped that as a nation we had hit bottom. Clearly, we haven’t. It would appear Democrats have much lower to go.
The post Meanwhile in Other News appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
That’s what President Joe Biden asked us to do last night in his Oval Office address – “lower the temperature.” He reminded us, vaguely, of our history and principles, but notably absent from the speech was a call to something higher, something better, something greater. His call left us mired in the morass that bred the problem to begin with, he just asked us to slog through it with better form. I agree, we need to lower the temperature, but in what can we place our hope? How do we get better?
Two pieces this morning present and interesting contrast. The first is on X and is Victor Davis Hanson casting himself as a leftist trying to explain the violence. His “framing” uses $12 dollar words but meanders without aim or purpose, saying much while accomplishing nothing. On the other hand, at the Washington Times, Gerson Moreno-Riaño opens quoting James Fenimore Cooper arrives:
America is undergoing a spiritual crisis. We all know it. We all feel it. But we are afraid to say it because we fear public ridicule. It is time to be honest – we need a spiritual reawakening and revival to heal the deep wounds of our sins and wickedness as a people.
Then concludes and calls:
President Biden, please call our great nation to seek God’s hand of mercy and healing….And may the call not suffice. May we all then pause in our places of work, in our places of service, in our universities, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our capitols, in our places of worship and take much time to kneel, bow, repent from the hardness of our souls, and turn to God and to our neighbors.
Do you see the difference? Think what you will about Christianity, at least it offers us a place to turn – a source of hope – a path to get better. “Leftist tropes,” as Hanson calls them, offer us only a scold to do better. But Christianity gives us a place to stand and a path. We have to walk it, and the effort is extreme, but at least we have some directions. With that in mind…
I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and [a]the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
To know wisdom and instruction,
To discern the sayings of understanding,
To receive instruction in wise behavior,
Righteousness, justice and equity;
To give prudence to the [a]naive,
To the youth knowledge and discretion,
A wise man will hear and increase in learning,
And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,
To understand a proverb and a figure,
The words of the wise and their riddles.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
Fools despise wisdom and instruction.
The post “Lower The Temperature”? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
…We know precious little more than we did when we went to bed last night. The shooter has been identified, but absent further information that is a detail without context or significance. Lots and lots of discussion of security failures. Now the fact that shots were fired at all is an obvious issue, but it is also impossible to fully secure an individual out in public. There is way too much information not yet available to know if there was serious failure here or not. Basically, we are in the same position we were when we went to bed, we witnessed evil and are at a loss to explain or deal with it. The irony of my post yesterday morning, pre-shooting, concerning our capacity for evil has not escaped me. I claim no powers of prophecy, only observation. As the facts come in over the next days and weeks, the question that predominates in my mind is, “Have we ‘hit bottom’?”
“Hit bottom” is a term borrowed from twelve step addiction recovery programs. It refers to the need for the addict to realize the destruction in their lives and decide to try to fix it. “Hitting bottom” is the point where that happens. It is different for different addicts. Some it comes early in the addiction process, when the damage is minor. Others it comes only when their lives, and the lives of those that love them, are in total and devastating ruin.
We have not yet destroyed the nation, but people are now dead. Repeating – while we focus on Trump’s survival we must never forget there are dead people from this shooting. That is a lot of ruin. It can get worse, I can imagine worse, but I don’t want to experience worse and am therefore hoping this is bottom. And yet some outlets are busy lionizing Trump – others Biden. We are struggling to let go of the politicization that got us here to begin with. The addiction is strong.
So this Sunday morning I head to church to pray. I pray first for the families of the dead. Then I pray for the nation as a whole – for our political process and our addiction to its polarization. And I pray for myself, for the wisdom to know what and what not to say – for the ability to hold my tongue rather than fill the lack of information with speculation and opinion that might prove to make matters worse, not better.
This is a Sunday morning to be on our knees, in humility and in prayer.
The post The Morning After… appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
As I write, Fox News is on inthe background, former President Trump has been shot, fortunately with apparently only minor injuries, “moments ago.” I cannot yet find reporting with a precise time-of-day. Reports are that the shooter was shot by Secret Service and is dead. There are reports of injuries and possibly death of others in attendance at the rally. Live TV coverage from all sources is, of course, chaotic and few facts are known. The news came over the internet rapidly, we tuned in the TV and once it was established that Trump was going to be OK I found myself wondering how long that universal condemnation will last. We are already playing politics with the health and well-being of the current occupant of the White House, you would have to think the same thing is going to happen with this.
I can’t believe I have to say this, but this is the point where politics have to end. That applies to former President Trump, but to President Biden’s health as well. The shooting is undeniable, and President Biden’s health is transparent. President Biden is putting his health into the political fray by failing to be straightforward and direct about it. We do not know the motivation of the shooter in this incident and given reports of the shooters death we may never know it. Politics hates a void and former President Trump will undoubtedly be tempted to fill that void with politics. It has to end. It just has to.
TV is right now already trying to fill the motivation void. STOP IT! The last presidential shooter was a total nutcase, motivated by fantasies unrelated to politics.
Everybody is condemning “political violence.” But the issue is bigger – violence is an endgame, not THE game. There is something wrong with the game if violence is the endgame. We have to fix the game.
The post When Politics End appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
“Death to America” chants have now become so frequent that they are hardly news. Let’s just start with that – not “American is dead wrong” – not “American’s position on Israel is contemptable” – nothing so mild. The chants are a literal wish for the death, death mind you, of an entire nation. Given that acts of terror killing hundreds, and in at least one case thousands, of Americans have been conducted by the ideological brethren of those making such chants, it is hard to dismiss the chants as merely metaphorical.
Then there is this (HT):
In an act of vandalism apparently carried out by pro-Hamas radicals in the Netherlands, the statue honouring Holocaust victim Anne Frank in Amsterdam was graffitied with the word “Gaza” in red paint on Tuesday afternoon.
The hatred involving in such an act is frightening. It accomplishes nothing other than an expression of hatred. Not only do the perpetrators find it necessary to express their hatred, but they do so at the expense of a monument honoring an innocent child.
The seven deadly sins are becoming far too evident these days. In these two stories we see pride, wrath and envy very publicly on display.
THE STORY – Joe Biden’s continued presence in the White House – while not so vile, is filled with pride, envy, greed and a touch of gluttony. No one wants him there save himself, his family and a few strangling supporters. To hold onto the office in the face of the overwhelming opposition to his presence there is not born of any good or selfless impulse.
We live in a troubled world – in reality the world is always troubled. We humans are prone to such wrongfulness. But right now it feels like we are embracing our wrongfulness rather than struggling against it. More evidence of the seven deadlies – in this case sloth.
That uneasiness you feel is justified. But it is not just because Joe Biden is in the White House or because there are people out there that want to kill us. Those are symptoms, not the disease. That uneasiness you feel is because in all those stories we are calling the wrong at least justified, if not right. The world is truly upside down.
The post Our Capability For Wrong appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Before the presser:
“He needs to drop out,” one Biden campaign official said. “He will never recover from this.”…“No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path,” said a second person working to elect him.
After the presser:
Biden vaulted over the lower-than-the-Earth’s-core expectations.
The most read word I have seen since the presser is “defiant.” Not good – “defiance” (anger) is symptomatic of age-related cognitive decline. Exceeding hyper low expectations is not an accomplishment. Are we sure it was “just a bad night?” Maybe last night was “just a good night.” Besides, one bad night is one too many for POTUS. Objectively, reasonably, there is no hope for Biden. Democrats are now trying simply not to be embarrassed.
My senior year in high school, we were a very, very good football team. Number one in the state, all that stuff. There were two games that season that we won 49-0 and 50-0. By half time our opponents were buried. Our coach, a good Christian man, did his very best to avoid embarrassing them – starters spent the second half on the bench (not to mention a good bit of the second quarter), the third string saw massive playing time, and yet the score continued to rise, the embarrassment was unavoidable.
What do you do when you are that deeply embarrassed? Well, I have been on the zero side of such scores in my life as well. When the embarrassment comes you either hide in shame or you own your mistakes and try to do better next time. You don’t try to find victory in an overwhelming loss – you just lose, and vow to do better next time. You beat them next year. Richard Nixon resigned and spent the rest of his life rebuilding his reputation as a statesman.
Well, there is no next year for Joe Biden, hence his recalcitrance. He is an embarrassment for Democrats – a big one. But there is no victory here with Biden in the mix. Yesterday Jim Geraghty pointed out there is only one mechanism open to Democrats – convincing the convention delegates to turn on Joe. To do that – a massive effort – they have to get very busy, very quickly. The time for equivocating is done. the time for action is now. The headlines this morning make that seem unlikely.
Look, Trump is Trump, divisive at best, easier to beat than most. But if he does what he has been doing, keeping his mouth shut and letting Biden destroy himself, he also seems inevitable. There is no good path forward for the Democrat party as a whole with Biden in the mix, and he does not look like he is going anywhere. Thus the embarrassment in unavoidable.
If I were a Democrat strategist, which frankly I am glad I am not, I’d be trying to figure out how to lose gracefully. No whining, no excuses – just take our lumps and vow to do better.
The post Time For Democrats To Lose Gracefully. appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The pressure on Joe Biden to step down is growing extremely intense. A neurologist appeared on NBC and stated emphatically that he has Parkinson’s. George Clooney has publicly asked him to step aside. All the cable anchors – most especially Chuck Todd and Jake Tapper – are going after him tooth-and-toenail. His polls are sinking like a stone in a pond. And yet Biden clings to office. The office is a public trust and the trust is gone. But then I am not sure Biden views the office that way.
We live in a country that increasingly thinks everything is some sort of entitlement. I cannot tell you how many of my clients complain, “No one wants to work anymore.” People increasingly think a job is some sort of right or reward, rather than a means to earn compensation. They think they own their jobs. Clearly Joe Biden thinks the presidency is his. Joe Biden is acting as both exemplar and example – he is setting a tone and reflecting it. The problem is none of it is productive. Jobs “belong” to employers and the presidency belongs to the people.
Joe Biden is giving a “Big Boy” presser this afternoon. The press is likely to resemble a school of sharks in a pool of chum. The presser is Biden’s opportunity to earn the public trust once again. His defiant letter to Democratic Congresspersons acted as if the presidency was his to lose, forgetting entirely that it has never been his, it has only ever been on loan – and right now the loan is being called. If he approaches the press with that same attitude this evening his future will be grim indeed.
But given that analysis we need to ask ourselves how we got into this mess – and not just the one in the White House. How did a nation forged from nothing come to take so much for granted? How did our citizens come to think of themselves as somehow entitled to a job and livelihood? (Whether that job is as an Uber driver or the presidency.) It’s not even just about jobs anymore. Grade inflation has allowed students to come to expect to pass, not work for it. Many students graduate high school without the ability to read and understand this blog – not just some esoteric point of regulation or law, but the most basic sentences and paragraphs. How did we get there?
The reasons in schools are myriad – from harassing parents to funding for results. Graduates simply carry the expectation from school to work. But what is going on in the presidency is both simpler and more complex. As simplicity, Joe Biden thinks the job is a reward for decades of service. It has always been fascinating to me that Biden is really a presidential loser – failing to win his party’s nomination at least twice and having never really started when early whispers told him not to bother any number of other times. The man has lusted after the job for forty years. I think he thinks it is his by virtue of wanting so much for so long. Complex in the politics of the moment created by a Democratic Party built as much on deception as reality. Biden is a stalking horse set up to appear palatable while behind the scenes liberals instituted policies completely unacceptable had they been run on.
Well, the stalking horse is falling apart before our eyes. As graduates soon learn they have to earn their pay – so the liberals behind the stalking horse will learn that if they want to change the world they have to convince the people to change – not dictate the change from above.
The post Earning It appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
We have an incapable president, not a wrong one, one simply incapable of doing the job. While SCOTUS is busy trying to dismantle the Administrative State, we see a purely administrative White House emerging as its titular head is simply not up to the job at least part of the time. I really don’t want to think about what would happen if a committee has to make a decision about something immediate and massively consequential, but here we are. His reticence to leave office in the face of immense pressure is reminiscent of old European kings. That which we founded the nation to avoid seems to be where we are. It is worrisome, but it is also the state of affairs for the moment. So perhaps we need to think about other things, at least today.
Technology is amazing. It has improved our lives, but it has also made them far more complex, and in many cases confused us, deeply.
There is a lot of buzz out there, thinking fusion power may be just around the corner. Hogwash written only by people that don’t have a clue about how fusion actually works or that have an agenda 0r like seeking research funding or as this article makes plain, simply want to control the world. The article looks at “ethical issues” associated with fusion – climate change, diversity, yada, yada, yada. It is the meandering of someone without a clue, asking questions we are simply not in a position to answer yet since we do not have a clue what fusion will look like if it ever comes to pass. For example, they worry about greenhouse gas emissions in the extraction of minerals need for fusion reactors?!?!?!?!? The greenhouse gas emissions from such operations are dwarfed by those used to generate electricity and hardly consequential when compared to the lack of such emissions that would be enjoyed as fusion came online for electrical generation. Not to mention the plenty of electricity we would enjoy from fusion would soon allow for electrically driven extraction equipment.
I always wonder what our ethics nowadays center on social engineering rather than personal behavior. Maybe we are trying to avoid having to be personally ethical?
Tech is not a canvas on which some social engineering project can be painted.
As Nvidia stock soars in the AI craze, one writer for Fortune looks to see if we are not creating an AI “bubble.” Conditions bear a remarkable resemblance to what we saw when the dotcom bubble burst. AI has immense promise, but the reality may be very different than the promise. Besides, as I have pointed out on several occasions in these spaces, what we are calling “AI” is not really artificial intelligence. The article points out that AI has it currently exists is massively energy intensive and may prove to be economically unfeasible for wide scale application because of the associated energy costs. They also point out that the Large Language Models are prone to hallucinations. There are problems.
The signs of a bubble – one that will eventually burst, are quite clear. The conditions and psychology of such developing just 25 years after the last one are fascinating and myriad.
But one thing seems clear – we project onto tech. We project our hopes and fears, we project our future, we project our “ethics.” In other words, we make a religion of that which is inherently areligious.
There is a lot of that going around these days. There is a climate religion, a tech religion and increasingly a Democratic Party religion. They are failing us.
What was wrong with Christianity again?
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One of the narratives they are trying to feed us for this election is the “heartlessness” of conservatives. It is an interesting charge given the ultimate heartlessness being exhibited by Biden and his close circle. They are willing to tank the fortunes of their party for the sake of their own gain, even willing to torture their patriarch. Sure, it is political fortunes, not financial ones at stake, but is it not the same thing people who complain about capitalism complain about? – hoarding, in this case an office, while excluding others? I have been thinking about this a great deal of late….
Been thinking about it to the point that I have been collecting “heartless” capitalism stories. Locally in East Tennessee a bunch of people have been dislocated – perfectly legally, as their mobile home park was sold and the new owners have decided to redevelop. Now, apparently, corporate America is trying to reduce home ownership in favor of rental. Who knew that what we thought affected everyone – the weather – was actually discriminatory? Finally, horror of horrors, SCOTUS has decided we do not have to let the homeless camp on our sidewalks. Such stories are on the increase. Given Donald Trump’s close association with corporate America and the legacy media’s loathing of that same man, I have to wonder if the rise in such stories is entirely coincidental. They also provide great cover for the massive inflation of the Biden years under which Americans are genuinely suffering.
There will always be winners and losers whether it be the financial world of the competition of politics. Even systems designed to eliminate such things have them. I have witnessed it in both the PRC and USSR. As George Orwell noted, “…some are more equal than others.” Even Jesus said, “you will always have the poor with you.” Such competition is fundamental to Darwin’s understanding of natural selection. That being true, the question is how best to deal with our compassion for the losers? Few people are truly heartless, it is rather a question of how to deal with the fact that there will always be losers. Systems to eliminate winners and losers always fail – from the communities of the early Christian church described in the book of Acts to the communism of the late 20th Century, they have failed. So what do we do?
If, indeed, the poor will always be with us, then we need to accept that fact and quit trying to eliminate them and instead be charitable towards them. The answer to poverty is not eliminating the possibility, but in radical charity.
Which brings me back to Biden and his countless and tremendous woes. He is hoarding political power, unquestionably – at massive cost to the Democrat party and to the nation as a whole. His defiant clinging to power defines heartlessness. It is stunning to witness from a man that claims to be “Working-class Joe.” He is acting like the “robber barons” he claims to despise. If he is really that guy he would act with charity, not this level of self-enrichment. The charitable thing to do would be to step aside – to sacrifice.
I’m thinking about another thing Jesus said:
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Right now there is a big plank in the eyes of Biden and his cohort – a really big one.
The post The Answer To “Evil” Capitalism appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton joined me this morning. After reviewing breakings stories from Asia and in Europe with the senator (and, as I pointed out, neither did the senator send me those questions in advance, nor did I alert him to what I would be asking) I asked him about Beltway media’s refusal to recognize –or inability to understand– that DOJ has in fact been weaponized against former President Trump:
Audio:
07-08hhs-cotton
Transcript:
HH: Joined now by Senator Tom Cotton from the great state of Arkansas. Senator Cotton, good morning. Welcome back.
TC: Good morning, Hugh. It’s good to be back on with you. I’m not sure what I did to merit Rocky Mountain High. Maybe it’s in honor of the President’s new most-trusted advisor.
HH: No, it’s just the, it’s just what the wheel spun round and turned up. I don’t really think you are a John Denver fan. Senator Cotton, there’s a story today in Ellis News Items, which I haven’t seen anywhere else, but I trust News Items. And it reads, “Japan and the Philippines signed a key defense pact earlier today allowing the deployment of Japanese forces for joint military exercises, including live fire drills, to the Southeast Asian nation that came under brutal Japanese occupation in World War II. But it’s now building an alliance with Tokyo as they face an increasingly assertive China. The reciprocal access agreement, with similarly allows Filipino forces to enter Japan for joint combat training was signed by,” and it goes on to talk about it. Are you surprised by that? Do you welcome it? And what does it mean in the larger scheme of things?
TC: Hugh, I do welcome closer cooperation between our two treaty allies, Japan and Philippines. Remember, the United States has mutual defense treaties with both of those nations. It’s especially welcome in the Western Pacific where there’s not a structure such as NATO that we do have a series of allies like Japan and the Philippines and Australia wrapping around into the Indian Ocean to countries like India that help provide kind of a frontier of freedom, if you will, against Chinese Communist aggression. Your listeners may have heard of something called the First Island Chain, which is the chain of islands starting with the Aleutians, and kind of running all the way down to Malaysia that help hem in Chinese ambitions. But the three most important parts of it are Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, which is right off of China’s coasts. So anything that brings Japan and Philippines closer together, helps to coordinate them militarily, helps them operate with us in the event there’s a crisis there, is a welcome development.
HH: Have you been following the Chinese so-called Coast Guard’s incursion into Filipino waters, Senator?
TC: Very closely, Hugh. This is yet another example of Chinese aggression against its neighbors all around its borders, from the southwest where they’ve brutally beaten and killed Indian soldiers up at the tippy tops of the Himalayans, and all the way up to Japan where they threaten Japanese-controlled islands as well. But some of the most aggressive activity has been in the South China Sea on these islands that are within Filipino sovereignty in which so-called Coast Guard vessels, which are really adjuncts of the PLA Navy, are interfering with resupply operations and otherwise harassing Filipino Navy ships. I don’t think this has gotten enough attention in Washington. It certainly doesn’t seem to be meriting the attention of our President, who should be paying it much closer attention since again, we have a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines.
HH: Let me come to one more national security story, Senator Cotton. This is also from Ellis Items, and I saw it nowhere else this morning. The Netherlands will begin sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine “without delay” after export licenses were granted, Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said during a visit to Kyiv this weekend. “Now that we’ve got clearance on the first F-16, they will be delivered without delay, Veldkamp said Saturday in a press conference in the Ukrainian capital. Ukraine hopes the advance U.S.-made jets will help it gain air superiority over Russia and better protect its troops and its cities. Now one, do you welcome that? And two, why haven’t we done the same thing?
TC: Well, unfortunately, Hugh, there has been a very long delay. It is now the second week of July, 2024. At the end of February, 2022, right after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Tony Blinken, the President’s Secretary of State, went on a Sunday morning news show and said that we would approve the transfer of those fighter aircraft, fighter aircraft like those, to Ukraine. Joe Biden immediately walked that back the next day, which is an example of how Joe Biden pussyfooted around for years in Ukraine, enticing Vladimir Putin to be more and more aggressive, without giving the Ukrainians what they needed to defend their own territory and to bring this war to an earlier conclusion. Just like Joe Biden tempted Vladimir Putin to go for the jugular in the first place with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan or early appeasement of Russia in his tenure. And as President Trump said in the debate a couple weeks ago, that’s in contrast to his policy. We saw what happened for four years when Donald Trump was president. We don’t have to guess. Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine or any other country. When Joe Biden, and for that matter, Barack Obama were president, he invaded Ukraine. It only seems to happen when Democrats are president. So this is just another example of how Joe Biden’s weakness has invited aggressors around the world to be more aggressive, to threaten more American friends and allies, to put our interests at greater peril.
HH: Now Senator Cotton, for the benefit of the audience, you did not send me those questions. Nor did I tell you what I would be asking. Will you confirm that?
TC: I will confirm that I did not send you any questions, nor did you tell me, nor do I think you sometimes know until it pops in your head live on radio.
HH: Okay, it doesn’t. Like I might, I could come up with something about the Red Sox on short notice, because they’re so bad and the Guardians are so good. But are you surprised at the President’s team is sending out questions to journalists to ask him? I actually have never, I’ve been doing this since 1990. No elected official has ever done that in my 34 years of radio and television.
TC: No, and Hugh, I don’t think it’s common practice. It’s certainly not common practice for me, either. Sometimes, if you’re going to appear on a Sunday morning show, the producers will tell you what you want to talk about so you can be prepared and in an informed fashion. But it’s at the level of we want to talk about the farm bill this time, or we want to talk about the war in Ukraine, or we want to talk about the 2024 campaign. It’s not the actual questions to be asked. So for a normal politician, I would find it surprising.
HH: You know, I often, when the former President comes on, one of his team will send me a couple of articles that said look at this, and it’s not a request, it’s just it might be interesting to go here. That’s not what happened here.
TC: Well, yeah, Hugh. No, it’s perfectly normal for you as a radio host, or me as a senator or any normal American to not have something on front of mind. So if you’re going to go on a radio program or a TV program and you’re expecting to, say, talk about the war in Ukraine, and the host decided he wants to talk about the 2025 tax legislation that Congress has to pass, it may not be as informative of a discussion if you don’t at least know that and give some thought, have some chance to collect your thoughts in advance. That is different from having actual questions not just provided to you, but given to the host. But again, Hugh, this should not be surprising anyone with Joe Biden. We’ve all seen those photographs taken when he does press conferences of the lapel cards that he holds in his hands, that he has the picture of the reporter and what they’re going to ask so he can, he doesn’t even have to know their names, so he can see their face and call on them and know exactly what he’s about to get asked. So this is not surprising at all with Joe Biden. It’s just another example of what we’ve all known for years, not just for 12 days, that Joe Biden is not up to the task of being president.
HH: Now Senator, two of your friends, two of your colleagues in the Senate, Senator Rubio and Senator Vance, were on two of the Sunday shows yesterday, and they both met hosts who deny that the Department of Justice has been weaponized. I have already explained what I think about that. I’m not sure they got the point across. Do you believe the Department of Justice has been weaponized against Donald Trump?
TC: Against Donald Trump and his supporters, Hugh. I mean, Jack Smith has pursued deranged, fanatical legal theories the Supreme Court continues to reject as Jack Smith loses every time he goes to that Court. They have used investigative tactics and techniques against every grandma in a red MAGA hat who was within a country mile of the Capitol on the January 6th riots, but they are not using, for instance, against the Antifa and the BLM rioters, or the Democratic street militias that were marching outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes, or that have been vandalizing statues of veterans in direct violation of federal law and occupying college campuses and federal lands. They haven’t used any of those tactics. Look at what else they’re doing. They’re investigating Catholics, because they think their Mass is too conservative. Or they’ve been pursuing people who are saying prayers outside of abortion clinics when they’re not investigating pro-Hamas lunatics who are conducting nascent pogroms against Jews across America. Of course, the Department of Justice has been used to target Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s supporters. That has to stop, and it will stop after we send Joe Biden home.
HH: So Senator, I have known and worked with both Dana Bash and Kristen Welker on the biggest stages there are, presidential debates. I like them both. They’re both very smart. They both had the same response, which is that there’s no evidence of weaponization. And I think to myself, do they really not follow the news? Do they not know that Jack Smith works for Merrick Garland? Do they not know about the FBI? Do they not know? Or do they simply reject it? What do you think, Senator?
TC: I think they just reject it. I mean, especially Kristen Welker, I mean, they’re just wearing blue jerseys at this point. And they’re also looking for any harbor in a storm. Right now, they’re desperate not to ask anyone more questions about Joe Biden’s fitness for the job, so they go back to their, you know, old faithful, tried and true hits, and trying to press Republicans on this or that issue that the American people also frankly don’t care that much about. But there can be no doubt again that the Department of Justice has been weaponized. Look at Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s classified documents cases.
HH: Yup.
TC: Donald Trump, a president, who has declassification authority, who has certain rights and prerogatives under the Presidential Records Act, gets charged with federal crimes by Jack Smith. Joe Biden, a vice president, who has no such authorities, who has no such rights and prerogative, gets of scot-free. I guess maybe the best you could say is he got off scot-free is because he’s non-compos mentis, which I would recall that Kamala Harris and everyone on down condemned in the harshest terms, Robert Hur when he released his report saying Joe Biden would be a sympathetic and confused old man to a jury. And now, I think he’s been totally vindicated.
HH: Now…
TC: But that is just another example, those two documents cases, about how the Department of Justice has plainly had two standards of justice under Joe Biden.
HH: Last question. Former President Trump on Truth Social graciously offered another debate to Joe Biden, provided there was no moderator. I don’t think he should do that. I don’t think he should go on the stage again, because the current President is not capable of doing it. But what did you make of President Trump’s offer to President Biden?
TC: Well, if the Democrats want another test of Joe Biden’s ability, then that would be a good one. I think they’ve already agreed to one in September. Of course, the cake will be baked by then. I would just point out, though, Hugh, that Joe Biden is obviously declined since he ran for president in 2020, and that’s an even further decline since he was vice president. The Joe Biden that we saw on the debate stage a couple weeks ago is the exact same Joe Biden that Democratic primary voters elected over, or nominated overwhelmingly earlier this year in primaries, in some cases, that were just a few weeks ago. So the Democrats don’t have a Joe Biden age problem. They have a Joe Biden polling problem.
HH: Well said. Senator Cotton, always a pleasure. Enjoy the summer. Go Guardians. He’s a Red Sox fan, unfortunately, but we let him on the show anyway.
End of interview.
The post “Of course, the Department of Justice has been used to target Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s supporters” Senator Tom Cotton appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Consultant – a role I played most of my professional life – is an interesting job. Essentially, people are hiring you to be smarter than them. Doesn’t mean you always are, but that is the general idea. Yet, it is amazing how many times they do not take your advice. Now, often that’s because of factors you, the consultant, know nothing about. Good clients will say, “But what about…,” so that as a consultant you can use your smarts to continue to try and resolve the issue with the new information in hand. But sometimes there are clients that just don’t want to listen; that do not want to hear what you have to say; that were compelled to hire you for some reason but have no intention of actually utilizing your services. It took me a few years to figure it out, but the best thing to do with such clients is let them fail. There is no sense bucking the tide and you’ll make more money cleaning up the mess than you will preventing it.
That’s deeply cynical, but just a fact of life – particularly in small, family-owned businesses where the family politics are complex. In my (mostly) retirement I have let go of such clients and my life is much better for it. But in only 18 months two such clients have called asking me to help clean up a mess. Being (mostly) retired, I turned them down, but somebody is going to make a chunk of change dealing with the mess.
Several stories appeared over the weekend about what has and is happening inside the White House and the Biden family – NBC – Daily Mail – WaPo. There is a lot of leaked finger-pointing going on in (out of?) that place. Family members being forced to come to terms with a reality they have to date been unwilling to face and aides trying to make sure they can get another job. The stories all merge on the theme of “Who failed to protect the president?” Interesting question – several points to be made from it.
Firstly, that the president needs such protection is the problem – not who failed to provide it.
Secondly, this sort of leaking and finger-pointing indicates that the cake is baked and frosted. No one, save maybe his immediate family, is trying to rescue the president; they are trying to save their own bacon in a massive political disaster. The means and timing of Biden’s departure are TBD, but the man is clearly done – the rats are leaving the ship.
Thirdly, on Saturday we examined the deep moral failing in this mess and decided that the cruelty to Biden himself was quite unpalatable. This kind of stuff just compounds the cruelty, reducing Joe Biden to a ping-pong ball being batted back-and-forth between family and staffers. Not only is it cruel, it reduces the office with each passing moment.
But what I found most interesting, and what pricked my consultant’s ears, was this from the NBC story:
Since the debate, Biden family members have felt that some of the president’s top aides in the White House and on the campaign have thrown the president under the bus rather than taking responsibility for what led to a catastrophic debate performance, according to one of the sources.
Does that sound a bit like, “let them fail,” to you? Suppose aides saw the president’s escalating incapacity, knew something needed to be done, but the president and his family would not listen. What would you do if you were an aide in that circumstance? Resign, I hope – but such resignation is in fact letting them fail.
This is the scenario I speculated about in the immediate wake of the debate and to which the host objected. The efforts to retrench we have seen from Biden and his family since the debate are clear indication that they are unwilling to listen to the very reasonable conclusion that he is no longer up to the job. When you add to that fact the necessity of spectacular optics to make any replacement for Joe Biden in the election just a few months away politically viable – letting him fail would be quite reasonable – if incredibly painful for a lot of people.
There is a huge mess to be cleaned up here – it is a shame we have to do it. But one way or the other, the problem will be resolved.
The post Sometimes You Have To Let Them Fail appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday we examined the mess created by Joe Biden’s infirmity, and likely incapacity at least part of the time, and determined that underlying the massive political crisis its revelation has created is an even larger and more pervasive moral crisis. The situation places self-interest über alles, is built on lies and contains a huge cruel streak in its treatment of the man Joe Biden – his seeming willingness to endure such treatment notwithstanding. The next few months will decide the outcome of the political crisis, but the moral one will endure, for a long time to come.
We did not get in a place where this political crisis is even possible overnight. Friday, I traced the roots of much of the issue to the “canonization” of Barack Obama. If we make saviors of our political heroes, is there room for an actual, eternal Savior in our lives? On Friday at City Journal, Lexi Boccuzzi, wrote about how anti-Catholic bias, thought conquered with the election of JFK, is not helping the things people thought it would help – that it is in fact making them worse. Since the rise of Marx and his contention that religion was “the opium of the masses,” the Left has targeted religion as a barrier to true freedom. But as Chesterton said:
When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.
And that is the problem. Barack Obama may have been president, but he was no savior and thinking he was created this mess. Christianity, whatever issues it may have notwithstanding, was fundamentally a part of founding this nation and its rejection has not led us to good results. It has always been fascinating to me that Jesus made claims precisely opposite of Marx,
So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
As this political crisis plays out, we need to address the moral one or we will find that our politics will continue to crumble in new and even more conspicuous ways. After many years now of turning to our politics to resolve our moral dilemmas – something that has clearly failed – I would suggest it is time to turn back to that which has served us so well historically – the church.
It’s Sunday – why not begin by heading to church this morning.
The post Dealing With Our National Crisis appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday, we relied on Jim Geraghty to make the case the Joe Biden is unfit for office. Yesterday’s Grand Old Pod (currently behind the Hughniverse paywall, but rumored to be released at Highly Concentrated Hugh this date) proclaims a “mutiny” within the Democratic Party. This is an unprecedented political moment – and precarious. But the revelation of what is the deepest and most problematic national crisis came in Hour 2 of the Friday broadcast in the host’s weekly hit with Sarah Bedford. (Also behind the Hughniverse paywall.) In that interview Bedford stated quite plainly that congressional Democrats biggest, almost sole, concern is not what is good for the country, but who can beat Trump in the upcoming election. Therein lies the genuine and deepest issue.
Yesterday I said, “There is not much to discuss here – unless there are considerations thought more important than the actual functioning of the presidency – matters of politics and the personal,” and here Bedford has presented evidence that such is precisely the case – that the naked politics are more important than having a functioning president – that their partisan politics are more important than what is best for the nation.
That is, of itself, a frightening proposition – a proposition they will deeply regret in the event of an actual national crisis like terrorism, war, or massive natural disaster. But I want you to also consider this on a very human scale. Asking a man in Joe Biden’s condition to try and function in the presidency is cruel and can serve no purpose on a personal level other than to hasten his ultimate destiny. So not only are people calculating what is best politics instead what is best for the nation, they are also quite willing to be very cruel to a specific individual in service of those politics.
Underlying the political crisis we face is a moral one – and that is the real and terrifying depth of our national crisis. At a minimum this represents total amorality – simply not allowing any moral considerations enter into their political calculations. Sadly, that is what I hope is going on, because the alternative would require evil intent – actual immorality. Morality demands putting the good of the nation first. Morality would preclude personal cruelty altogether.
Further compounding this is the moral crisis created by the lying of the Biden cohort in an effort to create the illusion that he has the capacity to execute his duties as POTUS. This is at least a more common form of moral lapse, in service to one’s own pride and is often reflective and not calculated and despite my proclamations of Friday 6/28, is far easier to forgive than the amoral calculus the Democratic party seems to be in the midst of.
As a nation we have endless, and sometimes ugly, arguments about what constitutes morality. But no more, now we set morality aside for the sake of politics and personal gain. That is not a good development. I think we think we have set morality aside for the sake of “getting along.” Just the opposite has happened. We have reduced ourselves and turned our political debates into matters of life-and-death. Our nation was founded on us being a decent and moral people. Our democracy has little chance of decent functioning if we are reduced to a mob of self-seeking, amoral animals. I could start quoting the Federalist Papers and D’Tocqueville to demonstrate the necessity of morality underlying our nation, but why cloud the point with such rhetorical flourish? The facts are straightforward and completely evident.
Everyday Joe Biden is in office the nation suffers and he suffers. Forget the election, forget Trump, the suffering is undeniable and to continue to create suffering is immoral. Simple human decency must carry the day. And that it has not to date is the biggest signal we have a very real, very deep and very genuine crisis.
The post The True Depth of Our National Crisis appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Here it is.
Mr. President, what happens if Iran nukes Israel when you have a “bad night?”
What happens if there is a major terrorist attack in the US when you have a “bad night?”
The post Hot Take On “The Interview” appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Rumors and rumors of rumors continue to swirl around the nation. Is Biden going to withdraw, is he not? Who will stand in his stead? Will he resign? He said this to who and this to them and they say…. Staffers say…Insiders say…Jill Biden said…. (It’s probably all true because I doubt the president can make up his own mind.) Meanwhile, on Wednesday Jim Geraghty made the case as plainly as it can be made, that by all reports and what we have all seen independently, Joe Biden is incapable of fulfilling his duties as POTUS. Game…Set…Match! There is not much to discuss here – unless there are considerations thought more important than the actual functioning of the presidency – matters of politics and the personal. And that set me thinking.
We’ve seen this before in the scandals of the TV preachers. Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert, Peter Popoff, the list is long. I’ve seen it happen in “ministries” (I hesitate to call them churches) smaller and less public many, many times. The leader fails, miserably, and yet they hang on to power in some fashion. That which is being lead does not quite let go of that leadership, failed though it is. The failures are clear, the damage to the institution obvious, but there is all sorts of sturm und drang about what to do about the guy that is supposed to be in charge, but clearly is otherwise occupied.
Wait….I can almost hear people screaming about the fact that the child abuse cases of the Catholic church are missing from my list. That’s because they are different than the scandals of Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism and that difference strikes at the heart of the point I want to make. It took a while for the Roman Catholic church to wake up to those scandals, but once it did, it got busy fixing them, and the church stands, scars evident, but trying to get back to doing what it is supposed to be doing- and succeeding for the most part. What’s the difference?
Evangelical and Pentecostal ministries are personality driven – they are a reflection of their leader, not their mission – when the leader fails, the institution fails, which typically means it dies. The Roman Catholic church, one of the oldest institutions on the planet, has not made that mistake, the institution and its mission exceed any leader within it. Therein lies the key difference.
So, back to the Executive Branch of our government. Barack Obama was no ordinary president. The Democratic party did not get him elected, they anointed him. As the first African-American president he was their version of the Holy Grail. They imbued him with an air of the holy. And he was unafraid to take advantage of that fact. Readers of history will know that George Washington was granted a similar aura – viewed almost as a savior. Washington refused at every turn – every turn – to accept the holy mantle that so many wanted to place on his shoulders. But not Obama, he reveled in it, luxuriated in it, and used it to try and “fundamentally change” the country. When Obama took office he was viewed by many as if, and did not hesitate to act as if, he was bigger than the office.
Then along came Trump. A man with an incredibly out-sized ego, and not afraid to show it. Whereas Obama’s very equally massive ego was disguised in his demeanor, Trump wore his on his sleeve. Trump was presumed to be Obama but on the opposite side of the aisle. There is no denying Trump’s ego, but he proved to be willing to be constrained by the demands of the office. But most people could not see the forest for the trees, all they saw was the ego. And so, in the public’s mind, the office had subordinated to the personality occupying the office.
Most people know that is not how things are supposed to work, and that as the failure of the preachers discussed above leads to the demise of the institution, so they feared for the institution of the presidency. And so they elected Joe Biden – who they presumed, based on his decades of public service, would restore the office and the institution to its proper ascendancy.
But alas, such has not proven to be the case. The dilemma we now find ourselves in is plainly driven by the fact that Biden, or at least those around him as Biden appears to be a blank slate much of the time, believe they are bigger than the office.
What is at stake right now is far, far larger than the individuals involved or the partisan politics that have come to invade even the most basic of concerns in our nation. What is at stake is our very form of government – it can only survive if it is more important than those that operate within it.
I have no clue how this thing is going to play out. Biden might just resign any moment and he might see the election through. He might refuse the nomination. But whatever happens in terms of Joe Biden, it’s only for six months. We have an election in November and a new president in January and that is what is going to make the lasting difference. The question for the election is who will occupy the office and make sure the office is bigger than the occupant. Donald Trump, foibles notwithstanding – most notably that ego – has already shown he does not consider himself bigger than the office. I don’t care who stands in the Democrat slot in November, the party is embroiled, and has been since Obama, in the politics of personality. We have to set them aside until they can figure this out, or like the churches described earlier, fail and be replaced.
The post Confusing The Office and Its Occupant appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses;
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress, in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.The post How It All Started appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
We all know about so-called “misinformation” on the internet. Last week, before we learned the skull of the man occupying the presidency is often vacant, Matthew Yglesias, dismissed the common conception of misinformation as marginal:
The whole notion of “misinformation” as conventionally construed has taken some blows lately, including scandals in the misinformation research field and, more importantly, some great work from Brendan Nyhan, Emily Thorson, and co-authors showing that “in our review of behavioural science research on online misinformation, we document a pattern of low exposure to false and inflammatory content that is concentrated among a narrow fringe with strong motivations to seek out such information.”
But he defines a new form of misinformation, “elite misinformation,” that is quite consequential.
As defined by Yglesias:
People have a lot of erroneous beliefs about the policy status quo in the United States, and that seems to matter. These beliefs are normally not formed via exposure to some kind of social media misinformation; they’re just about things that aren’t in the news very much and that people misunderstand. Which is to say that “people having information that is not correct” is absolutely a huge deal in politics… it’s just not necessarily “misinformation” in the sense that the misinformation police intend. In Dylan Matthews’ profile of the State Department’s small but very successful intelligence bureau, for example, one thing that comes through is that the bulk of American intelligence agencies genuinely believed that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons program. This erroneous information had a huge impact on the media, on the mass public understanding of political debates 2002-2003, in decision-making in Washington, and on the broad trajectory of American politics.
And I think erroneous ideas that are perpetrated by mainstream institutions — what I’m going to call “elite misinformation” — are a really big deal in an underrated way.
So, the differentiation here is between misinformation floating around the internet and misinformation that is institutionally confirmed and acted upon. He cites several examples, most of it rooted in some statistical sleight-of-hand. His conclusive section in sub-headed “Lying to people is bad.” Ya think? He says:
You can dupe people into a one-off, like the invasion of Iraq, but to have a sustained program of policy reform, you need to do things that work. And the political system is too large — hundreds of legislators, thousands of staffers, innumerable bureaucrats and interest groups, along with media, influencers, and other stakeholders — to operate on a conspiratorial basis.
What we are watching since last Thursday night is just what he describes. – a lie falling apart in the face of actual reality (information.) The lie is, of course, that Joe Baden is capable of carrying out his duties as POTUS. This is the ultimate in elite misinformation.
The host talked in the first segment this morning about “proceeding slowly” when it comes to the institution of the presidency. He did so in the context of the various court rulings of the last few days. But I think it also applies to the scandal of Biden’s incapacity. Since last Thursday night I have wanted heads on pikes – both from the standpoint of what he has done to the office and to policy (or not done depending on your perspective) but also as related to the abuse that has been heaped on the man by keeping him in a place he is clearly unfit to be in.
It seems increasingly clear that a resignation is not in the offing. Nor does a 25th Amendment action seem to be on the horizon. Options at the convention are limited and deeply damaging to the legitimacy of the party in the voters’ eyes. But the ultimate stop gap looms in November – the election. Perhaps it will be better for the nation if the end of the Biden presidency happens in the normal order of business as opposed to the spectacular stunts that have in no small part gotten us into this mess to begin with.
That said, let us never forget his presence in the office is based on a lie – the lie that he is capable of doing the job. It would be cruel to campaign based on his infirmities – but we most definitely should run on the fact that they, meaning Democrats, have worked very hard to deceive us. Whether they have actively misled us or simply bought into the lie themselves, the whole thing is a house of lies. They need to be routed. We need to put a stake in the heart of the concept that lying in pursuit of worthy goals is justified.
The post The Ultimate In “Elite Misinformation” appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday, in a grossly political speech done in a White House setting, the man that occupies the presidency condemned the presidential immunity ruling handed down by SCOTUS yesterday. The irony is breathtaking. For one, he used the phrase, “We all saw it with our own eyes….” Yes we did, just four short days ago, we all saw the same man unable to string a coherent sentence together. Yet there he stood acting as if we were supposed to ignore the evidence that was before us. Which leads to the second irony – he may very well avoid prosecution for fraud via the immunity just confirmed by the Court. Does he and his close entourage expect us to ignore the now obvious realities?
Axios talked to White House staffers that described Biden as “meticulously stage-managed” with only a few “engaged” hours per day. This was, I think, supposed to ease our minds about the president’s health, that he wasn’t always that bad. But all I could think about was it was a signal as to what time of day I, as an Iranian with nuclear weapons, should use them.
I have scanned coverage of the yesterday’s address and most of it mentions that the president appeared far more in command of his faculties than at last week’s debate, but such mention was several paragraphs in and never mentioned the time-of-day the speech was delivered, or all the other stage management clearly done in order to create that appearance. That’s the lead, not the speech.
While my sympathy for the president on a personal level is immense the audacity of his, and his teams, behavior after that disastrous debate threatens to overwhelm that sympathy with intense anger. This round up from Battleswarm Blog makes plain just how many Democrats want rid of the fragile and declining old man, and yet he carries on as if his presidency does not rest on lies and fraud. I honestly do not care what the president said in his speech, I cannot rely on any of it, because I do not know when he speaks truth and when he lies. His very ability to stand there and deliver the speech appears, at best, temporary, if not artificially produced.
If, as the Axios piece says, there are two Bidens – functioning and non-functioning, are we supposed to be grateful and attentive when the functioning one shows up? The only thought that crosses my mind is “What is happening when the non-functioning one is around?” Which is “the real and authentic” Biden? Functioning or non-functioning? This idea is neither helpful nor comforting, this simply illustrates the fundamental unreliability of this White House.
I opened by referring to Joe Biden as “the man that occupies the presidency.” That was quite deliberate. We have no idea who is actually making what decisions – no idea when Joe Biden is acting as president and when his infirmities take such strong hold that someone else must step in. Joe Biden sits in the chair, but quite clearly does not function as president thoroughly and completely. Our nation’s Chief Executive and Head of State is a lie.
When kings and queens would fail there would be a regent. Someone that everyone know was acting in place of the incapacitated monarch. Clearly there are regents in this White House, but who are they and what are they doing? We don’t know and that only compounds the lies. Jill Biden bears a remarkably resemblance to Marie Antoinette – is that really what we want? The Vice President and her team appear more concerned about matters of race than making sure the executive branch functions as intended. Who is in charge? It is clearly not Joe Biden.
The Biden administration is fraudulent – trying to make us believe a man not up to the job, is. They are going to be grateful for the immunity the court decided yesterday, very grateful.
The post Where To Focus Amidst the Noise – On the Fraud appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Contributor John Schroeder makes an argument below that I told him already I don’t agree with but found interesting and I can see how some might conclude that President Biden’s performance was so awful that it must have been planned and talking points distributed. It doesn’t work that way though. No one saw that disaster coming. If anyone told the president “Don’t!” he didn’t listen to them any more than Iran or Putin listened to Biden when he said “Don’t.”
Neither the First Lady nor long time Biden loyalist and former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain –who captained debate prep for Biden– would never have cooperated with such a deeply embarrassing display of infirmity and incoherence. The president and his closet advisors did their best, and it was just so awful no one could have anticipated it. The universal shock from liberal-to-left network and cable anchors could not have been rehearsed, and even now there are efforts to rally the troops going on among die-hard, hard-left partisans on “X” who realize that Vice President Harris is ill-equipped to govern for six months in the event of a resignation or win if she became the nominee. (And how would the Democratic Party not fracture for decades to come if she was rejected by the Democratic Convention?) Even if she asked Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to be her running mate, thus locking up the Keystone State, Harris is a terrible candidate no matter how well stage-managed, and very likely to lose in November. Of course, most predicted President Trump would lose in 2016.
My full assessment of Biden’s debacle from my AM program is in my new pod this morning over at “Highly Concentrated Hugh.”
As the day proceeds and then staggers to a close under the weight of blue bubble shock and dismay, my senior producer Duane Patterson will collect more second-and-third takes and put out a special edition of his new podcast which began this week. After three decades of producing talk radio, and 24 years as senior producer of my program, as well as hosting “The Aftershow” over at “The Hughniverse,” our premium site, Duane is now going to leave less and less on the cutting room floor, and put out brand new stuff and he’s just the best at this. “Duane’s World” should be added to your podcast feed because as a producer (and occasional guest host) for center-right talk radio and now the Salem News Channel for three decades, Duane has a fabulous ear for news, especially the key sound bytes and headlines of the day, as well as an encyclopedic command of music. The late, great Tony Snow tried to lure Duane to the east coast back when Tony began his radio show, and Tony knew what he was doing. I forgave him as all is fair in the world of broadcast, but Duane is a life-long child of the Golden State, and won’t be going anywhere until Gavin Newsom turns out the lights (literally, as the CA grid fails just as surely as the budget Grand Canyon gets bigger.
So, don’t be depressed, and don’t trust most of network and cable news. You can trust Duane:
The post Should President Biden Resign? Yes. Should He At Least Announce He Will Not Accept The Nomination In Chicago? Yes. Will He? Probably Not. appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
It’s universal – everyone thinks Biden is out at the convention, or before. Leading Democrats, legacy media, all of them saw Biden fail and fail miserably last night. But then I speculated yesterday that the entire debate was a set-up to move Biden out of the way. Too many shoved the knife in him way too fast for those to be hot takes – they were talking points. I honestly don’t know what is more pathetic, Biden’s performance or the fact that his ego, and the Democrat apparatus, has kept him there this long. The delusions go much further than the White House residence. Last night was a signal not just that Biden is failing but that the Democratic Party is quite broken.
There is fraud here, either by White House insiders that kept the true state of the president’s health from everyone’s view. or by the party as a whole that did the same thing to the American people. That’s the bottom line – last night was a stunt to bring their con to an end – they think they played it in a way that will permit them to continue the con but what actually happened was that we now know they are cons. Lying, thieving cons.
How will they overcome that?
In yesterday’s post I dismissed “next in line,” Vice President Harris, saying she is as incoherent as the president but without the excuse. The primary point of that post yesterday was to list Gavin Newsom’s countless disqualifications. Michelle Obama’s name is raised as an “outsider” untainted by all this, but please – who in the world do you think has been perpetrating this con? Team Obama! Biden’s staff, who have to be in on the con regardless of how widespread it is or is not, are all Obama holdovers. Untainted my sainted aunt – the woman is neck deep in this con.
And here is the thing – even if the con is limited to White House insiders – the rest of the party had to willfully suspend their suspicions in pursuit of their own agendas. Even if they did not con us, they willfully bought into the con to maintain their power. They placed their own interests ahead of the best for the nation. If not cons, they are so narcissistic as to be disqualified from office as well.
Anyone that buys into the Democratic Party right now, regardless of who they sub in for Biden, is a fool. The party as a whole cannot be trusted. The amount of mess from the fan that has hit any specific individual will vary, but they are all dirty to some extent.
The only question the Democrats face now is whether to let it die and build a new party or try and resuscitate what they have. But here’s the thing – even if they manage to get their heart beating and breathing on its own, the project of regaining actual health is a project that will take far more time than between now and the election – if it is even possible to regain full health. They are on hospice – trying to make their death as painless as possible.
I pray for the grace to forgive. That the nation has been conned is now quite clear. Everything that has gone so disastrously wrong during this administration – from the prices at the grocery store to the unaffordability of housing to Iran being within a moment of nuclear weapons to the thirteen dead at Abbey Gate – is part of the con. That’s hard to forgive – very, very hard to forgive.
The post The Democratic Party Entered Hospice Last Night appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
In late May I wrote of the need for a SCOTUS decision in the Jarkesy case. asking them to decide to overturn the in-house judicial proceedings of the SEC. Today, they handed down just that decision. Here’s the majority opinion. And boy are the liberals on the court upset – I mean ticked off. Justice Sotomayor insisted on reading her descent from the bench. So angry is she, she accused her colleagues of a constitutionally unbalancing “power-grab.” The irony there, given her statements after the Dobbs decision – a decision that undid the largest judicial power-grab in U.S. history, is palpable. I have just skimmed the majority opinion, but I found one aspect of its reasoning remarkable.
Background. The case decided concerned an investment guy and his firm that the SEC ruled had violated some securities regulations, and then proceeded with enforcement under their in-house judicial process. The accused (Jarkesy) requested, and was denied, a trial by jury and sued subsequent to that denial. Today SCOTUS ruled Jarkesy did have a right to a jury trial, essentially pulling the rug out from under vast portions of the administrative law system as we know it today.
If I understand the reasoning correctly, and bear in mind I am not a lawyer, the majority of the court ruled, in part, that Jarkesy had a right to a jury trial because the penalties levied against Jarkesy were not compensating an injured party but instead went directly into SEC coffers. Thus, and I am speaking now not the decision, the administrative legal system the SEC enjoyed amounted to a type of government extortion, not subject to any outside review.
In my May post I wrote:
…when the accused is a small, sole proprietor, business and the charges are something silly like failure to file a report in a timely fashion. In such cases the “judge” is a functionary that had nothing better to do that day and took seven years to complete undergrad school, the “prosecutor” is a line inspector that felt insulted by the accused who took exception when they forced their way into the accused’s place of business and started pointing fingers and the accused is represented by himself without a clue as to what has or is happening to him other than there are a bunch of people telling him he is a criminal and they need more money than he has to make it all go away.
Doesn’t that sound extortive to you? I am not exaggerating there either, I have sat in numerous such meetings in my professional life.
Of course the liberals on the court are upset by this decision. It will vastly curtail what they view as “progress” which serves to enrich and enlarge government more than anything else. Justice Sotomayor described the decision as “earth-shattering.” Yes, yes it is. It will take a while for all this to work itself out, but this decision will be far more consequential than Dobbs, even if not quite as publicized. If the court pulls the plug on Chevron deference, which it looks like it is poised to do, the entire foundation of the administrative state will be gone. Congress will have to go back to work and the days of government by fiat, disguised as regulation, will be gone.
The post The Jarkesy Decision – Angering Liberals Everywhere appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
A pre-convention debate — quite unusual. Why? Is this pure ego-jerk-reaction to Trump’s challenges? Quite possibly, but as my mind pondered what is going on, something else has come to mind. I have said, quite publicly, that for the Democratic party to successfully “sub out” Joe Biden, Biden has to undergo some sort of very public, very visible crisis. An open convention is unknown to younger voters and I can just hear the Squad mavens screaming “insider power – this convention is illegitimate!” We have spent decades turning the conventions from functioning party gatherings to media events, reversing that tide on a dime is not going to go down well. But the timing of this debate, well that would give the media time to educate the Democrat base on what happens if Biden shows himself incapable of doing the job tonight. Further they could cast his failure as Trump’s fault in some imaginative way, as if words can actually harm. Pure speculation on my part, and against the tide of prevailing opinion, but it is possible that this evening’s debate is designed specifically for Biden to fail and fail sufficiently to justify and open convention. Then what?
Subbing out Biden comes with a whole other set of issues – namely who to put in. Leading Democratic names are problematic. Kamala Harris has proven herself almost as inarticulate as the president but without age as an excuse. That leaves California Governor Gavin Newsom. Now, there are a number of far more reasonable and competent Democrats out there, and one of them could end up with the nod if a battle of California money between Newsom and Harris proves a stalemate. But more likely the California lefties will pick a winner and given that Harris has embarrassed herself so frequently and so publicly, Newsom stands tall.
One problem – Harris is truly incompetent and might therefore do significant damage to the republic. But Newsom’s ambition is so naked and so tied to extreme leftism that the damage might be much more extensive. Which brings me to the Front Page Magazine review of a new book, “Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power.” (HT: Powerline) The book is by Ellie Gardey Holmes (Foreword by Newt Gingrich) and the review penned by Bruce Bawer. Clearly, neither are fans of Newsom and both paint him in near demonic terms. I wish we would quit doing that – there is enough actual information that makes Newsom look bad, we do not need to embellish our language and write in all caps to enhance the point. So let’s just hit a few highlights, quoting from the review:
- This is a man who, despite having no discernible talent for governance or anything else, was lucky enough to be born into one well-off family – his great-grandfather co-founded the Bank of Italy, which later became the Bank of America – and to be, from earliest childhood, a sort of honorary member of an even richer family, the Gettys, his father being best friends with oil magnate Gordon Getty, who was like a second father to young Gavin.
- From the beginning of his life in “public service” – that laughable term – Newsom’s vanity and ambition were flagrantly palpable. Although the New York Times described him during his mayoralty as the subject of “local adoration,” some San Francisco insiders resented his brazen focus “on self-aggrandizement and personal publicity” and his relative indifference to the city’s growing problems on a variety of fronts.
- And then, inevitably, in 2019, Newsom became governor, thanks in no small part to massive donations from the Gettys and Pritzkers and his role as “the darling of the upper class.”
- The actions he did take, all of them plucked right out of the progressive playbook, tended to be disastrous in their impact.
- Then came COVID. Newsom, determined to respond to the pandemic in a more authoritarian way than any governor in the country, took “the most drastic actions” possible, including a “total stay-at-home order” and a panoply of inane and arbitrary rules that resulted, for example, in a $1000 fine for a man caught surfing alone.
- Newsom seemed to have a special animus for religious institutions. For a brief period during the pandemic, he reopened restaurants – but not churches. In February 2021, writes Gardey Holmes, Newsom “reopened film productions, hair salons, libraries, malls, massage parlors, nail salons, professional sporting events, retail stores, and tattoo parlors in counties where COVID-19 spread was designated as ‘widespread.’ And yet, in accordance with his continuously demonstrated bias against places of worship, churches remained shuttered.”
Language notwithstanding, the picture is not a pretty one at all. I find myself hoping, praying even, that Biden does exceptionally well tonight. The alternatives are too ugly to contemplate.
The post Understanding Newsom appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The host has been quite full of himself lately as the Cleveland Guardians are on top of the American League Central by eight games. We’re not even to the All-Star break yet and it is a Cleveland team, so I figure a fold is in their future, but the host is the eternal optimist so when the opportunity presents itself for him to be full of himself, he is, temporary though it may be. Meanwhile Monday night, the Tennessee Volunteers, from right here in Knoxville, won the Men’s College World Series, and last night the city celebrated with a parade and a ceremony downtown. I’ve only lived here about eighteen months, after decades in the L.A. area, where they have been known to riot after championships – the contrast was stunning. As the team was driven, in convertibles, down the main drag they held the trophy out for people to touch, all the while my LA bred instincts were screaming, “Someone is going to grab it and run away.” The crowd was joyous and well behaved, nary a store was looted, or a car overturned and burned. I watched the whole thing on TV because, again, those L.A. bred instincts told me to stay away lest something awful happen.
Two cities, two states, same country – vastly, extraordinarily different reactions to similar events. One is forced to wonder….
There are vast demographic differences between the two places, but to blame ethnicity and culture strikes me as inherently racist – though I will note that in East Tennessee everyone seems to be an East Tennessean first and of their particular personal origin only second. While in L.A. it seemed precisely the opposite – your heritage mattered more than your citizenship. In the end it is not about race, or gender or any of those things – it is about how one holds those things. More importantly it’s about how one views their place in the community – are they there to enhance the community or do they simply expect the community to somehow enhance them? So, is the point of a championship celebration self-expression, or joining the fan base? Which raises another interesting question.
Clearly some people think destructiveness expressive and celebratory. How does that work? We all have destructive impulses, most of us suppress them. But even if control is lost how do they become associated with celebration? It strikes me as a compound perversion. And why is this compound perversion prominent in some communities and impossible to find in others? Could it be that if we value self more than community, we begin to think release of our impulses as the greatest virtue?
I was moved nearly to tears watching the Knoxville celebration last night. It was odd. Sure, I enjoyed watching them win – watched every game in the MCWS. And while the Vols are now, technically, my home team I have no particular love for or attachment to them. No, what touched me was how it drew the community together in a positive and productive fashion – something that my decades in L.A. had made me believe was no longer possible. I was moved because for the first time in a long time I had hope that the nation still worked – that we were not going to rip ourselves apart at the seams.
Amidst the decay, in a celebration of college baseball supremacy, I saw the still beating heart of the United States. And where the heart still beats, hope of life remains.
The post Are There Two Americas? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined me this AM:
Audio:
06-25hhs-pompeo
Transcript:
The post Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo On Israel’s Wars, America’s Weapons, and former President Trump’s Debate Skills appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Last week, Donald Trump appeared at the Faith & Freedom Conference. Legacy media reporting sounded conspiratorial and hinted at the usual charges of “hypocrisy.” Fortunately, there are some faith-based outlets that give us a more even-handed accounting. Trump may not have carried on his marital life in accordance to Christian understanding, but there is some of it He plainly gets.
During his presentation, Trump makes it plain that he is not entirely in the fold, “”The radical left is trying to shame Christians, silence you, demoralize you and they want to keep you out of politics. They don’t want you to vote. That’s why you have to vote,” he maintained. “If you vote, we cannot lose.” His pronoun choices there indicate that he stands a bit apart from traditional Christianity, but he also seems to get it:
Trump suggested that the hostility from the Biden administration stems from the fact that “they know that our allegiance is not to them, our allegiance is to our country and our allegiance is to our Creator.”
“We do not answer to the bureaucrats in Washington; we answer to God in Heaven,” Trump said.
Fascinating. My email devotional this morning examines Phillipians 1:27 (Sorry, currently only available as a subscribed email. It will eventually be available here under the title “Live Worthy of the Gospel.”):
Rome made its presence known in Philippi through Philippian citizens who were also citizens of Rome. It was a dual citizenship arrangement. Now, in the Roman world, you weren’t automatically a citizen of a city just because you lived there. Citizenship was a reward given out to civic leaders, retired soldiers, wealthy influencers, and public benefactors. So, to be a citizen of Philippi was an honor….
This historical background helps us understand what’s going on in Philippians 1:27, though it can easily be missed in English translations. Philippians 1:27 reads in the NRSV, “Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” The Greek verb translated here as “live your life” is actually rare in the New Testament. It is closely related to the Greek word meaning “citizenship.” The New Living Translation of Philippians 1:27 captures the sense of the verb in this way: “Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ.”
Like those in Philippi who were honored to be citizens of both the city where they lived and Rome itself, we who have received God’s grace through Christ have dual citizenship. We are citizens of the place where we live and of heaven.
Trump certainly seems to understand what it means to be a Christian, even if he does not fully include himself in the fold. He also seems to fully grasp the key issue for Christians in today’s America – where we place our allegiance.
Trump is also quite forgiving of Biden personally, “‘What is that all about?’ he inquired before suggesting that Biden, a Catholic, ‘has no idea what the Hell is happening. I don’t think it is him. I think it’s the people that surround him, the fascists, communists,” he said. “They’re young, very smart, vicious people.'” And thus, Trump illustrates a deeply Christian characteristic – compassion.
Does this sound like the dictatorial monster the legacy media would have us believe that Trump is? Nope, it sounds like those charges belong in the opposite direction. Vote as you like, but make sure your vote is fully informed. The media is not giving us a complete picture.
The post When It Comes To Christianity, Sometimes Trump Gets It Right appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
There was some interesting reading on the overtly Christian front this week. Reading that demonstrates just how little we understand of God, and HIs desires for us.
Let’s start with a piece in Christianity Today that wonders, “What If the Christian Sexual Ethic Becomes a Feature, Not a Bug?” I set this article aside because the title makes a presumption that decent Christians should never make – that our ethic, in any area, is either a “feature” or a “bug.” Christianity is not subject to our judgement, we are subject to its judgement. But that said, I found the opening two paragraphs most enlightening:
Christianity’s 2,000-year-old sexual ethic is not normal in the contemporary West and hasn’t been for some time.
The notion that sex should be confined to the bounds of a lifelong covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is not simply out of step with a culture reshaped by the sexual revolution and the LGBTQ movement. Many now consider our ethic to be something far worse than outmoded. It’s hateful, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center; “dangerous,” per the Human Rights Campaign; and a source of “great harm,” says prominent ethicist David Gushee.
How can an ethic be “hateful,” “dangerous,” or “a source of great harm.” An ethic is a tool, a means of improving self and maintaining order. Hate, danger and harm are caused by people, not ethics. The Christian ethic generally considers love as the greatest good – so saying something about a specific part of the Christian ethic is “hateful” makes little sense. Christians can be and have been hateful and they have, sadly in God’s name, done great harm – but I don’t think that calls the Christian ethic into question, rather I think it calls the sincerity of the Christian faith of those involved into question. Violating one part of the Christian ethic while promoting another simply says some people are bad at doing Christian ethics.
The Christian Post carried an interesting piece on the nature of love:
They say love is like entering the lottery, and “you’re probably not gonna win.” Some statistics claim most marriages end in divorce, or that they consist of unhappy people. The pop culture magazines and the edgy social media posts champion this belief that love is whatever you want it to be. “Love is a battlefield,” cry the ladies singing Pat Benatar, and the men have given up on chivalry altogether. Sorry Sinatra.
Unfortunately, beyond romance, we find ourselves struggling with this virtue in all sorts of environments and circumstances. All it takes is a wave of frustration, anxiety, or any other blinding emotion for us to suppress any practice of this crazy little thing called love. But quite frankly, while the world may deal with it flippantly, Christians have little excuse to do the same.
Indeed, our two greatest commandments are centered in the love of the Lord and the love of our neighbor. And yet, I can’t help but wonder if the Church is just as prone to viewing love from a faulty perspective as the rest of the world is. Consequently, a faulty understanding will lead us to avoiding it, shoving it aside, or “failing” at it. But the reality is that love, if placed upon the wrong foundation, is simply not love. As such, the Church especially ought to be proactive in placing love upon what is truthful and glorifying to God. How do we do this? Well, you’ll find many a book written to conquer this very question. However, it would suffice to focus on one key distinction: Love is a choice, not a feeling.
If we exhibit hatefulness in pursuit of the Christian sexual ethic then we have made a bad choice. We have chosen to hate those living outside the ethic, rather than to love them, but the ethic is not the problem – we are.
The heart of Christianity is love – God’s love for us – a love that wishes to shape us, fully, into God’s created image. Perhaps rather than worrying so much about someone else’s misbehavior, we should worry more about our own. I cannot help but believe that if we truly reflect God’s love, the Christian ethic will not even be a question.
The post (Mis)Understanding Love and Hate appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
A few days ago a piece appeared at The Federalist about efforts to meet the new ABA mandate:
Standard 303(c) reads, “A law school shall provide education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism: (1) at the start of the program of legal education, and (2) at least once again before graduation.”
The story concerns Indiana University’s McKinney School of Law and how initial efforts to meet this standard proposed moving constitutional law studies to later (second year) in the curriculum. There is much legal wrangling over whether this is a D.E.I. move or not which is very lawyerly because it clearly and plainly is. But the bottom-line issue is that proposing to displace ConLaw with this material is a statement of priorities. The constitution is the basis of law in the United States by displacing the foundation of law in a law school curriculum, one would be stating that identity is more important than law.
Let’s think about that for just a moment – identity is more important than law. Is that not what this nation was founded to eliminate? After all, in England, the aristocracy enjoyed rights and privileges not available to the common person. Is not aristocratic birth one form of identity? The colonies were treated as a mere source of income, not as part of the nation (“taxation without representation”.) Is not place of residence a form of identity? Our nation did not implement these reforms perfectly, but throughout its history has sought to improve upon its implementation – up to and including civil war. Whether it be on the basis of birth-class, place of residence, race or gender, the history of our nation has been to eliminate discrimination based upon identity.
But now it seems we must consider identity before we consider anything else – we must consider identity as the fundamental concern. Before the law is considered, identity must be considered. Is that not a return to the days of aristocracy?
Ah, but things get more complicated. Being a member of the aristocracy was a matter of traceable birth and parentage. Records were kept and rules written so that it could be readily determined if one were aristocratic or not. But the modern aristocracy, the one based on “identity,” is a matter of declaration – of deciding one has a specific identity and then claiming the rights and privileges associated with that identity. Not only that, the decision/claim cycle is fluid – today I may decide I am of identity X, but tomorrow it may be Y. One is forced to wonder if this is actually a matter of discovering identity or instead a naked desire for rights and privileges.
Most galling of all is the claim that the current emphasis on identity somehow establishes justice for crimes committed long ago against people no longer living. Such is not justice – at best it is retribution for wrongs not suffered. In so doing we are establishing the kinds of identity-based hatreds that have fueled wars in the Middle East for centuries. Such can only destroy.
We have grown quite adept at claiming “progress.” But I am forced to wonder if we are seeing progress anymore. It seems to me we are seeing regress. Regression to where rights and privileges are a matter of fortunate birth – regression into ancient hatreds and blood feuds. Regression to the point we are more animal than human.
But perhaps that is the issue. We like to think we are better than our ancestors, but we are not. Fundamentally we are the same barbarians our ancestors of centuries ago were, just in prettier clothing.
The post When Identity Trumps Law appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
As I write, the Hillsdale hour is underway, the host talking to Arnn. As they went to break, said Arnn concerning WWI,
The way they settled it was not to settle it. Thus leading to WWII.
Note to all those calling for peace in Israel, and/or Ukraine.
The post The Smartest Thing Larry Arnn Ever Said appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
We were manipulated into sufficient fear to shut down the world during covid. It is now official, it will take us a very, very long time to fully recover. There was no conspiracy, just a perfect storm where in many factors aligned – the chief factor being our own gullibility. We have more education than any nation in history and yet we have grown quite intellectually lazy and prone to such misunderstanding. I think the internet has much to do with that – when information becomes too easy to obtain, we take it for granted and no longer vet it. When information becomes a flood, we no longer have time to sort good info from bad info. For once, good news out of California, “The Los Angeles Unified School District voted 5-2 Tuesday to ban all cellphone usage by students at district schools….” There is a start, but California also leads the way in purposeful manipulation.
The ballot proposition system in California has long been fertile ground for manipulation. Vaguely or misleadingly worded propositions have frequently resulted in voters getting exactly the opposite result of what they thought they were voting for. Prop 47 is one such example – people thought they were dealing with crime when in fact they were setting it loose. And now efforts to correct the mistakes of Prop 47 are being manipulated to keep it in place. The whole thing sounds like the ravings of a lunatic, I admit – but remember, California is effectively a one-party state. Conspiracies are no longer needed, all that is necessary is cooperation. Background – Prop 47 is the proposition that reduced theft of less than $950 value to a misdemeanor which has resulted in the wave of organized, petty crime that has overrun California.
Chief among the techniques of manipulation is the confusion of correlation and causation. Just because two things occur in parallel does not mean one of them is causing the other. This will certainly be the claim of the California legislators that claim they are trying to deal with the Prop 47 unintended consequences, not prevent the proposition based reversal of it. They will just claim they are getting there first. One key difference – ballot propositions are a matter of the California constitution, legislation is not. Propositions are far more powerful than legislation. The Riverside County sheriff is not raving here, he is making ground truth sense.
Climate change and related claims are full of causation/correlation confusion. But it has reached a new nadir. Now, a European study correlates a decline in political speech to climate change. As science, the study makes first-graders look like grad students, it also defies the common sense of watching Joe Biden decline in front of our eyes. But the timing of the study is quite convenient. Causation or correlation? We may never know for sure.
There are way too many efforts to control the flow of information, particularly bad information coming at us on the internet. Whether it be causation/correlation confusion or just outright lies, there is little doubt the internet has complicated our lives when it comes to the ingestion of information. Life was much easier when you could count on Walter Cronkite, your local anchor and morning paper to tell you everything you needed to know. But the answer is not to control the flow of information – that’s called censorship. The answer is to create a smarter information consumer.
The blow to education dealt by covid has not helped matters at all. It has in fact turned a slow decline into a steep descent. The vote by LA Schools is in fact the best news I have heard in a long time – particularly out of California. Here’s hoping teachers use it well, rather than as just another opportunity for manipulation.
The post Efforts to Manipulate appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I guess it’s now official – the most important thing on earth itself – not mankind, the earth. Apparently, activists in Europe gluing themselves to world-famous works of art has not garnered these people enough attention, so now they have spray painted Stonehenge. The complete lack of reason in these activities is evidence that these people are nuts. All these action do is create animus towards them. The more they raise the stakes, the less sympathy normal people have for their “cause.” But here is something to consider – these people clearly think that their “cause” is more important than one of the greatest achievements of ancient man. You can dismiss this as the ravings of mad people but…
…consider:
The conflict in Gaza has created unprecedented soil, water and air pollution in the region, destroying sanitation systems and leaving tons of debris from explosive devices, a United Nations report on the environmental impact of the war said on Tuesday.
People are dying immediately and acutely because of bullets and bombs and these idiots are worried about damage to soil, water and air that might hurt somebody years down the road?! First of all, “unprecedented!?” I don’t think so. War is among the most common of human activity. Secondly, war is about destruction, so such is to be expected. But honestly, what are the priorities here? These are not European nutcases, this is the UN! The organization charged with maintaining world peace after the massively devastating World War II is apparently more worried about secondary environmental damage from war than the war itself.
Let’s see. back when Stonehenge was built most people worshipped nature in some form. As mankind advanced, our concepts of God changed from natural to supernatural things. Then monotheism emerged and the basis of the western world was born. But these people clearly worship the earth – shouldn’t they be building new Stonehenges, not defacing the old one? Their own philosophical outlook is inconsistent – they cannot even mange to worship the planet well.
We have descended into nonsense – utter, complete, indecipherable nonsense. There is no consistent worldview, no constructive goals. There is just thrashing about, unhappy. There is no right and wrong – according to the UN, the war around Israel is no longer about recovering hostages, self -defense, or righting a wrong – it’s about environmental damage. None of this adds up into anything useful, helpful or constructive.
Reason has left the building. That’s the problem – It’s return, the priority. It is telling that the NYTimes is worried about Christianity. Reason has flowed from it and through it; Christianity is a threat to the unreason that rules the day. Fortunately, Christianity also holds the key to reason’s reemergence. Justice Alito is not about religion, he is about reason.
The post A Total Loss of Perspective appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum joined me this morning. The audio and transcript are below. The three articles I referenced are Ambassador O’Brien’s new essay for Foreign Affairs “The Return of Peace Through Strength,” the piece by Admiral Mike Studeman (USN, Ret.) for “War On The Rocks”: “China Is Battening Down for the Storm Over Taiwan,” and Sir Niall Ferguson’s essay for The Free Press: “We’re All Soviets Now.”
Audio:
06-19hhs-burgum
Transcript:
HH: I’m pleased to welcome back North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Governor Burgum, welcome back. How is that Achille’s healing?
DB: Well, thank you, Hugh. I’m doing great, and great to be with you on your show.
HH: So Governor, when I moderated the debate in November with NBC and Salem, I asked the candidates, neither the former President nor you were on the stage, and I regret that. But I asked the candidates who were there three questions, and they were China, China, and China. So I’m starting with China with you. I spent yesterday reading Ambassador O’Brien’s new essay in Foreign Affairs, The Return of Peace Through Strength, Admiral Studeman’s (retired), he’s a former head of office of naval intelligence, his article, From War On The Rocks, China Is Battening Down For Storm Over Taiwan, and then Niall Ferguson’s essay yesterday in the Free Press, We’re All Soviets Now. I’m depressed. Did Joe Biden forfeit in the conflict with China over the last three years? I mean, are we irreversibly behind the ChiComs now?
DB: Well, it sure feels that way to me, because I, just in, at a basic level, that Joe Biden doesn’t understand how deterrence work. I mean, he’s greenlighted activity by all of our adversaries, and whether that’s the two proxy wars we’re in with Iran and Russia right now. Then, we’re in this cyber war with Iran, Russia, North Korea and others, because we’re under, states like North Dakota are under attack every day from those countries. But we’re in this cold war with China. And in a cold war with China, you need deterrence, and Joe Biden is not a deterrent. Joe Biden just keep greenlighting stuff, and he’s not supporting our allies. Our allies see that, and so our allies have to hedge their bets that America is not going to be there. And so he’s weakening our whole ally defense network that we have. And then of course, the worst of all this is when he had an opportunity during the cold war with China, and he’s sending his cabinet leaders to China regularly. And when they’re there, they’re talking about CO2 emissions. And he’s not, we have a big stick that we can carry. Teddy Roosevelt – walk softly, carry a big stick. Our big stick is the U.S. economy, it’s U.S. energy, and it’s U.S. food production. China imports 11 million barrels of oil a day. They’re the most energy-dependent country in the world. They have to import calories every day to feed their population. They’ve got huge security risks. If you don’t have energy and food security, you have security risks. And as far as, I’ve never seen an article that we’ve ever talked to them about either one of those things. And we’re over there doing things that actually supporting them. We’re saying look, we’re going to buy batteries from you. We’re going to get rare earth minerals from you. We’re going to increase our dependence on you for our energy needs. I mean, we’re, they should be dependent on us, and we’re having a strategy around the Biden energy policy that puts us on dependence on them. It’s completely backwards, Hugh.
HH: You spend a lot of time with Former President Trump. I think he’s going to win, Governor. Do you talk with him about China? Does he think he can restore deterrence with Xi Jinping and the ChiComs?
DB: Well, I’ll tell you, I can’t speak for President Trump, but I can tell you what I do know, is that President Trump himself is a deterrent, because people understand that he is strong where Biden is weak. I mean, Biden invites wars through weakness, and Trump is an actual, literal deterrent. Trump is like adding, you know, pick a number. Our deterrents cost hundreds of billions of dollars. You elect President Trump, and it’s like adding to our Defense budget, because our enemies would actually go wow, this guy might actually take action to stop us. So you know, and Biden, of course, he’s doing the opposite – releasing billions and tens of billions of dollars to people like Iran, Swiss cheese sanctions on Iran so that Iran can increase their production, and you want to talk about China? Who are they selling, who are Iran and Russia selling their increased oil production to? They’re selling to China. And so he’s basically helping all of the bad guys help each other. It’s costing, I mean, it’s literally 180 degrees opposite what I believe President Trump will do the first day he’s back in office.
HH: Now Governor Burgum, this story in the Financial Times this morning has your name on it. The headline says it all. Silicon Valley Steps Up Staff Screening Over Chinese Espionage Threat. You went to Stanford, got your MBA. You started your own company in North Dakota, and the ChiComs stole all your stuff. I mean, this is like you know this. You lived this.
DB: Well, I did, Hugh, and I didn’t live it yesterday. I’ve shared it with you before, but 1989, I was a kid. We were a young software entrepreneur. We were selling our products only in U.S. and Canada. We were trying to expand overseas. The first country we looked at is Australia. I was in Australia in 1989. On my way back home, I thought, hey, I’ll stop in China and see if there’s an opportunity here. It was a long way away, but it’s a big country. Maybe they’ll need some software. And I’m there, and they said hey, they’re selling U.S. software in a street market. And so I go down there, and I of course expected to see some of the big names of the time like Lotus 1-2-3 and other products that maybe stolen there. But as a joke, I said do you have Great Plains software? And they said right over here in a street market for a buck a disk. They were selling, you know, for a dollars, they were selling a $5,000 dollars module of our software. I mean, general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, a buck each. $25,000 dollars of software for $5 bucks. So they have stolen every piece of software that I’ve ever made, and my software career continued right up to the day before I was, became governor of North Dakota back after the 2016 Election. So I watched these guys steal everything. And at every company I’ve ever been involved with, multiple companies selling software around the world, China just steals our IP. And so it is not a surprise to me. And now with the threat of TikTok, which we’ve banned in North Dakota on all state devices several years ago, it’s even worse, because obviously, they’re using it. They changed their algorithm. They dial it up, and I think there’s a direct connection between TikTok and what you see on our campuses today, because the multiple amount of information that’s pro-Hamas on TikTok versus that would support Israel is just dramatically unbalanced. And it’s influencing a generation of our young people.
HH: Now you know, the left-wing attacks Donald Trump, because he’s on TikTok right now like they are. Well, we’re not going to unilaterally disarm in this election before, we being Republicans. I hope he uses TikTok and then cuts it off on January 20th and bans it. Governor, if I can switch subjects with you, I want to talk about the border. Joe Biden declared an amnesty for millions of people yesterday. At least 10 million people have crossed the Southern Border under Joe Biden. How worried are you about domestic terrorists hiding among those 10 million? It doesn’t have to be many. It could be 20 out of 10 million I don’t know how we find the needles in the haystack, but how worried are you about that?
DB: Well, I’m very worried, Hugh, and you’re right. I mean, it was 20 people that were behind 9/11 executing that across four different attack vectors on one day. So it is a huge threat. And of course, the thing that’s disturbing to me as someone who understands and believes in states’ rights, I mean, the federal government’s got limited scope of authority, and the rest is deferred to the states and the people as you know. But one of the things the federal government is supposed to do is national security, which includes border security. And they’re not doing it. And I’ve been down to the border more than Vice President Harris, more than Biden has been down there, because we’ve had, during Biden’s time in office, we’ve had North Dakota National Guard troops deployed at the border. And as commander-in-chief, I’m down there, and I’m not down there like Gavin Newsom doing selfie videos. I’m down there talking to our troops that are doing the work. And one of the things that our troops are doing, they were in charge for a year of flying night missions trying to stop the cartels. We were flying Lakota helicopters from the San Diego coast all the way over to the Gulf Coast. And there are so many gaps in the border where the bad guys take down our surveillance. We don’t have people, and then we don’t even have video of it. And so these are the, you know, we’ve got the thing they call the gotaways, which the Customs and Border of the Biden administration puts that number out there with the millions of gotaways, but there’s another thing, which is the unknown gotaways. They disable the cameras. There’s a blind spot. And they surge people across when we’re not looking. We don’t know how many people have come across. If you’re a bad guy, if you’ve got terrorists, they keep talking about the number of apprehended terrorists that have gone up, and it’s gone up hugely under Biden. Well, those are the dumb ones. Those are the people that are coming across where they can get caught. The smart terrorists, which there’s I’m sure plenty of them, are coming across places where we don’t even have eyes. So we literally do not know how many people have come into the country. We know people have come from 140 countries. We know that there are hundreds of people on the terrorist watch list. But Hugh, we do not know. The possibility of a 9/11 event occurring on our soil with people that have come in under Joe Biden has increased dramatically. There’s just no doubt about it.
HH: All right, Governor, I want to switch to Israel, because the headline in the Times of Israel this morning is that the United States has paused 50 F-15s. Prime Minister Netanyahu went on video yesterday and complained that we are not, Israel is not getting the weapons we promised them. And the White House responded by having a fit and cancelling meetings with Israelis. What do you make of what Joe Biden has done to Israel? And what would the Trump policy be as you understand it towards Israel? Will he return to no daylight and back to the Abraham Accords?
DB: Well, nobody’s been stronger supporting Israel than President Trump. We all know that. And it’s like even, you mention cancelling the meetings tomorrow. The meetings tomorrow, it’s the second time they’ve been cancelled. And these meetings are for our intelligence experts to meet with Israeli experts to talk about the fact that Iran is moving further and further, closer and closer towards having a nuclear weapon, which is, that seems like an existential threat. That is an issue that is, for the very threat of Israel itself if Iran has a nuclear weapon. And so I, again, feel like the Biden administration, when they’re doing some of the stuff, they’re negotiating for the terrorists. People get upset when I say that. But if you were negotiating on behalf of Israel, you would say hey, we can have a ceasefire, Hamas, and you can have it tomorrow. All you have to do is release all the hostages. That has never been said by the Biden administration. Instead, they draw a red line in the sand for Israel, as opposed to drawing a red line in the sand for Hamas. They propose peace talks, and then they propose that Hamas is going to have a seat at the table like they’re a democrat country, like somehow, they’ve got a standing the same as a country with democratically-elected leaders. It’s a terrorist organization. We have, we in the United States, it’s a basic thing. We say we don’t negotiate with terrorists. The Biden administration keeps negotiating for the terrorists.
HH: Governor, yesterday, I watched President Biden. I played the entire audio, all 12 minutes of it, when he declared amnesty. It’s very unnerving. The President is infirm. Do you think he’s infirm?
DB: Yes. And I’ve had an opportunity to see that firsthand. I feel that just watching the videos like what you showed yesterday, it’s been a decline. But I had an opportunity to see him when the governors were at the White House in February. And you know, my conclusion, having spent, you know, 20-plus years in the corporate sector, there isn’t a board of directors in America, if you said hey, we’ve got to renew a four-year contract with our CEO, and this guy was applying for CEO, there’s not a board in the country that would sign Joe Biden up to be their CEO for the next four years.
HH: Excellent point. Governor, can you stand by for one second? I want to ask you about AI during the break. We’ll play it tomorrow morning and put it in our podcast today. Stand by, Governor, for just a couple of seconds…
— – – –
HH: I am back now with Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota. Governor, I don’t know what’s true. I’ve heard that you’re going to be the vice presidential selection. It doesn’t really matter to me one way or the other. I’m going to be for Donald Trump and his vice presidential selection. You’d be a great one. If you are the VP, and he turns to you and says, Doug, would you figure out what we need to do about AI? We need it, but we don’t need it out of control. How would you go about putting out a regulatory scheme for AI that protects Americans but harnesses the energy of the Silicon Valley that you know so well?
DB: Well, Hugh, the first thing for us with AI is we need to understand this is a fundamental-based technology that’s going to affect every job, every company, and every industry. And that means communications industry, transportation, educational, health care, you name it, legal profession. But it’s going to affect Defense industries as well. If we’re not leading in AI as a country, we will lose cold wars, we’ll lose hot wars. We’ll lose it all. So step one is forget regulation. We have got to put our pedal down, and we have got to lead in AI. It turns out that AI requires one thing. AI requires a lot of baseload electricity. It requires a lot of power. A search on some of the latest large language models that are available today that are just remarkable and can speak 26 languages and write code, you know, create original artwork and music, all of those things, it’s like a search like that could take ten times more power than a traditional Bing or Google search. We do not have enough baseload electricity in our country. Our grid is not stable enough The Biden administration is artificially driving up the demand for electricity through all of their EV mandates and their, whether it’s federal buildings have got to go all-electric, all the things they’re doing are driving it up artificially through subsidies, costing Americans trillions of dollars. But then, there’s real demand. I was in the tech industry for 30 years. We always, because of gains in efficiency, never took more than 1% of the nation’s electrical power for all the computing that was going on. Well, now with AI, we’ve moved towards 2%, and we could go to 10% by 2030. So you’re going to have the first time in 25 years real increases in demand for electricity at a time when the Biden administration is doing everything they can to actually destabilize the grid and shut down baseload in favor of all intermittent, which is their solar-wind initiatives. And you can can’t build on that.
HH: So Governor, the key question. If we brought in Palmer Luckey of Anduril and the heads of Palantir and Vannevar and Joe Lonsdale, who’s been on this show, you can talk to them, right? You understand their language. Are they worried about baseload electricity? Is that their concern? Or are they worried about the FTC screwing up their ability to develop? We’ve got like two minutes.
DB: They are absolutely saying it doesn’t matter what the regulations are. If we don’t have enough power, we’re not going to have AI, period, in our country. And so if you’re going to see Silicon Valley coming over and supporting President Trump. Some of the names of the people that you mentioned, I’ve talked to. And they’re all coming over, because there’s got to be an energy policy that supports us getting behind AI. From a regulatory standpoint, we’ve got to have some guardrails. But we’ve got to have a light touch. We can’t go and put some stuff up there that builds the walls guarding around the people that are leading now, because this is a base technology that’s going to lead to 10,000 new software companies or more. Just like base technologies like operating systems and databases led to a flourishing of innovation, the way we beat China is that we actually let the innovation flourish in our country. They’re going to try to control it. It’s going to hurt them. It’s, at a fundamental level, AI is a productivity tool. It’s like software is the greatest tool ever to expand human capability. AI is that on steroids. A country like ours that’s got 10 million jobs open in the country, AI helps us. It helps us increase our GDP. It helps us have the strongest economy. It helps us stabilize the world. China will have a tough time following us. They have high, high unemployment.
HH: Governor, thank you so much. We are out of time. I appreciate that. That was optimism. I appreciate it. Governor Doug Burgum, thank you.
End of interview.
The post North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum On China And Taiwan, The Threat of Terrorism At Home, And Israel’s War In Gaza appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I guess we are not allowed to say illegal “alien” anymore; it’s been banned by the language police that are actually trying to change the subject. But that said, the term is most appropriate this morning. Apparently, Joe Biden has not only opened the border, but also a space port – unmanned by Men in Black.
As a child in elementary school, I lived in Amarillo Texas. My father was President of the Amarillo Zoological Society which had received a land grant from a major benefactor and was attempting to build a world class zoo in the Panhandle city. Sadly, it has never come to pass and on my last visit to town the land remained undeveloped. But there has always been a small zoo – a place I loved as a child – in Amarillo and apparently it has been invaded by aliens – from outer space:
It’s been more than two years since a security camera at the Amarillo Zoo recorded what appeared to be a mysterious creature standing just outside its fence.
Word of the creature, later dubbed the “Unidentified Amarillo Object,” quickly spread, claiming stake in national news time and stories….
By some accounts the finest movie ever made is 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie is about a journey to discover the alien origins of life in our solar system, first revealed by the presence of a monolith on the moon. In the somewhat less of an artistic triumph Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the advance upon our planet of a planet consuming monstrosity known as Galactus is heralded by the appearance of great pits in various places on the earth. Clearly off-world aliens like to give us hints they are on the way or that they have been here. And now, we discover:
A mysterious monolith has appeared in the Nevada desert over the weekend,…Another one was found in Romania around the same time, as was one in California and on the Isle of Wight in the English Channel.
The southern border is a disaster, but so too it would appear are approaches from off planet. Not only has Joe Biden hog-tied the Border Patrol, but also, apparently the Space Force. Aren’t they supposed to be defending us against attacks coming from outer space? Granted, this does not rise to the level of attack, but as uncontrolled immigration from Mexico undoubtedly contains elements of evil intent, surely this invasion from above contains at least some creatures with mischief on their minds.
I will not be surprised if giant ants are discovered in the L.A. storm sewer system or a giant man attacks Las Vegas. Joe Biden’s administration has opened the floodgates.
ED NOTE: Of course, I am being sarcastic and hopefully humorous about aliens from outer space and science fiction monsters, but not about the pathetic state of Joe Biden’s America.
The post The True State of Biden’s Illegal Alien Issue appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) joined me this morning to discuss President Biden’s new amnesty executive order:
Audio:
06-18hhs-cotton
Transcript:
HH: Joined now by United States Senator Tom Cotton. Good morning, Senator. Good to have you.
TC: Good morning, Hugh. Great to be back on with you.
HH: I am not going to make you endure another round of ‘what would you do if you were selected as vice president.’ Instead, I’m going to talk about one of the policies former President Trump has put forward – no tax on tips. And I begin by showing the audience and telling the audience that our friend, Derrick Van Orden, Navy SEAL-turned Congressman, just posted a photo. I want to go to dinner with Derrick Van Orden. At least, I want to wait on him. At the Canned Pie restaurant in Milwaukee, he got a receipt for $57.45. He tipped $40 dollars on a $57. You’ve got to go help this guy. He’s from the Navy, obviously. And he wrote, “Vote Trump. No tax on tips.” So first, does Derrick Van Orden need to know something about the right amount of tipping? And second, what do you think about no tax on tips?
TC: It sounds like Derrick was doing a good job campaigning for the President in a critical swing state of Wisconsin. I think President Trump’s proposal to eliminate taxes on tips is a step in the right direction for hard-working Americans who are often struggling to make ends meet in Joe Biden’s America, because they can’t fairly afford to put food on the table for their kids and pay the rent and pay the bills. It also eases a lot of tax administration as well. As you know, Hugh, it’s kind of a nightmare for people who work in service industries to collect tips and report tips and pay the taxes on them. So I think it’s a great way to recognize the hard-working service industry and the generosity of those people who are their customers, get the IRS out of the business of another corner of American life. Meanwhile, you have Joe Biden threatening to raise taxes and giving amnesty to half a million illegal immigrants when we’ve got 14 million illegals into the country because of his failed open border policies.
HH: Now I want to go to that. The executive order is not out, yet, but I have a column about it at Fox News, that it’s illegal what the President is about to do. He does not have statutory authority to grant parole in place to a half million illegal immigrants who have married American citizens. They might be very sympathetic cases, but do you think, you’re the lawyer, and you have a good immigration bill. Do you think he has any claim to statutory authority to do what he’s about to do?
TC: No, of course not, Hugh. Only the Congress can decide who has legal status and who doesn’t have legal status. And the people that he’s going to purport to grant legal status to today are plainly in the country illegally. The President does not have the legal authority to give them legal status. This is at an event, by the way, that’s going to be celebrating when Barack Obama did something similar 12 years ago, building on yet another lawless executive action by Barack Obama with another lawless executive action by Joe Biden. And it kind of gives the lie to a supposedly tough crackdown on the border just two or three weeks ago, which I would call closing the barn door after the horses are out. It’s not even closing the barn door, because it’s still wide open. So I think it just goes to show the kind of chaotic Biden immigration policy that has let 15 million illegals into our country, including rapists and murderers and terrorists.
HH: Now I also, it brings up, the people who argue that Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy”. I think that’s absurd. They also call him authoritarian. That’s even dumber. But the authoritarian is the person who acts on their own authority. That’s what President Biden is doing today, isn’t it?
TC: Hugh, there were numerous cases in the Trump administration in which the President lost at the Supreme Court or at lower courts. He may have groused about it. He may not have liked it. I may not have liked it. In every case, he followed the court’s decision. Contrast that with Joe Biden, who for instance was rebuked totally on his student loan bailout. And what did he do? He didn’t just condemn the Court, but he immediately starting promising how they were going to get around it. And they’ve yet again tried to bail out student loans to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. And you see this pattern repeating itself over and over again with Joe Biden, is that he simply disregards court rulings he doesn’t like in contrast to Donald Trump. So tell me again, Hugh. Who is the threat to democracy – the president who is disregarding Supreme Court decisions and attacking the Supreme Court and trying to imprison his chief political opponent, or Donald Trump?
HH: I agree. It is President Biden. I also want to talk about the disinformation warriors. They are sprinkled across the media. Well, on Saturday night, President Biden had a bad moment on the stage in L.A. And I have watched every version of this that is out there, and the uninterrupted version is the one I’m playing for our Salem News Channel audience. It’s the President, and the music doesn’t break, so you know it’s not edited. There’s background music going on. And he freezes. Former President Obama has to go over and grab him by the arm and then lead him off the stage. That follows the G6 and a half. It’s not worth the G7. It’s the G6 and a half with President Biden there, and the Juneteenth. There’s a problem here. The White House response by saying that’s a ‘cheap fake’, which is a new term. It’s not. What are they doing? Isn’t that disinformation?
TC: Well, Hugh, I mean, I guess the White House strategy and Jill Biden’s strategy is that we’re down to 140 days now or something until the election. If they can just keep President Biden upright and count off the days, maybe they can hang on until the end. But as you say, it’s there for everyone to see. You saw him in Italy at the G7 wandering off aimlessly, which is kind of a good metaphor for American leadership under Joe Biden. And at that event in Hollywood, Hugh, there’s one person who obviously thought Joe Biden needed help and was confused and didn’t know where to go. And that was Barack Obama, because he turned around and took Joe Biden by the arm, and escorted him off the stage. Again, I think it’s a good metaphor…
HH: That’s very well put. I hadn’t heard that.
TC: A good metaphor for the Democratic Party.
HH: There was one person who instantly knew he needed help. I hadn’t heard that before. Senator, I want to talk about the Senate now. You are running for the Senate Republican Conference Chair. There are 10 blue states that could flip. Kari Lake in Arizona, Bernie Moreno in Ohio, Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. Larry Hogan in Maryland, Mike Rogers in Michigan, Tim Sheehy in Montana, Captain Sam Brown in Nevada, Governor Justice in West Virginia, Eric Hovde, who I do not know and haven’t spoken with, yet, in Wisconsin, and of course, Hung Cao in Virginia, who is on the ballot today. Of these, how many do you think are gettable?
TC: I think every one of those is a winnable seat, Hugh. The American people have decided that they’re ready to turn the page on Joe Biden, because they can barely afford to make ends meet, and they’re sick and tired of terrorists and rapists and murderers entering our country. And the policy of war through weakness, not peace through strength abroad, and another thing that you mentioned, that almost all of those states have in common, is they’re either very strong Republican states for President Trump, or they’re critical swing states for President Trump and Senate candidates are going to be working hand in glove, part of what we discussed last week when President Trump visited with us at Capitol Hill. So in every case, I think you see Republicans on the front foot, on the offensive, whereas Democrats are on the back foot and are scratching, clawing to hang onto what little power they have by their fingernails, or what little path they have to winning in those states, where Joe Biden has to get 270 votes. So I want to stress to your audience that 51 seats is what we need to get the majority and put Chuck Schumer out of work as the Senate leader. But I have ambitions for a much bigger victory than that. And I would encourage all your listeners to look at all those states you mentioned and that you posted on your social media, and consider pitching in a few dollars to each of them, because if a wave comes in, we don’t want to have people who aren’t in the water on their boards.
HH: Oh, that’s true. There could be a wave, and people are afraid of it, because we had red thunderstorms, not a red wave, in 2022 after Dobbs. Senator, of these 10, four are veterans – Dave McCormick is Army, like you, West Point. Tim Sheehy in Montana is Navy, Naval Academy, a SEAL. Captain Sam Brown is West Point, Army, an Army guy like you, and Hung Cao is another Navy SEAL. The veteran population in the United States is 16 million strong. How does Donald Trump get them back, because he lost 7% of that vote between 2016 and 2020, going from 61% of the veteran vote to 54% of the veteran vote in 2020. How do you get them back?
TC: Well, Hugh, the main reason I think veterans are going to swing very hard towards President Trump, even more so than in 2016 and 2020, is what President Biden has done to our military. For four straight years, he’s proposed budgets that cut our military below the rate of inflation that he created. He’s got civilian leaders in the Pentagon who seem more focused on what pronouns soldiers are trained to learn than they are whether or not they’re trained to fight and survive in combat. And it only gets worse the longer you go and the longer the echo of those policies continue. Our veterans know that we need to help our military urgently. We need to grow the military to provide our troops with the weapons that they need to fight and win our nation’s wars, and hopefully, therefore, not have to go into them in the first place. And that we also need strong leaders who will focus on training our troops to win in combat, not training them to be social justice warriors. Our veterans know that Donald Trump will do that.
HH: Now your colleague, Senator Sullivan, was on earlier today. He told me that in the markup of the NDAA, he has proposed changing Nav C, which is an admiral in charge of ship acquisition, to an eight-year term. Boy, that makes sense to me. Does it make sense to you?
TC: I’m open to an idea like that, because we have a crisis in shipbuilding right now. You know, one Chinese shipyard is turning out more ships in a year than all of our shipyards combined. And they have many more times the shipyards that we do. So any kind of creative or novel solution like the one Dan proposed, I think Congress and President Trump need to entertain seriously to ger our shipbuilding industry back on its feet and churning out the ships that we need to deter China.
HH: Last question, Senator. How quickly can we surge shipbuilding capacity? It’s so complicated to contract with the Pentagon. We’ve got a lot of startups. Joe Lonsdale has got a submersible startup, etc. But it takes forever to get contracts from the Pentagon, and then they change them continually.
TC: It does, Hugh, and a lot of that is the Pentagon bureaucracy. Some of that is challenges just in the private sector, you know, supply chain challenges or the lack of skilled workers, because we cut shipbuilding to the bone in the 1990s. You know, if the sun ever sets on America, which I don’t for a minute believe it will, historians will look back to the Defense cuts under Bill Clinton and the supposed peace dividend as one of the critical moments. That’s why it’s so…
HH: Senator, very quickly. You’ve been there for 12 years or 14 years in the House and the Senate? How long?
TC: 10 years in the Senate, two years in the House.
HH: All right, so 12 total. Has anything changed at the Pentagon contracting in that decade-plus of service in the House and the Senate?
TC: Not nearly enough, Hugh. Not nearly enough. You mentioned Joe Lonsdale. He’s a great innovator, as is Alex Karp at Palantir, and Palmer Luckey at Anduril. We need more innovative thinkers like that breaking into the Defense industry, pushing the legacy contractors who are still very important, but we need a more diverse Defense industry.
HH: Senator Cotton, always good to talk to you. Thank you, Senator.
End of interview.
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The whole point of California’s fast food minimum wage hike was to “save the fast-food industry.” I got a firsthand taste of the outcome when I was in California last week and paid $20 for a sandwich and bag of chips, something I can get here in Tennessee for $12-$15. But the data is in:
According to a new report from Placer.ai, quick-service restaurants in California have seen a sharp decline in traffic since the introduction of the wage increase, with McDonald’s traffic down by 2.48%, Burger King by 3.86%, and In-N-Out by 2.59%. Meanwhile, year-over-year visit trends in the state have been underperforming when compared to national averages since April. Earlier in 2024, however, before the new law went into effect, fast food consumer traffic in the state was trending slightly ahead of the national average. Indeed, the distinct flip in trending data is likely somewhat related to the industry-wide shifts being undertaken to adapt to the greater labor costs.
Oops.
Is there nothing the government cannot screw up? The evidence is overwhelming – government can only make matters worse. For example, President Biden’s proposal to grant legal status to illegal immigrant spouses of citizens strikes me as something reasonable, his lack of constitutional authority to do it unilaterally is a separate issue, in an issue area where the administration has been typically unreasonable. Breaking up established families is cruel and inhumane. But, consider:
The application process is likely to be open by the end of summer, a senior administration official said on Monday.
Ahhh, and so the bureaucratic monster raises its ugly head. This seeming blessing from the government will require people, often computer and/or English language illiterate, to fill out, at a minimum, an on-line application that will invariably be misunderstood by some functionary on the other end of the computer that will result in terrifying the applicant with a phone call and questions the applicant does not want to answer while it is being implied said applicant is an idiot. Soon there will be a mini-industry of people helping applicants with the bureau-speak, costing those applicants a small fortune. Said blessing comes at a very high cost, ending up not being nearly the blessing it is intended to be. Government can even screw up its efforts to do a good thing.
Why do we turn to government to solve problems we ought to be solving ourselves? That’s the key question. It’s also the answer. Don’t look to them, deal with it yourself.
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Antisemitism visible among the Columbia University Administration. There are some Congrssional staffers that are not proud to be Americans. Forget the stats, forget the nuance, both those statements are bald fact, spinnable perhaps, but fact. How in the world did we get to this point?
It began, academically, with the concept of “deconstruction,” the entire purpose of which is to find fault and problems. But the idea has crept into our national ethos to the point that we no longer try to build anything, and those few that do are bombarded with by “concerns” to the point that the problem is never solved, the thing never built. I have a client that after 7 years and $25M of sunk cost is closing their plant because officialdom in their area just kept finding problems as they tried to expand their facility by about 15%. We shut down the world, doing nothing, lest we get sick – and we all got sick anyway. We seek some ill-founded concept of perfection to the harm of any form of betterment.
That’s our state of affairs. There is no pride because there is no “perfection,” – antisemitism takes ugly root because absent perfection someone has to be blamed. We have become experts at finding problems, issues, shortcomings and fault, but in the process, we have lost our ability to make or build anything. We are all bureaucrats. “I’m sorry, you can’t do that because you 27/b-9 is not properly filled out.” We so desperately want to fix the world while standing in the way of actually doing so.
We live under an ugly form of oppression, not one that puts us in concentration camps, but one that makes sure we know that no matter what we do, it is not quite good enough.
The bottom line is we all see the problems in the world, and we all blame someone, anyone, other than ourselves. That’s how prejudice and oppression is born. It’s not born of hatred; it is born of our own innate sense of superiority and utter lack of humility. Thus, we criticize instead of compromise. Thus, we prevent, but never permit. Thus, we stand in the way rather than move forward.
We have to get past this or we are doomed. Maybe, just maybe the way to solve the problem is not “out there.” Maybe you need to start in your own heart and mind. Don’t worry about their mistakes, worry about your own. Don’t worry about their prejudices, worry about your own. And then go make something instead of criticizing what someone else is trying to make.
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Yesterday we wrote of fear destroying things. Since writing that piece, 2 Timothy 1:7 has been front and center in my mind:
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
We must ask what we have sacrificed as we have abandoned Christianity as our cultural guide, if not our true faith. As we head to churchthis morning we need to fucus on how to reclaim it – much is at stake, very much.
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Two stories have caught my eyes in recent days that tell quite the story. The first is that Grecian authorities closed all the ancient sites to the public due to “excessive” heat. It was indeed hotter than, well, you know, but I can also so that I visited Masada in Israel under much hotter conditions and not only survived unharmed but enjoyed myself. The other is a story about a school system in West Virginia closing its only high school because it rests within an EPA designated Superfund site – one that imposes no direct hazard to students attending the school either acutely or chronically. Clearly the lessons of the pandemic have yet to be learned. Fear of what might happen can do far more damage than what actually happens every could.
The Grecian economy is on very hard times and has been for quite a while. Those archeological sites are major tourist draws and contribute hard cash to coffers that badly need it. I think most people would stay in anyway given the heat, but why remove what money might come in from the realm of possibility? It is not that hard to take precautions to aid the employees that would have to be there. As my father used to say this is “cutting off their nose to spite their face.” Not to mention it is an abrogation of freedom. I have been on the Acropolis twice in my life, both on a very tight schedule. Had I been there, I’d have taken my water bottle and a good hat and gone for it, though perhaps shortening my visit. I also would have been very, very angry if the government had robbed me of the opportunity – there was no tomorrow in these instances – to see one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
The harm, and potential harm, from a Superfund site is a very technical matter. In the case described the danger, which BTW is not at all acute but consists entirely of an increased cancer possibility much later in life, is well below the surface and can only come to the surface in the form of water pumped out of the aquifer which is either not happening or it is treated before it reaches the water system. This is a classic “abundance (overabundance!) of caution” scenario – born entirely of fear and misunderstanding. (Qualifier -there may be something the article is not telling me, but let’s presume good reporting.) One is forced to wonder if there are other factors at play here. Closing the school is tearing the heart out of the community with virtually no measurable upside.
Isn’t that what happened in the pandemic? We were cautious to the point of ruining nearly everything. Greeks once, a long time ago, ruled the civilized world. America is the greatest nation history has ever seen. We are in danger of throwing it all away in an “overabundance of caution” – out of fear. The great accomplishments of ancient Greece and modern America are born of risk, not hyper-acute caution. We have to consider what we are sacrificing in our pursuit of “safety.”
ADDENDUM – many hours later: I did not, originally, want to get into too many details about the whole Superfund site thing, it’s about as tall as weeds get. Still don’t really, but to avoid sounding too cavalier, a couple of things should be noted. 1) A significant portion of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley is considered a Superfund site, a portion populated by millions of people. 2) The federal EPA, the only agency that can designate a Superfund site, is obligated by law to cause the evacuation of a site if that presents a danger to those on it. The people in West Virginia are definitely overreacting.
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This time its GA Senator Raphael Warnock (D) “wondering” how Christians can vote for Trump. He does not even do us the courtesy of basing his “questions” (accusation really) on the typical charge of Trump’s rather poor bedroom conduct. Nope, Warnock relies on the presumption for which I have never seen any evidence that Trump is a racist. Of course, Warnock sees everything through the lens of race, which raises the question of who is the real racist? It’s all very slick suggestion, but spare me. Maybe for just a minute we ought to consider actual policy of the candidates rather that the salacious personal details and the implied but unproven accusations.
Consider this:
President Joe Biden’s aggressive climate regulations targeting fossil-fuel-fired power plants will create widespread electric grid instability and lead to mass blackouts impacting millions of Americans, according to a recent study commissioned by North Dakota’s state government….The study largely echoes concerns that have been voiced by the U.S. grid watchdog, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation; regional grid operators; and power utility companies.
Politically astute readers will see “North Dakota” and assume this study is politically driven since ND governor Doug Burgum is oft mentioned in the VP short lists. There is only one problem with that charge, the phenomenon has been seen already – in Texas in 2021, and Tennessee (where the federal government controls TVA and is way “ahead of the curve” on eliminating coal) in 2022.
Now, let’s just ask ourselves one simple question. Who is the more compassionate soul? – The slick pol that’s all hugs and kisses and talk of racial equality or the guy that though he may be a boorish lout wants to make sure everyone’s heat works next winter? I’m serious – the Biden administration is pursuing policies that will leave people freezing in their homes in arctic conditions. This is not a small thing. People will certainly have their health compromised, and death is a possibility. Trump on the other hand will talk mean, since he can’t tweet mean anymore, while trying to make sure people have heat.
For those of us of faith, the answers here are simple. God works in mysterious ways. If it takes a philandering loutish boor to make sure people do not die in the cold, who am I to stand in the way of God’s good work? Charges that such a statement says I am a hypocrite in support of Trump’s philandering or loutishness is nonsense – a red herring. BTW, spare me the “convicted felon” stuff. If I change my focus from Trump’s bedroom behavior to his bookkeeping practices this argument still holds.
Hypocrite:
a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
Who’s the hypocrite here? The administration that talks about equality, equity and fairness then leaves all those people to freeze in their homes, or the guy that sounds mean, while making sure there is enough electricity available for them to heat their homes?
Recall the childish rhyme, “I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” I think we are there.
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Recalling yesterday’s post on some fraudulent science in Alzheimer’s research, there is one more comment need be made. Punching through to the original story covered in the post linked, there is an interesting notation:
But the Science investigation revealed evidence that the Nature paper and numerous others co-authored by Lesné, some listing Ashe as senior author, appeared to use manipulated data.
Now bear in mind the paper being retracted is 20 years old. And the key word in that pull quote is “manipulated.” Though the article does not say it specifically, the term “manipulated” Shows the problem with the statistical nature of so much of research these days that I have mentioned in these spaces many times.
More often than not, when you read these papers, you see the results of statistical analysis of data, but not the underlying data because the data is simply too voluminous to reproduce, it just resides on computers somewhere. Lots of studies these days are called “meta” studies where they analyze the analysis of a number of studies or combine the data from a number of studies. This makes it very easy to “manipulate” the data since the data proper is never reviewed. Which means it is easy to produce a desired result rather than look at the result you get, which is often inconclusive. Meta studies then compound the manipulation many times over.
The particular study in this story is not that statistically complex. But some things are. Climate change studies in particular are entirely statistical analysis of data from many sources of various levels of quality.
I don’t want to get too deep into the technical weeds here. The point is simple – this study stood for twenty years because it was easy to manipulate data and to cover up the manipulation. The next time someone tells you, “The science is settled,” don’t bet on it.
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Great reporting here on a scientific paper, now being retracted,
that…has driven research into Alzheimer’s treatments for nearly two decades, and treatment approaches based on its conclusions have failed to yield results….Lesné is responsible for perhaps billions of wasted research dollars and two decades of scientists following a false lead.
by David Strom. (HT: Instapundit) Strom concludes his piece looking at the current large number of scandals, particularly in the biological sciences, and noting that science needs far more scrutiny than it is currently receiving. True that, but one has to wonder how we got to this place and the motivations of those involved.
I’d like to suggest at least three things that need to be considered – declining educational standards generally – money and more money – celebrity.
The peer review system used to vet papers prior to publication is, in the end, a form of grading, just like when you are an undergrad trying to pass a test. We live in a world of massive grade inflation; a world that never wants to fail a student lest they damage the student’s sense of self-regard. If professors no longer fail undergrad students, how often do we think they will fail “peers?” The stakes of these papers are very high, graduate degrees, jobs, tenure, careers, grants and pay. In a world where we hesitate to make an undergrad take a class over, how much will we hesitate to tell a PhD that they will never get tenure? Which brings me to the second consideration – money.
Papers generate grants for further research, grants that pay professorial and their assistant’s salaries, grants that enrich the university, grants that keep the machine running. That’s bad enough, but n this day and age the university and the individuals involved in the research often get a piece of the financial pie when their publications result in products that make it to market. So, in the example we opened with, the market for an Alzheimer’s treatment drug is easily in the billions, if not trillions of dollars. If you are the person whose research was the fundamental breakthrough to that medication, you stand to make millions, many, many millions of dollars. That’s a heck of a motivation to publish a paper on the hope that it is a fundamental breakthrough, even if the evidence is not as strong as you hope it is.
When I was a boy and the polio vaccination was a new thing, it was called “the Salk vaccine” after its discoverer. Everyone knew who Joseph Salk was and among those credentials was one of the most famous people on the planet. A few decades later, everyone on the plant knew who Christiaan Barnard was – the surgeon that performed the first heart transplant. Just a few years ago, we all bowed at the feet of Anthony Fauci. Fame is a heady thing. In Fauci’s case we watched it, in real time, go to his head. After his last interview with the host, the producer pronounced on X(then Twitter) that Fauci was at least 3/4 ego. We watched Fauci say things he simply did not know for the sake of appearing authoritative and maintaining his rapidly accumulating fame. The lust for fame will call us to judge our statement and our publications by their potential to garner further fame, not their truth or falsehood.
With motivations that powerful, more than the higher scrutiny levels Strom calls for are needed if we are to stem the tide of fraudulent publications. Yet any alteration to “the system” that I can imagine ends up violating some fundamental value. For example, limiting financial gain is fundamentally not capitalistic. Not to mention for decades, and unfairly, academics enjoyed no financial reward for truly amazing and valuable work.
In the end what we need are scientists of sufficient character to resist temptation. It’s not more complicated than that. One has to wonder how much the animus between science and religion that has developed in the last century or so has contributed to this problem on the most fundamental level. Science does not teach character, that has to be learned in other classes, or maybe in church.
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Anderson Cooper called on Russell Moore to answer Ralph Reed regarding the question of Trump’s apparent morality and how Evangelicals should vote. YAWN The players are different, the issues are different, but this sounds remarkably like the debates on Mitt Romney and his LDS faith long ago. “If you do not vote for someone that is exactly like you in theology and practice then you are a hypocrite!” — “No, I’m not because (insert arguments I have been making since the early 2000’s here.)” And everyone goes their merry way having done their media spot, gotten their air time and enhanced their speaking fees. Meanwhile voters of all faiths make up their minds on entirely unrelated matters.
But the media does not stop trying to bash Christianity and the results are horrific. On Saturday, John Hinderaker found a local news piece on kids being arrested for riding their scooter over a “Pride Flag” painting in the street. Hinderaker is sufficiently snarky, but one thing he wrote was chilling:
But in today’s world, it is dangerous to cross the “Pride” contingent.
You can say that again. The New York Post uncovered some writings of the shooter that killed six in a Christian school near Nashville about a year ago. It evokes compassion while at the same time being very frightening. Here is a young lady struggling deeply with her sexuality. That is where the compassion arises. But she allows the struggle to turn to anger and the result shocked the nation. Where did that anger come from and why was it aimed where it was aimed?
I have to think the constant media drum, driven by the LGBTQ movement and its statistically outsized presence in the media community, trying to paint Christianity as an enemy of some sort has a lot to do with it.
That there is deep disagreement between traditional understandings of Christianity and the LGBTQ community is undeniable. That Christianity at one time treated people that struggle with these issues more as lepers than sinners is also undeniable. But what is becoming increasingly apparent is that the LGBTQ movement is, as climate change has, taking on many religious elements and seeks not reconciliation but vengeance. The acts of the Nashville church school shooter make take that vengeance to its ultimate violent extreme. (For some reason the word “jihad” comes to mind.) As such they do not correct the mistakes of Christianity past but come instead to resemble something very ugly.
Which takes us back to the issues of character and candidates. To discuss character simply in terms of sexual practice is to simplify matters hugely. Russell Moore’s comment, “If you cannot trust someone with your daughter, you cannot trust them with the nuclear codes,” is just silly. If someone lies about their sexual practices, hides them – then Moore is right – but Trump is a different animal, proud of his sexual conquests to the point of being distasteful and boorish.
The true measure of character is in other things. Chief among them is a preference for reconciliation and a deep resistance to vengeance – grace in the common sense if not the theological one.
The relationship between politics and faith is complex. Turning issues that have little or nothing to do with religion into religion only adds to the complexity. People will try; therefore, to simplify it. Somethings just cannot be simplified, and to attempt to is to appeal to our baser nature, not our higher one. We need to get back to appealing to our higher natures.
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Fascinating piece in The Federalist this week by Nathanael Blake. The provocative title is “If Churches Are Really Pro-Marriage, They Will Discipline Its Destroyers.” His thesis is:
Thus, churches should lean into their role of holding members accountable. In general, American churches are better about providing help than providing discipline. This support — from helping with babies to giving advice and nurturing friendships to providing financial help to struggling families — is indeed essential. Still, it is only part of what is needed. The biggest failure of American churches is in discipline; very few seem to impose real consequences on members who openly violate their marriage vows and thereby harm and destroy families.
In other words, we have forgotten all about negative reinforcement. This is most obviously true in the realm of family life, but also applies generally as we have moved from a church that calls people to be better to a church that is “come as you are.” Blake discusses the problem from an ecclesiological standpoint, noting that in an age of independent, evangelical congregations, church discipline has relatively little impact, as one can easily move to the next church. But there are other factors involved as well.
Note how I generalized Blakes argument saying, “we have moved from a church that calls people to be better to a church that is ‘come as you are.'” That statement summarizes two major theological shifts in church thinking. One, it marks a church relatedly focused on evangelism, not sanctification and preservation. Two, it marks a church that is fighting to survive rather than fighting to influence.
Somewhere in the 1960’s our cultural shift took a serious turn and among the many changes in that shift was a move away from church participation being an expectation and necessary for social success. Christianity could no longer look social pressure to fill the pews and the plates and realized it needed to develop real and genuine converts – people that came to church out of genuine belief, not merely social convention. This was difficult for the mainline churches and so the parachurch was born – organizations devoted to only a small part of the total Christian mission – mostly evangelism. The parachurch proved remarkably successful, but there was a problem – there was no bridge from parachurch to church, nor was there much desire to cross it where it did exist. Parachurch was fun and did not ask much of its participants. Church was hard, often dull, full of things like “sacrament” and demanded much. A lot of people loved parachurch and just decided to stay there – and thus the kind of independent churches Blake laments arose.
Somewhere in all this, we lost the ability to make believers out of converts. And so the church turned to “church consultants.” These are marketers and selling something is very different than making a believer. First thing the consultants did was survey people in church or looking to be in church and found what they want is a church that does not ask much of them. And so church slowly, but inexorably, became a place that does not ask you to take a hard look at yourself and see where you need improvement but instead into a place that takes you just the way you are. Our desire to win converts ended up undermining our reason to exist.
The great commission is to make disciples, not converts. We have lost our vision.
But note – all of this was in search of getting people to church. Over the decades the search has gotten increasingly desperate, increasing the temptation to follow culture into the “just the way you are” stuff. The desperation is the actual problem. Somewhere along the line we have eroded our own faith – acting like one of many agents in the world instead of the body of Christ. Paul wrote to the early Christian in Rome where they were deeply persecuted, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?” We have not acted boldly in that promise, but instead behaved timidly, afraid to stand out.
Later in that same letter, Paul urges the Christians in Rome, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed….” Timidity conforms, boldness transforms.
Now, having said all that, it is worthy of note, many churches, demanding transformation, have alienated and crushed people. That is not our goal. But the answer here is not in then giving up the call to transformation – it is instead in developing the character to call for transformation while not alienating, not crushing. The answer is in coming to embody Christ’s love so completely that rather than coming off as harsh legalists, people know we are acting in love, not condemnation.
Blake is right – church discipline is necessary. But if we are to return to it, we must first work on ourselves so that in the effort we do not become the harpies they think we are.
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There is a new study out on the effectiveness of pubic responses to covid. Here is the article for public consumption and here it is for science geeks. From the public consumption article, the major conclusion:
No matter how we approached these questions, the primary finding was lack of definitive patterns that could support claims about governmental policy impacts. About half the time, government policies were followed by better Covid-19 outcomes, and half of the time they were not. The findings were sometimes contradictory, with some policies appearing helpful when tested one way, and the same policy appearing harmful when tested another way. No claims about the relationship between government responses and pandemic outcomes held generally.
For a period of time we changed the world, almost entirely, and we have no idea if it helped or hurt – at least as far as the disease goes. It hurt and hurt for sure on a number of other fronts. That speaks to climate change in ways we really need to think about.
Both covid epidemiology and climate change are massive systems, making science difficult. We cannot really run experiments on either system. Although disease epidemiology can be studied in a laboratory under controlled conditions using human substitutes, meaning animals, assuming we are willing to sacrifice said animals. What this means is that most of what we know about these systems is statistical analysis of data as it happens, without controls on the experiment. It also says we can know more about disease progression than when can possibly know about climate as any experiment is impossible on climate.
Both systems, covid and climate change, involve human behavior as much or more than pure physical phenomena. Human behavior can be categorized but put two people in the exact same circumstance and you can get very different outcomes. That means that, at best, any model you produce with statistical methods will produce probabilities, not certainties – you can say what is likely to happen, not what will happen. And if you run into that group of atypical people, your projections will look completely worthless. In both cases, one person or group behaving atypically can have global effects, changing the entire predictive matrix.
I could keep going for a while and this could get really technical. Let’s just say that when it comes to “the science” covid and climate change have a lot of similarities.
Which brings us back to policy based on that science. We brought the world to a halt, with massive and mostly negative ramifications, based on this “science” for covid. The changes everyone is promoting for climate change are even greater and the downside even more potentially catastrophic. Which means covid should create a great hesitancy about climate change policy – that we should slow down and make sure we really and fully understand what is going on before we decide to change the entire world. But we seem not to have learned the lesson of covid. In point of fact, we seem to be using covid as cover to accelerate climate change policy, not slow it down.
That is deeply revelatory. It reveals that the agenda is not to respond to “the science” but to change the world. “The science” is just an excuse. The next time someone tells you “the science” says we have to do something about climate change, just know that it doesn’t. Such people are either grossly misinformed or more interested implementing global socialism than “the science.”
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Much has been made in the last week of how “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) has infected legal circles like a zombie virus, turning something benign into a raving monster. But when it comes to policy, it has created equally as much warpage. There are many policies stances that have appeared out of nowhere simply because they are the opposite of issues Trump picked up and championed. No place is that more evident than in the area of immigration.
The current status of immigration policy makes absolutely no sense whatsoever – the southern border is virtually open, immigrants being transported en masse throughout the country at government expense – unless you are not thinking about immigration policy at all. The people making these policies are obsessed with NOT being Donald J Trump who made immigration policy his key issue in his first election. Sure, they justify their actions with notions that they are looking for “equity and diversity,” but in the end it is simply a matter of doing thge opposite of Trump. “If Trump wants to control the border, we must erase the border.”
It would be bad enough if is stopped there, but for the worst cases on TDS, things have gotten even worse. Consider California where Gavin Newsom, still for reasons I cannot understand considered viable for the presidency, continues to enjoy the absolute ire of his citizens. Among the Sacramento illuminati, TDS reigns with absolute authority. The Washington Times writes “California rolls out red carpet for illegal immigrants.” It has gotten truly insane:
If passed, Assembly Bill 2586 would provide state government jobs at taxpayers’ expense for illegal immigrants. DeMaio said specifically, it mandates that illegal immigrants with no U.S. work authorization should be given access to apply for and take jobs provided through taxpayer-funded universities run by the state government.
California already provides such individuals with virtually full access to government assistance of all sorts, but now they are going to hand them cushy government jobs! There is no way to explain a policy like that other than TDS. They don’t even bother to make an argument for it, they just propose it and talk a lot about “compassion.” If compassion were the issue they could fund NGOs in their place of origin, it just does not add up.
Last week I wrote about hatred’s ability to destroy, but not to build. Last weekend Peggy Noonan wrote that we seem to like hating each other, and I commented on Sunday. It is becoming very worrisome. The zombie analogy seems most apropos as we appear to be eating our own.
There was a time when hating your political opponent was considered fodder for humor, but now it is political meat-and-potatoes. Mankind has long known that hatred can consume your soul, but it can also consume your mind and reason, harming yourself far more than the object of your hatred. I think we are there.
The post The Policy Ramifications of TDS appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Typically, good character and morality have been deeply associated, but recent times may cause us to rethink that. Specifically, the Trump NYC trial raises the issue. We have battling sinners. Trump who has at times past worn his immorality on his sleeve and Judge Marchan who has violated judicial ethics. We need to be able to make some judgement about them both. We need to decide who is the worse actor.
Let’s start with Trump. The former President is a known philanderer. The end of his first marriage was quite salacious and quite public. The quite public part matters a lot. Trump did not make any bones about his affair with Marla Maples, often using it as a bludgeon against his first wife. He never denied it.
Which brings us to the whole Stormy Daniels thing – he denies it. We all presume that Daniels is telling the truth because of history, but we have to realize that her testimony is unsubstantiated. We all presume the so-called “hush money” payments to be corroboration, but are they? Such payments buy silence only, they are not prima facie evidence of the truth or falsehood of the statements being silenced. Her statements could be purely extortive.
Trump is immensely proud of his conquests in business, in the bedroom, and in politics. You want more evidence of that fact? – see the infamous Howard Stern interview. In light of his character, defined by immense pride, and history, why would he lie about Stormy Daniels? So here is where we are – Trump is unquestionably immoral, at least in the past, but his character in that same past would indicate that he is no liar.
Now let’s turn to Judge Marchan. He was officially disciplined by the New York State ethics panel for his donations to Joe Biden and related. He should have recused himself under such circumstances. Instead, he marched forward presiding over a trial that most judges would have summarily dismissed – acting as if the discipline never happened. Judge Marchan acted, quite deceptively, to add the imprimatur of judicial impartiality to a proceeding that was far from legitimate. His actions are unethical, but further indicate a character of deception – rendering him untrustworthy.
Ethics, morality – they are the rules by which we are supposed to conduct ourselves. We try, but everyone violates them at some time in their life. The rules are complicated and cover many areas of life, from the bedroom to the boardroom. Slip-ups are unavoidable. But character speaks to how we deal with those violations. Good character belongs to those that admit their issues and attempt to overcome them. Poor character hides their issues, pretends like they don’t exist and never tries to fix them. You cannot trust such an individual.
Both men here are immoral. But one, though distastefully so, has proven to be more trustworthy than the other – and thus of better, even if severely flawed, character.
The post Morality and Character appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator John Cornyn joined me this AM to discuss the tidal wave of contributions to former President Trump’s campaign:
Audio:
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The post Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) On The Trump Verdict appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
$300 million in four days is a staggering amount of money for any campaign to raise, much less to do so in four days. I spoke with Senator Tom Cotton this AM on the outrage fueling that flood:
Audio:
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The post Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) On The Tidal Wave Of Contributions To The Trump Campaign appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
While we have be obsessed with the Trump conviction, which is fading from the news with remarkable rapidity as it seems to have had little effect on polling – revealing much, other things have happened. But before we get to that news a couple of more commentaries on that conviction are worth the read. Yesterday I commented on Trump’s conviction being a result of the threat he presents to the administrative state. Dr. John Marini from Claremont sees me and raises me. And, of course, Andrew C. McCarthy laments the damage done to the rule of law by that conviction. But that said, let’s move to other news.
Is there pure science anymore? A story appeared last week about a new discovery regarding the element promethium. Fascinating science about which most of you do not care – deeply esoteric stuff. But in its initial bullet-point summary of the story AP(Yahoo) writes, “the discovery could make protection of this rare element easier” – I had no idea it was threatened. This is the knee jerk use of a word, entirely inapplicable to the circumstances. This is a political agenda (“environmental protection”) imposed on a story about pure science for no darn good reason other than an editor that does not have a clue about the underlying story and does have an agenda.
Years ago, I wrote of the consumption of the once great magazine Scientific American by politics. That magazine has now descended into the dark netherworld, beyond politics into moral evil.
Can we be honest about what climate change is actually all about? It’s a wealth transfer scheme in science clothing, that’s all it is. This has now become most obvious in this development, “Vermont becomes 1st state to enact law requiring oil companies pay for damage from climate change.” That is simply ludicrous. IF (huge, big, boldface “IF”) we presume that oil is damaging the climate, and we IF presume we can somehow quantify this damage, how in the heck do we hold oil companies responsible for it? The current thinking is that climate change is due to the burning of oil, something oil consumers do, not oil producers. Furthermore, I thought coal was the real bug-a-boo, why are they not passing similar laws to go after the coal industry? (Easy answer – shallow pockets.) It’s naked now. Climate change is not science at all – it’s wealth transfer.
But while we are on the topic this Rich Lowry piece is delicious. The administration gave Transporation Secretary Pete Buttigieg $7.5 billion (with a “B”) to build electric car charging stations twop years ago. To date they have built 8! That is amazingly slow progress. Why so slow?
According to a Politico report on the slow rollout of the charging stations, “States and the charger industry blame the delays mostly on the labyrinth of new contracting and performance requirements they have to navigate to receive federal funds.”
In other words, the administrative state is standing in the way of the administrative state. If nothing else that is good for a laugh.
But when it comes to folly it is hard to top this story. The zero-percent down mortgage is making a comeback. Does anyone remember 2008? Yes, the housing market is a mess, but this is a way to make the mess bigger. It’s been proven and evidenced in history that this is a bad idea – a really bad idea – a horrendous idea. This is a mark of desperation – an effort to correct folly by more folly.
This election cannot come soon enough. The question is will it matter? We have to elect people with some common sense to even have a hope of righting the ship, but with the administrative state playing ball this way, and given its massive scale, can we get the job done?
The post Quick Hits (A Round-Up) appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Trump’s conviction in New York is now fact. Yes, it will be reversed, but not until after the election. The ramifications to the forthcoming election are to be seen, but there are also ramifications far beyond just the election, reversal notwithstanding. We need to think about those as well. After contemplating over the weekend, two have come to my mind.
Everyone, I mean everyone, knows this conviction is not about what was charged. Find the average Trump hater on the street and they will seethe and foam and tell you it is “about time,” but they won’t have a clue about what the charges actually were, let alone the evidence. I have yet to find a lawyer or other knowledgeable individual that thinks the conviction is about the charges. The legal theories and evidence involved are so tortured that they will admit that, in essence, Trump was convicted for being Trump. Some thought about what people are actually so upset is where ramifications beyond the election begin to appear.
Been writing for some time about the rise of the administrative state. Most recently looking at the Jarkesy case before SCOTUS trying to rein in the administrative court system. In that post I examined how unfair that administrative court system can be:
But what the article never addresses is such administrative courts at lower levels, when the accused is a small, sole proprietor, business and the charges are something silly like failure to file a report in a timely fashion. In such cases the “judge” is a functionary that had nothing better to do that day and took seven years to complete undergrad school, the “prosecutor” is a line inspector that felt insulted by the accused who took exception when they forced their way into the accused’s place of business and started pointing fingers and the accused is represented by himself without a clue as to what has or is happening to him other than there are a bunch of people telling him he is a criminal and they need more money than he has to make it all go away.
That is remarkably similar to what happened to Trump. No one really knows that his crime was, the whole idea was just to get to conviction. I think it is fair to conclude that one of Trump’s uncharged “crimes” is the threat he represents to the administrative state. The man came, and is coming, to “drain the swamp” but the swamp does not want to be drained. As if the pandemic were not enough, this situation illustrates in even larger type just how out-of-bounds the administrative state has become.
But more important is the revelations contained in the “seething and foaming.” Trump was convicted for being Trump – a lout – a boor. Many people are simply revolted by his manner and don’t want it in their face. And if it can happen to Trump, it can happen to any one of us. The outcome of this trial indicates that it is now a crime to commit a social faux pas. Pretty much everyone has been excluded from something based on being not socially unacceptable, heck, most of the “brat pack” movies of the 1980’s were themed on that very thing. It hurts, everyone knows that. That explains Trump’s massive money haul since the conviction.
But until now such has not been criminal. Now instead of not being able to get a date for the prom, or go to the cool party, you can go to jail for such. You…can…go…to…jail.
Americans will not stand for that. The shunned were the heroes of all those brat pack movies. The hyper-handsome blond guy always ends up falling in the pile of horse manure. I think that as this moves forward we must keep in mind that electing Trump is just getting that guy into the horse pasture. There is a long road and a tough war ahead of us to actually get to where we want to be.
I’ve seen it happen before – the administrative state just goes underground for a while, then pops up again when the opportunity presents itself. This election is the first battle, but far from the war. Let’s win the war.
The post Two Observations on the Trump Conviction appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Peggy Noonan’s column this week is a lament, she laments the fact that “We Are Starting to Enjoy Hatred.” I agree with her general thesis, that hatred builds nothing, I wrote virtually the same thing earlier this week. But there are places where I do not think she sees the full picture.
She gets into the “why’s of this seemingly new pleasure:
Some of it is human and has been around forever. People enjoy hating—it feels so vigorous. Some enjoy their hatred because they are by nature shallow and see the implications of nothing. Some enjoy it because they see politics as an extension of sports—booing the other team is part of the fun of being at the game. Some enjoy it because it lets them feel immersed in a warm bath of righteousness: I’m not immoral like a Trump supporter; I’m not a mindless snob who drove the country into a ditch like a Democrat.
But some enjoy their hatred—this is the new part, and I think pretty widespread—because it helps them avoid seeing that they are involved in a tragedy.
She is right – hatred is a natural stance of mankind, provided you understand that mankind is, by birth, sinful. (That darn Christian doctrine of “original sin.”) But then in her claims that our enjoyment is a part of that river in Egypt (de-nial – a pun so old it should be illegal) is new just misses the mark. We have always relied on hatred as a means of avoiding our own guilt – it is always someone else’s fault, that way we never have to own our issues. That is why Christ was crucified – so the officialdom of the time did not have to face their own shortcomings.
She also misses her own culpability as she stands on high and proclaims both candidates as deeply flawed. Indeed, and undeniably, they are. But as Jesus turned His crucifixion into salvation for each of us, we need to make the best of this situation, which means we have to make a political choice and act on it, if not vehemently, energetically.
She tries to end with a way to make it better – she writes a slightly more sophisticated version of Rodney King’s “Can’t we all just get along?” In her timidity, she misses the mark again. “Enjoy our hate” is phrase that rang a bell with me. I pondered a moment, and 2 Timothy 3 came to mind. Says Paul to his young protégé Timothy:
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these. For among them are those who slip into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, worthless in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress; for their foolishness will be obvious to all, just as was that also of Jannes and Jambres.
Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me! Indeed, all who want to live in a godly way in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil people and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.
I am not so bold as to declare these are “the last days” – even if that first paragraph sounds remarkably like a current description. But I will resolve to try and live in accordance with that second paragraph so that I might be “fully capable, equipped for every good work.”
The post Hating What Is Good appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
If you listened to the show closely this past week you may have heard the host and the producer discuss that I now have an “actual Batcave.” Kinda – I have modified a room in the house with a secret door and labelled it “Batcave,” but it could just as easily be a speakeasy or a priest hole. However, I am a massive superhero comic book fan and so I’m calling it my personal Batcave. This week the Beeb published a piece on how the Russian government has released a bunch of comic books in an effort to gin up support among its younger population for its ongoing war with Ukraine. Comics have a long history of use as propaganda. But more importantly the graphic arts have a long-standing connection to storytelling generally and storytelling shapes us.
Some years ago, I visited the Chester Beatty Museum in Dublin Ireland. I had no idea the place existed but had been in Belfast the day before and it was highly recommended bv some good friends. It is a museum of manuscripts containing true marvels like a piece of the Gospel of John dating back to 90 A.D. Among the things I found there was a copy of the first printed edition of the first novel ever written. It is heavily illustrated – so heavily that it is considered by some to also be the first graphic novel (long form comic book) ever made. The graphic arts and storytelling have a long and deep connection indeed.
Comic strips started appearing in newspapers in the late 19th century. They were a great diversion, and not long after they began to appear someone had the bright idea that they could be lengthened and published in magazine form, cheaply printed on newsprint and the comic book was born. These early books were a novelty until the Great Depression when the cheap price made them an easily obtainable form of entertainment.
The masked vigilante is an old genre of storytelling, born somewhat of reality in the old, lawless west and neatly summarized by The Lone Ranger. As the 19th century became the 20th such stories proliferated in different settings – Zorro, The Scarlet Pimpernel. Such stories were largely escapist – dreaming of a way to make the world a better place. They were natural fodder for the burgeoning comic book industry in The Great Depression and so character after character was born – The Blue Beetle, Sandman – just to name two of dozens. But then along came writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster who created a “strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities” (Superman for the really dense) and the super-hero genre was born. Sales skyrocketed! Titles expanded exponentially.
The stories, regardless of character and “power” followed the same narrative arc as the epics of antiquity – the shaping of a hero through overcoming loss and difficulty, duty to country and culture – what has come to be called The Heroic Ideal. Superman lost his entire race and became a force for good. Batman, something of a hold out from the masked vigilante stories, lost his family of origin becoming a force for justice. Shazam, then called Captain Marvel, was also an orphan overcoming the Depression. Plastic Man was a two-bit crook that lifted himself out of gangland to stand for goodness.
The boys that read these stories during the Great Depression were the men that fought World War 2. And while it was the pin-up girls that adorned barrack walls, it was the comic books that filled foot lockers. Raised on tales of the Heroic Ideal, the Greatest Generation became the heroes we needed. Yes, the War Department did not hesitate to put the soldiers’ avarice for heroic tales to productive use. Comics were commissioned specifically for the military. It still happens these days from time-to-time.
There is much scholarship on the role that comic books played in World War 2. Much effort to draw the line between propaganda and “truthful” storytelling – liberal conspiracy theorists claiming our youth were “suckered” by heroic tales cooked up by propagandists determined to fight “Roosevelt’s little war.” But the point is that the men, and women to some extent, that fought WWII were not shaped by the propaganda driven comics of the war, but by the tales of heroism that filled their youth.
The epic tale, from Odysseus to Gilgamesh to Superman is one of the most powerful ways we encapsulate and propagate our cultural ideals – and specifically our ideals about heroism and sacrifice and duty. The medium may change but the tale remains.
The tale has changed – radically – since the revival of the comic book medium in the early 60’s. That change has accelerated since the genre movies proliferated and particularly since Disney got its grubby hands on Marvel. Now the tale is one of personal fulfillment, interpersonal conflict, inclusion and finding “family.” It is indeed a tale, but it is no longer epic or sacrificial or heroic. One has to wonder what would have happened if the today’s tale were the tale then. From where I sit, it is not a pretty picture.
Like the chicken-and-egg question, it is difficult to say whether popular media like comic books reflect cultural change or drive it – probably some of each. But what is undeniable is that the heroes of old and the real-life heroes of WWII were inextricably linked. Given that undeniable fact, I think one must conclude that history would be quite different indeed had we never seen the likes of a Superman or a Batman or a Captain America – more akin to The Man in the High Castle than the world we enjoy today.
The more important question is what do the Captain Marvels and Deadpools of today tell us about what the world of tomorrow will look like. I don’t see good things. And that is where the chicken-and-egg questions moves from hypothetical to very real. Do we change our media in hopes it drives the culture in a better direction? Maybe that defines the line between storytelling and propaganda.
The post Art, Propaganda and Shaping a Generation appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) joined me this AM:
Audio:
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Transcript:
HH: Speaker Johnson, good morning. How are you?
MJ: Hey, Hugh. Doing well. Good to hear your voice.
HH: You’re early, and I’m glad you’re early, because I’ve got a lot to talk to you about. And we’ll talk during the break and post it all and then after the break as well. So let me begin by asking you, have you spoken to President Trump?
MJ: I have not spoken to him in the last few days. I was with him there in court a few weeks ago. I’ve talked to him a couple times since. He’s very frustrated, as we all are. But I think he understands they just ensured that he gets reelected president. I’m convinced of that.
HH: Well, Senator Rubio said that on Special Report last night when I was on the panel. Do you think the conviction will have the same effect on GOP and independents that the Dobbs decision had on the Democratic base?
MJ: You know what? That’s a great analogy. I think it probably will. Today, I’m in Ohio and Michigan, tomorrow in Illinois. Hugh, I’ve been in, by the end of this week, I will have been in 115 cities doing campaign events in the last six months in 29 states. There is an incredible energy on the ground that existed before this. But I was here in Ohio doing events when this came down yesterday, and I’m telling you that the enthusiasm is through the roof right now. People are so disgusted at what they’re seeing the Democrats and the left do, that they’re highly-motivated. And I just have never seen this kind of energy before.
HH: I was asked by NPR this morning to limit by objections to the verdict to one, and I cited the failure to specify charges. You’re a pretty good lawyer. Which one would you hold up? The judge’s conflicts? The instructions? The failure to allow Brad Smith to testify? What’s your number one reason for reversal?
MJ: Gosh, it’s a great question. You know, probably the fact that as the Trump’s litigation team is suggesting this morning, we know that Cohen perjured himself on the stand. He should have been impugned as a witness, and he wasn’t. And the entire case is premised and built upon his testimony, a known perjurer. You know, I mean, there’s so many grounds for appeal here. I think it’s a certainty that it will be overturned. It’s just going to take us some months to do that, I’m afraid. And that’s the peril of all this, and that’s, of course, what they knew and what they wanted all along.
HH: Yeah, but you know, I think sometimes, you’ve got to be careful what you wish for. Speaker, stand by for a second. I’ve got to cut to break, and I’ll continue talking with you as long as you can stay with me.
MJ: Sure.
— – – — –
HH: Speaker Johnson, we’ll play this and post it, even though we’re off the air for about five minutes, and then we’ll come back. Do you expect this miscarriage of justice to impact the former President’s selection of vice president? Will he go for a lawyer that can combat the ridiculousness of this like Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo? Or will he want a contrast with a mild-mannered but very smart Doug Burgum? What do you think?
MJ: Or Tim Scott or someone like that? Yeah, look, we have an embarrassment of riches on our side. It’s a deep bench, unlike the other team’s, and that’s a great problem to have. You know, he’s got some great choices. Every one you named there are good friends and trusted friends of mine. So it’s tough for me to handicap the race, but I’ll tell you, he’s got great choices. I think any of the people you mentioned could give voice to this and express the outrage of the people and explain what’s wrong about it. It really doesn’t take legal acumen or a legal background to be able to see that what’s happened here is just plainly wrong, and it’s lawfare. And there’s no better way to describe it, and I think people understand that.
HH: Well, I look forward to the vice presidential debate, and…
MJ: Yeah.
HH: When Vice President Harris stands up and says I was a prosecutor, and this was well done, I just think maybe I’d like to have Mike Pompeo say well, not only am I a good lawyer, but I was a secretary of state, and you’ve embarrassed us around the world.
MJ: Oh, yeah.
HH: Because I do think this embarrasses us around the world. Do you share the opinion of former National Security Advisor O’Brien that this really damages our rule of law arguments everywhere?
MJ: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is what you expect in a third world country, a banana republic, not the United States, the premiere legal system in the world that’s been the model and the envy of everybody for so long. The Democrats are so desperate because they know President Trump is crushing Joe Biden in the polls that they have relegated themselves to this. They risk the destruction of the credibility of our entire system of justice, and there is nothing less than that at stake here. People don’t see the system as fair right now. And Hugh, you and I both know that’s a peril to the maintenance of a Constitutional republic. People have to believe that the system of justice is fair, and they don’t right now. And it’s going to take us quite a bit of time to restore that faith. And that’s a serious challenge for us.
HH: Mr. Speaker, I come from California. That’s where I practiced law for 35 years. I’m retired now. And I’ve argued before judges I didn’t think were going to go my way like Stephen Reinhardt. I won that case on the 9th Circuit, but I nevertheless thought I didn’t have much of a chance going in, because it was Reinhardt. And I’ve argued in front of other judges who are erratic. I’ve never argued to a judge who had contributed to an anti-Hugh campaign. You’re a lawyer. I mean, can you believe Merchan stayed on this case after he had contributed to Biden and to two committees, symbolic, small contributions, but he wanted to make a statement. Can you believe he rejected the recusal motion?
MJ: It’s incredible. It’s incredible. I was with President Trump, rode with him in the motorcade to court a few weeks ago to see all that charade for myself, and I just can’t believe it. I mean, and think of it, Hugh. Even in the last week or so, you’ve got the left apoplectic that Justice Alito should supposedly recuse himself because his wife flew a flag at their home, right? This guy, this judge in Manhattan, to your point, is an open known Biden donor. His daughter, by the way, is out raising millions of dollars on the trial that’s going on in front of him. There’s no way that that should ever have been allowed, and I think everybody sees that double standard. And I think it’s going to work to President Trump’s benefit in the election. And all of us, by the way, Hugh, last night, our Republican fundraising platforms broke records. The NRCC, the RNC, I mean, there is a zeal out there in the base, and enthusiasm, a motivation, and I made the comment in another interview this morning that President Trump is no longer just an individual. He is now a symbol. He is a symbol of fighting back against this corruption of our system and the deep state and all the rest. It’s true. That’s happening in real time. And we’re all going to watch it play out over the next few months.
HH: Mr. Speaker, I have been trying to condense the issue set in ways that are easy to remember, and I’m finally down to the five I’s. The Five Eyes, of course, applied in the intelligence world are Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The five I’s of 2024, I think, are inflation, number one, immigration, number two. Number three is Israel. Number four is the infirmity of Joe Biden. And number five is the injustice done to Donald Trump. Good summary?
MJ: That’s excellent. You’ve got a great way of doing that summary. I might adopt that, Hugh, and I will give you the credit for it, because there’s so many issues, to your point, to talk about. And when I’m moving around the country doing all these events, I mean, people are so frustrated about so many things. It’s helpful to us to be able to summarize it well, and I think that does it. Yeah, that last I that we’ve just added is a big one, and I think it may overtake some of the other issues.
HH: When we come back from break, I’m going to ask you to rank them, because I do think inflation was number one going into this, but we’ll be right back and we’ll talk about whether or not injustice trumps it now. Stay tuned. I’ll be right back with Speaker Johnson.
— – — –
HH: I am back now with Speaker Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, of course. Speaker Johnson, in terms of your advice to candidates running for the House of Representatives who are challenging Democrats in competitive districts, do they lead with the inflation? Do they lead with the immigration nightmare that we have on our hands? Do they lead with the Israeli war and the fact that Joe Biden doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going? Do they lead with the infirmity of the President? Or do they lead with the injustice done to the former President?
MJ: It’s a great menu of items there. You know, I think no matter where you are in the country right now, and I mentioned I’ve been to over 110 cities in 29 states in the last six months. The issues are the same. I mean, they really are. It doesn’t matter where you are – north, south, east, west. That’s what’s been on everybody’s hearts and minds. It’s inflation. It’s the immigration, the open border, the infirmity of the President. I would add another I. How about instability on the world stage, which really all of this leads into? That’s a real problem.
HH: Yup.
MJ: And we’re on the verge of World War III. We’ve got hot wars around the globe, and China, Russia, and Iran all working together against Israel, of course, but us as well and the free world. These are dangerous times, and there’s a lot to discuss. And people have a lot on their hearts and minds, and they’re fed up, Hugh. They’re ready for change. And I think the polling was already showing us, the poll that came out Wednesday this week already said they gave Biden, this is the Hill and DecisionDesk, and they looked at 200 different metrics across the board, across the country. And they assessed that Donald Trump, prior to this verdict, had a 54% chance of winning the White House. I think that’s underestimated. They think the Republicans had an 80% chance of winning the Senate, and they gave us a 64% chance of keeping and growing the House majority. I think all those numbers just went up pretty dramatically. And it’s going to be an exciting year.
HH: Now white, hot anger has to be channeled into political activity that is legitimate and just, not into stupid stuff, and certainly not into violence.
MJ: Yeah.
HH: I know you know that. But do you expect the legacy media, especially the Manhattan-Beltway media elite to honestly explain to their audiences the grounds for appeal and why I and Mark Levin and many other people are so…Ted Cruz last night, 100% confident in reversal. Do you think legacy media will fairly present this over the weekend?
MJ: Oh, no. Of course, not. And they can drag this out, now, for another month before sentencing and then all the way through the conventions. That’s the game. That was the design. That’s what they wanted to do, call Donald Trump a convicted felon, you know, try to attack his character all the way through this thing. They’re terrified, Hugh, because they know that he is beating Joe Biden in all the swing states, six of the seven when I last saw it. I’m on the ground here, I mentioned, in Ohio and Michigan today. I’ll be in Illinois tomorrow. I’m telling you that these are not, you know, even in blue states and swing states, President Trump already had the energy and the enthusiasm on his side. And I think this makes it better for our team.
HH: Oh, Bernie Moreno is the happiest man in America. I know he doesn’t really want the President unjustly convicted, but Bernie Moreno is going to just immediately, Sherrod Brown is so bad on this stuff, I hope somebody asks him about the recusal idiocy that he signed onto for Justice Alito after this. Where in Ohio are you? That’s my home state, Mr. Speaker.
MJ: Oh, yeah. Well, I’m in Cincinnati this morning, and we’ll be headed, we’re doing four cities in Ohio in 36 hours. So Toledo and Columbus and Cleveland, and I’m telling you that the crowds here are enthusiastic. They know what’s at stake. Everybody does. We’re apt to say oh, you know, the next election cycle’s the most important one of our lifetime. Everybody knows that this one truly, truly is. And so they’re motivated. We set fundraising records last night on our fundraising platforms after all this broke. And we had to set up a new site, because they were crashing all of our sites, so www.supportDJT.com is our House majority’s effort to stand with the President and get this thing done. So I would refer everybody there if they get a chance.
HH: www.supportDJT.com?
MJ: That’s right. That’s right.
HH: You know, I’m glad you told me that, because I do think the website’s going to do down again. www.supportDJT.com. In Michigan, will you be with Mike Rogers, who was on the program yesterday?
MJ: Yeah. I’m trying to catch up to him. He is busy on the campaign trail and doing a great job. And I think he’s got a fantastic shot there.
HH: So I’ll close with this, Mr. Speaker. I know you’re pressed, and I appreciate the time. I want to play what people didn’t hear afterwards. If we get back the Senate, and I think we’re going to win with McCormick, with Hogan, with Moreno. I think we’re going to win with Tim Sheehy and Kerri Lake and Sam Brown, and maybe in Wisconsin. I think we’re going to get the Senate back. I think you’re going to hold your majority. You get one big swing in reconciliation. I hope it’s aimed at education and defunding schools with more than a billion dollars in endowment and making choice a requirement of every school in the nation. Like Louisiana just adopted choice, I believe.
MJ: Right.
HH: What do you think your big swing will be if you get the House and the Senate with the new second term of President Trump?
MJ: Well, the reconciliation process is so important, because you know that it requires only a bare majority vote in the Senate instead of the 60-vote threshold. We’re going to use it aggressively and broadly. We’ve got a multi-pronged plan to do that, because we need massive policy change. Those issues that you mentioned are high on our list. There’s other things as well, I mean, including even immigration. So I think that the Byrd rule, we can survive that, not to get too deep in the weeds. A lot of people don’t follow all this. But the Democrats used it very broadly last time, and they kind of set a new precedent, and so we’re making some very important plans for how to do that. And the first order…
HH: Yeah, the Byrd rule for, this audience understands that it’s a dollars and cents rule.
MJ: Yeah.
HH: If you’re going to affect the reconciliation process, you’ve got to be affecting the budget. But I think you can do education spending. You can do immigration. You can do a lot with budget-connected stuff, right?
MJ: Of course. That’s right. That’s right. The Senate parliamentarian is the arbiter of all that, but we’re working on the front end so there’s no surprises. And we’re very bullish and optimistic about what we’ll be able to achieve in that. Look, we’ve got to fix every metric of public policy. Joe Biden and the Democrats have messed it all up, of course. And I told President Trump recently, Mr. President, in your next term, which I’m convinced you’ll get, you can be the most consequential president of the modern era. We’ve got to fix everything. And he knows that. He gets it. And we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda in the new Congress, new administration. And I think it’s going to excite the people.
HH: My last question, Mr. Speaker. We have enemies – China, Iran, Russia. As they look at the United States today, have they changed their calculous about our role in the world and our ability to deter them?
MJ: Sadly, and dangerous, I think that’s true. We have projected weakness on the world stage. That’s the instability, the other I that I was going to add to your list. And I think it’s a very serious threat. But I do believe that when Donald Trump returns to the White House, I think all that changes. I think it’s a 180-degree turn, because they respect and they fear Donald Trump. They’re not sure what he’s capable of, and there’s some real value in that, you know, Hugh. I mean, we didn’t have hot wars around the globe when he was in the Oval Office for a very important reason. And Joe Biden…
HH: How dangerous will the transition be? You’ve got this infirm, feeble, wobbly president who has been defeated by Donald Trump, and I’m projecting here what I think is going to happen. How dangerous will those transition months be if China’s looking at Taiwan?
MJ: Well, that’s something that we lose sleep over. I think that is their plan, and it’s just a matter of time before they try it. And why wouldn’t you, if you were China? Really, why wouldn’t you in that transition period? We certainly hope that doesn’t happen. Our military is hopefully armed and equipped for that. You know, I get the briefings, and I can’t go into the classified parts. But there’s tabletop exercises being done right now, and I think that we’ll be able to hold the line. But we have got to have a change in our commander-in-chief. Everybody knows that. And this is not a sustainable trajectory we’re on. If we had four more years of Biden and Harris, oh, Heaven help us. That can’t happen. I don’t think it will, and that’s why we’re so bullish about November.
HH: Mr. Speaker, thank you for joining me this morning. I appreciate your candor and your willingness to get out there and start fighting back against what is a miscarriage of justice. Press on and have a good trip. Hope they take you to Warren/Youngstown, because that’s actually real Ohio, as opposed to Cincinnati. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MJ: Good to talk to you.
End of interview.
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The giveaway is the coverage. It took moments last night for the coverage of Trump’s conviction to turn from “crime and punishment” to politics – moments. That’s revelatory, revealing that it was never about “crime and punishment” to begin with – it was a sham and it was media product. This is not history. I’ve seen history – moon landings and presidential resignations – the coverage of actual history is an entirely different animal than this. The problem here is how I want to analyze and cover it. The avalanche of donations to the Trump campaign is one angle. The host is all about us becoming a “banana republic” this morning – that’s another angle. (I think I’ll leave that to him, he is after all, a lawyer and I am not.) An angle close to my heart is that this is an act of passion, not reason but I think I covered that, though not fully, yesterday. How many times have you heard the term “reversible” in the last few weeks and especially the last twelve hours? The verdict will not stand – and Judge Marchan has to know that – he is grossly partisan, but not stupid. But the wheels of justice are slow and so Donald J. Trump is stuck running with this weight around his neck. That indicates that this is, perhaps above all else, a facade – a media event – an illusion and that is the angle I think needs the most analysis this morning.
Yesterday in Slate a first person piece by one of the producers of the first two seasons of The Apprentice appeared. It is long and completely uninformative. If you can battle through the nonsense that is the first dozen of more paragraphs, you eventually get to the guy recycling accusations about Trump’s management of contractors etc. that was long ago baked into the cake. But what the article is really about is that reality TV is anything but real and this guy is undergoing some sort of catharsis while writing the piece because he feels responsible for Trump’s political ascendancy. This guy actually thinks that he, and the other producers of the show, “made” Trump. The vanity and self-importance practically drips from the piece, but having worked within Hollywood circles for many years, that is unsurprising. This guy actually thinks people cannot tell the difference between real and reality TV – that we were somehow fooled by his TV magic.
And so we have the trial – the most covered judicial event since OJ. The OJ trial was a miscarriage of justice – this was abuse of it – and both are united by the overwhelming presence of media. And as the article just discussed illustrates, overwhelming media warps reality. But people know the difference between actual reality and media’s warped version of it. Movie makers love to talk about making people suspend their disbelief – that’s how we buy into stories about galactic wars involving light speed starships. We do the same thing when we watch so-called reality TV; we are entertained, sometimes it touches on our passions, and so we are willing to buy into the illusion. But we still know the difference.
In the short term, the election will tell the ending of this tale. The American people know the voting booth is a place for harsh reality, not media warpage.
Longer term we have to look at the role media plays in our culture. Warping the reality of a bunch of yahoos in a beach house for entertainment purposes is one thing – perverting our justice system is another thing altogether. Make no mistake, the roots of this lie, decades ago, in “The People’s Court” turning small claims court into an actual TV show. It may be time for a re-think.
But mostly we should be insulted – these media numbskulls think we are, to borrow a pro wrestling term, “marks” – easily fooled and manipulated. Guess again.
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Announced the jury has reached a verdict.
Number One – expect a guilty verdict and do not get upset. That’s the first “don’t fall for it.” The verdict will end up reversed when all the appeals are in.
Number Two – Do not fall for the protest and riot bait. When the verdict is announced, let it go. Don’t take to the streets, don’t shout and scream, don’t carry on. All you’ll do is make us look bad and give them satisfaction.
The post There is a Verdict – Don’t Fall for It appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The host is quite animated on the show this morning due to the farce of the Trump NYC trial. He carried on about it at great length at Fox. His case is simple – the entire episode is driven by TDS – Trump Derangement Syndrome – hatred. I presume the host’s uncommon level of energy on this specific story is due to his love of the rule of law. And so we see hatred destroying the rule of law. So deep is this hatred of Trump that the haters feel they must protect “science” from Trump. In the first place, no president can threaten “science” – they can only threaten the science bureaucracy in the federal government, two very different things. Which means what they are doing is undermining the will of the people. We elect a president to execute the policy that he or she campaigned on, but here we see a prior administration acting to prevent the next administration from doing what we, the voting public, elected it to do. And thus hatred is destroying the very foundations of our nation. But it gets even deeper.
This hatred of Trump is a part of a toxic stew. It turns out that this effort to “protect science from Trump” is deeply rooted in DEI. DEI is itself an expression of hatred. Think about it. Somehow the civil rights movement of my youth, a movement designed to rightfully erase hatred of people based on race has somehow, within my lifetime, morphed into something just as bigoted and what it was designed to erase. Consider:
The Biden administration unveiled a plan that would push American hospitals to prioritize low-income patients when performing kidney transplants, a move Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra says is aimed at rooting out “racial inequities” in the “transplant process.”
If you do not know about the kidney transplant process in this nation it is difficult. The need is immense as it is the final fate of many diabetes patients, but the supply is short and so the typical wait for a kidney is ten years. That’s ten years of a life on dialysis – a life severely limited as the huge number of hours each week devoted to the dialysis machine. That’s ten years that many do not make it through. Which patient gets a kidney when it becomes available, is a difficult decision indeed. It is troubling enough that doctors are making decisions on whose life to save, whose to continue to chain to a machine, and who will, in not too long, pass away. They try to do so based on objective criteria such as the otherwise general state of health of the patient. Objective standards notwithstanding, it is scary anytime people are deciding who lives, who is disabled and who dies. And now the government is getting involved to make sure totally irrelevant considerations like race are involved?!
It may not be the racial lynchings of decades ago, but deciding who lives and dies based, in any way, on race is simply heinous. It is as rooted in hatred as the lynchings once were, just with a more civil facade.
In three stories we see hatred destroying the rule of law, the roots of our republic and common decency. Hatred is an extremely destructive force and in its furious rage it blinds its bearer to the destruction being wrought. In that blindness, hatred breeds violent responses, not because of a reciprocal hatred, but because it is the only way to make the destruction cease. Israel does not hate Gaza, but Gaza hates Israel and Israel has to make the destruction, born of the Gazan’s hatred, stop.
Most people in this nation are not full of or blinded by hatred – but there is clearly a significant and highly vocal minority that is. They are aiming their destructive force at things most fundamental. We have been trying for the better part of a decade now to check that hatred and its destructive tendencies with love – but the destruction continues. And so, we are forced to conclude that either the hatred is now so completely blind that it cannot detect love, or the love is not radical enough.
The destruction has to stop and we have to decide how to stop it.
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…is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. The past couple of weeks have seen story after story about the rising barriers to home ownership. Since its founding, owning some land or a home has been the key to wealth accumulation for pretty much anybody. But thanks to Joe Biden and his policies home ownership is increasingly out-of-reach. Likewise, inflationary pressure causes those who have done their accumulation to seek more real property to protect that which they have accumulated which further raises the barriers. People are looking to drastic solutions – like “tech.” But they fail to realize that the job displacement such would create would simply worsen the situation. It’s an ugly picture.
If Joe Biden enjoys a legacy at all, the ruins of home ownership may be it. But all the articles and all the analysis miss a key point in all this. They talk about housing shortages, but they fail to discuss increased demand, and more importantly they fail to realize that such demand was also created by government nonsense in the form of pandemic policy. If you are going to be stuck at home do you want to be stuck in a small apartment or condominium or in a house? If social distancing is the thing, don’t single family dwellings make a whole lot more sense than complexes of multiple units? So, the Biden policy seems to be create demand, limit supply and raise interest rates – a genuinely toxic stew.
The current bunch in Washington being wrong is not news anymore – the question that preoccupies me is why in the world would they do this? How could they miss this bus coming at them? It is easy to look at this situation and remember Jimmy Carter and assume this is simply history repeating itself, but I think there is more at play here. Consider some factors that were not at play during the Carter administration.
Preoccupation – The administration is preoccupied with climate change and equity to the expense of the fundamentals. Let’s discuss this by analogy. What is accomplished by putting an air conditioner in a broken-down shack? The shack is more comfortable but might just collapse under the weight of the air conditioning unit. The collapse of our educational system is a thoroughgoing illustration of what happens when you put equity in front of actually educating people. Virtually every proposal to deal with climate change is a formula for economic disaster. Whatever you think of those issues, you cannot deal with them at the expense of the fundamental system that make the nation work.
Fear Mongering – The more I reflect on pandemic policy, the less forgivable it becomes. The temptation to say it was a deliberate effort to undermine the Trump administration and re-elect is strong, but there is no evidence such was the case. But what there is plenty of evidence for is massive egos, combined with bureaucratic bungling designed to do nothing but accumulate power and a media that knew buts in homes meant eyes on TVS and the internet. Naked self-interest played a much larger role in the entire episode than did anything remotely to do with the “good of the nation.”
Instant Gratification – As a culture we are rapidly losing the ability to delay our desire or to work very hard to accumulate what we need to obtain it. Technology has a lot to do with this phenomenon, but there are a lot of other factors as well. I remain constantly amazed at why the nation bought into pandemic policy to begin with. The answer is, I think, because we are no longer willing to risk or sacrifice.
Social Media – Social media amplifies stupidity and makes it harder to sort the stupid from the reasonable. Information , even wrong information, has a way of taking hold if it is repeated often enough. The thing social media is best at is repeating things over and over and over again.
The last two factors are not necessarily “the fault” of the Biden administration, but the first two are the Biden bunch taking advantage of the latter two for their political advantage. Rather than combat these erosive forces for the benefit of the nation, they relied upon them to get where they wanted to go.
The difficulties in the housing market are a direct function of the poor policy of this administration, their naked ambition and their lust for power. Just remember that as you vainly shop for a home.
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This from Salena Zito last week:
The Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin. EEOC attorney Debra M. Lawrence wrote that criminal background checks “cause a disparate impact because of race or other protected classifications.”
Lawrence went on to say the employment hiring practices must be shown by the employer to be necessary to ensure the safe and efficient performance of the particular jobs at issue.
“Even when such necessity is proven, the practice remains unlawful if there is an alternative practice available that is comparably effective in achieving the employer’s goals but causes less discriminatory effect,” Lawrence added.
If your jaw has not hit the floor, it should.
Zito comments, “Logic says EEOC’s underlying assumptions are that nonwhites are criminals. That’s absurd and insulting.” That’s quite possibly true, but it could also presume that a greater rate of criminal conviction within a certain classification is based on discrimination, not the behavior of the people in that class. Either assumption/presumption is, on its face, bigoted – it is simply a question of where the bigotry is aimed. As Chief Justice Roberts has said, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Now, disclaimer time. I know many convicted criminals that have turned their life around. I have hired them – but – and this is a huge “but” – they had earned my trust to some level, on some basis, and they were watched more closely until that trust had been fully merited. That said, my business was small and individualized, an operation like the one contemplated in Zito’s story is huge and has to standardize hiring practices. Or does it?
There was a time when large companies put far more trust in the judgement of their local management. But there was also a time when a hire/fire decision was not automatically lawsuit fodder. One has to ask who really benefits from all this law, regulation and litigation about race and other classifications. Has it ended discrimination? As we have seen, it has not. Rather it has created a labyrinth of rules, standards and procedures that demands lawyers be involved at every step of the process. That, in turn, demands centralization of hiring standards in large companies. The local manager cannot take a risk on a con because that risk might violate some obscure reg that the local manager has no clue about. And so, it gets circular. Whatever happens, something hits the fan and the lawyers pounce.
In the end, the beneficiary of all this is not the victims of discrimination, but the lawyers. One is tempted to quote Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” But I know far too many good lawyers doing good things. Rather, we need to note that whether it be hiring practice, environmental regulation, or other areas where our government has come to dictate practice in the smallest degree, there are agendas other than “public benefit” that is pretended to at play.
And all of this is like a giant weight on the grave of merit. The more structure we build, the harder it becomes for straightforward merit to dig itself out again. If we are not careful, it might just crush the corpse. Then what?
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Yesterday, I noted that to die for one’s country was an act of love. Way too many people these days view it as an act of futility, or worse a symbol of oppression. How did we get here? I think because of the death of hope. Hope transforms how we look at so much. Those that have died in service to the nation know it is not perfect, but they love it because our nation provides great hope for a better future, and so they die for it. But without that hope, all we see are the nation’s imperfections.
Yesterday dozens died in massive storms throughout the middle part of the nation. It will be news on this news-slow day, but tomorrow when the coastal elites get busy again, it will be relegated to the rear of the first section and by Thursday it’ll be local news. The communities affected will rally and rebuild for they are still hopeful and love their towns. On the coasts the hopelessness will have taken hold, and the storms will be a sign of doom and gloom, of the pending global climate catastrophe. The coasts will turn the dead into political fodder while the middle part of the nation will name the rebuilt buildings for them. The contrast between hope and the absence of hope is vast.
And so, Pete Buttigieg turns a tragic mid-air incident into political fodder. And so, California finds evermore inventive ways to create instability and waste money. Without hope, what were once things to wonder at, create curiosity, and joyfully investigate have become signs of the climate apocalypse. Science itself is compromised by the lack of hope.
Love without hope becomes permissiveness and so our former taboos become celebrated. Without hope, a lifestyle once celebrated is rendered controversial, if not hated. Hope is a powerful thing.
This Memorial Day, as we lay flowers and flags on the graves of those that have sacrificed – let us remember their love, born of their hope. Let us share in their hope. Let us turn that hope into wonder. The best way to remember them is to build a nation worthy of their sacrifice, not bemoan its shortcomings. Let’s join those suffering from yesterday’s storms. That act of hope will do more to honor our lost than all the crepe-hanging we have done in the last decade put together.
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Jesus said:
Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends.
That’s what we remember this weekend – people that loved this nation, loved us, so much that they died in our defense. We live in an age when the military is ill-considered by many, where war presumes barbarity and people would just as soon ignore its reality. That’s not this nation, that’s not the United States. We do not start wars, but we do finish them – and when we do, we do so out of love of country and our fellow Americans. Not out of malice or evil, but out of love. This weekend is about loss and love. Let’s put the nonsense aside this weekend and focus on that.
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It is rare these days that I open the headlines on my computer or a device and spontaneously laugh out loud. But today was one of those rare days. I have to share:
‘Gavin’s Just a Pk’: Chris Sununu Says None of the Other Governors Can Stand Newsom*
Enjoy the long weekend!
The post Weekend Levity appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Let’s open this post with a statement by Bernie Sanders that he will not attend a Netanyahu speech to Congress:
Look, you have a prime minister who has created the worst humanitarian disaster in modern history.
Now, that’s just not true. I can think of a dozen other humanitarian crises worse than anything happening in Gaza just off the top of my head, but we tend to forgive such hyperbole in politicians. But such hyperbole in the name and service of identity groups can lead to deep ugliness.
Consider this report out of the UCLA Medical School:
Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).
Without those stellar stats, some doctors at the school say, students can struggle to keep pace with the demanding curriculum.
So when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee’s meeting.
Their reservations were not well-received.
When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.
“Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate’s scores shouldn’t matter, she continued, because “we need people like this in the medical school.”
The story moves from anecdote to statistic showing a pattern of blatant discrimination in UCLA admissions. This horrifies me as my wife’s life was saved by a doctor in the UCLA system. The story contains anecdotes of surgical students that do not even know basic anatomy. I would hate to think what would happen had that doctor been admitted based on anything other than her capabilities, talent and merit.
Merit being replaced by “diversity” is born of the kind of hyperbole Sanders evidenced. Consider the woman’s claims that “we need people….” Why? Can only black females treat black females? That’s certainly a hyperbolic claim.
Hyperbole is not meant to be taken literally, but way too often it is. I am not sure exactly how we got here. I certainly think that the internet age has not helped. Internet communication is without the subtlety of direct personnel communication, and I think people that now rely on email and text as primary communication have simply lost the ability for nuance. And so this sort of hyperbole gets baked in the cake as reality. And so we produce physicians that are something less than fully competent. The stupidity of taking hyperbole literally turned dangerous.
Now consider this hyperbole:
The group also demanded that Drexel administrators terminate the university’s Hillel chapter, which it describes as a “global zionist campus organization.”
Hillel is a support organization for Jewish students! Claims of active Zionist action is pure hyperbole and yet here that hyperbole is being used as a excuse for a blatantly discriminatory action. And so hyperbole evolves from stupid to dangerous to evil. Which takes me back to Bernie Sanders.
Look, I get it, the instigators of this stuff, are reaching for the hyperbole to justify their stupidity, dangerous actions and evil leanings. But the people that line up behind them – they buy into the hyperbole and therein lies the issue. Which takes me back to Bernie Sanders. The time has come to stop forgiving hyperbole in our leadership. They need to make their point based on facts. As we can see, relying on hyperbole can lead to places they don’t want to go.
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We have grown used to the federal government simply telling what is good and then enforcing it. We seem to have forgotten that the whole point of this country was that we, the citizens are the ultimate arbiters. But somewhere along the line we decided that the legislative process – wherein the laws that control us did not come from faceless agencies, but from a legislature, the members of which have to be elected frequently so that if they do something boneheaded, we can call them to account – was just too complicated. And so the legislature punted much of its authority to agencies not in the legislative branch, but the executive, and now faceless, unaccountable agencies dictate to us from on high. We have been calling such an arrangement “the administrative state” around here for a while. The administrative state is in trouble – deep, deep trouble.
The administrative state has, particularly since Obama and his administration of “pen and phone,” overplayed its hand. The dictatorial, and often nearly baseless, nature of their activity has become increasingly obvious to the general public. For decades they operated primarily in the shadows, regulating easily demonized corporations or other organizations leaving the average citizen alone. But that has in recent years changed as the effects of those older actions and new developments have pushed them front and center.
Forcing people into EVs is one such way their tyrannical nature is becoming evident. EVs are, at best, a niche market product. They are great as a second or third vehicle/grocery getter for the well-heeled, but they are far, far from a replacement for the standard automobile we all know and many of us love. But this maze of hidden agencies and unaccountable power are forcing them down our throats. We have offered a lot of evidence that they are not ready for prime time – from tire wear to charging infrastructure we have pointed out their unsuitability for general use, but still the regulators come at us. The latest is news is that they are less safe for pedestrians. They are quiet, you cannot hear them coming and so people are more likely to step into traffic in front of them. But from the regulator point of view apparently a few extra dead and injured pedestrians matter little in the face of the dreaded carbon menace.
Not only are these faceless dictators overplaying their power hand, but they are also eroding their own authority and purported expertise. Remember when we thought cattle, and particularly cattle flatulence, was the great bugaboo creating climate change? Not so fast:
…research by pro-agribuisness outfits Alltech and Archbold suggests that the thinking on reducing emissions at the source is missing a bigger picture on cattles’ relationship with the land, and possibly, by removing grazing from pastures, emissions will actually go up.
Oops.
But no place has the authority and expertise of the administrative state been more self-owned than during the pandemic. At NR, Wesley J. Smith catalogs just how duplicitous, dictatorial and unfounded was so much of the actions of our supposed expert leadership during that period. As Smith details, they hid the source of the issue, they attempted to control counterinformation and they recommended actions that had no foundation other than the panicked desire of an ignorant and fearful public, that they had driven to that unthinking and anxious position, to do something to ease the anxiety. Consider simply the social distancing mandate, which was, as Smith explains, scientifically baseless. This action alone resulted in:
…school closures. It deprived small businesses — particularly restaurants — of their profitability. It kept people from visiting hospitalized patients, holding the hands of dying loved ones, and attending funerals. It increased social isolation, led to suicides, and made life miserable in myriad ways, large and small.
And so everyone, not just the supp0osedly “evil corporation,” has learned that the administrative state is not a benign force for good but is instead as power mad and as inexpert as the rest of us. We learn that in some agency designed to regulate some specific area or issue, the expertise that actually develops has almost nothing to do with the specifics for which it was founded, but instead is all about the bureaucratic machinations of power and funding accumulation.
And now that this is exposed, people want it gone. Where to start? The fastest way to destroy a structure this labyrinthine is to attack the roots and so a case before the Supreme Court becomes paramount. Yesterday, Politico carried a piece analyzing Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, a case that threatens to pull the rug out from under the vast network of administrative courts that try to control our corporate world without benefit of jury. Politico, of course given their ever increasingly obvious leftward tilt, tries to paint a ruling from SCOTUS that severely undermines the administrative courts as a negative thing. Politico sounds as if these courts are wonderful things. Certainly, at the levels Jarkesy address the administrative courts have an air of authority and due process, but even at that level it is a facade designed to add legitimacy to something that the constitution never contemplated.
But what the article never addresses is such administrative courts at lower levels, when the accused is a small, sole proprietor, business and the charges are something silly like failure to file a report in a timely fashion. In such cases the “judge” is a functionary that had nothing better to do that day and took seven years to complete undergrad school, the “prosecutor” is a line inspector that felt insulted by the accused who took exception when they forced their way into the accused’s place of business and started pointing fingers and the accused is represented by himself without a clue as to what has or is happening to him other than there are a bunch of people telling him he is a criminal and they need more money than he has to make it all go away. While the administrative courts Jarkesy contemplates resemble real courts, their existence has created a sewer of “administrative hearings” that to call kangaroo court is to insult actual kangaroo courts.
We need SCOTUS to deeply undermine the administrative court system in its Jarkesy decision. The ramifications of such a decision will be massive and for a time there will be much chaos. But reestablishing the freedom the Founders intended will take a while and involve some chaos, but then that was true when they set it up originally.
The post Government Power Wanes appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The other day the host mentioned an Abe Greenwald piece in Commentary called “The Woke Jihad.” It is a masterwork, and every single word should be read and then read again. But there is one section that ties in well with what I wrote yesterday so I want to examine it in detail.
The second section of the piece begins:
The first thing to understand about any left-wing protest movement is that its nominal cause is irrelevant. Black Lives Matter isn’t about saving black lives. Trans activism isn’t about protecting trans children. And intersectionality isn’t about the suffering of the diverse disaffected. Never were, never will be. Underneath their particular brands, social-justice movements are assorted fronts in a radical war against the good. And so it is for the “pro-Palestinian” encampments.
Would a group trying to save black lives have seized on a statistically tiny number of police killings as justification to rid black neighborhoods of police? That’s what Black Lives Matter did. And by the time the cops were hobbled, and violent crime spiked precisely where police were most needed, the movement’s leaders were using corporate donations to buy safe suburban palaces. BLM was an attack on law enforcement, because law enforcement maintains the good working order of the United States. Undermine that and you’re left with chaos, which is the objective.
and ends:
No, the encampments aren’t pro-Palestinian. They’re the latest expression of the social-justice left’s impulse to destroy the virtuous and raise up the wicked.
What is worthy of note here is Greenwald’s contention that this is a purposeful destruction of morality. Greenwald’s contention is that actual jihadi’s and the Left have formed an alliance, and that the Left are in for a rude shock once America has been upended as the jihadi’s will turn on the Left with a vengeance. I think that is absolutely correct taken as a whole, but the Left and the jihad differ in more than sexual mores.
The jihadi’s want chaos as a prelude to being the ones to restore order. And the prior “hippie” movements in American culture were rooted in anarchism, but the current batch are of a different stripe – they simply see oppression and nothing but oppression. They indeed blame authority and wish to tear it down to build anew, but the anarchists of old never wanted to build anything new, they wanted to live in the chaos. Chaos is not the objective for either partner in this alliance – what comes after the chaos is. More importantly, neither party in this ugly alliance wishes the destruction of virtue, rather they seek their own version of virtue, one radically different than out current understanding.
The jihadi morality is born of a devotion to a different religion. But the Left’s alternate morality is born of something very different, it is born of our presumption that morality was somehow a given – that it did not need to be fostered and nurtured in our youth, that somehow they would simply get it right. And so, rather than share our morality, they have developed their own, one that has lead them terribly and horribly astray.
The jihadis are indeed wicked, but our Left is simply neglected – neglected by those of us that should have known better. My post yesterday was an acknowledgement that slippery slope arguments are real and dangerous. We slide down the sloped without intention, but out of neglect. Some moral standards are indeed a bit arbitrary, but the point is not always the standard, it is instead the effort to defend the standard, for that indicates a purpose and effort. When we let it slip, the neglect involved sends a signal. So, as I pointed out yesterday, while the slope may not slide where we thought it would, the slope is undeniable, and the bottom is bad.
There is a bedrock understanding of Christianity often neglected. Paul put it best in his letter to the church in Rome – “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Without guidance, correction, standards and instruction we are going into bad and wrong places. Here we are.
The post The Attack appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Two Harvard Law School alums who happen to be senators joined me this AM:
Audio of Senator Tom Cotton:
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Audio of Senator Ted Cruz:
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Senator Cruz is up for re-election. His campaign website is here: https://www.tedcruz.org/
The post Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) On The Trump Trial appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Amidst countless headlines telling us that the feckless ICC is seeking to issue an arrest warrant for Bejamin Netanyahu, none, I repeat none, I have seen to date points out that the political leadership of Hamas is also in that particular dock. Two things are illustrated by this rather silly move. One is the naive belief that war serves no useful purpose and the other, far more important is a complete avoidance of the issue of who is right and who is wrong in the conflict. The press has decided, based on its headline production, that Israel is in the wrong, presumably simply because they are stronger, but the court is avoiding such judgement. There was a time I would have declared that moral cowardice ruled the day, but I don’t think that is true anymore. Rather we have so radically shifted our morality that making judgements of right and wrong is the only thing that is actually wrong. We have decided that evil has a right to exist.
And thus we see, once again, that the slippery slope is very real. For decades now personal morality has been slipping. For example, the notion that legalizing marijuana would lead to great levels of issues with harsher drugs was dismissed as a slippery slope argument. The jury is still out on that but states that have legal marijuana have higher instances of homelessness. The actual cause-and-effect relationship is still under study, but that sure seems like a slippery slope of some sort to me. That’s just one example; in my lifetime many taboos have come to be widely accepted practice and all that erosion of formerly standard morality has occurred in the name of “tolerance and acceptance.” That notion is bound and determined to take root and spread like a disease.
And so here we are, at a point where undisputable acts of extreme evil – from rape to burning babies – are to be “tolerated.” A place where the enforcement of a very reasonable and universally agreeable – that invasion, terrorism, rape, murder, beheading is wrong and evil – is unenforceable. An unenforceable moral standard is no moral standard at all. Clearly the slippery slope is real and the damage immense.
That social taboo that “did not hurt anyone but those engaging in it” may or may not have cascaded into everyone doing it. Instead, the slope has been much steeper and the damage far more consequential – we have simply done away with the notions of right-and-wrong, good-and-evil.
We do so at our extreme peril.
The post What The Headlines Don’t Say and Dealing With Evil appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Former National Security Advisor Ambassador Robert C. O’Brien joined me this AM:
Audio:
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Transcript:
The post Former National Security Advisor Ambassador Robert C. O’Brien On Israel’s War appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
People often do not think about it, but taxation is far more a tactic of social engineering than of government revenue generation. History is replete with stories of people having massive reactions to taxation. Let’s just start with the Boston Tea Party. Typically, it seems like what happens in response to tax policy is extreme or revolutionary, but once in a while….
So, the Boston Tea Party is an example of a revolutionary reaction. My father, who at one point in his career handled taxes for a large food canning, freezing and distribution operation, created an extreme example. This story is from a long time ago. The company had massive holdings in California. At the time California had a business inventory tax. My father did a little scribbling and figured out it would cost the company less money to move its entire inventory out-of-state for the day of physical inventory than the tax would cost them. And so they hired pretty much every train on the west coast for a couple of days, loaded them up, took them across the state line, took inventory and brought it all back. California does not have an inventory tax anymore.
But beauty? Consider the cantilevered barns of Smoky Mountain National Park. The best surviving example looks like this. It’s a truly beautiful building, and not easy to build either. There are some functional advantages, like wagons being able to drive under them, but not really enough to justify the extraordinary expense of building them. Additionally, they are a fairly local phenomenon. If they were that much better functionally the design would have moved around the nation. So why did they catch on in this one area and nowhere else?
Apparently the answer to that question lies in taxation. Buildings were taxed based on footprint, not useful square footage, and so it behooved these farmers to build a barn with the smallest possible surface touching the ground and the cantilevered barn was born.
All this came to my mind yesterday as I was filing up the car with gas – gas that here in Tennessee is almost $2/gallon cheaper than it is in California. Much of that price differential (roughly 75% of it) is attributable to taxation, the remainder being about the much higher demand in California. The tax savings I have enjoyed since leaving California is truly stunning, gas tax just being one example. I would estimate that in my first year here, the lower gas tax and the lower taxes for owning and operating the vehicle in Tennessee resulted in a savings of several thousand dollars compared to the same vehicle set in California. No wonder there is a parade out of California.
Most of the time, reactions to taxation are negative. Most people do not feel like they get value for their tax dollar, and a lot of unusual things happen. But once in a while, and purely by accident, as with the cantilevered barns of Cades Cove, tax policy creates beauty. I wonder what the nation would look like if we thought about taxation as a way to create beauty.
The post That Time Tax Policy Created Beauty appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Traditional Christian expressions are in severe decline and have been for some time now. The question is “Why?”
The first hour this past Friday, the host devoted to playing large portion of the Harrison Butker speech that has stirred so much controversy. (Here’s the transcript for those not in the Hughniverse.) It is easy to say Christianity is under attack and that explains the decline. But then. if you think about it, Christianity was under far more sever attack at its inception and survived and has been under severe attack in some parts of the world for its entire existence. The heart of Christian understanding is an attack undo death on the Messiah. I think it fair to say that Christianity is built to deal with attacks from the outside.
It is also easy to say that Christianity has lost its way and thus can no longer withstand the attacks and that explains the decline. But there always have been and always will be those that are not lost. As God promised Elijah at Horeb, there is always a remnant. The question is why that remnant has lost its influence.
There are no easy answers; therefore, I think the answer lies in the search for answers – in our attitude as we search for them. Are we willing to hear and accept the answers when they present themselves to us? Are we too stuck in thinking we have the answer when in fact God may be trying to tell us we only have part of the answer.
Yesterday I wrote of hubris. And while I do not know entirely why the church is in such decline, I do know that hubris both inside and outside the church has much to do with it. As I head to chruch this morning that is where I will start, seeking to leave my hubris at the altar.
The post The Church Lost appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Lt Gen Jonathon Riley, former commander of British Forces in Sierra Leone and Iraq and Deputy Commander of all Nato forces in Afghanistan. has penned a piece that at first glance I wrote off as conspiratorial nonsense but found it intriguing enough to read through and found it is anything but. Rather the good general is cataloging efforts to control the weather by people that think it is the only viable response to “climate change.” Yep, there are people out there that think that we can control the weather – not that we can inadvertently alter the climate, a long-term and global thing – but the weather, making it rain, make it cold, that sort of thing. It is as if no one remembers the lessons of kudsu or the Burmese pythons in Florida.
It’s not that the guy does not occasionally sound very conspiratorial, especially when he spends several paragraphs trying to say, “I am not a nutcase.” But he does cite some credible sources and post-covid “science” doing incredibly. catastrophically dumb things seems far more reasonable than it once did. But where he really caught my interest was this:
The White House also appears to be keen on man’s ultimate hubris. Last October it announced that it was pushing ahead with a five-year research plan to assess ways of modifying the amount of sunlight which reaches the Earth.
Look federal money flows a lot of foolish places and feasibility studies do no harm. It was his use of the word “hubris” that ultimately caught my eye. We are in fact so filled with hubris these days that we just might try this sort of nonsense. The entire climate change movement is born of hubris – the very idea that we need to alter the entire economic and engineering basis of civilization is ultimately hubristic. Think about it. Virtually every proposal to deal with climate change that is on the table is massive in its scope. The EV efforts alone do not require simply providing the cars – it requires everything from building massive amounts to new generating capacity, not to mention distribution to a complete restructuring of our roadways as they cannot handle the additional weight involved. It is, in reality, social engineering on the grandest scale. In the end it makes the economic planning of the Soviet Union look like child’s play. People that consider such an undertaking possible would most certainly consider making weather a trivial exercise.
Everybody knows the maxim “Pride goeth before the fall.” Did you know its Biblical? Proverbs 16:18 –
Pride goes before destruction,
And a haughty spirit before stumbling.
As religion recedes in our public life, we have lost more than institutional religion. We have lost a certain philosophical centering that guards against our own self-destruction. Those religious institutions can be so pesky; I get it. But we have jettisoned the very idea of a creator/sustainer – of something greater than ourselves – and in doing so the guardrails are gone. What was once unthinkable has become not merely thinkable, but actionable. We should be terrified by that possibility.
Even if, in the end, this guy is a conspiracy nutcase, the point within his nuttiness remains. In an age driven by hubris, we are going to do something enormously, disastrously and dangerously stupid. If it is not trying to alter the weather resulting in unforeseen and terrible consequences, it’ll be something else. At least so long as we are driven by hubris.
The post We Are Not That Smart appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I spent a gorgeous day in Smoky Mountain National Park yesterday, just a short drive from my East Tennessee home. Such glorious days need to be balanced with a dose of reality and so my thoughts return to the California I left a couple of years ago – the California I thought for many years I would never leave. As unbelievably beautiful as the Smokies are, California really does have greater natural beauty. The eastern Sierra, Yosemite, the beaches (where they are not overrun) are just amazing. Such beauty and the weather are what keep people in California despite the exodus that has been apparent for the last five years or so. I always have a stack of stuff around my desk of California news and as I reviewed it this morning and with the perspective of yesterday’s Smoky Mountain glory, I found another reason why I left California behind. California does not glory in its beauty; it amplifies its ugly.
In 2009 Ed Driscoll noted, “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.” Meanwhile it was noted about a week ago that, “Homeless alcoholics in San Francisco are getting vodka, wine, and beer at the expense of taxpayers, thanks to a crazy program that claims to provide health benefits and save lives.” See what I mean? Rather than fix a problem detected more than a decade ago, they double down on it, they make it worse. That’s California in a nutshell.
Then there is the whole dueling mayors thing. So, to deal with a pro-Palestinian protest in Orange County, two neighboring cities invoke a mutual assistance deal with their police forces. So, while the cops are trying to work together to keep things under control, the mayors end up in a X (Twitter) flame war. There’s California – when we are trying to bring peace and calm, let’s send exactly the opposite message.
But nothing gets to the heart of the problem like money. Earlier this week, an article syndicated out of the LA Times, examined the California exodus and particularly the role housing costs play in it. By LA Times standards it is actually reasonable. Quoting Sarah Karlinsky, research director for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, the article says:
When the state adds to its housing stock, she said, it shouldn’t just be adding high-rises, but also “more affordable multifamily housing options” that might be smaller and cheaper.
Cities may begin to boost their population as businesses end work-from-home policies, but Karlinsky cautioned that “if everybody is driving back into their jobs, then that is going to be incredibly unpleasant.”
Driving? Unpleasant in California? Isn’t that interesting. The first thing I note is that it is not just the immense traffic volume that makes driving in so much of California a nightmare, it’s the actual state of the roads. Rather than spend their money on things like roadways, they spend it giving vodka to the homeless and the roads are miserable, even if you were driving on it alone. This is also silly because it is the land that makes housing prices so freaking high in California, not the type of housing. For its size, the population centers of California have nowhere to go but up – they are landlocked. San Francisco on a fully overbuilt peninsula – LA surrounded by mountains and ocean, San Diego likewise.
Now, think about the cost of housing in California and consider this:
On Wednesday, the country hit a sad milestone: Inflation under President Biden hit a cumulative 20 percent. The dollar’s value has plummeted under his watch. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also confirmed that the consumer price index is resurgent and growing faster than average wages. Combined with weak GDP growth, this data shows the U.S. economy is reentering stagflation.
So, here again, California takes awful economic news and amplifies it. Inflation is making every house, everywhere more expensive, so a place like California with all sorts of natural barriers to building housing, where housing will naturally be more expensive than the rest of the country, it simply skyrockets.
Why are people leaving California? It’s simple – people are moving to places where they solve problems, not places where they amplify them.
The post Amplifying Ugly appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
As the host basks in the glory of yesterday’s DJT interview there are other things happening. Notably, yesterday, was a piece from the Wall Street Journal, widely syndicated, reporting that Wiley, the largest publisher of science journals, was taking 19 journals out of production due to widespread fraud. That is truly disturbing news and worthy of some serious analysis.
The piece focuses primarily on two issues, one the financial hit Wiley has taken through all this fraud and how the fraudulent articles make it into these lower-bar journals. It is a good piece on those questions. But there are far wider concerns. The article notes the retraction of tens of thousands of articles. Now, just like the retraction of a front-page, above-the-fold story appears at the end of the first section, these retractions hardly go noticed. This is particularly true as the pieces appear on the internet and are cached somewhere other than the original publisher and therefore remain accessible even after retraction. So, in the age of “follow the science” these articles do damage, retractions and journal closures notwithstanding.
There is an honor system here. The journals rely on the honor of the writers, those that summarize and make the pieces publicly available rely on the honor of the journal publishers, the information consumer relies on the honor of those middlepersons. There are breakdowns on every level. These fraudulent papers are produced by mills that exist because profs that need publications pay them to get their names out there. There is no honor. The journals and the middle folk make money because people are always looking for “science” to give their insane idea credence and the internet makes it easy to find. No honor there either. Imagine how bad this will get when so-called “AI” really takes hold. Even if this particular avenue for scientific fraud gets shutdown, others will arise as the so-called “AI” makes it that much easier to search the internet. The easier it becomes, the more foolish notions will seek credence, thus creating a market. If there is a market, there is always a supplier. How do we fix this mess?
Regular readers will know my reflexive answer – we need to restore character and therefore restore honor to the honor system. That’s very true.
But there is more to think about. Tuesday, I wrote about how nowadays we build entire bureaucracies to do the impossible, or more practically to spin their wheels and do nothing. Academia is full of people that study things that just do not need to be studied. But they have to produce papers and those papers have to be published to justify their jobs studying things that do not need to be studied. I do not want to get into examples or suggestions as it would get way too esoteric way too fast, but anybody that monitors what goes on in the university would see it. But there are some general comments that can be made.
Academia needs to change its goals to some extent. At this point it is focused almost exclusively on the advancement of knowledge. That’s why profs get their jobs and benefits based on publications; publications are supposed to indicate new knowledge. But the university also exists to preserve and transmit existing knowledge, purposes that most universities pay little attention to, relegating it to graduate students that are more focused on their own studies than doing the job of teaching undergrads. Right now, the best education you can get if you are graduating high school is not at the prestigious, research-focused university, but at the smaller, private schools dedicated to teaching undergrads, where the profs may publish occasionally when it is convenient.
Right now, academia produces more academics. At some point academia ought to be producing smarter people that go out into the wider world and use what they have learned well. This should particularly be true for the highly prestigious schools where their endowments mean they do not need the research grants to pay the bills, but instead it is just the opposite. Imagine a school where salary and benefits are based on the quality of the students coming out of the class rather than the publications of the prof on the record who is punting the class to his research assistants. It’s a whole new world that would likely result in a lot less fraudulent papers having to be filtered out of the system.
The post When The Honor System Is Broken appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Former President Trump joined me this morning:
Audio:
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Transcript:
HH: We are now joined by former President Donald Trump. Mr. President, welcome back. Good to have you.
DJT: Good morning.
HH: The CPI number just came out at .3%. That means 3.6% year over year. It’s still too high. What’s your reaction to that number, Mr. President?
DJT: Well, it’s way too high, but if you go back two years, you see that was where it was just so bad, and nothing’s happening. Either you’re still way up in the stratosphere, close to 30%, the real number. Remember, they leave a lot of numbers out. You know, this crazy Biden administration, everything’s a game. And they leave a lot of numbers out. They leave the highest numbers, the worst numbers often times. They’ll leave rentals out. They’ll leave a certain food type out. The whole thing is rigged. They are the worst. He is the worst president. Hey, Hugh, this is, and you don’t have to say it. I will. This is the worst president in the history of the United States, and it’s not even close. And you can take the ten worst and add them up and they’re not as bad as this guy. And look, the inflation is bad, and the number today is bad. They want to try for the, you know, this is like using the Strategic Reserves for gasoline. They want to try and play around with the interest rates with the Federal Reserve, but you can’t lower them, because of the fact that you have the inflation. It’s a lot of inflation when added to the inflation that we’ve suffered that’s been so bad. It’s got to come down much more. That’s a lot of inflation, their number they announced.
HH: Combined with blue state taxes, it’s an incredible burden. People are fleeing California, for example. Hey, quick question, LeBron James can leave California, go back to Ohio if he wants. Given the taxes and the inflation in California, should he do that, Mr. President?
DJT: Well, I’m not a fan of LeBron James. I have a lot of players that I like better than LeBron, although he’s an excellent basketball player. But I don’t like his politics one bit. This nation would be destroyed if you went by his politics. If you remember, he endorsed the great Hillary Clinton, and that endorsement was a disaster. She got on stage, she walked up to him, and she came up to his belt buckle. I said that’s not a good look. That is not a good look for our president. But…
HH: But shouldn’t he flee California taxes like I did, like everyone else did?
DJT: Hugh, is he thinking about leaving California, going back to Ohio?
HH: Yeah, he was, he showed up at Cavaliers Rocket Mortgage two nights ago for the Cavs’ fourth game. So there’s some speculation he might come back to Ohio.
DJT: Well, Dan Gilbert’s a good guy, and he’s a smart owner, and that’ll be interesting. Certainly, it’s good to have LeBron James as a player.
HH: Yeah. Now let me talk to you about the debate challenge. President Biden just issued you a debate challenge for June and September with the Veeps talking in July. Do you accept?
DJT: Oh, absolutely. I’ve been trying to get, you know, he’s issuing it. I wonder whether or not he shows up, because you know, he also challenged me to golf. So I’m a very good golfer. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards. He said I’ll give him three a side, but he knows he’ll never play. This is sort of like that, I think. But I hope not, because I really think he has to debate. He might as well get it over with, probably should do it early so that he can, you know, because he’s not going to get any better. Every day…
HH: But June and September is great.
DJT: Every day is a down factor for him.
HH: June and September would be great if you could agree on the size of the table and the moderator.
DJT: Well, I’ve already, I just, why don’t you look at the statement? I just put out a statement. You should have it on your hot wires. You get everything. I notice you get things very quickly. I put it out on Truth, and Truth is the hottest thing right now by far.
HH: I will look that up. Let me move on.
DJT: And take a look.
HH: If President Biden…
DJT: You want to read that? You want to read it? Do you want to read it?
HH: Yes, I do. I’ll look and see if Jason sent it to me on the back wire here.
DJT: Oh, I see. Okay.
HH: I’ll look for a second. Do you think if his infirmity increases, they will dump him, Mr. President, at the convention, replace him with Kamala or Gavin or someone like that?
DJT: I do. I do.
HH: And…
DJT: I don’t think they’ll have a choice.
HH: Will it be Gavin? Will it be Kamala or somebody else?
DJT: I don’t know. I mean, Gavin’s a terrible governor, Gavin Newscum, he’s a terrible governor. I think he does a terrible job. I have things out in California, and you know, it’s so beautiful, everything. The weather is the best. Everything is so good, but he just does a terrible job. You know, water, I had a deal for water to come down from the north. They have so much water, and they don’t do it, because they’re trying to protect a tiny, tiny little fish that hasn’t made it. And millions and millions of gallons of water is sent into the Pacific Ocean, routed right into the Pacific instead of coming down throughout California. It’s so…
HH: All right, I’ve got your statement. I’m ready to go. The dates that are proposed are fine. Anywhere, anytime, anyplace. Let’s see if Joe can make it to the stand-up podium. I think they ought to go at least two hours. Do you think the President can stand up for two hours?
DJT: I think we should go two hours, yeah. I think we should go two.
HH: Okay.
DJT: And a stand-up podium is important. If he wants to sit down, you know, he wants to do things like he wants to sit down, I think a debate should be standing up. Don’t you agree with that?
HH: Well, I’ve done them both ways. The best debate in modern history was Lieberman and Cheney when they were sitting down, but that was a good moderator and it went a long time, and I don’t think you’re going to find a good moderator very easily. I really don’t. I think you should have a liberal…
DJT: Did you think my debates with Hillary were better? Didn’t you think my debates with Hillary were…
HH: Yes, I did. Yes, I did, and I…I don’t want Chris Wallace. I don’t want Candy Crowley. I want someone who’s fair, Mr. President. I just don’t want…
DJT: But let me ask you this. I’d like that, too, but I’d be willing to take anybody. You know, what difference does it make? I’d be willing to take anybody. But you know, the Commission got caught cheating with me. You know that.
HH: Yes.
DJT: They turned down my sound, remember?
HH: And they also cancelled a debate without talking to you. I, they’re so bad, they should have been exiled years ago. Now, they’re out of it. Let’s talk about Israel, Mr. President. Last time you were on this show a couple months ago, you said they’ve got to finish the job. They need a victory. At that massive rally on Saturday, you said the same thing. Victory, victory, victory. What do you make of President Biden’s arms embargo on offensive weapons declared last week?
DJT: It is not believable to me that he made the statement. All that does is prolong a war, because, and it gives the other side tremendous energy when that happens. You know, it gives them a psychological energy. That was such a bad statement. And how a person that’s Jewish can vote for this guy who’s obviously mentally impaired, how a Jewish person can vote for him is beyond belief. I have friends that are Democrats. You know, they’re good people. They’re Jewish, and they’re Democrats. And that’s just fine being a Democrat. But I say how do you vote for this guy, and many of them say we won’t. But some say we will, it’s almost like they’re in a rut. They can’t get out of the rut. But he is so bad for Israel, and I’ve been the best President with Golan Heights and moving the capital, Jerusalem, getting the embassy built. You know, we, not only did I give the embassy, I got it built.
HH: And you bankrupted Iran, or nearly bankrupted Iran. President Biden has refunded Iran.
DJT: Yeah.
HH: Will you put snapback sanctions in place if you’re elected?
DJT: When I was president, Iran was broke. They were broke. Stone cold broke. And you did a story, I remember once, but everybody was, there was no money for terrors. Hamas, Hezbollah had no terror, because they had no money. They had no cash. And Iran was broke. They had less than a billion dollars. They were at $600 million dollars. They wanted to make a deal with me, and then the election was rigged. And we had a different, a little problem came up with the COVID and with all of the different things that took place in that horrible election. That election was the worst election in the history of our country. We’re going to have the best election in the history of our country. And it’s going to be a beauty, November 5th. You know, the one thing, you know, you can’t really say November 5th anymore. In the old days, you could have a date. But here, you have all these early dates – September 22nd, September 29th. You have dates all over the place. We used to have Election Day. Now, we have election period, unfortunately. It was so much better the other way, but what are you going to do? They screwed that up, too.
HH: President Biden seems to me to be afraid of everything – afraid of China, afraid of Russia, afraid of Iran. I don’t think you are afraid of anything. Do you think he’s afraid of, like Xi and Putin, because this is the most tremulous administration I remember, and I remember Jimmy Carter.
DJT: So I think, well, he’s far worse than Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter is like a brilliant president if you compare him to Biden. Jimmy Carter never let 18 million people into our country, many from jails and prisons and insane asylums, okay? He never let, he never had anything like this. Jimmy Carter’s a happy man now, because his presidency was considered brilliant by comparison to this guy. This guy’s the worst. No, he’s afraid because of a different reason. He’s a thief, a total thief, and he’s taken millions and millions of dollars from China and Russia. Remember when he got $3.5 million dollars from the mayor of Moscow’s wife? And I brought it up with Chris Wallace, and Chris Wallace said you can’t bring that up? That doesn’t belong here? I said it’s a big story, and two months later, it turned out to be a big story. He didn’t want me to question him, and I said how come you got $3.5 million dollars from the mayor of Moscow’s wife? Remember that? It was a big deal. And Chris Wallace, how’s he doing, by the way? Chris Wallace wouldn’t let me bring it up, and I said well, I’m debating two people then, which is usual. By the way, it’s usually the case.
HH: You were. That’s why I’m afraid about moderators. But Mr. President, do you think Joe Biden is afraid of Xi Jinping? And do you think Xi is like a Mao or a Napoleon or a Caesar? Is he on the march everywhere?
DJT: Yeah, the answer is yes and yes. He’s definitely afraid, but he’s also afraid because Joe Biden is a Manchurian candidate in the truest sense of the word. He is being paid off by China, and he’s being paid off by Russia. And he’s being paid off and was paid off by Ukraine. You take a look at that. Just look at it. I mean, the money’s coming from every different angle. So he’s worried that if he is nice, is tough like I was with China, I took in $500 billion dollars in tariffs. Not one president, and it was going up, not one president has ever taken in anything from China. Now, he puts a tariff, finally, it should have taken place three and a half years ago. He puts it on the electric vehicle, but that’s going to destroy other vehicles. You’ve got to put it on everything. He just put a tariff on China, the first time he’s ever done this. And the only reason he did it is because the election’s coming up, and he wants to sell this ridiculous EV mandate, the all-electric car that people don’t want. 5% want it, and certain people want it, and you know, it doesn’t go far, it costs too much, and they’re all going to be made in China. But he really is, he’s a Manchurian candidate, and I believe he’s weak on China, because they know how much money they’ve paid him and his family.
HH: Now Mr. President, I’m going to take a break here and send some folks away and keep other folks, but I switch out stations, as you know. At this point, we leave some, and I want to give them that signal. I’ve got to ask you about the Washington Post story last week that said the Biden administration is holding back intelligence on where Sinwar is on the tunnels. He’s surrounded by hostages, probably American hostages.
DJT: Right.
HH: You brought back like 60 hostages with Ambassador O’Brien. What do you think of our holding back intel from the Israelis on where Sinwar and the hostages must be?
DJT: It’s not even believable, and it’s not believable that they’re trying to get, look, we don’t want Austin and these guys telling our ally, and a very important ally, by the way, how to fight their war. They’ve got to get that war over with, and they’ve got to do it very fast. You know, people are now starting to say October 7th didn’t exist. You know, here goes the misinformation machine. They’re saying the way, that never took place, October 7th never took place. It’s the same way, the same people that say the Holocaust never took place. And that’s starting to hurt Israel, because there are a lot of people that believe it. I was watching the other night, and these kids are saying, you know, these kids that are protesting, when they accepted an interview, a little interview, they said oh, October 7th never happened. That never happened. I never heard about that. It’s like incredible. Israel has to finish this off quickly. And I wouldn’t listen to the people that gave us Afghanistan, and the people that gave us all these failures, these military failures that we’re involved in. I would listen to the people that wiped out ISIS.
HH: You know, Mr. President…
DJT: You know who wiped out ISIS? Donald Trump.
HH: You know, when you ran in 2016, you surprised me. You surprised everyone when you won. I think one of the keys was you put out a list of possible Supreme Court justices. Would you consider putting out a list of your national security team possibles – I mean, people like Ric Grenell and Robert O’Brien and Mike Pompeo and John Ratcliffe? I mean, they’re all going to be there somewhere. You don’t have to name where they’re going – Tom Cotton, Michael Waltz…
DJT: Yeah, that’s an interesting, that’s an interesting question. And the answer is yes, I think it’s a great idea. Nobody’s suggested that but you. See, you’re a step above. Nobody has suggested that but you. It’s a very good idea. I will be putting out a Supreme Court list.
HH: Oh, good.
DJT: That’s a very interesting idea. Yeah.
HH: Well, if you just listed a half dozen people, and I know Grenell, and I know O’Brien. These are my friends. And I know Waltz is on your list. And I’ve seen the vice president list. By the way, does Doug Burgum have this locked up?
DJT: No, but he’s very good. I’ll tell you, he’s really good. He’s an expert. You know, he made his money, made a lot of money in technology, and yet he’s, to me, I think he’s more of an expert on energy. He’s an very talented guy. He has a great wife and family. He’s run, and it’s so beautiful…
HH: You know, they don’t give out Stanford MBA’s. It’s like Penn. He knows what he’s doing. He is very smart. I wouldn’t let him just run Energy, Mr. President, whatever he ends up doing. But we’re going to need a massive overhaul at DOD. You know how wasteful it is.
DJT: Right.
HH: We need a Waltz. We need a Pompeo. We need a Cotton over there. I’d love to know who’s on your list just so we could assure people that there will be reforms at DOD.
DJT: Well, all of the people you mentioned are real candidates. I mean, everybody you’ve mentioned, I mean, generally speaking, the people you like are the people I like, I mean, to be honest with you, all right? You’re not going to see some of the clowns you have right now. That, I can tell you. The people that we have right now, the Afghanistan, what they did with Afghanistan, and to have nobody fired, you know, I was a firer, not that I want to be. I don’t want to fire, but I would get rid of people if they did something where, which was, how about not one person was fired, and Afghanistan was the most incompetently, Afghanistan gave us Russia going into Ukraine. That’s for sure. And it gave us China getting frisky. It was so badly handled, I mean, grossly incompetent. To move the soldiers out first, you know, that was, that was 90%. They should have used Bagram. And by the way, we had not lost Bagram.
HH: You know, Mr. President, you just reminded me. Former President Nixon, with whom I was close and you were a good friend…
DJT: Right.
HH: …said his big mistake was he didn’t fire people fast enough. We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of his resignation. At the Saturday rally, your 100,000 people rally…
DJT: Right.
HH: You used the term the great silent majority of Americans, which Nixon first used in ’69. Did you know that, that he had used that term before? Or was that…
DJT: Yes. No, I knew very well, and I love the term, because I have a big silent majority, the biggest, I think the biggest ever. We had 107,000 people at that rally. The final count just came out from, I think, the town or the fire department. 107,000 people. I expected 40-45 thousand. We had, and by the way, if Biden went down to do a rally, he wouldn’t get 50 people in that same location. He wouldn’t get 50 people, and you know it. And by the way, nobody else would get more than two or three hundred. We had 107,000 people at that rally. That was, you had to see, it was a wave of people, and the town did a great job. They did a great job at Wildwood.
HH: Well, when Nixon brought up the great silent majority on TV, he got hundreds of thousands of responses, because it struck a chord. Are you looking for those same voters, people who love America but don’t necessarily say much?
DJT: Yes. So Nixon used the term silent majority. I added the word great to it. I have a great silent majority. I didn’t, you know, the term was very, very powerfully associated with Nixon. And I didn’t want to be copying the term, actually, so it’s the great silent majority. And I did use it pretty much, I haven’t used it much, pretty much for the first time in an important location in a speech.
HH: Oh, it’s a great phrase. I think it’s…
DJT: And it got a tremendous response. Yeah.
HH: When you became friends with Nixon in New York, did you ever talk presidential politics, how he ended up resigning, how he won so big in ’72? Did you ever discuss it with him?
DJT: His life, to me, was very sad. It was a very sad life. You know, I got to know him, really, more when he was out. He watched me on the, his wife watched me on the Phil Donahue show, and she wrote a letter, which I have. She wrote a letter, which he gave to me, saying that, he wrote me a letter saying that my wife, Pat, who he really loved, by the way, really loved, but that you know, he sort of had very few friends. You know, she was his friend. But he wrote a letter, my wife, Pat, said that someday, if you wanted to be, you’ll be president of the United States. It’s become somewhat of a famous letter. It’s from him explaining she watched me on the Phil Donahue show. Remember that one?
HH: Oh, I know the story well, and it’s absolutely true.
DJT: Yeah.
HH: But let me ask you about this.
DJT: It was very cute.
HH: Nixon had people who hated him reflexively for 50 years. You’ve got people who in this country, who hate you more than they hate Xi and Putin and Khamenei, these dictators, these torturers, these human rights criminals. What do you put that down to? Why do they hate, they’re deranged. And I don’t want you to get in trouble with the Judge. Don’t mention the Judge. He’s got an unconstitutional gag order on you. I think it’s loathsome what he’s done.
DJT: 100%
HH: But don’t talk about it, because…
DJT: By the way, totally unconstitutional.
HH: I don’t want you to get fined because of me.
DJT: No, I don’t get, I’m not getting in trouble. I know exactly how to talk. You know, we have a gag order that’s like the likes of which nobody’s ever seen. We’re doing very well on our case, but we have a judge who I say is corrupt and conflicted. He’s a corrupt judge, and he’s conflicted. And nobody can believe the gag order. That’s never happened in this country before.
HH: Oh, this is banana republic stuff. But to go back to that, why do people hate you more? The people who are cheering on this judge, and this judge, I think, and certainly Alvin Bragg, why do they hate you more than Xi and Putin and Khamenei?
DJT: Because I won an election against somebody that was supposed to win. It broke up their game rather drastically, in all fairness. If you remember before that election, they thought they had it made. They took the convention center. They built the most beautiful, they built the most beautiful venue I’ve ever seen. They spent millions. They spent $28 million dollars building that thing. It was beautiful. They built a, it was like a picture. It was a beautiful picture of the United States. I’ve never seen anything like it. And then, they lost. You know, the glass ceiling, it had a glass ceiling at the convention center. I actually was involved with it. It has a glass ceiling. They were going to break the glass ceiling. It was an election that they had in the bag, they thought, and they lost. And it’s been, you know, they’ve been very nasty. And you know, when you say, though, people that dislike me, I also have more people that like me.
HH: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
DJT: We just passed 95%…
HH: Nixon won a landslide. You could win a landslide. But what about a media burying the Hur Report?
DJT: And by the way, hey Hugh, I just got a 95% approval rating in the Republican Party. That’s higher than ’86 that Ronald Reagan had. You know, I’m very popular in the Republican Party. I mean, hey, we got more votes than any president in history, the last election. At 75 million, that was more votes than any president has ever gotten, sitting president has ever gotten by like 8. And you know, that’s pretty good.
HH: You know, the New York Times/Siena poll this weekend said you’re 12 points up in Nevada.
DJT: Yeah.
HH: What is going, are you getting overconfident?
DJT: No, I’m not overconfident, because they, I’m not overconfident, because they cheat. You know, they cheat. Look, I have people saying well, you know, you have to expect they’re going to cheat 6, 7, 8 points. I said I’m not expecting that at all. We have that covered. But they find new ways of cheating every time. It’s, they’re professional cheaters. And I say it like it is, and you know it, and you shouldn’t say it, because why should you get yourself in trouble? But you know, it’s just one of those things, but anyway…
HH: I like to say they buried the Hur Report. Special Counsel Hur should have charged Joe Biden if there was one rule, the same rule that Jack Smith has used against you. But there are two sets of rules here. Does that drive you to distraction that the media has buried what Hur said and explained it away?
DJT: Well, I think it’s a ridiculous thing. I also think that it’s almost worse than if he said convict. They said he’s grossly incompetent, and this is who we have running for president. You don’t think that’s going to be brought up? He got out only based on the fact that he’s incompetent. I mean, think of it.
HH: Yeah.
DJT: I said you know, I don’t think I want to get out that way. I think I’d rather have to win it in trial, because that is a disaster. It’s very sad, actually, in a way. It’s a very sad report.
HH: Okay, I have to close with, your people are going to be mad at me, but I want to close with a couple of very important questions.
DJT: Go ahead.
HH: When Iran attacked Israel, we helped them. But then, Israel was held back in their response. Should Israel have hit Iran harder in their response to the attack on Israel from Iran?
DJT: Well, I think they probably had a little side thing. You know, when I hit Iran, I hit them very hard, and then they had to hit back. And they called me, we’re not going to hurt anybody. We’re not going to hurt anybody. That was on the military base, you remember?
HH: Oh, my son was on that base at that time, Mr. President.
DJT: Okay, good. Well, say, then, tell him to thank me for his life, okay? He’ll thank me for his life. But you know, we knew that those missiles were not going to do any harm, but they had to send a signal. I have a feeling there was a little bit of a signal sent, because that was a strange situation where they knocked down every one, and then Israel went in and attacked in a certain way. And you know, and everybody was happy. So I think it was, I think it wasn’t so bad. That could have been catastrophic. But the bigger problem is what are you going to do with Iran trying to get, you know, they’re going to have a nuclear weapon soon. And when they have a nuclear, if you allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, you’re going to have problems like never before, because they are very difficult people to negotiate with. I did very well with Kim Jung Un, but he wasn’t a religious zealot. Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. They would never have had even close to a nuclear weapon. They are very close to getting a nuclear weapon. You cannot let that happen.
HH: Did you see Secretary Blinken playing the guitar in Kyiv last night? I just don’t know how he expects Khamenei to respect him.
DJT: It’s not the look you want. I said it this morning. I told people, I said this is not what we want. This is not central casting. And look, he’s done a very poor job. The world is blowing up. And I will say, Viktor Orban, and you know him and you respect him, he’s, you know, they say he’s a strong man or a tough guy and all that, and he is. He runs a tough, nobody came into his country other than he takes Ukrainians, I mean, he does take in Ukrainians. But he has nobody coming in, and they’re not blowing up his shopping centers, etc. He said the only way you’re going to solve the world problem, he was asked this question, and said Donald Trump has to become president of the United States. When he was president, we had no problems. He used the word afraid. I would never use that word, because I don’t want to use that, you know. And he said China was afraid of him. Russia was afraid of him. Kim Jung Un was afraid of him. Everybody was afraid of him. We had no problems. The whole word was peaceful. Now, the world is blowing up, because nobody respects Biden. Nobody.
HH: Well, you know what I say, Mr. President, is that President Biden and his team are afraid of everything. Their Biden is Never Don’t Retreat, and that Donald Trump wasn’t afraid of anything, and that that is what makes America strong. I have three more questions. You’ve seen the campuses. Your alma mater and my alma mater have failed terribly, Penn and Harvard. Should we cut off all federal funding to every college that has an endowment of more than a billion dollars or $5 billion dollars, because I don’t know why we’re giving these places money.
DJT: Maybe you should do it anyway, if you want to know the truth, because what they’re teaching and the way they’re teaching is ridiculous. But I’d probably recommend doing something. I think we should do something with endowments anyway. It’s ridiculous. And then we subsidize schools on top of the endowments. The whole thing is ridiculous when you look and see some of these things with $25 billion dollars, and then they’re coming to us for aid. Okay, the whole thing is ridiculous, and I’m going to look at the whole situation. It’s one of the great, it’s actually a tax scam in a very sophisticated way, and I think that whole thing should be looked at anyway.
HH: Now the great silent majority is with you on one issue that you occasionally bring up, so I want to ask you about it. The great silent majority rejects the idea of biological boys competing against biological girls in high school, and even in college, but especially in high school.
DJT: Right.
HH: And it’s not just the athletes. It’s their families, their friends, their coaches. The great silent majority is with you on this. Is it going to be a centerpiece of your campaign to keep boys in boys’ sports, and girls in girls’ sports?
DJT: Well, it is, but I’m embarrassed to say it’s a centerpiece, because who can imagine this is possible? You have to look at the weightlifting records. Have you ever seen…
HH: Yes.
DJT: You know, where one ounce stood for, one ounce, one ounce, stood for 12 years. And then some guy comes along and breaks it by, you know, by numbers that I can’t even tell you because I think they’re so ridiculous. But who can do this? When you look at the speed records, you look at the weightlifting and the weight records, you look at all this, and then you have the sports where it’s very dangerous when you’re competing. Now I understand they want to have football, they want to have girls playing on football teams. And they don’t want it. And it actually is very demeaning to women. It’s a very demeaning thing to women. It’s hard to believe. I mean, sure, a centerpiece, yes. But I’d hate to put it as a centerpiece, because it’s so ridiculous. It’s like open borders. I say there’s things that they do. I call them the no common sense things. Men should not be allowed to play in women’s sports, and women don’t want them. You know, I’ve yet to find people that really want this other than far left lunatics. I have yet…
HH: Well, there are a lot of far-left lunatics in the country.
DJT: Yeah, that’s true.
HH: Let’s wrap up by talking about the far-left lunatics at the United Nations. The very first time I interviewed you, we talked about the U.N. remodel because of your testimony years ago, which was hilarious and on point.
DJT: Right.
HH: The U.N. has completely fallen on its face in the Israel war.
DJT: Right.
HH: UNRWA, is it time to kick them out of New York, Mr. President?
DJT: Well, I wouldn’t want to see that from a country standpoint. I wouldn’t want to see that from the standpoint. They could, you know, I’ve always loved the potential of the U.N, but it’s never lived up to its potential. And it’s very much controlled by, I guess you’d say, radical left, but it’s even worse than radical left in many ways. It’s controlled by certain nations that shouldn’t be controlling. You see what’s happening. You see who’s going on security boards and boards. It’s like, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. But you know what? Just from the standpoint of, you know, I make my money in real estate. I made a lot of money. I’m good at real estate. Do you remember, I was going to, I offered to build it for one-fourth the price?
HH: Yes. Yes.
DJT: And it would have been, and they said well, what would be the difference? And I said it would be much better. You’d have marble floors instead of tile floors. Do you remember that? But I was willing to build it for 25%, because they spent so much money, it was so ridiculous what they did. And there were a lot of kickbacks.
HH: You warned them that they were going to get taken to the cleaners by the unions, and they did. It was very funny testimony. Let’s close here.
DJT: Oh, yeah.
HH: Are you going to negotiate…
DJT: They got taken to the cleaners.
HH: Are you going to negotiate personally the debates? Or are you going to send Susie and Chris to do that? And if so, are you going to give them a list of people you’ll accept as moderators and people you won’t?
DJT: Well, they’ll do it, but I’ll be, you know, I’ll be right on top of it. Look, I’d like to see more debates. I’ve accepted, I put out the letter. You’ll see the letter. You’ll read it afterwards. But I put out a letter. I think you’ll get a kick out of it. I’ve accepted the two debates. I’ve recommended they should have more. I hate to use this group that does the debates, because they cheated. They turned the sound off during one of my debates. And they go out of their way to help the Democrat, but that’s okay. You know, it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, you’re still up there with one person, so they can do whatever they want to do. But I think there should be more than two debates. I think, and I’ve accepted the two, 100%. But I think there should be more than two. And I think they should be in large venues. It’s just more exciting.
HH: Well, but it’s harder to hear. You know, I’ve been on the other side of you. It’s harder to hear when the people are cheering. And it’s not a conversation like this.
DJT: Well, that’s only because of the debate people. You know, you remember whenever I looked at Hillary Clinton, they turned down the sound so you know, she wouldn’t get spooked, I guess. I don’t know. But they turned down the sound, and we caught them. They sent me a letter of apology. They cheated on the debate. And I don’t care. Look, it’s two people standing on, we’ll have people back there that they can’t do that. But they’re very, very radical left debates. They’re really Clinton people, to be honest. More than anything else, they’re like Clinton people. But I don’t care about that. I think it’s important that we have debates. I think we should have more than two. But I’ve accepted the two. But I feel that the large venue is just, it’s a very exciting night. And when you don’t have that, it takes a lot of energy out of the debates.
HH: Very last question. I am surprised by the Siena/New York Times polls in Michigan, mostly in Nevada. You’re ahead in Arizona. You’re ahead in Georgia. Are you going to compete in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan? I mean, Pennsylvania, you’re ahead, but what about those three states in the Upper Midwest?
DJT: Well, I think I’m doing really well. We just had a poll come out, not that one in Michigan, where I’m up 9 points. We just had one come out in Minnesota where I think I’m up one. You saw that one yesterday. I’m up one point. You know, the Minnesota is amazing, because I go to Minnesota, and I say we’re going to win this state by a lot, and I thought we won it last time, actually. I really thought we won it. But it hasn’t been won since your friend, Richard Nixon, won in 1972. Who would think that, right? Minnesota.
HH: Well,
DJT: I thought we were going to win Minnesota.
HH: The last one I saw had you behind two, but within the margin of error, from KTSP yesterday. But I mean, that’s astonishing. It is Minnesota. It’s the Democratic Farm Labor. It’s a hard left state.
DJT: Yeah, I never viewed it that way, but it hasn’t been won by a Republican since Richard Nixon in 1972. And that’s amazing, to me. That’s really amazing. That’s the one. That’s the one, the longest, because they had, Reagan almost won everything. He almost won everything, but he didn’t win, he didn’t win, let’s say he did not win Minnesota. That’s right. Amazing.
HH: Are you going to bring the Senate with you and the House back with you and Republican majorities, Donald Trump?
DJT: I think we have a very good chance. We have some very interesting plans on the House, and we have some, and the Senate is, you know, if you listen to people like you, I think, the Senate would be looking a little bit stronger than the House in terms of winning. I think we’re going to take both. And I’m doing, I mean, were you surprised by how strong the New York Times poll was?
HH: Oh, yes. And I think most of the left is stunned, and they don’t know what to say. And they’re afraid, and therefore, you’re getting more and more heat in the New York trial, which is an absurdity. And I don’t want to get into it. It’s a circus. It’s a show trial. It’s a terrible scar on American judicial history.
DJT: It’s a disgrace. Well, it’s election interference. It’s their form of cheating this time. They always find a way to cheat, and they’re cheating with those trials, and they’re nothing, those trial. Those trials are absolutely…
HH: Well, they’re not letting you campaign four days a week. It’s just…
DJT: Right.
HH: Right there, you can’t go out four days a week.
DJT: But thank goodness, I can speak to you. Thank goodness, I can speak to you by telephone, unlike Joe Biden. Would he ever take your call? I don’t think so.
HH: No. (laughing) He doesn’t do any interviews.
DJT: You think he’d, can you imagine him doing an interview like this?
HH: You think Joe Biden could…no.
DJT: Can you imagine him doing an interview with you like this?
HH: He’s more than welcome. He will never show up. I’ve met him once. I’ve interviewed him once outside of an AIPAC convention. He’s turned his back on Israel. He’ll never come here.
DJT: And he may never show up to the debate. He may never show up to the debate. I know he accepted the debate, you know, accepted more or less. He sort of accepted it, but let’s see if he shows up. It’s all misinformation disinformation. Oh, sure, I’d love to debate. I want to debate. I want to debate. And then, you can’t make a deal with the guy. Let’s see if he shows up to a debate. But I’ve accepted. I’ll go anywhere, anytime, anyplace, and we’ll see where it is. You know, we’ll see.
HH: Bonus question. Your chief of staff in a second White House – is it going to be Ric Grenell or Mike Pompeo?
DJT: Well, they’re both good, and Ric has been really outstanding. I mean, he has been, he’s been something very, very special. And you talk about courage…
HH: Because you once told me the two most important jobs other than president were chief of staff and national security advisor. So those two matter a lot, and…
DJT: Well, and attorney general. I got attorney general wrong. That one, I got wrong. But attorney general is very important, too. Yeah, they’re all important. Honestly, every position is important. And we had a lot of great people. Lighthizer did a great job. We had so many great people. But sometimes, you get them wrong. And you know, the difference is I went there. I was not a Washington guy, and people were recommended. And for the most part, we had great people. But we had some people would never be there again, that I can tell you. I know the good, the bad, and the ugly.
HH: Well, you know, Senator Cotton would make a great AG, but you might want him at DOD. Once again, I want to close with, I hope you put out a list of your, AG is part of the national security team. I hope you put out a list.
DJT: By the way, Cotton is a, Cotton is a very good man. You’re right. More and more people are mentioning his name. More and more people are mentioning his name.
HH: Mr. President, keep coming back. Good luck in this campaign, and many more rallies. If you go to Ohio, by the way, you’ll get double the crowd that you got in New Jersey.
DJT: Well, it was a great honor to see that crowd. I mean, it was like, we expected 40-45 thousand. And the people just didn’t stop, because they’re looking for hope. It’s so bad, what’s happened to our country, they’re looking for hope. They want hope. And we’re going to give them more than hope. We’re going to give them fact. We’re going to give it to them, and we’re going to bring back our country. And you know, to use our greatest expression of all time, we’re going to make America great again. That’s what we’re going to do. And thank you very much, Hugh.
HH: Thank you, Mr. President. Be well.
DJT: So long.
End of interview.
The post Former President Trump On The New Inflation Number And President Biden’s Arms Embargo On Israel appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Over the weekend Peggy Noonan wrote of the ennui that seems to be this election. Current polling is giving Trump a huge lead. (The NYTimes, poll source, wonders if America wants “Biden’s normal.“) These numbers indicate to me that people are passionate about this election, just not the candidates.
What’s interesting to me is that both Noonan, examining John Ellis carefully, and Jim Geraghty yesterday point out that Biden and his organization are simply not in touch with what is actually going on in America. Yesterday, Mike Pence released a report on the growth of the regulatory state that comes closer to the mark of where the average American is living. People can do the math, they know this regulatory explosion is a Biden product. Geraghty notes that the Biden campaign seems obsessed with pleasing a very small slice of the electorate.
Yesterday’s conversation between the host and Byron York was fascinating when they kept talking about the fact that the rate of inflation may be lower, but prices are still going up. Of course. Rates are relative, computed from an annual basis and inflation has been with us so long that the basis is very high, making the rate look lower while prices continue to rise at near the same rate in real dollars. People understand this.
Back to Noonan, she notes the Ellis contention that “Democrats home in not on Mr. Trump or his supporters but on MAGA-world. He may be half mad, but there’s often method to his madness. MAGA-world is just crazy, and dumb.” People look at “MAGA-world” after looking at Biden’ record of statistical gas-lighting, regulatory intrusion and utter betrayal of Israel and figures 1) “MAGA-world” looks relatively sane and 2) “MAGA-world” is a small price to pay to escape the destruction Biden is wrecking.
So, we have two candidates, one “half mad” but trying to fix real problems, the other deeply and increasingly infirmed and almost completely out-of-touch with the daily realities of life in the country. That’s not a difficult choice – as the polling illustrates.
Not long after DJT took office last time, I wrote of the parallels between himself and Bob Knight when it comes to the contempt in which both are held by the press. I was urging then President Trump, not to repeat the mistakes of Coach Knight thus giving the press the opportunity to destroy his legacy. But I also pointed out that Coach Knight had no media skill and DJT was brimming with it; that where Knight held the press in straightforward contempt, Trump played them like a harp. Well here we are, Trump has continued to pluck at that harp and despite an avalanche of negative press and lawfare enjoys an impressive lead.
If there is ennui about this election it is because we all know the press, and their Democrat allies, will make another Trump term far, far more chaotic than the man’s personality alone would make it and nobody looks forward to that. I guess I was wrong back in 2017. Trump does not need to work with media to maintain his legacy, media needs to reform to keep the Trump legacy from completely destroying their credibility.
The post This Unpopular Election appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton joined me this morning:
Audio:
05-14hhs-cotton
Transcript:
HH: Joined by Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Good morning, Senator. Welcome.
TC: Good morning, Hugh. Good to be back on with you.
HH: I played a great deal of your exchange with Margaret Brennan from the weekend, just like I did the week before with Jon Karl. Let’s start with an open question. Has Joe Biden imposed an arms embargo on Israel?
TC: Hugh, I think it’s totally reasonable to say that Joe Biden has imposed a de facto arms embargo on Israel. Last week, he announced on CNN that he would no longer provide offensive weapons. That’s a vast category of weapons that Israel use not only in Rafah and Gaza, but to defend itself against the very rocket and missile attacks that are still threatening Israeli lives, and for that matter, lives in Gaza, and shutting down aid crossings. Now I know Tony Blinken on Margaret Brennan’s show before me said well, it’s only this category of large bombs. But Tony Blinken said on that exactly same show two years ago that the United States would be fine for Ukraine to receive fighter jets, only to have Joe Biden reverse him the very next day. And furthermore, there’s a reason why Israel needs those large bombs. That’s because for 17 years, the civilized world gave Hamas billions of dollars to build schools and homes and hospitals, and instead, they bought, they buried deep, or they built deeply-buried tunnels, which is where their leaders and hostages are now. So even if it’s only a category of large bombs, it’s a significant limitation on what Israel needs. And Hugh, just remember, the Biden administration let an arms embargo on Iran lapse just a few months ago. That’s how upended American policy is in the Middle East. An arms embargo on Israel, and a lapse of an arms embargo on Iran.
HH: Now I agree with you. I don’t even think there’s a close call. It’s clearly an arms embargo. The President himself added ammunition to that when pressed by Erin Burnett gently. But I don’t understand, and this goes to the heart of my question. Margaret Brennan argued with you rather than an interview. Jon Karl argued with you. It’s like they’re part of the Biden defense team, because the President is infirm and cannot appear on the Sunday shows. Do you get that sense?
TC: Well, there’s, they’re not much more persuasive than Joe Biden or all of his mouthpieces coming out of the White House, I can tell you that, in part, Hugh, because it is an indefensible policy in which the President and the Democratic Party has tied itself in knots trying to balance the growing pro-Hamas wing of its own party and the very large pro-Israel American majority. And again, you saw this play out just last week, Hugh. On Wednesday, Joe Biden announces an arms embargo, presumably because Israel’s committing some kind of terrible war crimes in Gaza. And on Friday night, after news deadlines had ended and people had gone home, they release a report that acknowledges they have no evidence of misconduct by the Israeli Defense Forces. Yet they still try to say well, it’s reasonable to asses, a phrase that Tony Blinken used five times over the weekend, reasonable to assess that Israel might have, which again, is a way of saying there’s no evidence for what Joe Biden did. This is again turning themselves into a pretzel to try to appease the pro-Hamas wing of their party while not offending the pro-Israel majority of Americans.
HH: Now Senator Cotton, I don’t know if you listen to or read Commentary on a regular basis. John Podhoretz, editor-in-chief, writes this morning at Commentary, “Ask yourself might there be something irresistibly seductive for the Biden team and Biden himself in the idea that his electoral woes have a foreign root. Doesn’t the disorder and crisis in and around Israel provide a convenient scapegoat for his own failings? No, it’s not the inflation that has eaten away at the ordinary American’s financial gains. It’s not that Biden now needs his staff to stand between him and photographers to obscure video images of his halting gait. It’s not that he sounds like his throat is coated in sandpaper, and that his tongue lolls about in his mouth when he speaks. No, it’s that damn Bibi that’s threatening to drag him down.” What do you make of the Podhoretz argument, Senator?
TC: Well, I think there may be some truth to what John Podhoretz writes, Hugh. I mean, look, Joe Biden has always been a vain, prickly, insecure man. You had a phrase last week. I forget what it was. I think you borrowed it from…
HH: Irritable vanity. I borrowed from Christine Rosen on the Commentary podcast.
TC: And so irritable vanity is a good characterization of that. Ever since he was in the Senate, he had a chip on his shoulder around senators who rose faster, had better political skills…
HH: Oh.
TC: …and that he, like the senators who outlasted him in the 1988 presidential election, like Bill Clinton, like John Kerry, for that matter, like the president he served, Barack Obama, and I do think if you look at the smoking ruins of Joe Biden’s presidency, he’s always complaining that the polls don’t reflect what a great president he is, that there probably is a temptation for him, and those closest to him, to blame this all on Benjamin Netanyahu and those pesky Israelis. The reality is, Hugh, Joe Biden’s polls were terrible before Hamas committed the October 7th atrocities. They have remained terrible. Joe Biden is unpopular in places like Michigan not because of Benjamin Netanyahu, but because his own policies have failed. People can’t afford to buy groceries. They can’t afford gas or their rents, that the situation on our border is a total disaster, and America is completely disrespected around the world, not just in the Middle East, but everywhere. These are the reasons that Joe Biden is failing, and that the American people are going to evict him from the White House this fall.
HH: The Washington Post ran a story last week that if it is true is outrageous, and that the Post usually has good sources telling them, they always have good sources telling them things, that the United States is offering up intel on where Sinwar is if Israel agrees to stop the Rafah invasion. Israel’s not going to do that, but can you believe? I mean, isn’t that insane that we would know where Sinwar is and didn’t tell the Israelis?
TC: Well, this is the galaxy brains behind Joe Biden’s failed policies. I guess they thought that they were showing how shrewd and clever they were by leaking that to the Washington Post, the Democratic Party’s official message board. But of course, if you think about it for a moment’s notice, what they’re acknowledging, admitting, confessing, is that they’re withholding vital intelligence from Israel that could help them not only end this war by killing Sinwar, but also certainly reveals the location of hostages, because Sinwar is surrounding himself with high-value hostages, to include, potentially, American hostages. So not only is it a deeply misguided policy, it goes to show the political stupidity behind this administration’s thinking that they would leak that to the Washington Post, believing it made them look good and smart and clever.
HH: Senator Cotton, the New York Times/Siena poll is just the worst news I’ve ever seen for an incumbent president, and that goes back a way, because I’m 68. I have never seen a Democrat down 12 points in Nevada. Speculation is that the Latino vote has turned against him. He’s also lost a large number of African-Americans. Why has the Latino vote turned against Joe Biden? Why are African-Americans going to Donald Trump?
TC: Well, again, Hugh, as we talked about with Michigan earlier, it’s the same reasons that most Americans have turned against Joe Biden. You know, in Nevada, it’s very hard for a cocktail waitress or construction worker on the strip to make ends meet, much harder than it was under Donald Trump when jobs were abundant and prices were stable. Furthermore, if you look among Latino voters, especially first-generation immigrants, many of them are appalled by the situation at our border, because if they’re voting, they’re by definition citizens. They played by the rules. They came to our country legally. They waited in line. They did the work necessary to become an American citizen, and they see this slow-motion invasion of people not just from Latin American, but literally all over the world. So I think that issue also especially resonates with the great patriotic immigrants who are going to help put Joe Biden out on the street and Donald Trump back in the White House.
HH: Last question, Senator Cotton. Duane, the producer, Duane, a [rule-enforcing] umpire but a great producer, and John Campbell, your friend from Congress in the old days, they do a podcast called Look Through The Chaos. John Campbell doesn’t want you to do these Sunday shows. He doesn’t want any Republican to do these Sunday shows. You go in there and carve up the host, he doesn’t care if you carve up the host. He doesn’t want any Republican to do the shows. Now you know the former President likes people to do the shows. Why do you do the shows when you know it’s rollerball. It’s completely going to be a Joe Biden surrogate talking to you?
TC: Well, Hugh, there’s no question that the Sunday morning news shows are not as influential in making public opinion, especially elite opinion in Washington and New York as they once were when Tim Russert and David Brinkley were in those chairs. But they still have some outsized influence among policy makers and reporters and opinions makers in Washington and New York. And I do think it’s important that we not entirely cede that ground to the Democrats, that we need people who are willing to go on Sunday morning shows, or willing to go on the evening news shows, or even CNN to explain to the swing voters who still watch those channels why all the things they see around them is Joe Biden’s fault, why Joe Biden is responsible for high grocery prices and gas prices, or the crisis at our border, or the crime in their communities, or Uncle Sam wearing a ‘kick me’ sign around the world. We do not want to cede that entirely to Democrats. I take John Campbell’s point. It’s not the highlight of my job, but I do think it’s important for the president and for our party, and for helping shape American public opinion in a way that elects a Republican majority this fall.
HH: Senator Tom Cotton, thank you for joining me. Have a good one. I appreciate it.
End of interview.
The post Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) On President Biden’s Arms Embargo On Israel appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Let’s start with John Podhoretz latest piece in Commentary magazine:
Ask yourself: Might there be something irresistibly seductive for the Biden team and Biden himself in the idea that his electoral woes have a foreign root? Doesn’t the disorder and crisis in and around Israel provide a convenient scapegoat for his own failings?
In other words – it’s never your own fault, it is always someone else’s. My wife and I ran into it in a restaurant this past weekend; the waitress screwed up, no big deal, just apologize and move on. Her embarrassment was obvious. But the restaurant, up to and including management, went out of its way to point fingers anywhere but at the waitress. The problem was always over there somewhere, indistinct. A while back I was invested, rather heavily, with a private investment operation and they made a major customer service mistake – frankly, someone needed to get fired. My investment was short lived. There was never an apology, an explanation sure, but never an apology, “It just happened.” It’s a cultural phenomenon, talk to a teacher.
Now let’s move to two stories, one about M.I.T. cutting back on DEI. And this:
George Mason University has at least 87 staffers working on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to an analysis by The College Fix. To put that in perspective, there are 59 full-time history and art history professors employed at the school.
This reflects that DEI is highly controversial. Most people focus on the fact that DEI tries to create diversity on some metrics while virtually eliminating ideological diversity. But I note that what DEI seeks – equal outcome – is simply impossible. If I create the statistically perfect classroom on ethnic, gender, religious and orientation metrics, the grades are still going to be a bell curve. If specific groups group in a specific location on that curve, is that the class/instructor’s fault or is it the fault of the students in that group? DEI presumes it is the fault of the class/instructor and therein lies the rub. Is the presumption based in reality or a reflection of the cultural phenomena of “It’s always someone else’s fault”?
Now, note the size of the DEI staff at GMU – that’s enormous! And what are they doing? Seriously, what are they doing? It is distinctly possible that they are busy trying to cover up for and create excuses for students that just are unable to cut it at GMU. They are trying to do that which cannot be done, meaning they are wasting their time. Wasting time means doing nothing. So, at GMU there are 87 people in a department whose mission is to do nothing. And yet they have to do something to justify their pay and so they do stupid things just to look busy.
And that is why DEI is so destructive. It is a bureaucratic solution to a problem that is based in perceptions and feelings and blame shifting – all things that a bureaucracy can do nothing about, and so the bureaucracy creates mischief that sort of looks like what it is supposed to be doing but changes nothing and is still mischief. Not to mention it creates jobs for those on the back end of that bell curve.
All these problems, all this mischief, created by a simple unwillingness to accept responsibility for one’s own failings. And, in my experie3nce and in the experience of many others, failure is the greatest teacher. Happened across a biopic on Thomas Edison last night. Failure as a teacher was a mantra with Edison. On his thousand something failure to make a light bulb someone comments that, “That’s thousands of failures.” Edison replied, “That’s thousands of things I now know won’t work.”
We need to learn how to fail again. We’ll be better off for it.
The post Building Something To Do Nothing appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Much has been made in recent weeks that the presidential betrayal of Israel is in search of a few votes around Detroit. Not sure the cost/benefit ratio works out on that one, but it is far from the only place where liberal policy math just does not work. Consider the EV.
Over the weekend, an op-ed appeared from CO(5) Congressman Doug Lamborn who rightly points out the insanity of mandating EV’s when absolutely none of the infrastructure necessary to support them exists. From charging capabilities to roadway engineering, design and construction to necessary mineral extraction infrastructure, the EPA mandate that 30% of vehicles sold must be EVs by 2032 just does not add up. It is even questionable that EVs are the environmental panacea we tend to think they are. Consider:
Protesters clash with police as some try to storm a Tesla plant near Berlin. Demonstrators are against the plant’s expansion, which organizers say would damage the environment.
And therein lies a hint on environmental policy. There is an insanity here, a clear break with reality. Supposedly we need, make that have-to-have, EV’s to save the planet, but the necessary infrastructure to build them can’t be built because it will harm the planet. There is an insanity here.
One must conclude that all this EV regulation and legislation in in pursuit of a few votes, apparently from crazy people.
Democrats have long been a coalition of limited interest groups, each in a minority but when combined enough to be nationally competitive. One has to wonder if this strategy has gone too far. Where once they chased labor union and ethnic minority votes, they now chase ever smaller groups of people with ever wilder positions. Somehow, we have gone from the commonsense mission of preventing rivers from burning to trying to force the nation into vehicles that they then cannot reasonably operate. Where once justice drove them to help the truly oppressed ethnic minorities of the nation, they now dispense with any sense of justice, to the point of betraying a truly brother-nation.
There has to be something more at play here than sheer political calculation. These policies are 1) unreal and 2) unjust. It is also too easy to lay this off at the president’s infirmity. There are too many check-and-balances for these policies to actually hit the ground unless the party is on board. Something is deeply, deeply broken in the Democrat party – something essential.
The post Counting Votes, Leaving Reality appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
You could see the aurora borealis in Alabama the other night! Everyone marvels. The news is all over it. Pictures everywhere. You would think it is was a miracle. But it is not, it is a perfectly natural event – ions and energy interacting. I mean we can predict it for crying out loud. How miraculous is something we can predict? And yet we have acted for the past couple of days as if fish had started riding bicycles and a Cleveland sports team has actually won something.
Something in us longs for the beautiful, because that is the bottom line here, the aurora is beautiful, and while not miraculous, beauty is rare.
When God decided Israel needed a new king, He sent Samuel to the house of Jesse to anoint that new king and Jesse paraded all his rather amazing sons before the prophet. As the first son approached, teh Bible says:
When they entered, he looked at Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
The aurora is beautiful, but that beauty pales in comparison to the beauty of a good heart. But so often we see “as man sees” and not “as God sees.” We see beauty in saving those we think oppressed when often those claiming to be oppressed are the ones with true hatred in their hearts. We think it beautiful to “save the planet” even when it hurts those living on it.
It’s funny though, the beauty of the aurora does not disappear when one knows how it works – it is still beautiful. That’s why we marvel at it – it is beautiful to its core.
This SUnday I head to church hoping to learn how to see genuine beauty and to treasure that which is beautiful to its core.
The post Marveling appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
When I grew up, old people were the voice of sanity and wisdom. Young people were all spit and vinegar, but it was the old folks that had learned through hard won experience that things typically were not as bad as they seemed and that things had a way of working out. But these days who knows. Despite the fact that Israel is doing everything in their power to spare “civilians” (I still say that is a questionable designation in this war) as they invade Rafah, Octogenarian Joe Biden has betrayed them like Littlefinger betrayed pretty much everyone he dealt with in Game of Thrones. And now comes the story of two octogenarians attacking an original copy of Magna Carte to draw attention their cause which is apparently to stop the use of fossil fuels. No longer are we dealing with “young skulls full of mush” (nod to Rush) gluing themselves to some artwork in some European museum, nope, now it’s the old folks attacking the very roots of democracy. And so, the so-called “wisdom of age” is no longer apparent.
At first blush the world has become a very complicated place and Aurthur C. Clarke’s maxim, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” seems applicable. And so it is easy to conjure visions of global devastation as civilization grows increasingly technological. This hypothesis is supported by this phenomenon being among the young, that are as yet not fully trained, and the elderly that are growing confused in the later years. (When I was young you usually died before this old age confusion took hold.) But that leaves open the question of who is doing the conjuring and to what end?
Also at play is the very impatient desire in the young to “make a difference,” and older people that look back on a life see a failure to do so. But that strikes me as a very macroscopic view of “making a difference,” marking a complete loss of perspective. Big things in this world are composed of a thousands and millions of little things. No one, not even POTUS can really “make a difference” on that level. Think about it. The next president comes along and reverses the policy. People don’t buy into the policy and it just goes nowhere. Every ounce of fossil fuel we do not use, China and India greedily consumes. No one can actually “make a difference” on this level.
And so, the young and the old are conned, by someone to some unknown end, into pulling stunts that accomplish little but generate a few headlines. There is no wisdom there. It is not expected in the young, and no longer apparent in the old. Wisdom is a shield against being conned and the insight to know what is productive and what is not. Where has wisdom gone?
It has become cliché to point out that the current environmental movement is religious in nature. The cynical then use that fact to support their contention that religion is simply a useful tool for the manipulation of the simple. And yet, that assertion is belied by the fact that the climate change religion is born of and evangelized by the most learned among us. And it is the so-called “simple” that are not buying into the climate change religion. While the university student may move around campus on their battery driven scooter and present themselves in a sanctimonious fashion, the did-not-graduate high school farmer is in his V-8 pick-up moving hay and livestock around. The simple are not buying it.
Maybe, just maybe, there are true religions and not true religions. Because it strikes me that this whole climate change religion that has no wisdom is filling a void that has been created by the shoving aside of the religion that says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.” I don’t think wisdom is dead, I just think it is lost, and not all that hard to find again – we just need to look in the right place.
The post Is Wisdom Dead? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
If I have heard it once, I have heard it a thousand times, “We are not the world’s police force.” And yet what would better describe Biden’s betrayal of Israel? Is that not policing that particular war? As I thought about it, I decided it’s close, but not perfect.
Nope, in the view of Biden we are not the world’s police force, we are the world’s nanny. “No, no – you two knock it off or there’ll be no goodies for you at dinner tonight.” Honestly, the more I have reflected upon it, and as absolutely awful as the decision proper is, the attitude underlying it, as if Israel were a misbehaving child, is what is truly despicable.
The host opined this morning that perhaps this decision is as simple Biden is too infirmed to understand what he is doing. Maybe, but it is actually worse. He has become the old man that not only sits on his own front porch and tells people to get off his lawn; he is making sure they stay off of everybody’s lawn too.
Domestically, we have gotten a bit to used to living under the nanny state regime. We have normalized it and now want to take it to the world. I hate to break it to you….
As I said yesterday, Biden’s legacy is now cemented which means his election chances are tanking even further as we speak. This story is both ugly and sublime at the same time:
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said he and his staff have been reviewing former President Trump’s second-term agenda in detail to prepare a potential onslaught of environmental, immigration and civil rights lawsuits in the event Trump defeats President Biden.
That is ugly in that the man is being so heavily opposed a priori. It is sublime in that a decision to spend resources in this fashion, at this juncture, indicates an expectation that Biden will lose.
If he keeps treating the world like small children, the world may respond in a fashion that hastens the matter far more than the expectation of California Democrats.
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I’ve been working up a post on just how bad the Biden administration legacy will be on non-Israel fronts, but Biden decides to double down. This is old news by now, but seriously?!
President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt some shipments of American weapons to Israel – which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza – if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah….
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said.
And with that we have gone from being a stalwart ally to being a betrayer. I stumble for an analogy. Yueh in Dune? Littlefinger in GoT? Fredo in the Godfather? Iago in Othello? All fictional and therefore lack the gut punch quality of this move by Biden.
First of all, I doubt this flows from the president. Biden is a feeble old man that goes where he is pointed by his own underlings and they are Obama holdovers and Obama’s contempt of Israel is renown. But does it matter? Even Obama had the common sense to not go this far. He was personally demeaning to Netanyahu on multiple occasions, but this is a step I doubt even he would have taken. But now he has a fall guy to take the heat for him.
There are two levels on which this can be analyzed. The first and lower level is this is the United States signaling that there is a place in the world for terrorism; that we will only go so far in pursuit of its destruction. So, in the future we can look forward to more October 7’s and more September 11’s. The higher level is fully geopolitical. The United States is no longer a reliable ally. Absent a change in administration and a new one that works its butt off to restore relationships – everything this nation has worked to build to defend itself and the western world since WWII could fade into the sunset.
It is actually too soon to fully analyze this, the shock is too great for clear thought, but this interview will go down in history on a level with Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of “peace in our time.”
It hardly seems worth mentioning, but the domestic political aspects of this are ironic and stupefying. A little noticed story emerged yesterday:
President Biden is getting a boost from a major group of former medical officials who say they are concerned about the “threat” former President Trump poses to public health….”We write today as people who have dedicated our lives to helping people.”
Since when does utter betrayal equate to concern about “helping people?” If they spoke Latin in Israel, I think the shouts of “Et tu Biden!” would echo off the walls of the Old City.
But having gathered information, I should not let it go to waste. Biden’s legacy is now forever cemented as betrayer. His electoral fate is sealed. (80% of Americans support Israel.) But it will be enhanced as an economic destroyer and debt creator both small, “Young Americans are starting out with more credit-card debt than generations before them. That financial burden can have long-lasting effects.” and large, “How much debt is too much? After three economic shocks in a row – the financial crisis, the pandemic and the energy price spike – the world economy is drowning in the stuff, with little sign of any life raft to the rescue.”
You know when you are an economic loser? When you are equated with the central economic planners of the former Soviet Union. Such is the comparison drawn in this article out of England on EV quotas, quotas also being implemented in this nation by this administration.
Biden is indeed feeble, but he is far from harmless.
The post The Disastrous Biden Legacy appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
This:
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, is calling on the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Israeli forces seized Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
“There is nowhere safe in Gaza,” Ms. Tlaib, Michigan Democrat, said in a statement Tuesday.
“I urge the ICC to swiftly issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials to finally hold them accountable for this genocide, as is obviously warranted by these well-documented violations of the Genocide Convention under international law,” she added.
The first thought that ran through my mind was, “Of course! We could have avoided the entirety of World War II if only we had arrested Hitler after the invasion of Poland!” (Not that there is any actual comparison between Netanyahu and Hitler, for crying out loud.) I know, the ICC did not exist back in the late 1930’s, but that is not the point. This’ll never happen.
Consider, from the ICC’s own website:
As a judicial institution, the ICC does not have its own police force or enforcement body; thus, it relies on cooperation with countries worldwide for support, particularly for making arrests, transferring arrested persons to the ICC detention centre in The Hague, freezing suspects’ assets, and enforcing sentences.
Sure, Israel is going to go right out and arrest its prime minister for prosecuting a war the entire nation wants. No more so than Gazans would go out and arrest all those Hamas soldiers that did all that nasty to Israelis. Give me a break here. Where is the actual crime against humanity? (That’s the stuff the ICC is supposed to go after.) People in Rafah have had weeks to get the heck out of the way. It is not like this surprises anyone.
Look, I get it, Tlaib is an antisemitic, racist bigot, but that was established long ago. But this? This is just stupid – calling on a court with no actual power to act on behalf of the perpetrators of a genuine and heinous crime against a nation/state prosecuting a just and legal war. Look, the American people can elect whoever they want to the House of Representatives, but honestly, don’t you think at some point there ought to be an intelligence test administered and passed before actual credentials are issued? If she thinks she was elected to try and protect people in an entirely different nation than this one, then I guess she is entitled to do so, but I can think of about a million ways to do so that would be far more effective than this – spitting towards Israel and into the wind being just the first.
This brings new meaning to the phrase “Stuck on stupid.”
FINAL QUESTION (while we are speaking of stupid): How in the world do the details of a sexual encounter between two individuals have anything to do with a trial about moving money around?
The post There Oughta Be A Test appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton joined me this AM to discuss the disastrous policies pursued by President Biden against Israel, inlcuding now the cut-off of precision munitions:
Audio:
05-07hhs-cotton
Transcript:
The post Senator Tom Cotton on President Trump v. President Biden On Support For Israel appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
So, the L.A. ADA charged with pursuing corrupt cops has been charged with corruption. Her particular corruption is, “California Attorney General Rob Bonta charged ADA Teran with 11 felonies. She is accused of illegally accessing personnel records on 11 different police deputies.” Essentially her crime is pursuing her aims beyond the bounds of reason and law. She is/was overzealous. We live in an age where some consider such single-minded, no-holds-barred pursuit of an aim as virtuous, which will most certainly be a major part of her defense. But to me it indicates that we have lost our way.
Consider what unchecked zeal has produced. Left unchecked the zealous hatred of Jews resulted in the Holocaust. Left unchecked the zealous pursuit of Christian domination resulted in the Crusades. Left unchecked the zealous pursuit of cheap labor resulted in chattel slavery. We could go on like this for a while. Zeal is pressing the accelerator pedal to the floor ignoring speed limits, traffic, road conditions and brakes. Forces need counter forces (e.g. acceleration <-> braking) to keep them in check or else the unconstrained force will move from productive to destructive.
I am stuck by how such stories of unchecked zeal have increased as the influence of Christianity in our society has decreased. Yes, on occasion Christianity has lost its way in its own zeal, but like the Constitution, it is full of checks and balances. The California AG is the check to this out-of-control ADA, but only after the damage has been done. The only force that can prevent the damage is personal character. And this is where Christianity can truly make a difference. Its zeal has taken over when it has become a political force. But when it is held close and used to develop the man, not the state, it makes good people and good people make good politics.
Let’s reserve our zeal for the pursuit of character, even figuring our precisely what that means. Let us temper our political pursuits. I think we will be better off for it.
The post Zealousness Without Character Is Corruption appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Among the eco-sensitive there is much discussion of plastic. Occasionally, it bubbles to the surface using words like “microplastics” (otherwise known as initial breakdown products that just might further degrade over time) and much discussion of plastic on the ocean surface and now plastic on the ocean floor. We’ve banned thin plastic bags in some states, restaurants have altered packaging and life generally is being made ever more expensive while people fret over changing the planet that is constantly changing anyway. I find the plastics fascination particularly interesting.
Plastics have come and gone and come back again as a “source” of pollution. Back when concern for the environment first became a “movement,” it was widely discussed. Then it faded from view, but has mounted a comeback in recent years under the new concern of microplastics.
Here’s the problem – what it really is, is litter. Plastics will degrade, particularly when properly buried. There are only a few ways it can get into the ocean. 1) Landfills that leach into the ocean. (This cannot happen in the US – our landfill construction standards are too strict.) 2) Illegal dumping. (This violates international treaty.) 3) Litter that runs off-shore in storm water drainage systems. 4) Litter thrown directly into the ocean from ships. So-called “plastic pollution” of the oceans is litter – that’s all it is.
So, presuming it needs to be controlled, what’s the best thing to do? Is it really to “ban” plastic, making life miserable for pretty much everyone and completely unenforceable in so many countries? Or is it just in teaching people not to litter?
When I lived in California and they banned the thin plastic grocery bag I was livid. Why was I, someone that was careful to manage the bags properly, as are most people, forced to now pay for thick or paper bags to compensate for the few very silly people that tossed them in the storm drain? This is socialism at is basest. Forcing misery on all for the misbehavior of the few.
“Plastic pollution” is the problem of those few miscreants that mismanage it, not the vast majority of the world. If you want to get rid of it, make them bear the cost, not me.
The post Plastic Is Not The Problem appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
A young Hillsdale student writes:
All of us young people need to give manual work a try, and summer is the perfect opportunity to do so. It needn’t be your full-time job: Build a fence for your parents, mow some elderly neighbors’ lawns, take care of a friend’s toddler for the day.
Proverbs says:
Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece.
The idleness the pandemic forced us into and the lethargy and idiocy that has come in its wake prove the wisdom of both writers. This Sunday morning as I head to church (to celebrate graduates!) I pray for utility, productivity and activity.
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Big stories yesterday about H.R. 6090, “Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023.” The title is certainly inoffensive, terribly appropriate actually, given what is happening on our campuses these days. The host contends it was intended primarily to demonstrate the antisemitic streak in the Democrats, most evident anyway in the likes of Ilan Omar and Rashidi Tlaib – and it did with 70 Democrats (more than 30%) voting against the resolution. However, there were also a scant few Republicans (<10%) that voted against it and that, the host rightly points out, is what the left-leaning media decided to make the story. The Republican objections were from the very, very far right of the party and entirely different from those of the Democrats. I was intrigued. On its face, how could a bill against antisemitism be objectionable to any other than those that are antisemitic or support those that are. So, I looked into it.
Democrat objections are obvious as the Democrat Congresspersons cited above and many other in their caucus are clearly antisemitic. But what about the Republicans? Well, the Republican objectors were “led” by the generally dismissible Marjorie Taylor Greene. Her “tweet” announcing her “no” vote looks at the language of the resolution (linked above) and the language to which the resolution refers and concludes, ” (H.R. 6090) … could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.” That would certainly make the resolution objectionable to me. However, Rep Greene reveals some ignorance.
The language to which she objects in the working definition of antisemitisms from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (linked above) cites an example of antisemitism that reads:
Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
That certainly sounds like what Rep Greene is talking about – unless you know what “blood libel” is. The ADL website discusses blood libel at length:
The “blood libel” refers to a centuries-old false allegation that Jews murder Christians – especially Christian children – to use their blood for ritual purposes, such as an ingredient in the baking of Passover matzah (unleavened bread). It is also sometimes called the “ritual murder charge.” The blood libel dates back to the Middle Ages and has persisted despite Jewish denials and official repudiations by the Catholic Church and many secular authorities.
The blood libel flowed from the fact that when it arose Christians were not permitted to lend money and so the Jewish community filled the void. In collection efforts common to all money lenders, Jews came to be viewed as “bloodsuckers.” In other words, the blood libel was an excuse not to pay your debts. Jewish authorities did, in fact, hand Christ over to Roman authority for crucifixion, but that fact was abused as a justification for the blood libel. The IHRA has gotten a bit sloppy in its definition of antisemitism, confusing a factual reality wrongly contributing to the blood libel with the blood libel itself, but it is most evident they are referring to the blood libel and not that actual fact.
It is absurd to presume that anyone stating a fact asserted by the Bible could be convicted criminally for antisemitism. (It is important to note that the resolution in question establishes no crime but rather serves as guidance to the Department of Education on how to determine what antisemitic acts are.) Or is it? More than once in my career dealing with regulatory agencies I have seen linguistic ambiguity pounced on by bureaucrats, decades later, to force absurdities (or at least what everyone thought was absurd at the time of the drafting) on the regulated community. (I would cite examples, but I am still actively involved in situations where such is the case.)
Given my experience, it is not hard for me to imagine that in a decade or two, and providing the IHRA does not modify its “working” definition, some overzealous bureaucrat in the Department of Education going after New Testament teachers in seminaries and Bible colleges throughout the land for teaching that it was Jewish officialdom that handed Jesus to the Roman authorities. Such nonsense could, eventually, be turned back but only after considerable expense and a lot of time, during which much havoc could be rendered.
So what we have here is a package of ignorance and absurdity compounded by the government’s never-ending desire to expand its authority. And thus, we get to the root of the problem. Somethings, even heinous and awful things, are not the governments business. You cannot draft language precise enough, nor can you police a person’s thoughts. Denouncing antisemitism is good. Revealing it in the Congress is good. But in cases like this we need to do so without making or directing law and regulation.
The post When The Absurd Isn’t So Absurd appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
President Biden’s comments yesterday on the campus unrest seemed to want it both ways. Something often referred to as “splitting the baby.” Because we don’t get near the Bible in public education anymore, people may not know that reference. It refers to a biblical story wherein two women come before King Solomon claiming motherhood over a baby and Solomon responds by offering to split the baby in half, half for each woman. Of course, the real mother immediately reveals herself, repelled by the thought and offers to give the baby to the other woman rather than watch her child die. It is an example of Solomon’s renown wisdom. But where does the wisdom lie?
President Biden, in his remarks talked about free speech and the right to assembly, but that there is no excuse for violence or vandalism. Like Solomon, he avoids making an actual judgement, relying on the actors to reveal themselves. That has been considered political wisdom pretty much since the days of Solomon. The only problem is the trick is not always wise. The trick, as performed by Solomon, relies on the basic decency of both women and the sacrificial love of the actual mother. It would not work when the mother claimants were not essentially decent people. Before we applaud the apparently “wise” statement by President Biden we must judge whether the two sides of this argument are basically decent people. The true wisdom lies in making that judgement, not in using the trick.
The answer is simple. One side has declared its goal to be the destruction of the other side. Is there any decency in that? One side attacked a peaceful group of the other side, raping, beheading, torturing and committing other barbaric atrocities. The other side, attacking in response, goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties and engages only in legitimate warfare, not acts of terrorism or barbarity. In this situation, there is no common decency to rely upon to enable the trick to work.
Imagine, in the Solomon story that the claimant, not the natural mother, had responded to the natural mother’s offer to give the baby up by grabbing it and running – relying on the trick to get her desire. Would Solomon have been so “wise?” He would have had to command his palace guards to seize the woman running with the baby and bring her back before him, forcibly taking the baby from her, charging her with kidnapping and returning the baby to its rightful mother – a very different scenario. That’s where we are. The pro-Palestinian protestors are relying on our basic decency to grab what they want and run – they are not interested in decency or justice.
All these remarks by Biden can do is make matters worse; serve as license to those that have no genuine interest in decency or justice. There is no wisdom in President Biden’s remarks, just shame born of moral cowardice.
The post Wisdom Lies in Knowing When to Offer to Spilt The Baby appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Our nation sits on a foundation built of decency and respect for the law. Before there was a constitution, a Congress, a presidency or justices, there were those two things. It is impossible to write laws to direct every human interaction, hence decency is mandatory. If no one respects the law there is no way to enforce it short of becoming a complete police state, and even then it does not really work. If our nation is to work at all there must be decency and respect for the law. And yet the two leading stories that confront us, for the last several days and for several days to come are rooted in the absence of those two things.
The campus chaos throughout the nation is rooted in a lack of decency. Let’s be honest, they are rooted in antisemitism – a specific hatred of a specific people. Such prejudicial hatred is the precise opposite of decency. But further the actions of miscreants (“protesters” is just not the right word here) are entirely illegal. The entirely illegal trial of Donald J. Trump in New York City is born of hatred for the man – not disagreement, not distaste – hatred, the ultimate indecency.
The problems we face right now do not come with easy fixes and they will not be solved quickly. It is easy to say the problem is in our character because in the end, it is. But the thing is our character is unchanging – this is how we act when we do not have anything better to aspire towards, and therein lies the path back to reason.
The three fundamental institutions of our society are government, education and religion. All three now serve the needs and desires of the so-called “leaders” that operate them more than they do the people. Church has turned itself into an entertainment medium meant to keep the pews full and the plate fuller, paying the staff, not to make those in the pews better. Stories like this are unsurprising to any reasonable church observer. The pandemic revealed our teachers to be a bunch of self-serving salary collectors that would rather mail it in than actually work for a living. Our government is increasingly intrusive in daily life simply for the sake of making more bureaucrats and increasing their power. (I could rant for hours about that story I just linked but will resist as it would get all chemically and regulatorily geeky.) In order to bolster their ability to do so they throw bones to the least productive of us. In such a world what is there to aspire towards?
Our character has returned to its normal state because we no longer expect any better of ourselves. This nation was not designed to operate properly unless we aspire to be better. We are broken on a fundamental level because we have ceased to aspire to be any better. The place to start to make the nation better is with ourselves. Make sure we aspire to be better and work towards those aspirations. It’ll be hard; it’ll be difficult, but in the end, it is the only thing that will make a difference.
The post Fundamentals appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Mary Kissel, among former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s most trusted advisors, is now executive vice president of Stepehns, Inc. She and I discussed the path the General Secretary Xi has placed the CCP. Heads up to trustees of endowments: You may want to study your exposure to Cina’s economy very closely:
Audio:
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The post Mary Kissel On Secretary Blinken’s “Strategy” For Visiting Xi, And On Investment In China appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Andrew C. McCarthy argues, quite technically, that the current criminal trial of Donald J. Trump in New York is illegal. At Powerline John Hinderacker follows up more accessibly and says, “His legal arguments are well taken, but the reality is perhaps even more stark. This prosecution is entirely fraudulent.” Hinderacker considers, briefly, if Trump should simply return to the campaign trail, refusing to cooperate with this extra-legal nonsense, pointing out that since the prosecution is purely political so should be the response. Heck of a point, but it further undermines the rule of law, and therein lies the rub.
Hinderacker’s conclusion is, I think too simplistic:
But whatever Trump decides to do, on this and other absurd Democratic Party prosecutions, he deserves our support. In its desperation to retain its grip on power, the Democratic Party has turned the United States into a banana republic. Never in our political history has there been anything as disgraceful as the lawfare the Democrats have launched against Trump. For their misconduct, they deserve to pay a steep political price.
The reason to support Trump is not necessarily Trump, it’s supporting the rule of law. Hinderacker’s entire point is that the lawfare against Trump places politics in front of law, which it does, but further lawlessness does not help restore the rule of law unless the lawlessness of the court is utterly transparent to the vast majority of people. Sadly, the deep technicality of McCarthy’s argument makes the legal issues difficult to access and Trump’s incredibly public persona guarantees that a significant portion of the public will never get past it to the actual legal issues.
That said I don’t think Trump is the root cause of the lawlessness; that lies in the pandemic. For years, leftists have tried to sell a climate emergency as a lever to set aside our normal democratic and capitalistic constraints, with limited success – just enough success to know that if they could gin up a crisis that sent everyone into a panic, they could throw off all constraint. Then along came the pandemic and presto-chango, “emergency powers” were invoked and the rule of law went by the wayside. This is how the Roman Republic died – a Cesear was appointed in a time of emergency, and he simply refused to give back his power when the emergency ended. Please recall that during the pandemic it was the blue states that exercised their emergency powers to the greatest extent – and they are having a hard time letting go of them. The illegal lawfare against Trump flows out of that.
Much of the impetus behind the Trump re-elect is a desire on the part of the American people to put the genie back in the bottle, to reset to pre-pandemic. The problem is that is not what the other side wants – they want more pandemic, more dictatorial power, more ability to drive their agenda forward regardless of public sentiment. In the end Trump’s actions are not going to move the needle much – our actions are. We have to stand for the rule of law.
Right now. I think most Americans are just ashamed of what we did during the pandemic and want to memory hole the entire episode and pretend like it did not happen. That’s a mistake. The first step to fixing a problem is to admit to and define the problem. If we do not face up to our mistakes during that unfortunate period, the rule of law cannot be fully restored because the quantum leap away from it goes unacknowledged.
ADDENDUM: When lawlessness is rampant, things get ugly. The article tries to make it look like the violence at UCLA belongs to the pro-Israeli protestors, but in reality if the law had been enforced when the original pro-Palestinian “camp” had been established, all of this could have been avoided. It is the rule of law that matters most – not sides, not candidates, not causes – law.
The post The Death of the Rule of Law appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton joined me this AM:
Audio:
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Transcript:
HH: My guest is United States Senator Tom Cotton. Good morning, Senator. Welcome back.
TC: Good morning, Hugh. Thanks for having me back on.
HH: I’m playing the Vietnam protest music of my youth. I wasn’t in college at the time that went on, but I heard it, and I saw it, and I am amazed that we’re seeing it again. What is your reaction to the takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall this morning, and to the obvious antisemitic actions and assaults that occurred at UCLA that went unpunished yesterday?
TC: Hugh, from coast to coast, we’re seeing nascent pogroms on college campuses. Columbia seems to have been the lead of the most recent round. You’ve seen the videos, as I have, of students draped in Palestinian keffiyeh headdress physically preventing Jewish students from attending classes, much like Nazi brownshirts did in the 1930s in Germany. And now, overnight, these radicals have apparently taken over an administration building on Columbia’s campus and barricaded themselves in. We shouldn’t be surprised that they’re escalating their tactics when the supposed adults on these campuses won’t do their basic responsibility of providing safety and security to all students and bringing in police, and if necessary, police from outside their university police departments, and if beyond that, the National Guard, to restore law and order. Look, these are not criminal masterminds. They’re not paramilitary militants. They are deeply troubled and fanatical students who can be easily detained and removed from these so-called encampments, or from seizing the building. That should have been done long ago. I’d just remind all your listeners that one of the predecessors of the current Columbia University president was Dwight Eisenhower between his time as Supreme Allied Commander and president of the United States. He was president of Columbia for about five years. Just ask yourself what Ike would have done at such a despicable display of antisemitic criminal activity on his campus.
HH: People should remember that Ike visited a liberated death camp and was so disgusted, he brought the local Germany citizenry in to view what they knew was going on, but they had never articulated was going on. I know what’s going on, on these campuses, is they’re antisemitic, hate-filled circles of students who should never have been admitted. So the question is what do we do. I know you’ve suggested taxing endowments, but that’s going to hit the innocent as well as the guilty, right, Senator? What about just cutting off all federal funding to any university with more than $5 billion in an endowment, and I mean all federal funding?
TC: Well, yeah, that’s one option, too, Hugh. But there are other things we can do specific to this outbreak of pro-terrorist fanaticism. For instance, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education should be investigating the sources of funding for these groups. These are not just spontaneous student uprisings, Hugh. I mean, just look at the pictures. They’re out there in tents that cost hundreds of dollars apiece. There’s credible reporting that left-wing groups like the Soros Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation have been behind funding these groups. Second, many of these students are quite possibly foreign students here on student visas. The Department of Justice and Education should demand universities turn over the names of all foreign students who have been engaged in this kind of criminal activity, or for that matter, who have even engaged in antisemitic pro-Hamas rhetoric. They have no right to be in this country. Their visas should be revoked immediately, and they should be told to go home. And if they don’t go home, they should be deported immediately. Frankly, these private universities should kick out the students, even if they’re American citizens who have engaged in that kind of pro-terrorist rhetoric. You don’t have a 1st Amendment right against a private university to come on and advocate for Hamas or Hezbollah or other foreign terrorist organizations. And you can just imagine what they would do. In fact, you don’t have to imagine what they’d do to students that have had their offers of admission rescinded or have been expelled from school for opposing favored left-wing advocacy groups like Black Lives Matter at some of these universities. So there’s many steps that can be taken specific to these criminal fanatics, Hugh. I suspect Joe Biden’s Department of Justice and Department of Education won’t, but just wait until next year when Donald Trump’s back in office. I can tell you, I can tell these fanatics on campus who are breaking the law, and all the administrators on these campuses who won’t enforce the law, that when that happens, winter is coming for them.
HH: Winter is coming. Senator, yesterday, my favorite podcast is the Commentary podcast. And yesterday, John Podhoretz, Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen were joined by Adam White, who is a legal scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, George Mason. And they went through all of this insanity that is going on, on the campuses, as well as in the courtrooms. And I don’t know that Joe Biden can politically recover from the combination of all the things that are hitting him. Certainly, he can’t with Karine Jean-Pierre being his spokesperson. But do you think he can recover from this?
TC: Well, he needs to do what he hasn’t done, yet, which is come out and forcefully condemn all of these antisemitic fanatics who are violating the law on these campuses across the country. He needs to urge local Democratic mayors or Democratic governors in these states to help the university presidents restore order. And he needs to do so without equivocating between these antisemites and Israel, which is fighting an existential war of self-defense against Hamas. That’s exactly what he did last week. This is from a guy who supposedly ran for president in the first place because he falsely accused Donald Trump of saying there are good people on both sides of crimes and mob activity in Charlottesville seven years ago, when of course Donald Trump was talking about a debate about how to handle a historic statue. But that’s exactly what Joe Biden did, was equivocate between antisemitic fanatics and Israel. He needs to come out and forcefully condemn all of these antisemitic fanatics. But the reason he doesn’t is a lot of them form a core part of his coalition. The Democrats have let this antisemitism fester in their party for years to the point where they now have people like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in the Congress. In fact, Ilhan Omar’s daughter, or maybe her niece, was one of these students who was instigating these things at Columbia.
HH: It is astonishing to me, but I want to go back to first principles. Hamas is, I believe, listed by the United States as a terrorist organization. They are holding Americans hostage. Why are we interfering with Israel’s ability to get them back by stopping Israel at the outskirts of Rafah? We should not. We should, the only thing that gets these hostages back is the defeat of Hamas.
TC: Well, because the war in Israel, given the antisemitism that Democrats have let fester for years, puts intense pressure on Joe Biden’s electoral coalition. And Joe Biden has elevated his own electoral interests over the vital national interest of this country for the last seven months. And he’s going to continue to do so for the next six months, because I think he views it, in his deluded frame of mind, like many Democrats. The most important foreign policy interest of the United States is to defeat Donald Trump. And that’s why they are conducting foreign policy by Electoral College strategy. I should say, actually, that would be the favorable, hopeful interpretation, that the less favorable interpretation would be they’re using that electoral imperative to do what they’ve always wanted to do, as Barack Obama said, get daylight between the United States and Israel, and find a way to sever the long-standing, deeply-held sympathies and alliance between America and Israel.
HH: You know, Senator, the future of Gaza depends upon the eradication of Hamas, and then the cooperation of the Gulf States, which stand ready to cooperate with Israel in the rebuilding of Gaza into a terrorist-free…it could be, it could be a beautiful city on the Mediterranean. It could be a lot of different things. But as long as Joe Biden is in charge, and I think Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, I don’t think they have a compass. I really don’t think they have any strategy. Do you?
TC: Beyond what’s good for Joe Biden’s reelection and trying to beat Donald Trump, no, they have no compass there at all, Hugh. I mean, Gaza will only prosper when the people who live there accept Israel as a neighbor. The problem with the so-called two state solution, Hugh, is that most Arabs living in Gaza and Judea and Samaria don’t want two states. They want one state. They want an Arab state in the Holy Land. They want to drive Jews out of the Holy Land. That’s why one of their antisemitic chants that you hear at these pro-Hamas encampments is from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. The river, just for your listeners, Hugh, the river is the Jordan River. The sea is the Mediterranean Sea. And everything in between it is the modern state of Israel. That’s what Arabs living in Gaza, Judea and Samaria largely want. And until they accept that the Israeli people are going to be living on that land, they are not going to have peace.
HH: Now I want to close, Senator. You’re a soldier. You served in Iraq. We have a State Department that brought forward yesterday charges of abuse by five different IDF units, none of them connected to Gaza, by the way. They all go back before 2022. They’ve all been remedied. I listened to a long explanation of this by Haviv Rettig Gur, who served as a combat medic in one of these particularly Haredi-focused units. What are they doing at the Department of State? You have some jurisdiction over them. That spokesperson should be fired. That whole group of people should be fired. I hope that Donald Trump fires them all when he comes in, because they are undermining the state of Israel with this nonsense.
TC: Yeah, of course they are, Hugh. Again, it gets to foreign policy by Electoral College strategy. They’re trying to find any way they can to point out to their left-wing fanatics who are taking over college campuses and chanting antisemitic phrases that see, we’re tough. We’re tough on Israel, too. Yeah, we’re supporting them in Gaza, but we can take tough measures on them as well. So they’re threatening sanctions against specific elements of the Israeli Defense Forces, an outrageous position for a democratic ally that holds its own troops accountable whenever they violate military rules and regulations or the laws of land warfare, just as we do in our military.
HH: You know, I keep thinking of Abu Ghraib. Every military has a tail end on the bell curve of bad actors. And militaries don’t want them, and they punish them. I’m sure you did as an officer in the groups that you controlled. You made sure they did. I’ve never seen the State Department do this before. Am I missing that they do this routinely for our allies, because I have never seen this before.
TC: No. No, Hugh, not to my knowledge. And I would suspect it’s another example of how Israel is held to a singular and unique standard in the world. Whether the State Department has done this to specific military units in other allies around the world, I’m not aware of any precedent for it.
HH: Okay, last question. The ICC wants to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials. Again, antisemites are in charge of international organizations. No surprise there. What, we’re not part of the ICC. What can we do about that?
TC: We’re not part of the ICC. Israel is not part of the ICC. The ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction over us. It doesn’t have jurisdiction when a nation’s own courts and legal system holds its leaders accountable. Hugh, I’ve been involved in trying to persuade the ICC not to move forward with this ludicrous action. Let me just promise the ICC, and specifically Karim Khan, their lead prosecutor. If they do take these steps, the Trump administration will ensure that Karim Khan faces charges in the United States, that he will not be able to travel anywhere without facing extradition to the United States. So if he wants to move forward with that and imperil his own freedom, I welcome him to do so. Otherwise, he should get back in his lane and focus real crimes like what Hamas has done in Gaza.
HH: Senator Tom Cotton, that’s why I want you to be the Attorney General, if you’re not the Vice President in the next Trump administration. Thank you, Senator. I won’t make you respond to that.
End of interview.
The post Senator Tom Cotton On The Anti-Semitic Protests On College Campuses And The ICC’s Threat Against Israel appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Sadly, we are not cartoon talking dogs, momentarily distracted by a squirrel that can easily pick up the conversation exactly where we left off. Once a conversation is diverted, it tends to follow the diversion, not the original strain. Covid was a giant diversion of the national conversation and sadly many of us are still running down the path of the diversion and we have not returned to the main conversation. Some seek to reinforce the diversion. Some seek to regain lost credibility to reinforce the diversion. Which is why Jim Geraghty’s concerns that the presidential election forthcoming is going to be about anything but what most Americans are concerned about is completely unsurprising.
Geraghty is right, the economy is issue #1 to the average American, (they know better than to buy into the Biden et. al. efforts to put lipstick on that pig) but when he points out:
The average American doesn’t lose any sleep thinking about climate change, gun control, LGBTQ+ rights, DEI initiatives, or whether the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have access to enough food. This is not to say that if the average American doesn’t think about an issue very much, it doesn’t matter.
The antisemitic chaos on campus at Columbia University feels awfully far away to the average American. In an argument against my own interests, the average American doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the Ukrainian fight against the invading Russians; or the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan; or the national debt, which is currently $34.5 trillion; or the annual deficit, which is $1 trillion for the fiscal year that began in October.
Most Americans feel a vague sense of distrust and animosity toward China, Russia, and Iran, but don’t spend much time thinking about foreign policy or national security.
he is missing the point. The economic woes we are most definitely experiencing are because our political leadership is focused precisely on those things. We should care about them, not because we care about the issue proper but because those issues flow directly from the big distraction/diversion that was covid. The problem with lying is that it tends to compound – you have to tell ever more complicated lies to cover up for the original lie.
In a world where are government officials are this egotistical (this is NOT about Trump), where fascist tactics are used to cover investigations into fascism, where they are trying to frighten us about things we should not be frightened of (the professional class will adapt) and most importantly where reading is dying, these supposedly “minor” issues matter because of what they flow from and they are, combined, the root cause of the big problem we face.
Americans should be, and many are, concerned about these issues because they relate to the economy. We need to oppose these things precisely because they distract our government officials. All this noise increased massively in volume and breadth as Americans sat at home, needlessly frightened out of their skin, leaving the asylum’s inmates to run wild. Getting those inmates back in their beds and properly medicated is not a matter of simply deciding to get the security systems working again. Each inmate has to be rounded up and dealt with and each one, their crazy notwithstanding, is an individual and corralling them will be different in every case.
Yes, the economy is THE issue. But the path back to economic sanity is quite tortured.
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When I moved to Southern California in the early 80’s the automobile was THE status symbol. Southern California has always had an amazing car culture, but amongst it was the car purchased purely to indicate status – often falsely so. Mercedes and BMWs were commonplace in SoCal and it was not uncommon to see one parked in front of a studio apartment. So status conscience was LA and so valued was the automobile as an indicator of that status that people frequently spent almost all of what they had to get one of those cars, choosing to live in quite poor accommodations so long as they had their precious motor.
The EV is the ultimate virtue signal. Driving one tells the world that you genuinely care about the environment, particularly when compared to those nasty shlubs drive “gas-guzzling” pick-ups or shudder muscle cars.
I have quite recently visited SoCal to see old friends and loved ones. No matter where I drove you were always in sight of a Tesla. In East Tennessee, my current place of residence, a Tesla is only occasionally cited, a bit of a novelty actually, but in Southern California they are as ubiquitous as the Benzs and Beemers of old. Everyone knows that the vast majority of EVs sold are sold in California and I thought about how expensive they are…and that is when it dawned on me.
The status symbol conspicuous consumption of the 80’s has melded with the virtue signaling of the 2020’s to create the very large EV market in California. In this combination, conspicuous wealth has been turned into a seeming virtue. And then I thought:
Matthew 6:1-4 (words of Jesus) – Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
A worthy thought.
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Just before Easter, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump announced the “God Bless The USA Bible.” Tasteless? Perhaps, but the reaction has been stunning and almost completely missed the mark.
Yesterday an “evangelical pastor” in North Carolina went off on it and the “news” went round and round and round. The irony is stunning. Trump is using the Bible to garner attention and this guy is using Trump’s Bible to garner attention, and, of course, he got it. There are two levels on which to consider this issue.
One, the man’s entire issue is the confusion of church and state – that the Bible is about God and the founding documents of the US are about us, and they should not be confused. Theologically, that’s a heck of a point, which is the second level and will be considered in a moment. But this is hardly the first time people have published the Bible and America’s founding documents in a single binding (here’s the first example I found) and none of those efforts have drawn this much attention, bile, or coverage. One is forced to conclude that the opposition is to Trump, not necessarily the ideas. I have seen some far more sophisticated rants about this “Trump” Bible than what this current guy has made headlines with, but the fact remains, if you have not consistently made the same arguments about all the other wacky special interest Bible publications out there, then your opposition to this one is far more about Trump than your theology. There seems to be a double standard, even among those of Christan faith, where our ideas of justice originated.
Theologically, the guy does have a point, there is a strong temptation to confuse God and country. They are deeply related, but also very separate. Jesus had a chance to lead a political revolution and adroitly avoided it. True Christian faith is not about establishing a nation, it’s about personal holiness. Christian thought had massive implications in the founding of the nation, but so did the decidedly secular Enlightenment. Nonetheless the fact remains that if you are ranting about Trump’s Bible, or any of the other special editions. you are focused in the wrong place. Biblical truth stands tall and will be heard over the noise if we just live it out.
There is much talk in church these days of “justice.” I can’t help but think we’d be smart to start in our own house.
ADDENDUM: People on both sides of the political aisle bend faith to suit their political viewpoint. Case in point. Condemning one side for doing something both sides are doing is missing the mark.
The post In The World of Double Standards. appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday tornadoes devastated Nebraska and Iowa. To date, thankfully, no deaths reported, some injuries and hundreds of homes and businesses destroyed. And no one seems to care. It is not even on the NYTimes landing page and a good bit down on WaPo. (Please know, both links are “live” and contents likely to change by the time you get there.) Campus unrest (he said, putting it mildly) continues at many of our most prestigious educational institutions, and neither of those venerated newspapers lead with that story either. Nope, they lead with the NY Trump trial. Seriously. The perfect opportunity to lecture us, again, about “climate change” and leftist activists doing leftist activist things both “trumped” by a nonsense show trial.
On Wednesday Rick Lowry wrote comparing the 2017 Charlottesville rally with the current antisemitic activism on campuses around the nation. Here is the heart of what he noted:
As Phil Klein has noted, there is a gross double standard in how progressive opinion regards antisemitism depending on who is peddling it. The antisemitism of the Right is considered morally abhorrent and inherently threatening. The antisemitism of the Left is very often ignored, explained away, or viewed as a regrettable excess….
What accounts for the double standard? Some of it is pure tribalism and hesitancy to rebuke one’s own side. Some of it is a sympathetic understanding of the protesters — sure, some of them have gone astray, but most are good kids — and a shared opposition to the Gaza war.
More fundamentally, through the perverse prism of the woke Left, alt-right antisemites are the victimizers while pro-Hamas antisemites are the victims. Put another way, devotees of the alt-right are racist antisemites, while supporters of Hamas are “anti-racist” antisemites, and that makes all the difference. All the other forms of “anti-” of the Columbia protesters and their ilk — anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-Western, anti-colonial — redeem their antisemitism.
Of necessity, that really tortures the language. But in the end it says two things about how the Left currently thinks. One, motive matters more than action. Two, the only measure of good and evil is in the oppressor/oppressed narrative. This is how we get to the point that Trump is the greatest evil mankind has ever faced and therefore deserves the newspaper placement this morning. One, “just look at his personality, that has to mean evil motive.” Two, “he thwarts our agenda and is therefore, by definition, an oppressor.”
Only problem is motive is only ever know by implication from action and circumstance, and the storyteller can weave the narrative the way they want onto any situation. Witness the death of objectivity and therefore the death of anything resembling genuine justice.
Where this observation leaves us is with the absolutely execrable notion that to a Democrat objective evil is tolerable if it aids their political objective and justice is likewise subject to that same objective. Charlottesville was intolerable and unacceptable because they were Trump voters, but Columbia, composed of Biden voters, well, that’s just fine, so let’s all go back to piling on Trump.
Which brings me back to Lowry’s comment about “pure tribalism.” If there is not objective standard for justice, then that is where we are, just competing tribes. I thought we were smarter than that.
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The campus turmoil is way, way out of hand. The University of Southern California (USC) has cancelled commencement altogether lest they suffer protests. (About the only thing the host and I agree on regarding sports is that USC should be beaten in all sport at all times in any circumstance.) Jim Geraghty wrote yesterday that what is happening on campuses is a leadership crisis. That’s putting it mildly. Glenn Reynolds has responded by inviting Jewish students to southern universities, because we don’t tolerate this stuff. Reynolds acts as if we in the South just like everybody – and we do. But it is deeper than that.
What is ingrained in the south is respect for the law and decency, in large part because the law there has not been trivialized by trying to dictate every tiny aspect of life. I live out in the country and there are some homes in the area that are “ill kept,” to be polite. I was riding with a tow truck driver a few days ago and he commented on it. I told him that after years in California with very strict municipal standards and a community associations to boot, that such homes were, to me, freedom. Yeah, they are eye sores, but in California they would be another tent on the sidewalk, if not jailed for creating a public nuisance.
It is illegal to build “villages” on university commons. Vandalism is illegal. Harassment is illegal. Assault is illegal. We have even gone so far as to make “hate” criminal in some circumstances. I don’t care what these people think or believe, who they support or who they despise, they are engaged in illegal activity and as such they are subject to law enforcement. But we have so trivialized law in this age of gross over regulation that no one really cares any more.
Regardless of the response to these protests, the massive spread of them indicates organization. The utter ignorance of some participating in the protests indicates they are being manipulated. That manipulation is enabled to some extent by a romantic nostalgia for the protest movements of the late 60’s and early 70’s – which is sad since those of us old enough to have lived through it know there was nothing romantic about it.
But the biggest enabler of this manipulation to illegality is the pandemic immediately past. I, and many others, wrote time and again about how the government, regulators and administrators were sacrificing credibility in their overreaction to the disease and their overregulation in response to it.
Geraghty and many, many others in the past twenty-four hours have jumped on the bandwagon noting that university administrators no longer actually lead their institutions. That ship actually left the dock a few years ago when they locked down campuses and declared a virtual education just as good as a genuine tutorial.
During the pandemic lunacy, D.E.I. went from an academic concept to policy fact and we saw person after person gain positions of great authority based solely, or nearly solely, on meritless characteristics – further eroding that authority.
We are now reaping what we have sown. Authority and respect must be earned and cultivated. In recent years we have done neither.
The straightforward assertion of authority after having urinated it down the drain will backfire. It will just look weak and pathetic. Yet it remains true that these protests are a purely illegal activity. There is only one option – a whole lot of resignations and the assertion of authority by replacements that have not yet wasted it. And if those resignations are not forthcoming, well someone of greater authority will just have to force them.
We need to get control of immediate circumstances so we can begin to get into the bigger picture. Who is organizing all of this? Who is manipulating these poor ignorant students? Why are they doing so? We are currently missing the forest for the trees, and maybe even the trees for the leaves. This is coming from somewhere, and someone is playing on our weakness.
The post What’s Illegal Is Illegal appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
House Speaker Michael Johnson joined me this morning:
Audio:
04-24hhs-johnson
Transcript:
HH: Honored to have Speaker Mike Johnson back with me. Good morning, Mr. Speaker. Welcome back.
MJ: Hugh, thanks so much. It’s really great to be with you, my friend.
HH: You are now doing a syndicated show with Salem every Saturday with Tony Perkins. How do you like being a radio guy?
MJ: (laughing) I’m going back to my roots. Many years ago, I was a small-time radio host, and I miss that work, actually.
HH: It’s kind of, it’s much better than doing TV, because the talent are actually the producers, although our friend, Tom Tradup, is helping you and Tony get that going. Mr. Speaker, first, congratulations on the national security funding bill. It passed the Senate yesterday. Are you satisfied that we’ve done right by our allies?
MJ: I don’t have any question about that, Hugh. I know that history is going to judge this well. It was the right thing to do. This is a very dangerous time. We truly do have a new axis of evil. You have China and Russia and Iran, and often North Korea working together in coordination. They’re funding one another’s aggressions. And the reason you and I both know, and you highlight this all the time, the reason this is happening is because the current president is projecting weakness on the world stage. And our adversaries are acting aggressively and provocatively, and taking advantage of that. So we had this moment in time, Hugh, this historic question. Would America stand by our allies, stand by Israel, the beleaguered people of Ukraine in this pivotal moment, or would we shrink back, and in my view, abdicate our obvious responsibility and role in the world? I don’t believe we need to be the world’s policeman. I don’t believe that that is our burden. But I do believe that the perception of a strong America is essential, is essential on the world stage, and I think the Congress has acted to make sure that happens.
HH: Earlier in the show, I talked with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who applauds the national security bill as well. He also brought up, and I discussed with him, Secretary Blinken is thinking about sanctioning a unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. If that happens, Mr. Speaker, would you bring forward some sort of resolution condemning Tony Blinken, because we have to stand with our allies. We cannot be cherry-picking instances where we think they’ve done something wrong. What would you think about the State Department sanctioning an IDF unit?
MJ: Well, I would be opposed to that, of course. And we heard a rumor of this before our bill was actually brought for a vote in the House, I mean, hours before. And I’ll tell you what I did, Hugh, and I don’t, I guess I’m breaking news here. No one knows this. But I called the White House immediately and talked with Jake Sullivan, and Tony Blinken was overseas at the moment. But I made him send me an email where he committed to me in writing that it would not affect any of the funding that we were working on to assist Israel in this critical time, and that they would be very judicious in that. He indicated to me that that won’t happen, that there were some allegations of some event many years ago. It seems to be have been resolved, and I am very hopeful that they won’t try to proceed on that. If they do, we’ll intervene.
HH: And it will undercut completely our position standing by Israel. And you are going to Columbia today, and let’s talk about that. I applaud this. Yesterday, I recommended President Trump go up there after the trial lets out. But of course, he’s under the thumb of a judge, which is unconstitutional, but that’s the way it is. Why are you going to Columbia? Who are you going to talk to? And what are you going to say?
MJ: Well, today, I’m going to join Jewish students at Columbia, and Rabbi Yuda Drizin for a meal, and then we’ll be hosting a press conference there with some of my colleagues from the House, Republicans from New York, to call on the president of the University to resign. It’s unconscionable. This president, Shafik, has shown to be a very weak, inept leader. They cannot even guarantee the safety of Jewish students? They’re expected to run for their lives and stay home from class? It’s just, it’s maddening. What we’re seeing on these college campuses across the country is disgusting and unacceptable. And we have to, every leader in this country, every political official, every citizen of good conscience, has to speak out and say that this is not who we are in America. And we’ve got to have accountability, and that’s what my colleagues and I are going to be working on.
HH: I am curious, Mr. Speaker, I am loathe to say anything good about an SEC school, because the Big 10 rules. But have you ever had anything, any antisemitic outbursts at LSU or any other school in Louisiana?
MJ: No. I don’t believe we’d tolerate that. And if that happened at my alma mater, which is LSU, I’d be down there myself to stop it. I mean, this is outrageous. We have Jewish students who have actually been physically assaulted. They’ve been harassed. They’ve been intimidated and threatened. What we need to be doing is, I love the clip of Tom Cotton. My friend, Tom, said it before your break. We need to revoke federal funding to these universities if they cannot keep control. We need to revoke these student visas for these violent protesters. You don’t have a right to be here and to do this. But Jewish students have a right to be able to peacefully attend classes. They’re trying to get an education, and this is just madness. And you know, I’ve seen some of these man on the street interviews with some of these kids who are protesting. Hugh, you and I both know, the vast majority of them have no idea what they’re talking about. They don’t know the facts. Some of them are denying that October 7th even happened. I mean, it just, it’s ridiculous, and we’re relying on and calling upon and demanding these university officials to get control of this situation. It’s just completely out of control right now.
HH: You know, Mr. Speaker, ignorance is a problem. I don’t believe any of these students know that Israel is the original anti-colonial state. They were under the thumb of the British mandate after Arthur Balfour promised a homeland for the Jews before the Holocaust. It finally came to pass in 1948. They threw out the British mandate. Yes, there are other failed colonial, anti-colonial states around the world, but Israel has thrived. So I’m glad you’re doing this, and I can’t believe anyone would be opposed to it. Have any Democrats objected to you going to Columbia?
MJ: Well, they may be mumbling that. They’ve not, I haven’t seen it publicly, at least some of my colleagues. But I’ll tell you that the real problem we have right now is that we’re not getting strong leadership, obviously, from the White House or even some Democrats in Congress. I mean, the White House is caving to the antisemitic, I call it the pro-Hamas wing of the party now. They’ve backpedaled on their support for Israel. I mean, and you’ve got members of Congress who refuse to denounce even the chants of Death To America. They just go silent. They won’t call that out. And some members are, Democrat members of Congress, are even calling these antisemitic mobs peaceful protesters, and defending the harassment, intimidation and all the rest. So it’s really, it’s really become a serious problem, and they’re allowing mob rule to overtake the American ideals of free speech and the free exchange of ideas and the free exercise of religion. This is not who we are.
HH: Mr. Speaker, I’ve got some favorite members, like Mike Lawler. He’s a member of the centrist Republicans. David Joyce, center-right, Chip Roy, right-wing. Do you have a, within the Republican five families, have you got a good representation going with you to Columbia, or is it just you?
MJ: Oh, no. I’ve got, Lawler will be there today. You know, he represents New York, and Nicole Malliotakis, and several others of the New York delegation who will be gathering there. And look, I tip my hat to my friends and colleagues there. They have been very consistent. I mean, those who are in the proximity of these universities have been very active and very engaged. And look, the House has taken action. We’ve acted to address antisemitism. We, the House Education and Workforce Committee, as you know, has conducted these important oversight hearings of colleges and their leadership. Some of them have gone viral online and seen around the world, because they’re failing to protect Jewish students on their campus. We passed a few pieces of legislation, the Deterrent Act, which shines a light on foreign money influencing American universities. We passed the No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act. Yes, it’s exactly as what it sounds. It would remove illegals who supported Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7th. But look, we passed this legislation, Hugh. Here’s the problem. It all faces a common fate. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, controls the upper chamber in the Senate. And he is so focuses on calling for new elections in Israel, he can’t be bothered to protect Jewish students here at home.
HH: I agree with that, and good on you for drawing attention to this and going up there. A couple of related questions, Congressman. You have an unwieldy caucus, and everybody knows that. And you’ve got some members on the Rules Committee, Olivia Beavers and I were talking about this earlier today. You’ve got Representative Norman, who’s always a thorn in your side, Tom Massie, who is my least favorite Congressman, along with a couple more. Are you going to make some changes on Rules Committee? I like Chip Roy. I’m glad he’s on there. But are you going to make some changes on the Rules Committee to make your life easier?
MJ: Well, look, we’ve got a delicate balance right now, Hugh. I’ve got the smallest majority in U.S. history, famously. Everyone knows that now, having a one-vote margin. So when you have such a slim margin, you know, there are actions and then there are reactions and reverberations from the actions. It’s a very delicate balance. If I start kicking people off committees right now, it’s likely that I cause more problems than I solve. And so what I’m trying to do every day is manage this team. You know, people ask me all the time, Hugh. I was at a big event in Dallas last night, and they said why do the Democrats seem to stick together more than the Republicans? And I said it’s actually pretty easy. The explanation is this. The Democrats think and act like a union. They’re collectivists. You know, they move in a herd. Many of them are not deeply principled or philosophical folks, anyway, and so you can command them, and they’ll move as social animals. They’re socialists, right? We, on the other hand, are rugged individualists, and we’re deeply principled and philosophical. And it’s difficult to get us to move in tandem sometimes. That’s a blessing. I love that part, except when you have a one-vote margin. And so you know, I’m working every day to get the team together to understand the stakes. I think they do. And I think we’re going to get this job done, deliver for the people. And Hugh, I believe we’re going to have an extraordinary election cycle in November. I think we’re going to grow the House majority and make this job easier. We’re going to win back the Senate, and I think Donald Trump’s going back to the White House. We’ll be able to turn this thing 180 degrees.
HH: When you went down and saw former President Trump, how did the conversation go? Do you think you two would work together if he’s back in the White House, because I think he’s going to win. The numbers today from Bloomberg are astonishing. He’s ahead in every swing state by 10 points in North Carolina, by 7 and 8 in Arizona and Nevada. He’s running away with it, and I have a column in the Post today about vice presidential choices that will really accelerate that. What, is he upbeat about it? Do you think he’s going to win big?
MJ: I do. I think he’s going to win big, and I think it’s going to be historic, and I’ve known him now for eight years. We came to Washington at the same time, in January, 2017. And we have a very close relationship, and I’ve enjoyed that. And I think it’s important. It’s going to be critical going forward, and when the new Congress and the new term begins in January, that the Speaker of the House and the President work in tandem on a principled, you know, agenda that’s aggressive. We have so many things to fix. And I told him, Hugh, recently in a conversation. I said Mr. President, I’m going to state the obvious. In your next term, you could be the most consequential president of the modern era, because there are so many things to fix. I think he understands that. He’s thinking a lot about the importance of this and what his legacy will be, and I think it’s going to be extraordinary.
HH: I’m going to put my bid in early for both shipbuilding capacity, but in reconciliation, conditioning federal money to any state on their having a vibrant school choice program. I don’t know what Louisiana does, but school choice is the way of the future, Mr. Speaker. Are you on board with that?
MJ: 100%. And I visited recently with Betsy DeVos, our friend who was the Education secretary under the last Trump administration. She’s been a champion of that as well, and there are some grand ideas on the table. But I agree with you, the federal funding, the purse is the big thing that Congress has to help enforce that, and I think there needs to be dramatic reform of the Department of Education on the federal level, and all the rest. We need to restore and return choice to parents, and control of the public school systems back down to the local and state level so that bureaucrats in ivory towers in Washington are not making these radical demands on people. There’s a lot of reform that needs to be done.
HH: And control of the campuses again.
MJ: Yeah.
HH: I hope there’s no federal money going to Columbia, and I hope you start taxing their endowment. Speaker Johnson, safe travel to New York today. You’re going to need your security on that campus, but I’m glad you are going, and I’m glad you are taking that message. Look forward to talking to you again, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for joining me this morning.
MJ: Thank you, my friend.
End of interview.
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Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined me this AM to discuss among other things the leak that his successor Tony Blinken is considering sanctioning a unit in the IDF:
Audio:
04-24hhs-pompeo
Transcript:
HH: Joined by former Secretary of State, former Director of Central Intelligence, Mike Pompeo. Secretary Pompeo, welcome back. Good to talk to you.
MP: Good morning. It’s great to be with you, Hugh. It’s great to be back on the show again.
HH: Now I assume you approve of the Senate approving the $95 billion dollar security budget last night. Do you approve of how much it was? Did we spend enough? For example, there’s a giant total of $95 billion, $300 million for shipyards.
MP: So look, it’s a good step in the right direction for things that matter to America. We can all argue about the right amount, but I’m glad that it passed. It will keep America more safe, more prosperous in the years ahead. But Hugh, it’s not just about the money. One of the things that’s been too little discussed is it’s great now we’ve provided these resources to our adversaries, right, or to our allies. That’s great. We should remember that our adversaries in each of those strategic areas of operations – the Chinese Communist Party money to Taiwan, the Russians killing Ukrainians to Ukraine, and to our Israeli allies to push back against Iran, now we need to unleash them. Now we need to actually let them use the tools, the weapons, and the money that we’ve provided to win, to actually defeat our adversaries, not to just kick this can down the road so two years from now, you and I are having the exact same conversation saying how do we use Defense to deter. You have to hold your adversaries at risk. You have to hold something they value at risk. And if we don’t use these resources, or permit our allies to use these resources in a way that can do that, this will have done far less good than it could have.
HH: Mr. Secretary, you have been succeeded by Tony Blinken. Secretary Blinken has not yet announced, but it is rumored that the State Department, by good leaks, is about to sanction a unit in the Israeli Defense Forces, something we have never done, to my knowledge, at any time. What is your advice to your successor on that subject of sanctioning our allies?
MP: I hope he’ll reconsider and not do what I am confident he’s being told to do by the Palestinian bureau of the State Department that sits in Israel today. I know those folks. Remember, we consolidated when we move the embassy to Jerusalem, that particular organization that had responsibility for covering Judea and Samaria, this is a radical, pro-left group of people at the State Department. I hope he’ll decline their recommendation. To sanction an ally who is attempting to fight and adversary that killed a thousand of its own people, and an ally that is trying to defend and defeat an adversary that’s still holding Americans hostage, I pray the Americans are still alive, all the hostages. That’s just insanity. Meanwhile, they had lifted the terror designation on the Houthis. This is completely backwards. It misunderstands the threat and the risk, and it equivocates morally between these two, between Iran and Israel, and that’s unforgivable.
HH: You know, Secretary Blinken, when he was abroad at NATO, made an astonishing statement that Israel risks becoming like Hamas, and I thought that was preposterous. What was your reaction to it?
MP: Yeah, that’s what I was just getting at. It’s not only preposterous, it’s dangerous, and dangerous not just for Israel, but for the world. When the United States doesn’t understand the difference between the people of the Jewish homeland in Israel who are doing nothing more than trying to keep their own country safe, and an Iranian regime in the form of Hamas terrorists invades their country and kills barbarically a thousand people, and you begin to describe these two in the same moral terms, that is so inconsistent with the American tradition, and it will come back to harm us, because the world will see America no longer has the moral compass to call good and evil what they are. And I saw that and was deeply disappointed, and very concerned for the security of America.
HH: The moral compass is broken not just at the State Department, it’s broken on campuses. At Columbia, most obviously, but at NYU, at Harvard, at Michigan, both of my alma maters are compromised. You went to West Point. In fact, you were first in your class at West Point. I don’t think they had many sit-ins in the West Point quad, did they?
MP: (laughing) Not very many, and if you’d tried it, it lasted maybe 20 second, Hugh, something like that.
HH: Okay, but you did go to Harvard Law, and Harvard Law has got some students there who’ve been involved in assaulting Jewish students. What do you make of the mess on the campuses? This is not 1968. This is a good versus evil fight in Israel and Gaza versus Hamas. What do you make of what’s going on?
MP: This is a little bit of the chickens coming home to roost. When you refuse to teach in your schools in America that this is an exceptional nation, when you force the 1619 Project on them, when you teach them that America is no better than other countries, that we’ve frankly been a problem in the world, not a solution for the good of humanity, this is what you get, Hugh. You get quasi-grownups, kids in college, and faculty members that don’t understand the difference between the freedom of speech on a campus and truly threatening behavior that has put at risk Jewish kids on campuses. And when you have a White House and a secretary of education that aren’t prepared to do what they could do to put these things down, whether that’s using security or coercion through federal funding, if you’re not going to use the tools of power that you have to tell these folks this is not freedom of speech, I’m happy to have people say whatever it is that’s on their mind. But you can’t go threaten a group of students on campus. And then to have to close your school down, as Columbia has done, to take classes online, because you’re prepared to defend basic rule of law principles, it’s indecent, Hugh. And it’s unamerican, and I hope that we will find leaders in the years ahead that will put a stop to this.
HH: I’ve got Dave McCormick coming up on the show, and I’ve also got the new Bloomberg poll that shows former President Trump a point ahead in Pennsylvania, 10 points ahead in places like, I think it’s Nevada that he’s got a 10-point lead. We have to win this election cycle. What is it going to be about? Do you think it’s going to be about these trials? Or is it going to be about national security?
MP: I think it will be a little bit about each of those. But I mostly think it will be about the direction that people want to take America. Some of the issues, frankly, we’ve just been talking about, I was in Indiana yesterday supporting Jim Banks, who’s running for the United States Senate there. I’m confident he’s going to win. We need him in the United States Senate, and Jim’s a great conservative, Reagan Republican. What I heard from people when I was there yesterday is they just watch this White House refuse to think about America in the way they know it to be – as a fundamentally decent nation prepared to defend its borders, enforce the rule of law, not to drive costs higher by making silly statements abroad that cause multiple wars to break out. I think those are the things, basic competence and leadership in the White House is what I think this election will turn on in the presidential race, and in these Senate races, including in the race in Pennsylvania. Dave McCormick, my 40-year friend, we were cadets at the same time at West Point a long time ago, Hugh. And we need people like Dave in the Senate, too.
HH: I will ask him about that. Now every day, the former President comes out, and he gets like three minutes. And he hits the prosecution. And today, the New York Times has an op-ed blasting the prosecution. You’re a pretty good lawyer at one time, Harvard lawyer. This is an out-of-bounds prosecution. This is a political show trial. Do you think it’s helping the former President, because he can’t campaign. At the same time, everyone realizes, I think everyone who’s in the middle realizes, this is an absurd prosecution.
MP: It’s definitely the case that reasonable people all can see that this is a political stunt, political stunt that frankly, the whole world is watching, Hugh. I’ve been traveling. I was in the Middle East and in Asia. The whole world’s watching and saying what the heck is going on in the United States where you’re prosecuting the President for this garbage? So I think people can see that. Look, it may help marginally when it comes time for people to go to the voting booth. I don’t frankly know the answer to that, for sure. But it’s unfair to not let the Republican candidate for the presidency to go campaign and compete and tell his story to the American people about why he ought to be the president of the United States again. It is so unfair, so indecent, and so dangerous for our republic when we have now had a party resort to having their political leaders put on trial a candidate for president of the United States.
HH: Last question. Since you’ve been abroad, do people abroad notice that President Biden is infirm, because he is absolutely infirm, and it’s impossible to hide it. The Vice President is simply not competent. Her numbers are even worse than the President’s. But do the people abroad notice both those things, that the President is infirm, and the Vice President is incompetent?
MP: Of course, they do. It’s readily apparent to them. You know, a year ago, maybe, Hugh, maybe a year and a half ago, it was whispered. They would mention it. They’d say it in a small circle. Now, it’s common knowledge. It’s spoken about relatively openly that the United States President and person who’s a heartbeat away from the presidency are not prepared to actually engage, converse, argue, make, to listen, to actually address the global challenges that are upon the world today. They’re watching this world come unglued. They see the United State incapable of holding it together, and they are frightened not only for our country and what it has done for them throughout these years, but they’re frightened for their own country, because they all know that American leadership matters. And when it is absent, their people are in danger as well.
HH: 30 seconds, Mr. Secretary. Do you think President Biden is making the choices that Secretary Blinken is announcing? Or is it Secretary Blinken and Jake Sullivan basically running, along with the chief of staff, as triumvirs, the national security policy of the United States?
MP: I think President Biden has blessed every decision that is made. I’m sure these recommendations are coming to him, and I think that President Biden needs to own every one of these decisions. He’s the commander-in-chief. They are his.
HH: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, thank you for coming back. I’m glad you’re back from your travels safely, and I will look forward to having you back again soon. Thank you for campaigning for Republicans across the country.
End of interview.
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So, this morning the host played a clip in the first hour of Trump carrying on at length about the unconstitutional gag order under which he finds himself at the moment. It occurred to me that if, as so many have contended over the years now, he really wants to set himself up as a dictator do you think he would care about a gag order from a minor judge in New York? He was POTUS and this is a small local judge telling him what to do. Seems to me he is at least trying to abide by normal governmental restraints. Meanwhile…
- United States Democratic legislators are trying to dictate actions to the leaders of foreign nations – like they have any authority in any other country.
- The Ninth Circuit has decided there is a right – a right, mind you – for people to camp on the sidewalk. In other words, the US Appeals Court is telling people they can squat in my front yard. Apparently, I no longer own my own property. Last I checked the city has an easement to the sidewalk, but they did not own it.
- A judge in New York said, “Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.” Whoa! The constitution swept aside by an utterance.
Who wants to be a dictator here? No seriously, who really?
I complain and complain in these spaces about over-regulation. (The latest, a broken seat belt buckle in my car costs nearly $1000 to replace because regulation requires a single electronic, tamperproof module of buckle, seat sensor and computer communications so I cannot escape my car nagging me should I not buckle my seatbelt! Let’s call this “regulatory inflation” – not to mention it is utterly and completely annoying to have your car screaming at you while you drive it to the shop because the buckle is broken.) But increasingly regulation is becoming the least of our governmental overreach.
Let’s be honest. DJ Trump is a massive egotist with grossly distasteful conduct of his marital life (at least he used to be that way) and a blowhard. But he is not dictatorial. That particular honor belongs to those that oppose him. And every time they illustrate their dictatorial impulses, they aid Trump’s re-elect efforts. People would rather deal with a difficult personality than an actual dictator.
The post Just Who Wishes to be A Dictator? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday was “Earth Day.” I remember the very first one – I was a freshman in high school, then known as 9th grade at middle school, and we organized a field trip in our science classes and went out and picked up litter. I was a bit disappointed because just a few years earlier I had lived in Cleveland, Ohio when the river burned and litter seemed to my young mind, trivial. I was far more interested in the actual science of cleaning the water and air than trash by the highway, but then I am a nerd. What I never dreamed was what Earth Day would become by my retirement.
Let’s start with two interesting stories that appeared yesterday. The first is how President Biden chose the recognize the day:
President Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving 900,000-plus households in low- and middle-income communities. He also plans to expand his New Deal-style American Climate Corps green jobs training program.
So, in the fifty or so years since the first Earth Day we have moved from students collecting litter, a job now granted to convicted criminals doing community service, to doling out sums unimaginable in the early 70’s for part time power generation.
The second story is a collection of photos from the early 70’s attempting to illustrate just how polluted we were then. There are a couple of things to note:
In the early 1970s, the EPA launched the “The Documerica Project,” which leveraged 100 freelance photographers to document what the US looked like….
Many of the photos were taken before water and air pollution were fully regulated.
It is truly fascinating that one of the first orders of business for a newly formed federal agency was to document its legacy and the second was legislation and regulation. From the beginning it seems the EPA was not particularly trying to solve the problem it was formed to solve, but to gather and use power. About a year ago, I wrote in support of efforts to get SCOTUS to take up a Chevron Deference case reflecting on a professional lifetime dealing with environmental regulation and said:
BTW, in all these years I have never had a client ask me how to cheat – never. Nobody wants to pollute or harm their employees. These companies are not evildoers looking to exploit anything. Sure, accidents happen, and problems arise, but nobody is in this to harm anybody.
There were, and still are, many ways to approach the issue. Regulation, now massive and overwhelming, presumes ill-will on the part of companies and people. But largely there is good will out there; the EPA could have easily played on that to achieve the same goals. When the river burned in Cleveland my father worked for one of the companies creating the conditions that lead to that fire. The executives were as aghast at the situation as everyone else. Thy lived there after all and did not want their kids dealing with burning rivers. No, it seems transparent that the EPA from its founding was focused not on solving the pollution problem, it was interested in the acquisition and exercise of power.
Which brings me back to Biden’s current Earth Day beneficence. The day before Earth Day, John Hinderacker at Powerline examined a Robert Bryce Substack on how utterly impractical EV’s actually are. One of the more interesting points was just how much power they will require. Says Bryce:
In 2019, Southern California Edison, one of the biggest investor-owned utilities in California, estimated the amount of juice needed to electrify transportation in the state. The utility found that trying to do so “will increase electric load by nearly 130 terawatt hours — representing more than one-third of the grid-served load” by 2045.
Now, if you read the piece about the Biden money dump you find nothing about how much power will be generated. At a time when other actions by the administration, also coming from EPA as is this largesse, demand vast increases in power generation, the announcement of this cash cow talks about the reduction of carbon emissions but mentions nothing of how it fits into the power generation puzzle it has created. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors going on here.
Finally consider this:
A new study out of UCLA says same-sex couples are at greater “risk of exposure to the adverse effects of climate change” than straight couples.
These effects include “wildfires, floods, smoke-filled skies, and drought,” according to a report from KQED.
Same-sex couples disproportionately live in coastal regions and cities, which are more vulnerable to such disasters. They’re also more likely “to live in areas with poor infrastructure, worse-built environments.”
Holy mackerel! Somehow in the fifty years since the first Earth Day we have gone from dealing with rivers catching on fire to equal outcomes for people with non-normative sexual orientations. That’s just flabbergasting. Somehow over the years a real and serious problem has been levered into an excuse to dump government money on the populace in a nearly transparent effort to buy votes, and an anvil against which to ground any personal pet peeve.
When Israel fended off the drone attack from Iran, President Biden advised Israel to “take the win.” Well, rivers no longer catch on fire. You can no longer slice the air with a bread knife. Beaches are no longer littered with dead fish or old tires. Maybe Earth Day ought to “take the win.”
The post From Commonsense to Madness appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
There is an ugly picture developing, and I am not at all sure anyone is seeing it. Let’s start with the host’s interview of DJT on April 4. Far and away the most interesting thing Former President Trump said, even if the media largely ignored it was, concerning uncontrolled immigration:
HH: What do you think the Chinese nationals are doing? You don’t get out of China without permissions, according to Secretary Pompeo. And there might be one or two can slip…
DJT: No, they’re probably building an army. They’re probably building an army from within. I mean, you look at what’s happening, because they’re very healthy young men for the most part. And it’s up to over 30,000 now. That’s a lot of people. It’s up to over 30,000.
That makes sense if you think about it – why invade en masse if you can rot a country from within?
But the Chinese are not the only one’s playing this game, in point of fact they are far more stealthy and perhaps behind the curve of others trying the same thing. Remember back just after the hideous attacks on Israel of October 7 when. A Jewish man, counter protesting a pro-Palestinian protest was murdered. I speculated at the time, and was eventually proven right, that the murderer was an Islamic immigrant. I based my speculation on the fact that Americans are just not naturally that violently antisemitic. To be certain there are a lot of Americans that like to whisper about “the Jews” and blame Jews for their own misfortune, but there is a wide gap between racial/religious resentment and actual violence.
Now let’s fast forward to just a few weeks ago and the “Death to America” chants in the Detroit area. The lack of response to this incident was widely commented upon, but at the same time, no one was terribly surprised. After all, Dearborn (suburban Detroit) has a large population of immigrant Muslims. Even years ago, the area was well known for its enclave of polygamist Muslims. I am not at all sure “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is intended to include people that wish to destroy the freedom they yearn for, but here we are.
Now let’s come forward to the weekend just past. Both Yale and Columbia suffered under near riots, if not actual riots, that were loudly pro-Palestinian that called for the destruction of Tel Aviv, resulted in property damage, desecrated the American flag and worst of all injured at least one Jewish student. Which takes me back to the murder last fall in California. Where did the mob energy to do this come from? The average American college student would rather drink heavily, play video games and occasionally study. Someone had to work them up into this lather.
Well, our California murderer was a community college teacher, so one has to imagine, particularly given how lax our border security is, a few of our premiere universities have hired a few Islamic, antisemitic, professor provocateurs. Further given how easy it is to get a student visa and how obsessed our Ivy League institutions are with diversity, they have to have a few students more interested in inciting these riots than completing their studies.
Not calling for police state tactics, but there is also “nothing to see” here. I’d like to know that there is at least one person or agency investigating the possibility.
It may not seem related, but let’s turn to the story of the beating of a twelve-year-old girl in an Orlando Florida middle school. Despite the fact that the attack was recorded and placed on social media, the school and police at first turned a blind eye claiming:
Hall said officials initially claimed the girls told them it was just ‘horseplay’ and there was no crime because there was no victim.
‘For us to establish the crime of battery occurred, there needs to be a victim, and all of the parties interviewed said the same thing: That they often “play fight” throughout the day at school,’ the sheriff’s office said on Thursday.
Now, anyone with half a brain knows what was happening here. The attackers have friends, and the victim knew (knows) that if she admits to the attack and her attackers are adequately punished, her beatings will only worsen at the hands of her original attacker’s friends. Officials are now at least paying attention, but only after the victim’s mother took it all to the media (don’t watch the videos unless you have a strong stomach), but they are still cranking the wheels of bureaucracy at an immensely slow, and in this case unjust, pace. One is forced to wonder if the gang of girls involved is not connected in a fashion to a wider criminal gang that has intimidated both the school administration and local law enforcement.
In both of these situations we have schools and law enforcement laying back when they have a clear duty to deal with situations. In both situations one must wonder if there are not broader and far more heinous forces at play. Are we really down the rabbit hole of being “non-judgmental” and “tolerant” to the point that we can stand by and simply watch property destruction and violence, not to mention anti-American sentiment?
Last Tuesday I wrote of the inherent lack of courage in our response to the traffic shutdown pro-Palestinian protests of a week ago. But I am beginning to wonder if there is not more at play here than simple cowardice.
Timely update: As I write, news has broken that Columbia has cancelled on-campus classes and gone remote in light of the “chaos on campus.” Thus the protesters win – they have conquered the campus.
This is not tolerable. It is simply not. We are rotting from within. Perhaps it’s the infiltration of provocateurs as both the former President and I have speculated, or perhaps we are doing this to ourselves, but either way, we are rotting from within.
What I fear most of all is that if our officialdom, school administrators, university officials and police, do not deal with the rot, private citizens will. (Maybe should as Sen. Tom Cotton hinted last week.) The solution to chaos is not more chaos, but when government fails….
ADDENDUM (A couple of hours later): Yale, at least, seems to have come to its senses.
The post Rotting From Within appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
For a few days now the alarm panel in my home has been telling me the smoke detector had a low battery, only problem was I did not know which smoke alarm. Well, the smoke alarm in question decided to tell me about 4 this morning. Changing the battery turned out to be a far more complicated operation than one might anticipate, involving special resets at the sensor and the panel – a most difficult task when 1) you’d never done it before and 2) you are very groggy because it is 4AM. But then who can sleep with that incessant chirping from the sensor? It was easy to curse the complexity of the whole operation, but as the grogginess cleared and my brain engaged, I came to understand why the engineers had designed it as they had. And that got me thinking about a lot of things.
Science came to be to figure out how the world works. Engineering came to be to put that understanding to concrete use. But it was all within the constraints of how life, the universe and everything presented itself to us. We weren’t so much trying to build the world to our liking as we were trying to use the world as it is to our purposes. But somewhere along the line (I think when we fooled ourselves into thinking we had tamed the fundamental forces of nature with the atomic age) we have changed our approach and are no longer trying to use the world as it is, but to build what we think is a better world. Rather than figure out how the creator made this thing to work, we just want it to work in the way that is easiest for us.
I think this change in approach accounts for so much that seems to be wrong today. Yesterday we looked at how California keeps spending money it does not have in a fashion that only increases its deficit, as if the money can simply appear from thin air. We hire people to do things and put them into universities based on factors that simply do not indicate their capabilities. We think people that fundamentally wish to destroy other people are reasonable. We think we can control disease. We think EVs a transportation panacea when their utility is severely restricted by fundamental technological shortcomings. We think wishes will come true if we just wish hard enough.
Psalm 24:
The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains,
The world, and those who dwell in it.
For He has founded it upon the seas
And established it upon the rivers.
This is not our world to make, it is simply the world we live in. We have to figure out how it works and live within those parameters. And that is what church is about. Science learns and teaches how the world works, church learns and teaches how we work in that world. As there are limitations to how the world works, so there are limitations to how we work. It is a good thing to learn those limitations – it is a good thing to go to church.
The post Whose World Is It? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
California is bleeding. The sea of red ink that is the state budget nearly matches the size of the Pacific Ocean that is the state’s western border. There is a constitutional mandate for a balanced budget, but so many people suck at the state government teat there that googling stories about efforts to balance it are almost comical. Nearly everyone is lobbying to make sure they do not get cut, but the deficit is so bad that everyone will have to take a cut while their taxes are being raised. The situation is truly awful.
You will recall that earlier this week many major cities, most prominently San Francisco, CALIFORNIA, were brought to a standstill by protestors, calling for laying back and letting Israel be destroyed, blocked major traffic corridors. California was quite tolerant of the debacle, but I love how Florida handled it – picked up the jerks and dragged them off the street. No place has consumed the kool-aid of “tolerance=love” more than California. Which is why the budget crisis will never be resolved – they will tolerate one too many cries for help.
The wastefulness and stupidity is enormous. I love this:
California’s massive budget deficit, coupled with the state’s relatively high level of joblessness, has become a major barrier to reducing the billions of dollars of debt it has incurred to pay unemployment benefits.
The surge in unemployment brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the state’s unemployment insurance trust into insolvency. And over the last year California’s joblessness has been on the upswing again, reaching 5.3% in February, the highest among all states. The March job numbers come out Friday.
To keep the safety-net program operating at a time when the taxes paid by employers and earmarked for jobless benefits are insufficient, Sacramento has been borrowing billions of dollars from the federal government. The debt now stands at about $21 billion and growing, an increasing burden for state deficit fighters and for the businesses that pay into the jobless insurance program.
Payroll taxes paid by employers are rising not only to cover payouts to unemployed workers but also a state surcharge and a gradually increasing federal surtax to help pay off the principal on the debt. But the tax increases are not enough to deal with the huge loan the state has incurred, or at least not in any timely manner.
So, state policy generates unemployment, the state then pays the unemployed with money they do not have, taxing employers more heavily to try, but fail, to fill the void which then creates greater unemployment as the businesses close because they are no longer profitable. That would be comical were the tax burden not so terribly onerous. But it is really born of corruption. We started noting a couple of weeks ago that the place was pouring unaccountable billions into the homelessness problem with no measureable result. Blame shifting efforts just make the corruption more evident, not less.
California’s ballot proposition system has been used (Prop 13) and misused (Jungle primaries and vote harvesting) on countless occasions. (Consider Prop 47.) But when the citizens try to use it for something truly decent, the shenanigans drive them to court, which in California are almost as corrupt as the rest of the bunch. You have to love this paragraph from a recent Atlantic profile of Gov. Gavin Newsom:
This aura can invite distrust. So can participating in magazine profiles when you don’t want to be seen as buffing your national image at the expense of being a team player—the team being President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
“Aura?!” – My sainted Aunt Petunia! Anybody that is paying attention knows the man is a blame-shifting, gaslighting weasel. Some of us are old enough to remember referring to Bill Clinton as “Slick Wille.” Newsom sees Clinton’s slick, greases it up, then uses some sort of miracle lubricant from CalTech to make it frictionless. Given the failures and missteps and unconstitutional actions (forcibly closing churches during covid) of this man and his administration, the only way he is still standing must be corruption of some sort because it sure as heck ain’t merit.
Seriously, pray for California. People there are growing numb to it all and that is just creating more opportunity for waste, stupidity and corruption.
The post The Latest on the California Dumpster Fire appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Joni Ernst joined me this morning:
Audio:
04-19hhs-ernst
Transcript:
HH: Joined now by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. I think I’ll call her Col. Ernst, retired Iowa National Guard Army Reserve this morning, because we begin, good morning, Senator, welcome back, good to talk to you.
JE: Hey, great to be with you, Hugh. Thank you.
HH: What do you know about, what’s your response to what Israel did overnight?
JE: Well, at this point, Hugh, I only know what is publicly available. I should learn more today as I go into work at our beautiful nation’s capital. But it is in response, of course, to the attacks on Israel over the weekend. And there is a very clear difference here. You know, what we saw with Iran and their attacks on Israel, you know, hundreds of drones and missiles, and very little damage done to Israel. What we saw from Israel was a very, very measured, targeted response. To me, it just shows the superiority of Israel and what it is capable of doing versus what we saw was more of a demonstrated weakness coming from Iran.
HH: Senator, there are many reports, and I haven’t been able to nail them down, yet, that Israel used something new, a different kind of missile. And you’re on the subcommittee on emerging threats on the Senate Defense committee, and I already referenced your military service. Should we expect to know the specifics of what Israel used? And if it was a razzle dazzle something that stunned the Iranians on how precisely it could hit and how it got past everything?
JE: I don’t think that Israel wants us to know exactly what they are using. And again, I think that’s okay. I want them to have cutting edge weaponry and platforms. They live in a very dangerous area of the world. They are surrounded by those that are perpetuating the support for Hamas. So yes, I anticipate that it probably is something that they have recently developed or do have in their toolbox. So I don’t think we’ll know right way exactly what it is. I think we can learn that in upcoming months, maybe. But certainly, I’m glad that they have the capability to defend as they do, and to attack as they do. They have every right to exist, and they have every right to strike back against those who come at them.
HH: Now Senator, Matt Continetti, who is clearly one of the most dominant views of the next generation behind me, more of your generation. He works at AEI. He writes for the Washington Free Beacon. He’s on the Commentary pod. His column this morning is that Israel was right to disregard Team Biden’s urging that they not do anything. I agree with Matt on that. Do you?
JE: Absolutely, I do. I see Israel and much of the world that is in chaos as direct result from the appeasement of Joe Biden and his administration. We absolutely have to stand with Israel. Israel has a right to defend itself. The result of Biden’s appeasement, you know, he has told Iran “Don’t” over and over again. Well, it means nothing when you’ve appeased them for three and a half years. The Biden administration failed to enforce the sanctions. We’ve seen Iran’s oil revenue go to a five-year high. That’s $80 billion dollars of revenues for Iran that’s directly funding their war against Israel, and funding, not to mention, the American troops that have been killed. Just recently, we had three American Army Reservists killed at Tower 22 in Jordan. You know, those missiles and drones that attacked Tower 22, those were bought and paid for with Iran’s oil revenue. So President Biden needs to grow a spine and start pushing back against these authoritarian regimes. Absolutely, I agree.
HH: Senator Ernst, I want to interrupt you there, though. I have watched President Biden this week pretty closely. Physically, it is a very unfortunate thing to see. He is infirm. Do you believe he’s actually running the national security response? I think it’s the triumvirs of Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Defense Secretary Austin. I don’t think it’s President Biden. Do you?
JE: I don’t think he’s capable. I don’t think he’s capable. No, you’re right. He is infirm. And so I think it is those he has surrounded himself with, or maybe a few others. But most certainly, this is a man who, in my estimation, he cannot lead. He’s proven that. And whether that was willful in the past or not, just his appeasement, but I think as we move through the years, we see an ever-increasing failing Joe Biden. So I don’t think he’s capable.
HH: Senator, when you go around the Hill, do people talk about, like, the cannibal story that he came up with this week? I mean, do they, in the Cloak Room or at the conference meeting, do they look at each other and say my goodness, cannibals?
JE: Yes. Actually, we were laughing about that yesterday.
HH: Oh, geez.
JE: And where does this stuff come from? And I’ll point out one that I think is absolutely horrible. I have a friend who lost her husband in Afghanistan. She is a gold star wife. And just recently at, just recently over the course of the Christmas holiday, she had been invited to the White House, as they often invite gold star families in. And he reiterated the story that he lost his son in Iraq.
HH: Oh, my.
JE: Now he continues to either lie about it, or he simply can’t remember.
HH: You know, Senator, you’re too young to remember 8-track tapes. You’re too young to know that when they be…
JE: Oh, I do remember those.
HH: Okay, well, then you were in, like, third grade. When they began to skip, they just kind of go different places, and you’ve got to throw them away. And I think his 8-track tape upstairs is skipping. Senator, Donald Trump, by contrast, went to the bodega up in Harlem, comes out of court every day, and lets everybody have it, energy to spare. I think he’s going to get convicted anyway. It’s a New York jury. I think that will be overturned, because it’s a nonsense lawsuit. What do you think that trial is doing to American politics?
JE: I think this is absolutely horrible, Hugh. It is just crazy the way the Democrats are pursuing Donald Trump on nonsense charges. And you see the exact opposite in the Senate where we had the trial, well, we were supposed to have the trial of Secretary Mayorkas, where we actually had evidence and proof that could have been reviewed, and the Democrats just simply dismissed it. So on one hand, they’re bound and determined, decades later, to continue going after the former president of the United States in a bogus charge. And then you’ve got right there in the nation’s capital, you’ve got Democrats who are like, oh yeah, there’s all this evidence, but we’re not going to allow you to bring it up, and we’re not going to have a trial in the United States Senate, even though it’s our Constitutional duty.
HH: Senator, yesterday, Michael Waltz pointed out that he had gone and reviewed the documents that Special Counsel Robert Hur looked at. He is shocked at what was in those documents. I don’t know if you have them. I don’t think you’re on the Intel committee. You’re on Armed Services. But have you heard that report, that the Hur documents, the ones that Joe Biden had, were very, very troubling?
JE: Well, yes. And I do trust Congressman Waltz. He’s a good friend. And I have not reviewed the documents myself. I’m on Armed Services. I could go review those documents. But I know exactly what I heard in the public space as well. That is plenty troubling right there. I see what Joe Biden is doing. I see that he is infirm, as you stated. And I don’t know how he can be the candidate for the Democratic Party other than he’s a useful puppet right now.
HH: I think you’re right. Let me ask you about Wisconsin. The new Fox polls came out, and you’re next door to Wisconsin. You must know Wisconsin pretty well.
JE: Yes. Oh, yeah.
HH: It’s tied. What do you think that says? I know, you know, the former President is going to win Iowa handily, but you know Wisconsin well. What do you think is going to happen to the state to your north?
JE: Well, I think he’s going to win.
HH: Trump?
JE: I think he’s got momentum on his side. He’s leading in a number of really important swing states by anywhere from two to eight percentage points. And if you just look across the country, and I think Wisconsin is probably a pretty good barometer, Americans, they’re just sick of suffering under Joe Biden’s policies. So just as we talked a minute ago, he’s such a disaster on the foreign stage, on the world stage. But right here domestically, you know, he has failed the American people. So I think Wisconsin goes the way of Donald Trump. I think a lot of these polls, I think they’re actually pretty conservative in their numbers, because Trump, as you know, will have a lot of voters that don’t participate in polls or may not answer truthfully in polls. So I think there is a lot more support for Donald Trump out there than what you’re actually going to see in the papers, on the TV, and here on the radio.
HH: Now two weeks ago, the former President told me Israel needed to finish the job, and they needed a victory. That means going into Rafah. Do you support, despite what Joe Biden has said, and Jake Sullivan has allegedly said, do you think Israel ought to go into Rafah and finish the job with Hamas?
JE: I am going to support Israel, whatever they decide to do, Hugh, because that should be my role sitting in the United States Senate with a good friend and ally in Israel. It is not up to American to tell Israel how to do their job and defend their country and wipe out Hamas.
HH: But you just came back from Ukraine as well.
JE: Yes.
HH: Are you in favor of the aid package that looks like it’s going to get out of the House this weekend?
JE: I am. I am in favor of moving forward on a supplemental package. I do caveat it. We’ll see what comes over, but my mantra for U.S. foreign aid has always been weapons, not welfare. So whether it’s Israel with right to defend herself, whether it is Ukraine, you know, getting the weapons to pound the bloody hell out of the Russians, whatever that is, we can provide the weapons. We are the arsenal of democracy. And I know a lot of those lefties, they hate it. They hate it. But we can provide the weapons and the munitions in order to at least give these countries a fighting chance to push back on these authoritarian regimes. We have that opportunity, and we should do it.
HH: Can I keep you for three more minutes, Senator?
JE: Yes, you may.
HH: I would like to hear about Ukraine. I’m going to go to a break and then come back with Senator Joni Ernst. We’ll post it on the podcast today.
— – – – –
HH: Welcome back, America. I’m joined by Senator Joni Ernst. Senator Ernst, I’ll play this in the next segment, but thank you for staying with me. You just came back from a CODEL to Ukraine. And when I was talking with your staff setting up the interview, we didn’t know Israel would attack overnight. We didn’t know the Wisconsin polling would come out. What did you see? What did you do? What do you think the United States should do?
JE: Well, first, I’ll start with that last question. I do think that we need to supply Ukraine with the munitions that they need. We need to provide them the weaponry they need to push the Russians back. So right now, they lack on air defense munitions, Interceptors. We know that they would like to have fighter jets for air superiority, which would allow them to get the Russians back even further, perhaps back into Russia. There’s a lot that we should be doing there. But as I traveled across the country of Ukraine, it was a bipartisan delegation that traveled. We went to Kiev, of course. We went up to the northern region up closer to Belarus and Russia and visited a number of villages up there where the Russians had committed war crimes, atrocities, killing women, children, raping women, taking elderly hostage, putting an entire village in the basement of a schoolhouse for a month where they had to stack up dead bodies in the corner, because there was no room for them to move around the basement. It was suffocating down there. We heard all of these stories as we moved across the country and talked to the local population. In Odessa, we were able to visit the port. Oddly enough, later that night, the Odessa port was struck by the Russians. This is Ukraine’s one way of moving grain and goods out of their country. Believe me, folks. Ukraine is desperately trying to support itself. If anything, we should be able to provide them the means to support themselves. They are providing fighters to the front lines. They’re not asking for American troops on the ground, which I think is a benefit for the United States. If Russia does take Ukraine, I guarantee they’re going to be knocking on our NATO friends and allies’ doors, and then we will have Americans involved.
HH: So my last question, Senator…
JE: So we definitely have got to step up.
HH: We’re in the election season, and obviously inflation, abortion, the President, former President being persecuted, Israel’s all going to matter. How much is national security going to matter? I’m always interested in it, but I know it’s only 3-4% of the population that votes that way. But in this election, it might be decisive that the Republicans support Israel, and the Democrats don’t.
JE: Right. I think it is pretty decisive. And I think Americans pay attention. I know, you know, moms and dads out across the nation, those families, they have a lot on their plate right now because of inflation and domestic issues. But folks, all of that will not matter if we have Russia coming after us, if we have China coming after us. This is important stuff. So as long as we can keep the rest of the world strong and free, we can be strong and free. But I always believe national security includes protecting ourselves domestically, and we didn’t even talk about the Southern border, Hugh. That is a disaster. And that plays into our national security as well. The Chinese are sending Chinese nationals over the Southern border.
HH: Absolutely.
JE: That’s a whole other story for another day. But we can do it all.
HH: Our next interview, Senator. Our next interview. Thank you so much for joining me. Good luck on the Hill today in getting that package passed and over the line on Sunday or Monday. I appreciate you joining me, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. Thank you, Senator.
JE: You bet. Thank you. Thank you.
The post Senator Joni Ernst On Israel’s Strike Deep Into Iran, The Infirmity of President Biden, The Trial Of Former President Trump, and…Wisconsin appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel joined me this AM:
The post GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel On Election 2022 appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson joined me this AM:
The post Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson On His Re-Election Bid Against Radical Mandela Barnes appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I find myself lost in pain and anger this morning. This week saw a natural disaster of immense proportion and it has disappeared from the headlines save for this (BTW, I am not saying the source I use here is the problem, these stories come from countless sources, just the closest example at hand, my issues are with the content):
The post The True Nature of Charity appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Let’s bring together three streams of thought.
The post “What It Takes,” or “The Real Difference” appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Dr. Oz, GOP nominee for Senate, joined me this AM:
The post Dr. Oz On His Surging Campaign appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
House GOP Leader (and Speaker of the House come January) Kevin McCarthy joined me this AM:
The post Future Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy On Relief For Florida, Election 2022 appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The New York Times‘ Michael Shear joined me this morning to discuss the article he authored, along with Miriam Jordan, on the immigration crisis and President Biden’s proposed tweaks to the broken border. I also interview Texas Senator John Cornyn about the same piece. Michael is a regular guest and a fine reporter –two Pulitzers don’t come to folks by accident– but this piece misses a couple of marks by a wide margin:
The post Talking Immigration With The New York Times’ Michael Shear and Texas Senator John Cornyn appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Before I begin snarky comment – I suppose we’ll be working to ban “assault knives” now.
The post The Celebrate Labor Day – Get a Job or Build Something appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Ecclesiastes 2:18-26
The post On A Labor Day Weekend Sunday appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The state of our political debate these days frightens me. Let’s go back through the last few elections and hit some highlights:
The post Sinking To The Lowest Common Denominator appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
…Was last night a presidential address or a campaign speech?
The post Dear Mr. President, Forgive Me, I Am Very Confused… appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Ron Johnson joined me this AM:
The post Senator Ron Johnson On President Biden’s Speech appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Dr. Mehmet Oz joined me this morning:
The post Dr. Oz On His Race In Pennsylvania appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Here is an interesting fact:
The post The Joy of Accomplishment appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday, Jim Geraghty discussed the completely over-the-top rhetoric of some Democratic candidates. He cites the arrogance of some of them:
The post Virtue, Impatience and Potential Civil War appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Oft quoted on Facebook these days is Davy Crockett’s speech to Congress on providing money to a widow:
The post On Generosity appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
We live in a world where the concept of truth is very elusive. It has become common among the conservative commentariat to talk about being “gaslighted.”
The post Truth and the Church appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The post Jared Kushner On His New Book “Breaking History” appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
There was much ado amongst some of the Twitterati yesterday about this piece in Scientific American. I gave up on SA as anything approaching a scientific magazine a couple of years ago, but this piece hits a new low. Title: People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties – Subtitle: A growing mortality gap between Republican and Democratic areas may largely stem. This is pure political hit piece. The data is indisputable, but what is not examined is at what cost those differing mortality rates come.
The post When Democrats Are Losing appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis joined me this morning:
The post Florida Governor Ron DeSantis On The Great Biden Give-Away appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
So, Biden is set to forgive student loan debt.
The post NOW, I AM Ticked… appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
And so, the inescapable Anthony Fauci is retiring this December. I have little doubt this is forced. Fauci has made way too many comments about his indispensability (interview with the host about a year ago.) talked about retiring in “a couple of years” (just a month ago,) and this announcement is so close to the heels of the Walensky memo, that one must suspect that there has been enormous pressure being applied to Fauci to get gone. In point of fact, I would conjecture that last month’s comments were an attempt on Fauci’s part to build public support to forestall this move. And so, while publicly Anthony Fauci is retiring, and being permitted to sneak in a final bow, I’m about 98% sure the man is being fired.
The post Fauci Lessons appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
…there is government mischief.
The post Misdirection appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The Babylon Bee has recently published a very funny Beach Boys parody video that has been making the rounds – “I Wish We All Could Leave California Now.” It barely scratches the surface of why California has become so intolerable. It also reminded me of Gavin Newson’s “French Market Incident,” wherein he had the state all masked up and locked down but attended a very high-end birthday party unmasked. You know, the kind of stuff that has gotten Boris Johnson booted out. (sorta) Yet Newsom has carried on shamelessly, up to and including running ads in places like Florida and Texas chastising them for their stances on abortion after Dobbs.
The post The Usefulness of Shame appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Originally posted by Hugh Hewitt
The post The Key Races For The Control Of Congress appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Sometimes you are reading along in a book and you come to a paragraph so perfectly pithy, precise and true that it takes your breath away. That happened to me yesterday reading Henry Kissinger’s Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. Specifically in his chapter on Nixon, he concludes the discussion of the Vietnam War this way:
The post A Diagnosis in a Nutshell appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin joined me this morning. The focus was on education reform, as it ought to be for every Republican candidate, at every level:
The post Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin On Education And The 2022 Elections appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The CDC is trying to reform. Too little, too late by my estimation.
The post On Confidence In Government appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Here are some of the key races the GOP. If and when you donate, please give directly to campaigns or through WinRed.com so you don’t get scammed by false-front PACs. The worst thing is for your good intentions to get hijacked by campaign fund-raising pirates who are in it for the profit or worse, by Democrats and groups even farther to left who use your money for exactly the opposite cause:
The post The Key Races For The Control Of Congress appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
To read this morning’s news, the Wyoming primaries were all about Donald J. Trump.
The post It Is Not About Donald Trump appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Large cars with large engines were once the American dream. Big aircraft carrier sized things that looked at “compact” parking spaces and laughed. But then along came the government policy induced fuel shortages of the early 1970’s and the introduction of “Corporate Average Fuel Economy” (CAFE) standards and that dream died. Car makers could not make such things anymore and meet those standards. But something else died with that dream – the muscle car.
The post Just When You Think You Have Killed The Monster… appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Well, now we know. The Mir-a-Lago raid was a scavenger hunt. For full analysis, see Andrew C. McCarthy at NR.
The post That Which Will Destroy Us appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
One thing has become apparent to me this week. There are a lot of people in DC and the media, and some other places in the country that think the worst about Donald Trump. They do not merely oppose him, nor do they simply hate him. Nope they think he is the devil incarnate – the Anti-Christ. That is the only thing that can possibly justify some of what I have read and heard this week – it is the only notion that could possibly account for the massive and overwhelming use of government force we have been witnessing for quite some time now, which reached a whole new apotheosis this week.
The post If Only They Knew appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan joined me this morning:
The post Maryland Governor Larry Hogan On The FBI’s Raid At Mar-A-Lago appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Newsweek has “a source” on the whole Mar-a-Lago raid. I am so far from expert on this stuff, and the host is so deeply expert in it having you know, built a presidential library, that I have really tried to steer clear. But this Newsweek piece stretches credibility to the breaking point:
The post Spin, Lies or a Big Stinking Fetid Pile appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
“A House built on lies cannot stand.” I have heard that sentence a thousand times in my life so this morning I went researching its source. I found hundreds of variations from hundreds of sources – multiple attributions and countless retellings. But I never could nail it down. Yet it seems a most obvious thing. History is replete with societies that have fallen as their lies crumbled – the Soviet Union being the latest example.
The post Living With Lies appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I spoke with Lindsey Graham last night just after former President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home was searched by FBI agents.
The post Senator Lindsey Graham On The FBI At Mar-A-Lago and the #IRSExpansionAct appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Americans are, largely, a live-and-let-live people. We may disagree mightily with what someone does or thinks, but provided that it does no harm to others, we are for the most part willing to let them stay in their little errant bubble. But there are limits.
The post The Limits of American Tolerance appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
If you are of faith, the Dobbs decision feels like a major victory. But we live in interesting times. I grew up in central Indiana where corporate life is dominated by companies like Eli Lilly and Cummins Engine. In the wake of Dobbs, Indiana passed strong abortion restrictions last week and the major employers of the state are not happy about it.
The post The Church Is Losing appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The current “budget” deal, that can only be passed using reconciliation, includes a massive increase in the IRS budget. That means they are going to try to squeeze every dime out of you that they possible can. Most revolts in history are born of over taxation regardless of the actual form of government being revolted against. It is the place where government is most intrusive into daily life and the more aggressive the government is in collecting its taxes, regardless of the actual level of taxation, the more intrusive it feels and the more people resent it.
The post The Edge of Tyranny appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator John Cornyn joined me this AM:
The post Texas Senator John Cornyn On The Disaster That Is The “Inflation Reduction Act” appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Former New Jersey Governor and future presidential candidate Chris Christie joined me thiss morning:
The post Chris Christie On The NFL’s Decisions on Deshaun Watson And On The Dolphins, And What This Week’s Elections Showed appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Sinema can have literally anything she wants that isn’t crazy. Anything. What will she ask for? National Review’s Jim Geraghty and I discussed this AM:
The post NRO’s Jim Geraghty And I Discuss The Unprecedent Leverage Senator Sinema Holds Right Now appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator James Lankford joined me this AM to discuss his and all the other GOP races for Senate in 2022. Senator Lankford is a mortal lock for re-election, but listen to the discussion of the path to a GOP majority:
The post Senator James Lankford On The 2022 Senate Races appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
So, during my business travels this date I passed a church in an industrial building, as has become so very common. Lots of advertising abiut how that church was “fighting the good fight” and the advertising made plain that they were talking about a political fight. This too has become common within the Evangelical community
The post The Lost Thread appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senators Pat Toomey and Tom Cotton joined me this morning:
The post Senators Tom Cotton and Pat Toomey On Reconciliation Nightmare Bill appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Interesting times. As the weekend rolled, the inflationary pressures that the Schumer/Manchin deal will create have not emerged as the big story, rather the tax increases have, but before I get there, one amazing observation.
The post What Democrats Cannot Do appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday I ranted about the “mislabeling” Democrats engage in and how angering it is to be simply lied to all the time. I said I had thought there would be massive electoral consequences. I am going to modify that slightly and say there better be massive electoral consequences or we are in deep, deep trouble.
The post The Lies We Live In appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I have just about had it with the whole labeling thing.
The post Fed Up! appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The host spent substantial time on Monday’s show ranting about the transparent ignorance in a Colbert clip he tweeted out over the weekend. In the clip, Colbert and Chris Hayes discuss the 1/6 hearings as if they were a new development in democracy, absent all the messy, and untelegenic, debate and argument. Their comments, as the host noted quite energetically, ignore the fact that our system is adversarial by design and that the absence of such adversity renders this committee inherently undemocratic. The host described the clip as he presented it on Twitter as “unintentionally, quite revealing.”
The post Our Democracy Problem?! appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) joined me this morning:
The post Senator Tom Cotton On His Opposition To The Expanded “CHIPS Act” And On Nancy Pelosi’s 1/6 Committee appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Dr. Henry Kissinger was my guest Friday, discussing his new book “Leadership: Six Studies In World Strategy”:
The post Dr. Henry Kissinger On “Leadership” In An Age Of Image appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
They are still trying to glue themselves to famous masterpieces in Europe and Democrats are now turning on their own as protesters gather in front of Ron Klain’s house. What is becoming increasingly clear is we live in a world searching for…something and thrashing about trying to find it. Yesterday I ranted a bit about just how stupid things have become. People are not generally that dumb, but when they know in their heart something is very wrong, but they can’t quite put their finger on it to figure out what to do about it they tend to do stupid things to try and make it better.
The post This World Of Discontent appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
OK, in the category of “they need to bring back editors” is this story:
The post You Cannot Make Up Stuff This Stupid appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Been reflecting quite a bit n Bret Stephens mea culpa in re: Trump voters that the host discussed at great length on the show yesterday. It is a breath of fresh air and the first sign of a thaw in the internal conservative divisions over Trump – which bodes well for 2024. I have been considering my own issues with Trump, especially during the primaries. I was never #NeverTrump, nor was I ever contemptuous of Trump’s hardcore base. I voted for him in the general because I simply could NOT vote for Hilary under any circumstances and because an abstention, the idea of which I flirted with, was, given the polling, a vote for Hilary. I became a supporter, but never a fanboy, during his administration when he delivered substance, again and again.
The post Manners and Substance appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Been one of those weeks, too busy to think. I have collected a number of things I thought I wanted to write about but have simply been unable to get the job done. But want to pass them on…
The post Esoterica appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier joined me this AM. We discussed Bret Stephens’ revealing column in today’s New York Times:
The post Bret Baier On Bret Stephens’ New York Times Column Today appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton
The post Senator Cotton On CHIPS-Plus Act Which Went From $54 Billion In Subsidies And $25 Billion In Tax Credits To $250 Billion In Spending In 24 Hours appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
There are lots of lists of virtues, – Aristotelean, Platonic, Christian, etc. But one thing all the lists have in common is they are about personal character traits – charity, courage, truthfulness, humility…. These are hard things to obtain. They must be practiced, nurtured, studied, and are often against our initial impulses. Developing virtue is the effort of a lifetime and never full accomplished.
The post Virtue vs Virtue Signalling appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The host and the producer had good fun mocking the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson before the J6 committee this morning. And yet the Beltway Elite think it was was a “damning day.” Yet to do so they are ignoring, entirely, contradictory evidence.
The post And I Care Because? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The post South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem On Her New Book “Not My First Rodeo” appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves was my guest this morning:
The post Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves On That’s State’s “Trigger Law” And The Aftermath Of Dobbs appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I devoted a segment Wednesday to Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the Nancy Pelsoi 1/6 Committee Tuesday:
The post Commentary On The Appearance Of Cassidy Hutchinson Before Nancy Pelosi’s 1/6 Committee appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday was a tragic day.
The post This Bloody Administration appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The pandemic raised statistical obscuration from an occasionally practiced form of spin to an art form used to justify government overreach on levels previously unimagined in the United States. Numbers were sliced, chopped, “normalized,” and otherwise processed to make things look at bad as possible. We, the public, were deemed too stupid to possibly deal with raw numbers or simple counts. It will be interesting to watch this art form develop in the wake of the Dobbs decision.
The post A Not-So-Bold Prediction appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The last twenty-four little hours have seen more rhetorical nonsense thrown around than I had previously thought possible. I could barely stand to look at TV, listen to the radio or read the internet for all the ignorance, hyperbole, whining, kvetching, and straightforward bull*&^% that has been pouring forth in the wake of the Dobbs decision. It is hard to know where to begin to comment, but I shall endeavor.
The post A Victory For Law and Order appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
On Deck – Gavin Newsom!
The post Oh Please…Oh Please, Oh PleaseOh Please… appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
There are a lot of men that have shaped my life – that’s true for most men my age. My father, first, foremost and of course.
The post Men Who Make Other Men appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday was a fascinating reading day. Two articles appeared on the same basic theme that are sort of amusing, but far too consequential to be actually amusing. Further they are frar deeper than either of them notes.
The post Inadvertent Self- Destruction appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Last night this headline has me laughing hysterically:
The post The Philosophical Roots of Environmentalism appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Father’s Day, and I am flying from Tennessee to LA today. This could be interesting.
The post Some Things Cannot Be Fixed By Government – Fathers Day Edition appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
As I read through the headlines this morning, I was struck by how many headlines I encountered that were stories of perceived personal injury – none of which involved actual injury, just insult or fear. “This workplace is toxic.” “My ex might sue me – again!” “He was mean.” It goes on and on and on. There are two things to note in the trend.
The post This Nation of Wimps appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Texas Senator John Cornyn joined me this AM:
The post Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) On The School Safety Legislative Package He Is Negotiating With Senate Democrats appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
All you need is a ten second tag at the end for each specific candidate. You’re welcome.
The post A Little Free Campaign Consulting For All Republicans Running For Congress Or Senate This Fall appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Dr. Anthony Fauci Tests Positive for Coronavirus
The post Irony, Justice, or Simply an Inevitability? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
John Sexton at Hot Air is commenting on Andrew Sullivan noting on Substack that “the scolds are in retreat.”
The post Retreat Can Be Strategic appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
No, I did not watch last night’s congressional TV show, but the reviews are in. Well, a few reviews anyway. My perusal of the headlines this morning shows only a moderate amount of coverage, indicating that 1) no news was made and 2) no one cares much. As predicted.
The post It’s All About Personal Ego appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday was a crowing day for many as California appeared to step back from the brink of suicide in Tuesday’s first round elections. Problem is stopping a suicide attempt is a long, long way from eliminating suicidal desires. I wrote last week:
The post Listening appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I spent most of this morning’s show on the attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh early Wednesday morning:
The post Senator Tom Cotton and Fox News’ Bret Baier On The Attempted Assasination Of Justice Kavanaugh appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
There has been much ado of late in the religious press about the “Drag Pastor” in the United Methodist Church. One hardly knows where to begin. The latest story on this phenomenon is in The American Spectator. There is so much that could be said here, but I want to focus on one specific paragraph in the piece:
The post Understanding Love and Hate appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
It is fair to say my graduate level education in the science of chemistry began with a fantasy – the comic book superhero “The Flash.” When a bolt of lightning struck the laboratory chemist Barry Allen was working in, bathing him in an irreproducible mixture of substances and massive electrical discharge he gained the physics defying power of super speed. (There were a number of other chemistry-based superheroes – Hourman, Metamorpho, even the Metal Men to some extent, but The Flash was the guy I loved.) Once my study of chemistry actually began for several years I knew, just knew that once I got through this elementary stuff, I’d get to the stuff that might get me where I wanted to be. But then high school and my first class called “chemistry,” as opposed to the independent reading I had been doing, and my super-speed dreams were quickly dashed, but replaced by a fascination with the actual, real science.
The post Chasing A Fantasy appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Former Maine Governor Paul LePage, who is running again, joined me this morning:
The post Paul LePage, The Once and Future Governor of Maine appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Glenn Reynolds NYPost column this week draws a stark line between “the ruling class” and normal Americans. His primary point, which is that our leadership tries to avoid accountability and blame through the use of communal ideality is one I cannot help but agree with. His list of “fails” on the part of our government, particularly recently, is spot on and worthy of note. This is a statement that I find I must agree with, though I must also take issue with:
The post “Our” Moral Failures appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Yesterday I wrote of the death of political sensibility. The president’s speech last night, calling for gun control, looks like it might bolster my case. Passage of such a thing is a political impossibility and completely bucks the growing tide for legislation to harden schools – another failure to read the room.
The post Don’t Fall For It appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I have been commenting a lot on California politics this week. A big reason for that is that the CA primaries are next Tuesday. After careful consideration, for the first time in my voting life, I am not going to participate. Let me repeat that. I am not voting next Tuesday in the California primaries; the first time I have not voted in an election since I became eligible to vote.
The post The End Of Political Sensibility? appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The host seems desperate to find something that Congress can do about school shootings. Fully understandable given the recent birth of two grandchildren and three already hanging around. He took calls most of the Tuesday show looking for ideas. One call in particular produced a fascinating exchange. I do not recall the precise caller’s name, but his response to the host’s proposals was, to paraphrase, “There is no reasonable proposal that ‘they’ will not turn into a nightmare.” That resonated with me – deeply.
The post Problems Compounding Problems appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
On Tuesday, Senator Tom Cotton joined me Tuesday and Senator Rick Scott Wednesday to discuss the massacre in Uvalde and what the Senate might be able to agree to that could then be sent too the House. It is important to recall that Senator Scott, as governor of Florida after the Parkland massacre, shepherded a legislative package through his state’s GOP-dominated legislature:
The post Senators Rick Scott (FL) And Tom Cotton (AR) On The Senate And Legislation On School Safety And Guns appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
California’s ~~Dungeon Master~~, er Governor Gavin Newsom tested positive for Covid over the weekend (the irony is so rich), but not before releasing his “budget proposal.” The scare quotes are mandated by the sheer fantastical nature of the thing. It seems clearly to have been drafted by the fantasy storytellers of Hollywood. Also indicated by the fact that it was dropped on the Friday before a three-day weekend. We’ll use the LATimes reporting and start here:
The post The Madness of King Gavin appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Too many people think today is about “victims” of war. Way, way too many people think it’s just a three-day weekend to kick off summer. It is neither.
The post To Honor Those… appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
I have spent a good portion of the day trying to assemble the timeline and understand all the decisions involved in the police response to the Uvalde shooting. I can’t get the job done. This is in part because information keeps coming available on an hour-by-hour basis. But mostly it is because the more I read, the more my anger flares and the less capable I am of making a reasonable determination.
The post Who and How Hard appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
So, Uvalde happened and we have way too rapidly descended into the usual debates about guns, police in schools and calling each other names. That, of itself, says something. The lack of originality in how we respond indicates that we either have not taken the time to mourn and are just flailing about, have nothing original to do about it, or there is nothing practical that can be done about it. In other words, when it comes to school shootings it is a SNAFU (see the acronym meaning of that term) and the entire post-event thrash is a catharsis – a big, national, media-driven catharsis.
The post Much Outrage, Little Action appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined me this morning:
The post Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on President Biden and Taiwan; President Erdogan and NATO; appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
All of Hugh’s podcasts of his radio show and his off-air extended interviews can be found at InterviewWithHugh.com
The post Today’s Podcast appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The politics of this nation are getting pretty ugly, and lawlessness seems more prevalent than lawfulness. In recent weeks both Victor Davis Hanson and I have written of the desperation in our current politics and the unlawful and increasingly violent ways that desperation is expressing itself. The future can look grim.
The post Christ in Politics appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
America is built on optimism – on the belief that we can, if given the opportunity, make a better life for ourselves.
The post Afraid Of Optimism appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Dave McCormick, candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, joined me this morning. I endorsed the West Point combat veteran, Princeton PhD and business success this week and we talked about how crucial this seat, presently held by Senator Pat Toomey, is to the GOP regaining the majority in the United States Senate:
The post Dave McCormick, PA’s Next Senator appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
America’s most successful governor, Doug Ducey of Arizona, joined me this morning:
The post Arizona Governor Doug Ducey appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Alex Gray, former Chief of Staff of the National Security Council in the Trump White House, a four year veteran of that White House, joined me this morning to answer some of my questions about former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s book:
The post Alex Gray, Candidate For Senate in Oklahoma, On The Oklahoma Tribes’ Upset With Him, And On Mark Esper’s Book appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
There has been a discussion brewing over the past couple of weeks about the church and politics. Major Christian figures like David French and Rod Dreher have been debating much. I have not followed it closely enough to know how it started or even where it is going, but it seems to have reached a new peak with a Tim Alberta piece in The Atlantic, “HOW POLITICS POISONED THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH.”
The post The Church and Politics appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti:
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti blamed high housing costs for the surge of people moving out of the second-largest U.S. city.
LA County lost 160,000 residents during the 12 months through July 1, the biggest population drop of any U.S. county, according to a U.S. Census report released last week. That accounted for almost two-thirds of the declines in California, the most populous state.
“You don’t have to be indigent, you don’t have to be homeless to feel that it costs a lot,” Garcetti said during an interview Friday at LA’s city hall. “If you ask me the question, what are the top three issues facing Los Angeles or California, I’d say in this order: housing, housing and housing.”
I own my home – outright. The rise in the price of housing in LA has been a financial boon to me, a huge one – and I am leaving. A bit of profit tanking? Sure, but I don’t need to sell my home to realize that cash, nor do I need that cash. Most of the people I know have left, are leaving or are thinking about leaving – and the vast majority of them are in the same financial circumstances I am in. Most of the people leaving LA are not leaving because they cannot afford a home. As this article points out:
U.S. coastal cities saw the biggest decreases in residents during the pandemic. Aside from the cost of living, factors contributing to the urban exodus ranged from strict lockdown rules to high taxes and safety fears, including rising crime rates. A lower birth rate, slower foreign immigration and increased deaths also played a role.
But, of course, Mayor Garcetti doesn’t go there. Which brings me to this piece in The Atlantic. It is about the rise in “incivility” during the pandemic and now – everything from air rage incidents to reckless driving. And now we start to see the reason people are leaving LA – it has become a deeply uncivil place. And according to this piece a lot of that can be laid at the doorstep of pandemic restrictions. LA enjoyed, and continues to enjoy to some extent, (Just last week as I landed at LAX I was advised I needed to register at a web site as having travelled out of the county) some of the tightest in the nation. But even this piece ignores the full extent of the incivility.
LA was consumed by rioting early in the lockdowns – violent, destructive rioting. Not quite to the Rodney King riot level, but plenty of businesses were burned, etc. The violent crime wave LA is suffering under has its roots in those riots. That’s serious incivility and why people want to deny it is connected to the lockdowns I’ll never understand.
So, Garcetti refuses to look where the real problems are and The Atlantic refuses to discuss the full extent of the phenomena they are examining. Which brings me to the Jerusalem Post and the wave of terrorism that is hitting Israel. The world has grown more violent, not just the coastal cities. The pandemic saw all sorts of rules ignored, bent, warped and abandoned – without anything resembling due process. So naturally people are going to test whatever rule they find irritating, annoying, or wrong.
Ignorance of our mistakes only makes those mistakes worse. Willful ignorance of our mistakes for political advantage leads us to where we are now, where people feel like they must lash out to be heard, to make their point, to simply make the willfully ignorant acknowledge that the world is not as they portray it. The host’s invocation of the old Rush Limbaugh bit where in Rush denied what he had said second earlier was brilliant both on Rush’s and the host’s part. (Related Warning – April Fools approaches and the host is very good at such things.)
The pressures being created by our media and our politicians trying to paint reality differently than it actually is, is bleeding off in all sorts of ways. Some of them are unsavory and some are increasingly violent. If we don’t start to look reality square in the face and acknowledge it, those pressures could become explosive.
The post It’s All About Where You Look appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Tom Cotton, R-AR, joined me this AM:
Audio:
03-29hhs-cotton
Transcript:
HH: That’s President Biden yesterday in an unnerving exchange with Peter Doocy. I’m joined now by Senator Cotton of Arkansas, Senator Tom Cotton, a regular guest, Republican from Arkansas. Good morning, Senator. Look, this is very serious. And I am a patriot. I do not want the president of the United States to be infirm or mocked by foreign tyrants. What do we do?
TC: Good morning, Hugh. It’s good to be on with you.
HH: Thank you.
TC: That press conference was unnerving, a well-chosen word, although I have to say probably not as unnerving as the President’s statements during his trip to Europe last week. Obviously, the most unsettling and imprudent statement was when he in effect called for regime change in nuclear armed Russia. But he also seemed to suggest that the United States might use chemical weapons against Russia, or that the troops we have in places like Poland may soon be deploying to Ukraine, contrary to his announced policy. And then again, he denied it all yesterday in that press conference. Hugh, I…
HH: When you walk back a walk back, that’s what’s unnerving.
TC: Yeah, and you know, Hugh, one can agree on the merits with what Joe Biden said about the treachery of Vladimir Putin if you’re a talk radio host or an editorial columnist or just a normal American. But when you’re an elected official, especially when you’re the president, adlibbing and speaking about, I think Joe Biden called it, his emotional outrage, is highly unwise, and it’s dangerous to our national security. And most president throughout history have known that. They don’t get to engage in off the cuff extemporaneous moralizing that could threaten the interests and the safety of the American people. Hugh, at this…
HH: You know, can I add to that? I’ve been listening to Martin Gilbert’s Churchill book, Walking With Destiny. And for five years, Churchill cried through the whole war. He’s the most emotional man to ever lead the free world, and he was very emotional, and he was very, but we were in total war, Senator. That’s where we don’t want to go right now. We can’t have an off the cuff chief executive.
TC: No, Hugh, we cannot. And at this point, with just under three years to go in the Biden presidency, I genuinely think it would be best for all involved, to include Joe Biden, but especially for the American people, if the president would simply stop speaking publicly in an extemporaneous fashion. He should not adlib in speeches when he’s reading from a teleprompter. And frankly, I don’t think he should continue to take questions or do press conferences. I know that lots of Republicans and conservatives like to criticize the President for his lack of accessibility or his refusal to hold regular press conferences, but I think for the good of the nation and for the safety of our people, we should all agree, we on the center-right in America, that if Joe Biden would simply stop speaking extemporaneously, stop doing press conferences or press availabilities, we’ll agree that that’s not a solid ground to criticize him.
HH: I will agree 100%.
TC: Yeah. There are plenty of grounds to criticize the President on the results and the outcomes of his policies and decisions. We don’t need to criticize him on the process point of his not answering enough questions if he’ll simply agree to stop answering questions, stop adlibbing and riffing off the cuff from a prepared speech on a teleprompter. If we could get three years of Joe Biden speaking in deliberate fashion on words that have been carefully reviewed and vetted, even if we disagree with those words, that would be safer than what happened over the last five days.
HH: That’s a mature and smart response, because in all seriousness, we can’t do this for three years. And I asked David Drucker in hour one and Byron York in hour two what do you think Putin, Xi, Khamenei think is going on? And they all had good responses. Drucker suggested they may not know who’s in charge in the United States after yesterday.
TC: Well, if you put yourself in their shoes in Moscow or Beijing or Tehran, what’s happened over the last five days has probably been confusing, but it’s also been, in some cases, a windfall. Vladimir Putin has been claiming for almost his entire time in office in Russia that the United States want to engineer his ouster. He’s believed that and fervently declared that repeatedly. And Joe Biden essentially gave him a massive propaganda victory over the weekend simply by going off the cuff, clearly speaking off teleprompter on his emotional feelings, which again, I think we all have very strong feelings about the devastation we see in Ukraine and about the villainy of Vladimir Putin. And again, it’s fine to say that if you’re a normal American, if you’re a talk radio host, if you’re an editorial columnist. But when you are responsible for the safety of the American people, as I am, as other elected senators and congressmen are, and most especially as the President is, you know, it’s imprudent to be moralizing extemporaneously in such a fraught moment.
HH: You know, I want to refer back to Churchill again. I know you’re a student of Churchill. When he goes to Yalta, FDR, and it’s in Crimea. It’s so relevant to today, it’s almost ghostly spooky. He goes off to Crimea, and FDR arrives. It’s ten weeks away from when FDR dies, and everyone knows FDR is out of gas and is failing. Churchill is 70 years old. He’s complaining about being 70 years old, and he is, his colleagues say he’s up and down, he has good days and bad days, but he’s still Churchill, and he can get the House of Commons to support him. He can get a big show. He can give a two-hour speech. So I’m actually thinking what do we do to prop up the President right now in the eyes of the world, Senator Cotton, to confirm that the United States is strong and steady?
TC: Hugh, for the last month, the Congress has actually been pushing the President to take a firmer stance with Ukraine. It’s a very clear pattern whether it’s sanctions or weapons deliveries or the ban on Russian oil imports or revoking Russia’s permanent most favored nation status. The pattern is clear. The President is usually a few days behind Congress, to include members of his own party, and then he takes a decision. We need to continue that, and I think Congress will continue it, even if many of the Democrats in Congress still hesitate from some of the tougher measures I would advocate. They’re at least tougher than this President, and I think it’s an important signal to Vladimir Putin and our other adversaries that Congress continue to assert itself and take a stand on behalf of international stability and support the Ukrainian people as they do an amazing, miraculous, even, job of defending their own home and defending their own soil. And we need to pull out all the stops to ensure they have what it takes to defend their home.
HH: There’s an article in the Atlantic this morning, a sidebar, saying don’t ease up now. And that means flood the Ukrainians with whatever they need, from anti-ship missiles, which are still not there as far as I can tell, to these new drones, the mini-drones that are, I mean, the display of advanced weaponry is pretty amazing. But they haven’t got enough of it, Senator.
TC: Yeah, I mean, Hugh, if I can be partial here, I think this war once again shows the primacy of infantry in warfare.
HH: Oh, interesting.
TC: Russia has vastly outnumbered Ukraine in mechanized vehicles and tanks and armored personnel carriers and mechanized artillery. However, it’s been shown to be deeply vulnerable when not supported by the infantry against infantry forces that have mobile man-portable weapons. The Javelins and the NLAWs provided by the British have been devastating these columns of armor. So once again, if I can be partial, we have seen the supremacy of infantry, even in modern combat. And in some ways, the advances you cited, things like the one-way explosive drones, or small surveillance drones sided with off-the-shelf technology such as thermal imaging of the kind that you know, you can use in the woods in America, those go to show the primacy of infantry. Ukraine has more than enough infantry to defeat the Russian forces if they have those weapons, and we have to continue to provide those weapons for them, because you are right. That article says it’s no time to let up. We are barely one month into this war. It could go on for many, many months. And we cannot flag in our attention or in our dedication to the Ukrainian people. Again, they are not asking us to fight this war for them. They are asking us to help them fight their own war in defense of their own home.
HH: Now Senator, I’m not even an armchair private, much less an armchair corporal, sergeant or officer. I am an armchair talk show host. But I remember 1991 changed everyone’s view of what war could be. So did 2003 with the American massed combined forces moving forward. I am now amazed, I don’t know if big platforms are ever going to be as significant again. These are important discussions to have, but they don’t supersede the discussion about what to do about the President. So my question is would you welcome someone like, whether it’s former Secretary Clinton, Admiral Stavridis, someone who is serious going into the White House? Because I’m afraid they’re about to give the store away in Iran, in Vienna to Iran. I really don’t know who’s running things.
TC: Yeah, I’m very worried about the status of those negotiations regarding Iran in Vienna, Hugh. From all reports, we’re down to a single momentous choice, and that’s whether we remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from the terrorist designation list. Again, if it wasn’t a big deal to Iran, if it wasn’t vital to Iran’s power, then they wouldn’t be holding out for it. I would remind everyone that Joe Biden may be on the verge of delisting the Revolutionary Guard Corps at a time when three former high-ranking American officials must have full-time, 24/7 security details because of the threat of assassination of that very Revolutionary Guard Corps.
HH: Agreed.
TC: But for both Ukraine, for Iran, for China, I do think it would be welcome for the President to bring on board someone who is a senior statesman, wizened in the ways of the world. You mentioned Jim Stavridis. That might be one. It might be hard to get Bob Gates out of retirement, but I think that would be a great addition to his team as well, someone who has the independent stature and gravitas that so many of his team lack, that they can help right the ship.
HH: That makes a lot of sense. Senator, has the President called you?
TC: We have not talked lately, Hugh. No.
HH: So I’m just curious. We’re in the middle of a war. You’re one of the most influential Republicans in the national security community. And he hasn’t said come down and let’s talk about this? I mean, Nixon had people in the office all the time.
TC: I think, Hugh, the President’s aides keep a very, very close grip on his schedule and his calendar. I don’t think, you know, it’s not just me. I think it’s pretty much every Republican, and for that matter, a lot of Democrats. I think their access to the President over the last 14 months has declined pretty significantly as well. I just think that’s the way the White House conducts business.
HH: Is that a good way to conduct business?
TC: Well, obviously, it’s led to a lot of fiascos, most notably in Afghanistan. But also, I think the results over the last month, really the last six months with Ukraine, it’s led in part to this war that we see. And we kind of stumbled, as you saw, in Europe last week. So I do think, as you said, the President would benefit from consulting more widely. Look, he doesn’t have to consult with his partisan critics in Congress if he doesn’t want to. It doesn’t hurt my feelings. But gentlemen like you mentioned, Admiral Stavridis or Bob Gates, you know, General Jim Jones, who you may remember was Barack Obama’s first national security advisor, there are many graybeards out there who are not partisan critics, even if they do belong to or affiliate with the Republican Party. I think Joe Biden would benefit from their counsel.
HH: I agree, and I hope he listens to you. I hope he listens to you. Senator, thank you, as always. I appreciate it.
End of interview.
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By now everybody knows and either trumpets or ignores the fact that our response to covid, lockdowns, isolation, remote work, etc, has resulted in a mental health crisis and a huge rise in overdose deaths. Anybody with a brain knows that our measures to relieve such stresses (flooding the zone with money, for example) has resulted in massive supply chain disruptions and inflation. Then there is the crime wave which is not solely covid’s fault, but it is certainly a factor.
But consider what else has happened in recent weeks:
- A SCOTUS nominee could not tell the Senate what a woman was.
- We have awarded a woman’s swimming championship to a male.
- People are bragging about how many (negative) covid tests they have taken?!
- One man hit another man on stage during the Academy Awards.
- The president almost ad-libbed us into WWIII and isn’t quite done yet. If I didn’t know better, I would say the man is trying to slip off his leash.
I would not blame anyone that began to proclaim the world had slipped off its axis. The last two years have broken something very fundamental in us. We just don’t seem to know how to think straight anymore. There are no straight lines, no cause-and-effect, there seems only to be isolation induced fever dreams and the expression thereof as if such were sensical.
And then I remember. Even if you are not a believer, even if you think this Christianity, or Judaism, stuff is bunch of bunkum, the Bible contains some gems of wisdom that cannot be disputed. Proverbs 27:17:
As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another.
Which explains why we cannot think straight anymore. We have become like dull knives without whetting stones available. We are each others whetting stones, and in our isolation have grown very dull.
I only hope we can sharpen up before our dullness destroys everything.
The post The Real Cost of Covid (Responses) appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Seriously. As if it were not obvious enough to anybody with a brain that Hollywood has disconnected itself from America this happened at the Oscars tonight. (Uncensored version if you really must.) Not going to mention names because people this self-indulgent do not deserve publicity. For the record, did not watch the show – haven’t in years because it is a bunch of incredibly selfish people patting themselves on the back. I know way too many people way too good at their jobs that go an entire career without any awards, congratulations, or anything other than a “Don’t let the door hit you in the backside on your way out” when they retire to care that much about other people that while they may be good at their jobs get awards like this solely by virtue of access to media.
For years now we have been subjected to lectures about their personal political agendas as if they were somehow more intelligent or well informed than the rest of us. If I don’t care about that, and I most sincerely don’t, I sure don’t care about their petty personal grievances with one another.
One thing you can be very sure of – I will never pay my own money to watch a movie, or any other form of entertainment, that features the individuals involved in this disaster ever again.
The post The End of Hollywood appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Most often heard around Christmas, one of my favorite Bible verses begins this way:
The Word became flesh…
If you are like me, you have heard countless preachers expound on “The Word” – what it means, who it describes and the wonders of the Holy Trinity. That’s because you usually hear this verse preached on at Christmas – when we talk about incarnation.
But it is Lent, and the verse still matters but the thing to focus on is “flesh.” Firstly, and obviously, flesh is necessary for the actual death on Good Friday, which we prepare for during Lent. But as we emerge from the global nightmare that was our response to covid there is something else about “flesh” that matters a great deal.
If Christ’s earthly ministry is indeed the hinge point of history, then it would seem that flesh is how communication best happens. When even God must take the stuff on to get through to us, then it must be vital in some fashion.
During lockdowns we were told “virtual” church was good enough. Nonsense. If God needed flesh, we, acting in His name, certainly must require it. Post-covid many churches are experimenting with continuing the remote church experiment. Big mistake.
The thing that makes preaching effective is not the words used or the arguments made, it is presence, it is flesh.
Go to church, talk to people. Be in their presence. God’s word will flow.
The post Flesh, Lent and The Incarnation appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
This:
Symptoms from the new omicron variant’s subvariant — named the BA.2 variant— might be mistaken for spring allergies, experts recently told CBS News.
Which was immediately followed by a massive discussion of the necessity for testing at home to make sure you did not transmit this disease. One individual mentioned they had tested 70 times! Yes, Seven-Zero, 7X10, 100-30, 50+20 – need I go on? (I am not linking here because I do not wish to embarrass anyone – you’ll just have to take my word on this.)
Let’s see, I’m seeing home test kits on the internet at anywhere between 9 bucks a pop to $120. Let’s go with $25 for an average. So, the 70X tester has spent roughly $1750 on testing. All this not to spread a disease that affects people with an inconvenience that many of us have lived with every year of our lives.
As a sufferer of spring allergies, I think I’ll keep my $1750.
I think we have lost our minds.
The post Seen on Facebook appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
The first months at a university are heady things. One’s first taste of personal freedom and true intellectual activity is a stew both sweet and bitter at the same time. In my day this milieu inevitably created a situation where a bunch of new friends were sitting together on an unfettered evening drinking too much (or smoking if you were so inclined.) Invariably the conversation would begin testing the boundaries of one’s newfound intellectual capabilities and everyone would start pseudo-philosophizing. “Why ‘psuedo?'” you may ask. Well, the questions one found so deep under such circumstances were deeply influenced by the intoxicant of choice and so self-contradictory as to be unanswerable. You know things like, “If God is so powerful can He make a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it?” Initially it was a game and everyone giggled, but the more the intoxicant flowed the more seriously one took such inane questions until you were actually trying to answer them.
The image of such an evening is what filled my mind when SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson could not say what a “woman” was. I laughed a bit imagining the nine justices sitting in conference together with a keg and a bong. But then I remembered that just a week earlier the NCAA awarded a woman’s national championship in swimming to a man. It’s much later in the evening than the exchange between Senator Blackburn and Judge Jackson might indicate on its face.
Such college nights often went into the wee hours which meant you might just end up in class the next day hungover, or still somewhat under the influence. In this less than fully functional state you would then posit your inane pseudo-philosophizing in front of the prof. If you giggled when you did the prof would know what was up and in private warn you never to come to class under the influence again. If, however, you did so seriously, you quickly learned, in the most embarrassing fashion possible, just how ~~inane~~ stupid you were – a lesson in humility and the boundaries of genuine intellectual activity quickly taught and hopefully learned.
Clearly Judge Jackson never experienced such a lesson in her rather extensive education. Or if she did it most certainly did not take. But with the NCAA giving a women’s swimming championships to a man, I’m pretty sure it never happened.
My inclinations parallel the host’s when it comes to nominees. Barring serious integrity or morality problems, you win the election, you get your nominee. Judge Jackson’s child porn sentencing situation borders on a serious morality problem. Were she personally implicated in such a thing she’d be out, but this is a poor judgement issue, not an actual personal scandal. But the lack of intellectual integrity shown in her inability to answer Senator Blackburn’s question – without giggling – indicates that she was either stoned or stupid. Pretty sure she wasn’t stoned.
Regretfully, this nominee should be opposed.
The post Stoned In The Freshman Dorm appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Senator Lindsey Graham joined me this morning to discuss the concluded hearings on the nomination of Judge Brown Jackson:
Audio:
03-24hhs-graham
Transcript:
HH: Joined now by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina. It is a rare treat. Senator Graham is usually in the Senate gym at 6:00am and will not join the show anytime because we’re on live. But today, given the events of this week, we got him out of the gym. Good morning, Senator Graham. Good to talk to you.
LG: Thank you for having me.
HH: It’s always fun to have you. Are you going to vote to confirm Judge Brown Jackson to be Justice Brown Jackson?
LG: Well, you’ll find that out pretty soon, and I’ll be glad to share it with you and the world. But can I tell you my takeaways from the last…
HH: Oh, please. Please.
LG: Okay, number one, I think I better understand why all the radical groups, Demand Justice, Arabella, and that network of leftist groups wanted her over anybody else. What have I learned in the last couple days? She’s a nice person, has an accomplished background, but when it comes to judging, I’ve learned several things that are incredibly unnerving. It’s not the sentence she gives in child pornography cases that is outcome determinative. They’re always on the low end, and that is disturbing. But what I learned is that this judge will not consider as a sentence enhancement the fact that the perpetrator that went on the internet to pull down the images, and the more images the person pulls down doesn’t count in her world. So she takes off the table sentencing factors regarding using electronic media like the internet, and she will not hold against the accused the volume of pornography they possess. I think that’s a mistake, because the venue of choice for child pornographers is the internet. We went from mailing some photos to within one click being able to download thousands of images. They’re 85 million, at least, images of children being abused on the internet. And here’s my view. Every time you click the button to download pornography involving a child, your sentence should go up, not down.
HH: You know, Senator, I had on former U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott. He served under W., and he served under Donald Trump in the Eastern District of California. He said the Department of Justice has run a special facility for consumers of child porn for years in North Carolina. You can’t fix these people. You can’t help them. They revert. And the hearings, for me, ended up proving President Joe Biden is a leftist. Your Senate Democratic friends are leftists, and they’re soft on crime, and Judge Brown Jackson is a leftist and soft on crime.
LG: Right.
HH: And it’s just the way that it is. She’s qualified. I tell everyone, my radio audience is confused, I say she’s qualified, but I wouldn’t vote to confirm her. And she went from my over/under of 65 to 53 now. I just don’t think, it’s just crazy what she wouldn’t answer.
LG: Well, let’s break that down. Number one, what have we learned? How much the left hates conservatives.
HH: Yeah.
LG: …and which the media is in the tank for a Democratic nominee. Cory Booker, who’s a friend, moved everybody to tears about the historic nature of this pick, the first African-American woman to go to the Supreme Court. He did not shed a tear when Schumer and Durbin and Biden filibusters in 2003 Janice Rogers Brown, who was picked by President Bush 43. She was a Supreme Court justice on the California state Supreme Court to be a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal judge. She is African-American, born in Alabama, single mother. They destroyed her ability to get on the court for two years. Nobody shed a tear for that. So the only reason that Judge Jackson may be the first to go to the Court as an African-American woman is because the Democrats kept off Janice Rogers Brown.
HH: Janice Rogers Brown is a friend of mine. I saw her at a Pete Wilson salute in the fall at the Nixon Library. Great to see the judge. She’s retired from the D.C. Circuit now, eminently qualified.
LG: Yeah.
HH: She’d still be serving on the bench. Bottom line this for me, Senator Graham. If confirmed, Judge Brown Jackson as Justice Brown Jackson will vote with Justice Sotomayor what percentage of the time, do you think?
LG: I think all the time.
HH: (laughing)
LG: And I knew that Sotomayor and Kagan would be liberal. I expect Biden to nominate a liberal person. I get that. And I expect Trump to nominate a conservative person. But here’s what I don’t expect. I don’t expect the person to be nominated to have a view of the law that’s outcome determinative. The immigration case she decided, she ruled that the President Trump administration could not expand expedited removal in illegal immigrant cases as the statute would allow for anybody here under two years. What Trump did is expanded the list of people who could be removed under expedited removal that have been here two years or less. The statute says that decision is solely in the hands of the secretary and is non-reviewable. She set that part of the statute aside, struck down the Trump policy change, and the D.C. Circuit Court said this was, one of their greatest violations of ignoring a clearly written statute they’ve ever seen. She discounted the law as written to get an outcome she wanted, in my view.
HH: Now were the one, I don’t know if it’s you or Tom Cotton who said those of us in the law writing business really don’t know how to be more specific.
LG: That was me.
HH: That was you?
LG: I said, you know, I told my staff if you, okay, here’s the challenge. I want you to go and write a statute, and your audience is judges. Write it in a way where you could tell the judge this is the discretionary decision that we’re talking about in this statute. They can make any decision they want up to two years regarding expedited removal. It’s solely in the hands of the secretary. And this discretionary decision under the Administrative Procedures Act is non-reviewable. That’s exactly what they wrote. It is impossible to write a statute more clear than this one.
HH: You’re right. You know, Senator, these hearings don’t often tell you much about the judge. They tell you a lot about the Senate and the senators. And your exchange with Dick Durbin when the chairman would not shut you down, I mean, you blew through your time limit, and you know why he wouldn’t shut you down?
LG: Yeah, I got 30 minutes. You know why? Because…
HH: Because of their embarrassment at what they did to Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. They dare not deny you ten minutes.
LG: Well, number one, she was evasive. I understand the game. You know, you’re a great legal mind, good on your feet. That’s why you’re on the radio and TV. I understand the game. My goal is to challenge her fairly. And when Washington Post says this was worse than Kavanaugh…
HH: Oh…
LG: That is disgusting.
HH: Did Ruth write that?
LG: If anybody that they interviewed…
HH: Did my pal, my boss, Ruth Marcus…
LG: We need to get that, listen, you need to get the editorial, my friend. They accused me of being worse than Kavanaugh. Now what was Kavanaugh about? He was ambushed after the hearing was over with allegations that they say were credible. Here’s what I said about the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh. They fall in two categories – manufactured. Three of the people making claims against the judge actually made the stuff up and may be going to jail. The other claims were uncorroborated accusations. The more you looked at them, the less reliable they were. They were not credible. Has anybody accused her of misconduct here? All we tried to do is prove that her record is one of judicial activism. And when it comes to Gitmo, this is a pet peeve of mine, I don’t mind representing Gitmo detainees. I’ve said the greatest traditions of being a lawyer is to represent the unpopular. But she signed on a brief, an amicus brief, and you know what that means…
HH: Yeah.
LG: …that accused Bush and Rumsfeld of being war criminals, and would eliminate indefinite detention under the law of war, which means we can’t hold anybody.
HH: You know what I heard her saying in that exchange? I heard her saying that Morrison and Foerster partners made me do it. That’s what I heard her saying, is that they made her…
LG: No, I hear something else. Well, I don’t remember doing, I don’t remember me calling them. Would you sign your name to a brief that called the President…
HH: No.
LG: …of the United States a war criminal?
HH: Absolutely not. I wouldn’t. And I doubt that she read it. Honestly, I thought to myself that…
LG: That’s the language of the left, is my point.
HH: Yeah.
LG: I mean, she’s hanging out with activists. That’s the language of the left.
HH: Now Senator, someone online asked what happened to Lindsey Graham? And I wrote Lindsey Graham has gone through the Kavanaugh and the Coney Barrett hearings now. He may have watched the Clarence Thomas hearings, but he’s gone through these others. And I think you’re actually, I’m not going to use the word scarred, I just think you’re informed about the left now in a way that maybe no one who isn’t on Senate Judiciary is.
LG: Well, and, so you can’t, I can’t even say it any better. What happened is that I understand that I voted for Sotomayor and Kagan because I thought they were qualified. They were people of good character. I expected them to be liberal, and they have been. I would expect the favor to be returned. And I was beyond shocked at the way, Alito was bad. But Kavanaugh was the destruction of a fine man and his family to keep a seat open. Amy Coney Barrett was treated like she’s a weirdo because of her faith. Here’s what I’ve learned. People of color and women who embrace conservatism are fair game. Here’s what the media wants me to do. Sit there and clap for Judge Jackson, vote for her and keep my mouth shut. That’s why I am who I am in this hearing. I am refusing to play the game of not challenging her, because if I do, somebody will call me a bad name. I am so far over that.
HH: I’m so glad. By the way, I think the hearings helped the cause, the cause being the rule of law, because I think people are beginning to connect the dots, Senator Graham, that Joe Biden is soft on crime, Senate Democrats are soft on crime, the judges they nominate are soft on crime, and we’re tired of soft on crime. I just came back from L.A. L.A. is overrun with homeless people who defy law by virtue of their disability, their addiction or their mental disorder, or they’re just, their desire to live on the street. And people are running off with $950 and less, because it’s not prosecuted by these crazy Soros prosecutors.
LG: Right.
HH: I think this is the issue of the coming election. Do you?
LG: I think so, too. Well, I think Ukraine will be. I think a couple things. Number one, you could connect the dots regarding her record from the Space Station.
HH: (laughing)
LG: I mean…
HH: Yes, you could.
LG: Literally. This is not that hard. You know, I came into this thing not really knowing how I would approach it. And the more I got into her record, and the more I heard her talk, the more I’m convinced that Michelle Childs was destroyed, because she would have been liberal, because they saw in Judge Jackson the activist that they’ve been living for all these years. So I’ll tell you about my vote and why I’m going vote and how I’m going to vote later. But let me tell you what I think will define this election – security at home and abroad. I think the judges being picked are going to expose a bias here against being tough on crime and activism in terms of interpreting the law. And I think Biden’s world order he’s creating is thugs, terrorists, and communist dictators are going to run the world if we don’t change our policy.
HH: Let me close by talking to you about Bill Barr, who was a guest on Monday. And I read Barr’s book cover to cover. There is one overwhelmingly provocative line. The failure to try one Gitmo detainee in 19 or 20 years is an indication of our unwillingness to survive as a nation, that we cannot bring these people to justice.
LG: Yeah, I know.
HH: And I stopped, I underlined it, I talked to Barr about it, because it’s right.
LG: Yeah.
HH: If you cannot try, much less execute the people who are trying to kill you, you’re at a crisis point.
LG: Well, KSM has been in jail for I don’t know how many years now.
HH: 19.
LG: Number one, he hasn’t killed any Americans, because he’s still in jail. An enemy combatant can be held off the battlefield as long as there are hostilities, and as long as they present a threat to us, because we’re in a war with radical Islam. You can’t hold somebody indefinitely under criminal law. Judge Jackson wanted to change the ability of the United States to hold enemy combatants indefinitely to interrogate them. She wanted them charged or let go. KSM, he was ready to go into the military commission system. Obama comes along and shuts that whole system down. It’s been shut down and started twice, and I hope one day to see justice rendered.
HH: I think it’s coming. I do believe it’s coming.
LG: I hope so.
HH: …and that the new Court will uphold whatever procedure. Let me close by asking you about Ukraine, Senator Graham. Why do we not send them anti-ship missiles? They’re getting bombarded by the Sea of Azov warships…
LG: Right.
HH: …the Black Sea warships, and they don’t have a Harpoon or the Norwegian missile that we now use. Why have we not done that?
LG: Why haven’t we sent them to the S-300s? Why? If you believed, as Biden indicated, and Blinken, that the invasion was going to happen, that you had good intel that he’s intending, Putin intended to invade, why didn’t you start flowing the weapons before the invasion? So here’s what I would say. Biden cannot embrace victory for Ukraine. They’ve always believed that Putin would win, there would be a peace deal to satisfy Putin, and they could get on with life. The problem is that Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have fought like tigers. Every weapon we’ve given them, they know how to use and they’ve done a good job. If we gave them anti-ship missiles, I think it would be a game changer. The Russian Army could break only if we help Ukraine more. Biden cannot wrap his head around winning. And if Putin gets out of this thing, survives, then China will invade Taiwan, and the Iranians will get a nuclear weapon. If the Ukrainians with our help can break the Russian Army, I think Putin is short for this world, and Biden cannot embrace victory. He cannot embrace winning. And the slowness of this administration just breaks my heart, and it’s disgusting.
HH: Now you know, Boris Johnson is picking up the pace.
LG: He is.
HH: And I’m glad that we’ve got one leader in the West.
LG: He’s the man.
HH: He’s the man right now. Lindsey Graham, thank you. Good to get you out of the gym this morning.
LG: Okay.
HH: I hope you’ll get back with us again soon.
LG: I need to be in the gym more and on your radio station more.
HH: Good to talk to you.
LG: Thanks. Bye.
HH: (laughing) Thank you, Senator.
LG: Bye.
HH: Bye bye.
End of interview.
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Yesterday I paid $6.29 for a gallon of mid-grade gasoline then went to the grocery store to find whole aisles empty. I flashed back for a moment to my 1991 visit to the Soviet Union when you had to have a special government issued card to buy gas and people stood in lines many blocks long to go to stores that only had one item. Our economy is on the brink.
In the last episode of the HBO docudrama “Chernobyl” the trial of the reactor operators is concluded by the chief engineer of the immediate aftermath of the explosion explaining what happened. What one quickly learns is that we do not control nuclear reactors – we balance forces in them to counteract each other. It is called in science and engineering parlance “maintaining an equilibrium.” Many of our great engineering achievements are finding and maintaining equilibriums. That is how dams work, for example.
To control a thing means I can make that thing do whatever I want. But maintaining an equilibrium is a very different matter. In the case of a dam or a nuclear reactor, the thing we build is a device that permits us to balance a number of forces against each other and we must work in concert with those forces or else things get very unhappy very rapidly. That’s why dams break and disastrous floods ensue, and why “Chernobyl” has become a pseudonym for catastrophe. We press the equilibrium too far in one direction and one force overwhelms all the others,
An economy is not something that can be controlled. It involves forces as strong or stronger than the atom or moving water. An economy is an equilibrium of the highest order. In the worst of the covid days we tried to control that which could not be controlled. We thought that with enough motivation (fear) we could stuff the uncontrollable beast into a cage. But the best we could manage was to unbalance the forces and hence we are on the brink.
Now, the populace having declared covid in the past, we hear much talk of a “green economy.” This talk comes from people just stupid enough to think they can somehow capitalize on the “control” of the economy they thought they had during the pandemic to control even more. All they are doing is creating greater imbalance. The more imbalance they create, the closer we come to catastrophe.
What I know is this, if we totally break the equilibrium that is the American economy the results will make Chernobyl or the Johnstown flood look like a child breaking a toy.
Why is it stupid seems to always come in a package with hubris?
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Senator Tom Cotton, (R-AR), joined me this morning to discuss his questions for and Judge Brown Jackson’s answers from Wednesday’s hearing as well as what he intends to focus on today:
Audio:
03-23hhs-cotton
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Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell joined me this morning:
Audio:
03-17hhs-mcconnell
Transcript:
HH: Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and to my guest, GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell from the great state of Kentucky. Good morning, Leader McConnell. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
MM: Well, and same to you. The McConnells came from County Down up near Belfast a long time ago.
HH: That’s where the Hewitts came from, Saintfield in Belfast, outside of Ulster. So there may be come common ground there.
MM: Yeah.
HH: Senator, what did you make of the Zelensky address yesterday?
MM: Well, inspiring once again. What a brave leader the Ukrainians have. They’ve been an inspiration to the whole world. And that said, yesterday, I appreciate the President’s efforts, but he needs to step up his game. There’s a lot more we need to do, and we need to do it quickly. I’ve been trying to get this administration to properly arm the Ukrainians for months, because you could see this coming. I mean, this is not a surprise attack. He’s been mobilizing and putting soldiers on the border for quite a while. No surprise, and I’d say one good thing came out of it, Hugh. Vladimir Putin has unified NATO and transformed German politics, something no American president’s ever been able to do.
HH: You know, the only leader of the West who has not increased their awareness of the threat posed by the trio of tyrants in Iran, Russia, and China is Joe Biden. And I want to ask you, can you believe we’re about to do a deal with Iran and Russia with Russia being the mediator with a terrorist regime that’s trying to kill Americans in the country as we speak?
MM: It’s mindboggling. And of course, it’ll be a bad deal, too. It’ll have absolutely nothing to do with all of Iran’s collateral activities supporting terrorism all over the Middle East. Yeah, I mean, President Trump was right to get out of that deal. And I think there’s no question the administration is anxious to make a deal. And look, you know, that unsettles our Sunni Arab allies like the Emiratis and the Saudis. They see us cozying up to Iran once again, so it has an adverse impact on our allies, the Sunni Arab states, and Israel’s not going to be too keen on this, either.
HH: It strikes me, Leader McConnell, that President Biden’s eagerness, and eagerness of his team led by Tony Blinken and Wendy Sherman for any deal with Iran has compromised his willingness to step up in Ukraine, because he needs Russia to do the deal with Iran. Ben Rhodes, you know, the Metternich of MSNBC, has been out there yesterday blasting Americans as oligarchs, the Koch Brothers. That’s how far left this gang has gone. Do you think fear of losing the Iran deal is holding the President back from supporting Zelensky?
MM: Oh, I think it could be a factor. Mainly, I think they have incorrectly concluded that Putin may actually want a war with NATO. That’s insane. He can’t handle Ukraine. He’s nuts to try and go to war with us. And so they have, in effect, Hugh, allowed Putin to define what we do. If they’re afraid, for example, to okay the Poles’ efforts to send MiGs into Ukraine because, why, they think it may provoke Vladimir Putin. It could well be that they’re anxious, their desire to get into a bad deal with Iran has an adverse impact on this. I’ll tell you, in my view, what gave Putin a green light was our precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan last August. It was a bold display of cowardice and an indication that America was in retreat.
HH: Well, I have been telling people all morning I’ve been listening to Andrew Roberts’ magnificent biography of Churchill before I go to bed. Last night, I listened for two hours, because it’s 1938-1939. The Brits believed in appeasement. They actually embraced it, the Conservatives under Neville Chamberlain. And right now, President Biden just strikes me as Neville Chamberlain writing to his sisters. He thinks he’s doing a good job on Ukraine, Mr. Leader. You’ve known him a long time. Can anyone get through to him? He’s not doing a good job. He’s in the line that leads directly back to Neville Chamberlain.
MM: Well, you know what Bob Gates said about Joe Biden in foreign policy, that he’s been wrong on every major occasion. So I think the, this is the Joe Biden that I knew in the Senate. Good guy, but increasingly wrong, or almost always wrong on these kinds of issues.
HH: And surrounded by weak-kneed people, even if Ben Rhodes is on the outside cheering on attacks on the Koch Brothers as oligarchs. It’s just astonishing. Now, I want to turn to Judge Brown Jackson. I think she’s going to be confirmed rather easily. I’ve put the over-under at 65. I think she’s qualified, but the questions matter. Will someone ask her about Article II, Section 2, which is the treaty power? That is vested in your body, Leader McConnell, not in the State Department. They cannot continue to do JCPOAs and pretend like they can’t go to the Senate with it. Is that a legitimate question for a nominee to answer?
MM: Well, I don’t think there’s any question she would not answer it. She would claim that that’s an issue that might come before her. And so I think she will not answer it. I’ll tell you, I asked her something I thought she could and should have answered. I said Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Breyer have been quite open and expressed themselves on the issue of court packing and term limits for Supreme Court justices, which is clearly unconstitutional. This is about the institution of the Supreme Court. How, you know, why don’t you tell us how you feel about that. She wouldn’t even answer that. So I think all these nominees, whether they’re from a Republican president or Democratic president, since Justice Ginsburg’s confirmation have basically refused to answer any question, and I don’t think she’ll address the Treaty power, either, Hugh.
HH: All right, now there is one thing I think she can address, I don’t know if you’ve talked to her about it, when your colleague, Chuck Schumer, held a press conference in front of the Supreme Court and threatened the Court. And the United States Senate sent a brief in threatening the Court. That is a Court matter about which the Court, it’s not going to come before the Court, because it’s a letter. Would she talk about the appropriateness of threatening the Supreme Court by the Senate?
MM: Well, my guess is that our Judiciary Committee members will ask her about all these things. But she won’t respond. Look, I mean, the liberal groups that are so excited about her nomination are the very ones that have been calling for packing the Court or term limits on the Court. So in a sense, that’s her base. So that’s a double reason why she won’t answer questions about attacks on the Court, which I think would be appropriate for her to comment on.
HH: I do, too. I hope it’s repeatedly brought up. Leader McConnell, I have in my hands One Damn Thing After Another, the memoir of Attorney General William Barr. I’m a big Barr fan, and I’m up to the part where they’re nominating David Souter. And you know, that is probably the biggest mistake in judicial politics in the last 50 years, because it was Edith Jones or David Souter. Ken Starr was in third place. And George H.W. Bush, a great American, was afraid of a confirmation battle. Why is it that Republicans are afraid of them, and Democrats aren’t, that they nominate reliable hardcore liberal judges like Judge Brown Jackson, and no one doubts she’s going to rule with the left, and we get all jumpy, we being Republicans, about nominating good, solid conservative originalists?
MM: Yeah, I think, I think it’s pretty safe to say no Democratic president has had an unpleasant surprise by any of their Supreme Court nominees, and we’ve had that on a number of occasions. I don’t think we made any mistakes during the Trump administration. I think confirming judges with a simple majority helped get the right kind of judges on the bench. But yeah, if you look back, Nixon appointed Blackmun, Bush 41 did Souter. They made a mistake.
HH: And Bill Barr points this out that Dick Thornburg and Boyden Gray recommended David Souter. He and Mike Luttig and Vice President Quayle and others supported Edith Jones. What would be the difference in the United States if Edith Jones had been the nominee, Leader?
MM: Enormous difference. Edith Jones is still on the 5th Circuit doing her thing.
HH: Yes, she is.
MM: She’s been terrific. You know, others that were considered at the time, Larry Silberman, a great D.C. Circuit Court judge, would have also been an all-star.
HH: So what’s ahead? Do you just expect a repeat of the Kagan hearings, a repeat of the Sotomayor hearings where there are difficult questions asked? Republicans do not engage in vicious personal attacks based on rumor, innuendo and lies, and the judge is confirmed comfortably? Is that what you expect?
MM: Yeah, look, I’m not interested in what somebody may have written in Justice Jackson’s high school yearbook. And I think this will not be anything close to what they did to Clarence Thomas or Brett Kavanaugh.
HH: I agree. I also think the Democrats hope that some Republicans overplay their hand, because they’re going to get, they’re going to get blown out in November on a variety of reasons, and they’re praying that the Republicans make a misstep here. Does the conference know that?
MM: Yeah, we do. We do, and I think Judge Jackson will be treated respectfully. I think the questions will be appropriate, and I think you’re right. I think she’s highly likely to be confirmed with very few Republican votes because of her philosophy, not anything else.
HH: But the Republicans in their questioning will not be using the tactics of the left. I mean, I will disown those. Have you just talked to them bluntly? We don’t do that?
MM: Yeah, I mean, I’m confident that’s not going to happen. None of our people are interested in doing that.
HH: All right, last question is on gas prices, Mr. Leader. The President is right. Putin has added a premium to our gas. But it’s 10%. It’s not 100% of what’s happened at the pump. Does anyone on the other side of the aisle really believe gas prices are the result of Putin’s invasion?
MM: No. It’s laughable. The invasion’s gone on for three weeks. The spike in gas prices began at the beginning of the year. And so whatever the, whatever Putin added was a tiny percent of what you’re paying at the pump.
HH: And is there anything that the President could do to lower that gas price, in your opinion, that he has not done?
MM: American energy production. We were a net exporter of oil and gas as late as 2019. They have basically shut down domestic production on public lands, cancelled the Keystone Pipeline, and they’re begging Venezuela, for example, to increase production while they won’t allow it here at home.
HH: It’s astonishing. So the very last question, Senator, are you confident of getting the Senate back under Republican control in November?
MM: I think we have an excellent chance. There are a lot more of us up than them, 20 of us and only 14 of them, but the President’s in terrible shape. I think the chances of his improving dramatically before November are not good. And this kind of midterm election is always a referendum on how you feel about the incumbent president.
HH: I agree with that. Leader McConnell, continue to keep the focus. Thank you for joining me this morning. Good luck in trying to get some answers out of Judge Brown Jackson. I appreciate the time, Leader.
MM: Thank you.
End of interview.
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Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) joined me this AM:
Audio:
03-16hhs-sullivan
Transcript:
HH: Joining me, Dan Sullivan, Senator from Alaska. Good morning, Senator. Great to have you on.
DS: Hey, good morning, Hugh. Great to be on.
HH: Before we talk about Zelensky and Ukraine and serious things, I have to ask you as a Browns fan, what do you think of Jimmy Haslam’s bid to become the NFL’s new Dan Snyder?
DS: Yeah, look, I just, I mean, the whole idea of saying we’re going to get rid of Baker Mayfield, and you know, it’s the perennial issue you and I have talked about, finding a franchise quarterback and sticking with him. Remember, he was injured a lot towards the end. I just don’t get it. It makes no sense to me.
HH: It makes no sense to me, either. Let’s hope it’s all just smoke. Let’s now get to the real smoke. There’s smoke over Kiev. There’s smoke over Kharkiv. But the Ukrainians say they’ve gone over to the offensive. Do you know anything about that, Senator?
DS: Well look, you know, like a lot of senators, I’ve been very involved in trying to get the Ukrainians as much lethal aid as quickly as possible. And by the way, as quickly as possible is one of the key issues. Hugh, as you know, our Pentagon can really drag its feet on some of these things. They get these drawdowns in tranches, and it just takes way to darn long. The Biden administration dragged its feet last fall in terms of getting them lethal military aid. I think we’re going to hear a lot about that in the next hour from President Zelensky. But we need to be doing everything possible to enable him to win. And I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility, although it’s going to be tough. You know, you’ve talked about it. The Russian way of war, they’re going to come in, and they’re just going to try to flatten Kiev. And you know, there’s some courageous, courageous people right now inspiring the world. Zelensky is one of them. But the average Ukrainian citizen, to me, is a sight to behold fighting for freedom. It’s remarkable.
HH: You are too young to remember this, Senator, but in 1973 when the Yom Kippur war was on, I was a junior in high school. Nixon became so frustrated with the Department of Defense, he finally called in Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger and said send everything that can fly to Israel full of weapons. Do you think Biden will get there, send everything that can fly, fill them up with not just Javelins, but high-altitude missiles that can take down the high-altitude bombers that are just indiscriminately hitting civilians? Will Biden get there?
DS: What’s happening, if you’re watching, on so many issues, this president is not leading from the front. He’s leading from behind. And think about it. Just go through the list, Hugh. NordStream2, the SWIFT sanctions, banning Russian oil, you know, MFN on Russian trade, the Migs. What’s the common theme? This president has had to be pushed either by Congress, and by the way, it’s almost always a bipartisan group in Congress…
HH: Yes.
DS: …or by our European allies. They have not led on the front foot on any of these issues, including the lethal weapons. What I’m hoping is that Zelensky really, really makes this a key part of his speech in the next hour, and then the administration will act. But the administration has been acting on almost every major issue after being pushed by us, and believe it or not, by our European allies. Look, when you’re being pushed by the Germans on energy and military equipment, you know something’s going wrong.
HH: Senator, I want to play for you Tony Blinken on NPR last hour, because it is Aspen Institute speak. It’s Davos speak. And it makes me crazy what the Beltway talks itself into. Listen to this talking to Steven Inskeep.
SI: Are the United States and its European allies capable of isolating China in the way that you’ve isolated Russia if China were to aid Russia beyond some certain point?
AB: Well, China’s already on the wrong side of history when it comes to Ukraine and the aggression being committed by Russia. The fact that it has not stood strongly against it, that it has not pronounced itself against this aggression flies in the face of China’s commitments as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council responsible for maintaining peace and security. It’s totally inconsistent with what China says and repeats over and over again about the sanctity of the United Nations charter and the basic principles, including the sovereignty of nations. And so we’re looking to China to speak out, to speak up, and to be very clear. Second, of course…
HH: Senator, this is, it’s high school U.N. speak. It is the stuff of Washington seminar rooms, you know, wrong side of history. It’s nuts.
DS: So Hugh, let me, let me, what I’ve been telling these guys and what I’ve been talking about is that we need to be much more clear. It’s not great power competition, right? This is the new era of authoritarian aggression, and it is dictators, too, Putin and Xi Jinping, increasingly working together, driven by historical grievances, and paranoid about their neighbors, whether it’s Ukraine or Taiwan because they’re democracies, and they’re willing to use force. You may have seen Congressman Mike Gallagher and I have put forward legislation called the Stand With Taiwan Act. This is the kind of clarity that we need. One of the lessons from Ukraine already is that comprehensive economic sanctions, financial sanctions, have the best chance to deterring conflict if they are clearly articulated before the conflict begins.
HH: Yes.
DS: And our bill lays out really comprehensive sanctions to crush the Chinese Communist Party leadership, key sectors of the Chinese economy, and it says here’s the sanctions. If you militarily invade Taiwan, here’s what you’re going to get crushed with. That is the clarity we need.
HH: You know, Senator…
DS: That’s the kind of clarity we need, not what you just heard from Tony Blinken.
HH: The alliance of tyrants that you refer to has got a third junior partner in Khamenei. And they’ve got Maduro, and they get Kim Jung Un. But it’s the trio of tyrants is Khamenei.
DS: It is. Trio. I like that.
HH: And so those trio, they don’t believe in this ‘international rules-based order’. They don’t believe in the wrong side of history. They believe in themselves. At what point do the Biden administration wake up to this?
DS: So again, this should be a clarifying moment. You’re exactly right, the trio of tyrants, what they believe in and what they react to is one thing. It’s power, whether that’s military power, whether that’s unleashing the incredible power of American energy, not unilaterally surrendering it, which is what Biden has done the whole first term, and it is the power of our alliances. You know, we are a country that has deep, substantial allies. We’re an ally rich nation. And those, that trio of tyrants, they’re allied for. These are American strengths, and it’s what these guys respond to. It’s not, you know, U.N. speak. It’s things like all right, Soleimani, you’re going to be in Iraq reviewing the killing of more troops, we’re going to kill you. That’s the kind of thing that the…
HH: They know. They understand.
DS: And Iran understands, and these leaders understand.
HH: Now Jim Sciutto of CNN reported minutes ago that a senior U.S. official has told him that Soviet-era SA-8, SA-10, SA-12, SA-14 mobile air defense systems are being given to Ukraine, which is great, I think, except they’ve got to be at least 30 years old. I’m not sure what they’re going to work or if they’re going to hit. Don’t we have stuff that can high high-range airplanes? I mean, I remember Vietnam, the Russians gave, the Soviets gave the Vietnamese everything to kill Americans with, and it wasn’t direct conflict.
DS: Well, you know, the Stingers are effective, but they’re effective only to a certain altitude. I would say these SAM systems, they’re old, but they’re pretty darn effective at higher altitudes. And the reason those are important, and this is where, Hugh, we have to be calling on other NATO countries, particularly former Warsaw Pact NATO countries to also surge as much as they can to Ukraine, is because the Ukrainians have trained on those, mostly. But those SAM systems that you’re referring to that are higher altitude than the Stingers are actually still quite effective.
HH: I’m glad to hear that. Let me ask you about the Mig…
DS: And it’s important that we get them there.
HH: The Mig-29s. Can’t Poland roll those up to the border like we did to Canada in 1940 and allow the Ukrainians to walk across and fly them away? I mean, what, how did we veto that?
DS: Yes, you’re exactly right. And you know, the point here, I mean, I was on the call with Zelensky about 10 days ago. He was talking about a no-fly zone. My view is give them all the weapons they have to create their own no-fly zone. And that’s what he asked us for, and the Migs are part of that mix of weapons systems that can control the sky. But as you see, right now, it’s what I mentioned earlier. These guys are, the Biden administration is deterring itself. The point is to deter Putin. And right now, on this issue as well, they’re dragging their feet.
HH: You’re so right.
DS: And it sends exactly the wrong message to the guy we’re supposed to be deterring.
HH: The Biden administration is deterring itself. Well put, Senator Sullivan. Breaking news, Marco Rubio has put out a deep fake that Russia has Zelensky saying he’s quitting. They’re not quitting. Dan Sullivan’s about to hear the real Zelensky as he gathers, as Congress gathers. Thank you, Senator Sullivan.
End of interview.
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Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) joined me this AM:
Audio:
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Former Allied Supreme Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis (USN, Ret.) joined me this AM and gave his view of the military situation on the ground in Ukraine:
Audio:
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Yesterday the host was looking for an exit ramp for Putin since he is clearly not prevailing in Ukraine as hoped. That same day, Jim Geraghty does not think Putin wants one:
Putin will shift to the long game and bet that his willpower can outlast the West’s. He never has to worry about reelection. He likely believes the Russian people will accept any sacrifice he asks to restore Russia to greatness. He looks at the West and sees weakness, decadence, and fecklessness — a lot of tough talk but not much willingness to sacrifice.
Sure, the world is outraged at Russia’s brutality in Ukraine now. But the world was outraged by the Taliban returning to power, and it slowly and steadily moved on from that; Afghanistan is once again an afterthought on the world stage.
The world was outraged by the brutality of Syria’s Bashir al-Assad and his use of chemical weapons 50 times in the course of that country’s civil war . . . but the world slowly and steadily moved on from that. The world was briefly outraged by the CCP’s ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs . . . and yet the world, moved on from that concern. There’s always something else coming along to push that story out of the news cycle.
I lean more towards Geraghty on this one. Putin is not entirely a rational actor here. If the rumors about his health have any basis at all and this is legacy thing for him I worry more about escalation. People forget that the Soviet Union exploded the largest nuclear weapon in history. Given that we turned a blind eye to our own “red line” on other types of weapons of mass destruction, I think he might rely on us to do the same thing if he employed battlefield, tactical nukes. Due to Chernobyl, Ukrainian radiation paranoia is extreme and even such limited nukes, while outrageous, could very well make them lay down their arms.
Here’s the thing about war, it is always inconclusive, unless one side cries “No Mas!” Most people expected this mess to turn into an ugly, quagmire insurgency like Afghanistan, instead it seems to be turning into a military stand off – both inconclusive, just quagmires in different clothes. If this thing is to end either Putin has to beat Ukraine to a bloody stump, or vice versa. Given the West’s hesitancy to arm Ukrainians, let alone enter the fray, I don’t see vice versa happening anytime soon. All Putin has to do is give an order.
Many in this nation are foolishly more worried about the climate change effects of nuclear war than the actual lives lost in the war itself.
So what should the US do? At a minimum we need a red line backed by action. After Obama and Assad, threats are meaningless. We need to demonstrate in real terms the point at which we will not tolerate anymore. It is time to get serious.
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In the second hour of Friday’s show, guest host Ed Morrisey interviewed Matt Schlapp. They were discussing Morrisey’s relocation from Minnesota to Texas and Schlapp commented, “Isn’t it great to live where people are happy?!” That certainly rang a bell with me as it is the perfect encapsulation of how my wife and I feel when we are at our Tennessee home versus our California home. The equations Red State = Happy and Blue State = NOT Happy seem to be empirically true.
That goes a long way towards explaining why liberals are always trying to fix things. What they are really trying to fix is unhappiness. Yet it seems like no matter what they do, from not permitting conflicting ideas in their presence to trying to keep their summers cooler, they can’t find the happiness they seek.
That’s because no matter how hard you try to control the things around you, you can never do so sufficiently to create that perfect happy circumstance. And that is because the world is not broken – we are. And thus, fixing the world starts with fixing ourselves. Then we can find our own happiness regardless of circumstances and the world will be better because we are better. The key is not to fix things apart from us, but to fix ourselves.
The events of Holy Week are what permit us to fix ourselves. This season of Lent is all about understanding that we are the problem, not the world. It is all about preparing ourselves to be fixed – which starts with knowing it is we that need the fixing.
This Sunday morning I go to church in search of happiness. I will find it in admitting I am the problem, I hope you will join me.
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Dictators always have a problem – STAFF. When you are a dictatorship advancement is based on pleasing the dictator, not competency. Truly competent people generally do not like toadying, so dictators tend to be surrounded by loyalists, but not necessarily the best people for the job.
Ask Putin. This whole Ukraine invasion thing is not going well for him. Most thought it would be over by now, but it’s not. Some of that is because the Ukrainians are much smarter fighters than anticipated, but a lot of it is because Putin’s own troops are not performing up to par. A retired military friend of mine once said “War is logistics,” and Putin’s supply lines are getting pretty thin. He has major logistical problems. In other words his military staff is not getting the job done. See first paragraph.
I see this happen in small business all the time. Most of my clients are privately held, and you can draw a line down the middle of that group. Those where the guy in charge wants to run every little aspect of the company are successful only to a certain point. Those that look for good people and enable them, tend to succeed to the point of going V.C. or public. It’s all in whether the guy in charge wants to dictate or lead. When the boss starts to interfere with a competent employee, the competent employee wants to move on. Such interference is insulting to the employee’s competence.
Which brings me to the current administration. Constitutionally, nobody is a dictator in the United States, not structurally anyway. But it is very clear that this administration is being dictated to by a few ideologies – climate change – Iran deal – wokeness. These three things act as filters through which all other considerations must be strained, just like the wishes of a dictator. Further, this is true even if they interfere with the task at hand. And thus, good people are hard to find in this administration.
This administration is Obama redux with a less competent leader. Do you remember in the early days of the Obama administration? He started with a lot of good, if wrong-headed, appointments. They all left very rapidly in the first few years. See first paragraph. This left the Obama administration as primarily operated by youngsters, slave to the ideologies. Well, now those youngsters are seasoned veterans and were reappointed under Biden – problem is they are still slaves to the ideologies, and without even the modicum of prudent leadership that Obama exercised we are seeing a nightmare of an administration.
Back in the days of Article VI Blog I often quoted “Martin Luther” (This quote is attributed to him, but not well sourced) “I’d rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.“ Competency matters more than ideology. Might be important to remember that in these next election cycles.
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This exchange between the host and Senator Rand Paul back on January 20 has haunted me:
HH: Now we actually have, I believe it’s beyond argument, that Dr. Fauci is an impediment to educating the American public about health risks. And God forbid, if there were another biohazard now, if there was another public health crisis, no one would believe him. Or the people that would believe him are 35%-40%. Is that an acceptable status quo?
RP: No, and I think the main reason I oppose him is not to win the argument, although I think we are winning the argument. The main reason I oppose him and keep going at him on the facts, particularly the origin of the virus, is we could get a much worse virus the next time there’s a leak from the lab. This one has a 1% mortality, but that still means, I don’t know, five, six million people died in the world. We could have a 15% mortality, or a 50% mortality.
Let’s break down what they are saying to a couple of bullet points
- The credibility of the public health system, particularly as embodied in Dr. Fauci, is virtually non-existent at this juncture.
- There is in this world the possibility of public health crises far more consequential than covid-19, even had it been allowed to progress without any sort of human intervention.
Should one of those crises present themselves right now, or even in the near-term future, we are in big trouble. Sen. Paul is focused on another release of some far worse agent from China, but there are other things that can happen as well. For example, imagine a dirty bomb in mid-town Manhattan. The explosion would not be that consequential, but such could render much of Manhattan unsafely inhabitable for decades. Would people believe and evacuate? Would they stay evacuated?
Then I consider the fact that covid-19 has not been nearly as bad as initial claims. Suppose Russia chose this moment to launch a full-scale nuclear missile attack? I know that if my television started yelling at me to get underground, I’m going to be sorely tempted to verify before I act.
Meanwhile, it is worse in some localities. Even the Would-Be Emperor Newsom is letting up on mask mandates, but not L.A. County. How am I to take seriously a public health agency in LA County that worries about masks proven to be mostly ineffectual while they do not address homeless encampments that simply have to be disease infested based on filth levels alone?
The internet, and particularly social media, have rendered us much more difficult to govern. Not ungovernable mind you, just much harder to govern. The solution we need is not tighter control on the internet or generally. The solution we need is better people doing the job of governing – better electeds, better appointeds, better bureaucrats. We need people concerned about the job, not the perks that go with it.
How do we get there?
It’s a long journey, but it starts with the voters. As the mid-terms warm-up and the next presidential is forming in the shadows, we voters need to re-calibrate our expectations and desires. We need to vote asking not “What’s in it for us?” but “What happens in the event of an actual emergency?”
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The Stacey Abram’s mask controversy has picked up on the heels of the Gavin Newsom/Eric Garcetti mask-less at the playoff game controversy. Jim Geraghty has done the best takedown of the mask hypocrisy angle. Frankly, now that California is moving the entire mask mandate thing from ridiculous to completely unenforceable, we’ve moved into the Twilight Zone. But there is a whole other angle to this Abram’s thing that is deeply troubling.
Check out the opening salvo of the Abram’s campaign’s response:
It is shameful that our opponents are using a Black History Month reading event….
Race card played.
Let’s back up about 15 years. I served on a criminal jury in downtown Los Angeles not long after the O.J. Simpson criminal trial. The defendant was African-American as was a significant portion of the jury. At the time I described the case this way, “The case I was involved in was a very straightforward case, based on a tape recorded conversation between an undercover police officer and the defendant. The crime was pandering, which is a specific intent crime. The defense stipulated to the findings of fact in the case, and the only issue in question was intent.”
The African-American jurors, not the defense, held that discussing housing for and rates charged by the undercover police officer posing as a prostitute was merely flirting in the African-American community. “That’s just what we do in the ‘hood.” In other words, the defendant’s color made what is a crime, not a crime.
While the Abram’s campaign is more subtle about it, that opening line of their statement is doing the same thing as those African-American jurors. It is invoking Ms. Abram’s race as defense for an action that is otherwise indefensible. (Setting aside for the moment the mask controversy itself.)
After I left that jury room I took to the blog I wrote then and said:
High School Civics class, first day, first words, “Ours is a nation of laws not men.”
Those words, that idea, that sentiment has made this nation great. It has, given time, undone the injustices that our society wrought early on.
There was a time, sadly, when the law did not apply equally to all people in our nation. It is our great national shame; fortunately, it is not true any more. More importantly; however, the solution to that former gross injustice lies not in changing what people group gets the benefits of that unequal application – it lies, rather, in assuring EQUAL application….
But I am deeply, deeply saddened. What I saw makes me fear gravely for justice in this country. When people are willing to jettison the law for reasons of race, or simple disagreement, justice ceases to exist. We become a genuine tyranny of the people.
The debate about the inanity of covid policy can rage all it wants. It should. But for Ms. Abram’s to invoke race in a debate that should have nothing whatsoever to do with race is inexcusable. The only shame due here is on her and her campaign for bringing it up to begin with.
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Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) joined me this AM:
Audio:
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Admiral James Stavridis (USN, Ret.) is a former Allied Supreme Commander of NATO. He has a new column out on Ukraine and the potential invasion of it by Russia. This AM he joined me to discuss “What could possibly go wrong?”:
Audio:
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Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie turned heads on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday (he is almost always the most interesting voice heard on Sunday mornings on the legacy network shows because he’s an honest-to-God Republican and will say both good and bad things about former President Trump whereas the Manhattan-Beltway media elite generally operates within a pervasive “Never Trump” or “Anti-Trump” environment.) Governor Christie joined me this AM:
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Transcript:
HH: Governor Chris Christie, I assume, is on the East Coast. Good morning, Governor. Welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show and the Interview.
CC: Happy to be back, Hugh. And I am on the East Coast and ready to go with a good day.
HH: All right, good. First question – Knicks or Nets for Governor Christie?
CC: Knicks.
HH: Okay, so I want you to know the Cavaliers are way ahead of them both. That’s what I wanted to let you know.
CC: Let me tell you, that’s not hard, Hugh. That’s not hard.
HH: Well, it is for Cleveland. You haven’t been watching the Cavaliers since LeBron left. Anyway, let’s play for the audience what you told Martha Raddatz yesterday prompting my invitation to you yesterday. Cut number 1, Chris Christie on This Week on ABC with Martha Raddatz hosting yesterday.
CC: Well, look, Martha, I think that the actions the Vice President took on January 6th spoke loudly, and I’m glad he’s finally put words to it. I don’t know why it took him so long, but I’m glad that he did. And let’s face it. Let’s call this what it is. January 6th was a riot that was incited by Donald Trump in an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and the Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own words last week – overturn the election. Now he’s trying to do a cleanup on aisle one here in correcting that stuff, but it’s not going to change. He actually told the truth by accident. He wanted the election to be overturned. Donald Trump did respond to what the Vice President said, and I think it’s kind of akin to the kid standing in the corner holding his breath. You know, it’s immature, and it’s beneath the office that he held.
HH: So Governor, did the former President call you yesterday?
CC: He did not.
HH: Do you expect a call soon?
CC: You know, you never know, Hugh. He’s, knowing him for 20 years and being his friend for 20 years, you never know when you’re going to get a call or you’re not when he’s upset about something. But look, what I said yesterday is the truth. And my biggest concern about all this is while Joe Biden and his administration is doing things to this country that may be undoable, and Republicans should be solely focused on that, we’ve still got the folks at the RNC focusing on this stuff. And then all weekend, we have commentators asking us these questions, and rightfully so because of the actions of the RNC. We as a party should be focused on our plan for the future and how we’re going to change and stop what Joe Biden’s doing to this country.
HH: Now Governor, I, the RNC did a lot of things, and we’ll come back to that. I want to focus on the legal issue that maybe Martha didn’t hear you say. Incite is a legal term. Do you think actual and proximate causation of the riot and the people who trespassed into the Congress, does causation flow to the President, former President?
CC: Look, I think due to his conduct, Hugh, not on January 6th, necessarily, but the conduct from Election Night forward, I think when you’re going to hear testimony from many of those folks who were up there, they’re going to tell you they went there because that’s what Donald Trump told them to do. And so I think he’s got an issue in that regard. There’s no doubt. Now is it a slam dunk? It is not, as is always the case, as you know with these types of issues. But to me, it’s less important as a legal issue than it is as a policy and political issue.
HH: Well, I agree with that, but let’s, you’ve got legal chops. Very few people do. I can talk to you, Pompeo, Cotton and DeSantis about the law. So I want to talk to you about the law. Is he liable? Is he potentially liable for any wrongful death action or damages done to the Capitol in tort?
CC: He’s potentially liable for that, although I think he’s down on the causation chain from the folks who were actually there and committing the acts of violence.
HH: Do you remember Palsgraf [v Long Island Railro?
CC: Yes.
HH: Okay, where is he on the train track?
CC: (laughing) He’s, look, I think that the conduct that happened was foreseeable given that he is, he’s been telling people you’ve got to fight for your country and go up to Capitol Hill and fight for your country. You know, words matter, Hugh. Words matter under the law. Words matter in politics. And words matter when they come out of the mouth of the president of the United States.
HH: Do you think he intended the 725 people who have been charged with one crime or another to break into the Capitol?
CC: I don’t think he intended that specific act, Hugh.
HH: He’s told me he didn’t.
CC: I think what…
HH: He’s told me on the air that he didn’t.
CC: Look, I don’t think he intended that, but I think what he intended, and his words this past week support this, that he was attempting to set up a situation to intimidate Mike Pence and intimidate the members of Congress into voting to overturn the election, his words, overturn the election, Hugh.
HH: Okay, what…
CC: And those are the President’s words.
HH: Was his speech, was his speech protected under the Brandenburg test, which we can explain to the Steelers fans later?
CC: Okay, I believe his speech was protected. I believe his speech was protected. That’s why I say that when you look at the causation chain, him saying the things he was saying from Election Day forward is what causes the problems.
HH: All right, now I want to switch over the Vice President, former Vice President’s statement. I want to play it for people. Cut number 11 from the Federalist Society last week.
MP: But President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election.
HH: Now this is a legal question, Governor Christie, and again, you’re a prosecutor with chops. Is Mike Pence right on the law?
CC: Yes, he is.
HH: Is there any doubt in your mind?
CC: Absolutely right on the law. Not a scintilla of doubt in my mind that the Electoral Count Act is something that’s ministerial. It is not something where the vice president of the United States is there making a qualitative or political judgment as to the Electoral Votes that come in certified by the individual states.
HH: A ministerial act?
CC: Yes.
HH: Okay, and that is a legal, I agree with your assessment. I’ve always agreed with your assessment. However, I’m also aware in 2016 that Laurence Tribe and Lessig, a couple of Harvard Law profs were out there trying to get faithless electors to switch their votes after their slates had been certified. Minnesota Post columnist Eric Black wrote about it. Didn’t all this craziness begin in 2000, get worse in 2004, and metastasize in 2016 so that it became the 2020 riot?
CC: I think all of those things were, what I talk about is the Democrats started this in 2000 by calling George W. Bush an illegitimate president. And they’re the ones who began down this road of illegitimacy. And by the way, that we had votes in 2000, as you know, to not certify to the vote by Democrats in the House with the George W. Bush/Al Gore election. And it continued from there. It continued in ’08, ’04, ’08 and ’16, and then ’20 being kind of the pinnacle, at least, to date of that kind of activity.
HH: So it’s a bad road that we’re on, but I want people to understand the Electoral Count Act is not really ambiguous. Now I moderated two debates, Governor in Arizona on Saturday for the Arizona would-be GOP nominees, four out of five, and for all four would-be Arizona GOP governor nominees. I asked the four Senate would-be nominees if they agreed with Mike Pence or Donald Trump on the Electoral Count Act. Three out of the four agree with Donald Trump. What does that tell you?
CC: Well, it tells me that in Arizona, there are people more afraid of crossing Donald Trump and what that will do in their ability to win the primary than they are in telling the truth.
HH: Now I also asked the governor candidates, all four of them, I got booed. I don’t like getting booed. You remember, you might not remember I got booed when I asked Ben Carson if he could actually drop a nuclear weapon on somebody. But, so I got booed when I asked the candidates what they thought of vaccines and if they had been boosted. And I looked at the audience and said President Trump said you should answer this question. Cut number 13:
DJT: Well, I’ve taken it. I’ve had the booster. Many politicians, I watched a couple politicians be interviewed, and one of the questions was did you get the booster, because they had the vaccine. And they all, they’re answering it like, in other words, the answer is yes, but they don’t want to say it, because they’re gutless. You’ve got to say it. Whether you had it or not, say it.
HH: Now Governor Christie, I don’t think they’re gutless. I think they’re afraid of Trump voters, because I got told I was making up what the President said. I mean, MAGA people were mad at me, telling me that the President didn’t say that. What is the disconnect, what is going on here? People who believe Trump on the Electoral Count Act and disbelieve the former president on boosters? It doesn’t make any sense.
CC: There’s a segment of our population out there right now, Hugh, who just hears what they want to hear and interprets things they want to interpret. And look, the former president has been very clear about his belief in vaccines and vaccinations. That’s why he started, rightfully, Operation Warp Speed, funded it the way he did, and brought about, through work that he did in supporting those scientists, the vaccines we have and the booster we have now. He’s done it. He’s taken it, and he’s recommending to others that they do the same. And for public officials, I think, you know, Trump is doing something very responsible here, which is to say you’ve got to lead. And whatever your answer is, whether you took the booster or you didn’t, you should be telling people they can make a judgment and an evaluation. I think this is nonsense.
HH: Yeah.
CC: All of it is nonsense.
HH: It is. It’s crazy.
CC: And it just shows how divided we are. It shows how divided we are.
HH: You cannot actually hold both positions and be, and wear a MAGA hat. You know, the MAGA hat says you’ve got to be wrong on the Electoral Count Act and wrong on the booster, to me, now.
CC: Yeah.
HH: I just don’t get it. Go ahead, Governor.
CC: I don’t get it, either, Hugh, and I think that it’s part of why we’ve got to get back to talking about facts. We have to get back to talking about not feelings anymore. And this is where we get into trouble when we’re talking about the 2020 Election, you know. It all flows from that, in my view. And this distrust that we continue to stir with the government, they’ve earned a lot of it, Hugh, but we shouldn’t be stoking it.
HH: I also asked each candidate in the Senate debate, I think, did President Biden win a Constitutional majority in the Electoral College, if not, which states do you question, if so, how firm is your authority. I want to ask you, Governor Christie. Did Joe Biden win an electoral majority in…
CC: Yes.
HH: A Constitutional majority in the Electoral College?
CC: Yes.
HH: How soon were you certain of that fact?
CC: By the, you know, probably two weeks after the election.
HH: Okay, I was pretty certain the next day, because I’d written a book. If you’re behind in four states, you’re not going to win.
CC: Right.
HH: It’s just the reality of cheating in America. You’ve got to be within a thousand votes, and he wasn’t within a thousand votes in any of those states, I don’t think. Let me ask you now, and I like the former president. I think he’s done a great thing on boosters, and I think he did a great thing on a lot of things, and his Supreme Court, we’re about to get to. Before I go to the RNC, I, do you expect anyone to run for president not named Christie or Hogan if President Trump gets into the primaries?
CC: Sure. Sure.
HH: Who? Who?
CC: I think Pompeo will run.
HH: Oh.
CC: That’s my guess. I think he would run. I think Pence will run.
HH: That’s going to be an interesting set of debates.
CC: It sure will be, and hopefully we get good questioners like you who are asking questions that allow to follow up so you can test what the candidates really know and what they don’t.
HH: Oh, that’s a non-fungible token for Chris Christie there. We like that plug. However, when it comes down to it, do you think the President will engage in primary debates given his numbers?
CC: Well, look, I think he likes it. I can tell you, I think he likes it. I think he likes the back and forth, and I don’t think he would like to be characterized by anybody who might be running against him that he’s afraid to do it.
HH: Ah, okay.
CC: And so knowing Donald Trump as well as I do for as long as I do, I think he will engage if he runs.
HH: Okay, now I’m going to, I’m going to take Chris Christie into the break, talk to him during the break, and bring him back on the other end. That’s an audience note. When Dobbs comes down, do you expect it to overturn Roe and Casey, Governor Christie?
CC: I do. I do.
HH: And effectively 100% back to the states, or to just find a way to uphold the 15-week law?
CC: Well, look, I think that John Roberts is desperately going to attempt to find a way to limit it to some extent to just the 15-week law. But I think that Roe is such a flawed decision, always has been, that this Court is going to say look, like Plessy V. Ferguson was flawed, Roe W. Wade is horribly flawed, and we need to overturn it.
HH: You know, we disagree on predictions. I think the Chief Justice will overturn Roe and Casey. I’ll be right back, America.
HH: Rejoined now by Governor Chris Christie. So Governor, I want to go to the RNC. Everybody in elite media, Manhattan-Beltway media especially, focused on the censure of Liz Cheney, my friend, and Adam Kinzinger. And they missed entirely the real big deal, which is they adopted a rule saying we’re not working with the Presidential Debate Commission. I can pretty much guarantee you that that’s an issue, and that Liz and Adam are not going to be an issue in the fall of ’22 and in 2024. Why doesn’t legacy media cover the big deal, and they only focus on the [1/6] Select Committee, which is actually illegitimate, in my view?
CC: Because they’ll, this is what they do, as you know, is they focus on the things that they think will help their cause. And their cause is the cause of the Democratic Party. And so they don’t want to talk about the inherent problems with the Presidential Debate Commission and what that’s going to lead to in 2024. They’d rather continue to talk about January 6th. Look, Hugh, I have strong feelings about that. I’d said them publicly. I said it again today on your show. But enough already. You know, we saw it. It reminds me of the old Marx Brothers routine. You know, are you going to believe me or your lying eyes? We all watched January 6th. We all know what happened. And I think that, but for legacy media, what they want to do is continue to push that and push it and push it, because they know that that’s harmful to Republicans, and they can see that we’re moving towards Republican majorities in the House and Senate without something cataclysmic happening. And that’s what they’re attempting to cause. And so that’s why they do it, and you know it, and so do I.
HH: I do, and I never talk about January 6th, because I like my audience. I don’t want them to turn me off. And they’re bored. They do not like it. It is illegitimate. Nancy Pelosi quashed the minority, and yes, there are two Republicans on it. Liz Cheney has been a fine spokesperson for national security for years. I don’t know Adam, but they’re opposite their party on this, obviously. I just am curious. Do you think the blue bubble knows how absolutely uninterested America is in the January 6th Select Committee, which is actually a rump parliament gone wild?
CC: No, I don’t think they have any idea, because they live in their own world. And I said this right from the beginning, Hugh, from when the committee was established, that it had undercut its ability to be a credible investigative body when Nancy Pelosi refused to allow Kevin McCarthy to put the members on that he wanted to put on. And that’s always been the right of the minority leader whether it was a Republican or Democrat. When she did it, she made it a partisan committee. And that’s not saying anything against Liz, because like you, I have great respect for Liz. But the fact is that when she prevents the minority leader from putting the members on that he wants to put on, then she makes it a partisan committee, and it makes it very, very difficult for any American to really listen intensively to what they did, you know, unlike, let’s say, the Watergate committee, Hugh, as you know, from nearly 50 years ago. That was a committee where it was a truly bipartisan committee appointed the right way to do an investigation of what went on.
You know, Senator, Govenror, I’m older than you, and so I had to watch that in AP Government during summer school. That’s all we did was, it was the basketball coach, so we watched four hours of Watergate hearings. Those were interesting. Let me ask you about Jeff Zucker leaving CNN, your reaction.
CC: Look, I think that Jeff Zucker is somebody who has tried to manipulate the political process through is position in the media. And you know, he left, he resigned or got pushed out, whichever way it went. To me, hopefully CNN changes after this and stops becoming an advocacy arm for the Democratic Party.
HH: Now you know, Jeff is brilliant, and a friend of mine, I’ve never worked for him. He offered me a job once, I turned him down. I asked him for a job once, he turned me down. So that’s the conflict disclosure. But he’s brilliant. He’s brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, but he made a bet, right? He wanted to be MSNBC lite, and it didn’t work.
CC: Yup. Exactly right. And look, same here. He offered me a job twice after I left the governorship. I said no both times, and I told him the reason was I couldn’t come on there and be a credible voice given the kind of programming that he was running on CNN. And so you know, I hope that as they go into the Discovery Channel and they become under different management that perhaps they’ll look at how failed the model is economically and from a news production perspective and decide once again to go back to being a network that shows both sides and isn’t an advocacy arm for the Democratic Party. I doubt that will happen, but you know, we live in hope.
HH: Now let’s talk a little bit about ratings and NBC, my former employer. I’m no longer employed by NBC. They have the worst ratings in history for a Winter Olympics. Why is that, Chris Christie? And why doesn’t NBC know what to do?
CC: It’s the worst ratings, because in my view, Hugh, we shouldn’t be there. We’re giving the Chinese dictator, murdering dictator, a platform to try to make his country and the way they run that country look like it’s in with the League of Nations. And it’s not.
HH: No, it’s a totalitarian, do you believe in the genocide that Mike Pompeo had declared?
CC: Listen, there’s no doubt that what’s happening with the Uyghurs, the Uyghur Muslims, is a genocide. And remember, we went to an Olympics in 1936, Hugh, in the midst of a genocide. I think we were wrong then, and I think we’re wrong now.
HH: So I terms of the woke corporations that are sponsoring the Olympics, will they get the blowback that, for example, Coca-Cola, Delta, and Major League Baseball got for injecting themselves on the progressive side of the debate in Georgia about Georgia voting laws?
CC: Of course not. They won’t, because the legacy media that you talk about will not gin it up like they ginned up this controversy in baseball and in Atlanta for the All-Star Game and Major League Baseball caved to it. They won’t do it, and when they don’t do it, it makes it much more difficult for that kind of reaction and blowback to occur to these corporations. And Hugh, they know it, and that’s why they continue to buy commercials on the Olympics, although with the ratings going the way they are so far, they may turn out to have made a bad investment.
HH: Now let me ask you, by the way, about Major League Baseball. I didn’t watch it because of their choice, so I didn’t see the All-Star Game. Was Frankie Lindor on that squad?
CC: Oh, now see? There you go, Hugh. We’re going to get into a Guardians-Mets conversation. No, he was not, nor did he deserve to be given his first half performance, as you well know.
HH: I just wanted, it’s a fact-based question, Governor.
CC: Of course.
HH: I’ve got two more. I’ve got two more.
CC: Yup.
HH: Redistricting, I actually admire the knife work done by the New York Democrats. I mean, it’s sort of like watching the Duelist movie, and Illinois. Does redistricting bother you? I mean, it never bothers me. This is the way it’s supposed to be. I just wish legacy media would stop complaining about Texas and Florida, and focus on the fact that New York has like left the Republicans like the Black Knight in Monty Python.
CC: Listen, my view on it is that it would be better for the country overall if we kept the courts out of this and let the political institutions, the state legislatures in the main, be able to draw these lines, and then let them be judged up or down based on the work they do both with Congress and the state legislatures. You know I’m the co-chair of the Republican Redistricting Trust with Mike Pompeo, and we’re going to be out there fighting hard to support Republicans all over the country who are trying to draw fair and Constitutional maps. So that is the way I choose to be involved in it. I don’t want to bemoan it and moan about it. I get involved and try to make a difference, Hugh, and that’s the way I try to operate.
HH: All right, last two questions. Do you expect the former president to run in 2024?
CC; I think it’s a total jump ball, Hugh. I really do. And I think that we have no idea right now. And like you know, I’ve known him for 20 years, been friends with him for that long. No matter what he says, I don’t think he’s anywhere near having made a final decision yet.
HH: And a last question. Our thoughts and prayers are with Senator Lujan, who had a stroke. But he’s the 50th vote. The Democrats run the Senate only by virtue of having all 50 Democrats show up. And the legacy media won’t tell us what his condition is. Do we deserve transparency here?
CC: Well, I think that first and foremost, Hugh, the people of New Mexico deserve transparency. You know, he’s their representative in the United States Senate, and they deserve transparency. I hope, as you said, that the Senator is getting better and recovers. He’s a young man. And to have that type of medical condition as such a young man is a really sad and desperate thing. But you know, everyone deserves to know what’s his course of recovery. Will he be able to come back and be able to execute his responsibilities and his oath? And I think that the people of New Mexico, first and foremost, before any of the rest of us, are the ones who are deserving of knowing, because they’re the ones who are counting on him to represent their interests in the United States Senate.
HH: Did you see legacy media cover this at all?
CC: No.
HH: Did they cover the RNC, did you see anywhere that the RNC’s decision on Presidential Debate Commission get covered anywhere?
CC: No.
HH: And last question, do you approve of the RNC, and will you abide by it if you’re the nominee? Will you reject the Presidential Debate Commission?
CC: Look, I absolutely would, because in the end, I think there’s been a lot of unfairness that has happened over the course of time. And by the way, there’s no reason why the two major candidates for president of the United States, whoever they are, can’t sit down themselves, negotiate rules, and put these debates on. No reason that can’t be done.
HH: Agree and agree. Governor Christie, always great to talk to you. Well done on ABC yesterday in terms of at least somewhere on mainstream media, we find someone who will say both good and bad about Donald Trump. I think you’re the last island on the networks. Thank you, Chris Christie. Go Cavs.
CC: I’m a unicorn, Hugh. I’m a unicorn.
HH: You are a unicorn. You are a unicorn on baseball, too, in that you’re hoping for the Mets. Anyway, I appreciate you coming back, Governor. Be well.
CC: Thank you, Hugh.
End of interview.
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Some days I am stunned by the evil that has come out of our response to the pandemic.
- Economic chaos and an incredibly difficult road back to stability, if we can pull it off.
- An entire generation at comfort with a severe restriction of freedom, including the freedom of assembly, the freedom of religion, and to some extent the freedom of speech.
- An entire generation uneducated.
I could go on, but it is too depressing. We sort-of, kinda tried to protect everyone, often at the expense of protecting those truly at desperate risk. None of this evil was intended, I don’t think. It is easy to attribute intent after that fact. But I think this situation arose out of a sincere, if misguided, effort to protect the health and well-being of people.
Moreover, I do not think the efforts at the beginning resulted in this evil. The evil arose from a failure to recognize and respond to the costs of pandemic policy. No one knew exactly what would happen, or how severe it would be. But it quickly became apparent that 1) the disease while bad, was not as bad as projected and 2) the costs of the policy outweighed the costs of coping with the bad disease. But pride, bad communications, and to some extent for a limited few profit prevented the policies from being re-evaluated in the light of the new information.
Evil is rarely intended. Rather it is born of a strange brew of our ignorance and pride. Very few of us are mass murders or serial killers. Yet any of us can create great evil simply by being just a little too selfish. That’s what makes this passage both powerful and difficult:
Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
It is so easy when we are the victims of evil to lash out in some fashion, cathartic as well. But such generates more evil, not less. Such makes evil common, not rare.
This Sunday morning, I pray for the rarity of evil.
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Chairman Kevin Brady of House Ways and Means joined me this morning to discuss the tax bill that will be unveiled tomorrow:
Here are the facts. I work for Hugh. It’s Halloween. Hugh really is emotionally stunted at age 7. I’m still far too gullible.
Mike Farris is the CEO and General Counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, lead counsel for Jack Phillips, petitioner in Masterpice Cakeshop Ltd v. Colorado Human Rights Commission, the most important Free Exercise Clause case to come before the Supreme Court in three decades. You can help support ADF with a contribution here. The SCOTUSblog page on the case with links to all the briefs is here.
Tennessee’s Senator Lama Alexander joined me this morning to talk about the very narrow path to a set of Obamacare repairs:
U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions joined me this morning to discuss threats to First Amendment freedoms as well as other pressing topics at the Department of Justice: