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Hugh Hewitt OP-ED: MORNING GLORY: Pope Leo XIV (and President Trump)


Commentary By: Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published 

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/morning-glory-pope-leo-xiv-and-president-trump

Pope Leo XIV arrived in the papal summer retreat of Castel Gandolfo on Sunday, July 6 to start a six-week vacation, giving the hilltop town back its most illustrious resident after Pope Francis stayed away during his 12-year pontificate.

It has been widely reported that Pope Leo will be using part of his vacation to begin drafting his first encyclical. These are important teaching documents for the Roman Catholic Church and sometimes they teach that the current pontiff can be very right, very wrong, very smart or simply not very good at this particular part of his duties. Most Catholics have high hopes for this first missive. Still, who doesn’t need editors to help with my suggestions? 

The new pope has been very measured, calm and careful in the months since his election on May 8. It has to be the most dizzying of ascents and upon arrival as head of the Vatican, a confrontation with the broadest range of problems for any religious leader, and most political ones, on the planet. So Pope Leo taking things slowly and cautiously is a relief. 

CARDINAL DOLAN DESCRIBES POPE XIV AS ‘CITIZEN OF THE WORLD,’ WILL BUILD BRIDGES WITH TRUMP

An encyclical is a big deal for practicing Catholics who assume encyclicals are intended to be read, studied, and the occasion of a prayer for discernment. The audience is assumed to be primarily Catholics everywhere, but Pope Leo has to be aware that the secular press —from supportive to hostile— will also be looking the first one over very carefully. 

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Here are some suggestions from an American Catholic his age which means we share a lot of culture, from network television, movies and music to the transition that followed Vatican II. (If Leo had to learn the Mass in Latin in order to be an altar boy only to have that chore tossed out as soon as it was accomplished and replaced with the English script, he will have perfect pitch for millions of Catholic seniors —young and old seniors alike.)

When he does begin to do interviews, if he chooses long form sit-downs with respectful journalists, the pope will go a long way to making the promise of his papacy real. Those interviews should focus on the encyclical if one issues before he does his sit-downs with reporters at least a few of whom, American Catholics hope, will be American. Curiosity about a new pope is always acute. It is off the charts about the first American pope. 

So will curiosity be about the encyclical, which is a reason to hope that it is (1) written in clear, concise English and then translated by the Vatican’s best Latin scholars into the official language of the Church and (2) relatively short. 

If the pope writes in English, not only will he be using his native tongue and thus be as certain as he can be that he’s conveying his meaning, it will be a huge hit with the English-speaking peoples of the world, especially the Americans, especially Midwesterners, and most especially Chicagoland Catholics. Some inside baseball phrases for Americans would be a nice touch. 

The more concise the encyclical, the less susceptible it is to misleading excerpts and agenda-driven reporting. Even with the reach of the internet, hundreds of millions of people who have not read it will be told by others what it says and what it means. 

As with discussions of Supreme Court decisions, the second-hand reports are usually at best incomplete and at worst intentionally misleading. In this new age of AI-driven deep fakes, don’t be surprised if subtlety-altered encyclicals instantly appear. The Vatican press office might want to assure that the real deal has arrows pointing to it. Simultaneous distribution to many of the world’s major outlets would be another guardrail. 

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So in English and relatively concise. I hope as well that it is not overtly political in the sense of the left-right spectrum that dominates most of the West where Leo’s letter will not be subject to suppression. If he encourages religious liberty, great! If he speaks to the need to care for life from conception to natural death, great! If he wants to encourage the flock to read and reflect on the Beatitudes, great!

If he wants to encourage Catholics to renew their commitment to the confessional, bravo! (The decline in the practice of this Catholic sacrament is pronounced, but its revival would have to begin with the direction to bishops and priests to make it a priority above all but the other Sacraments.

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Pope Leo XIV could even begin with an appeal for vocations to the religious life which are needed everywhere, but especially in his homeland. 

But pray he has already decided he’s not going to do immigration and especially that he’s not going to disparage capitalism or America as his predecessor was fond of intimating. 

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Catholics believe the Church is divinely ordained and can never fail. But it can and frequently does stumble. The road back from a divided and disillusioned Church in America begins with finding the good in the United States and praising it. Now that would be a welcome change from the past dozen years.  

And please, nothing about President Trump. Read the room Pope Leo, please. You don’t need to single out the president. Lots of Catholic commentators like to do so. You don’t have to. At all. 

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives America home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: 15 questions for Harris and Walz CNN’s Dana Bash should have the guts to ask


By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published August 29, 2024, 5:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/morning-glory-15-questions-harris-walz-cnns-dana-bash-should-have-guts-ask

It has been 39 days since President Joe Biden abdicated and Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democrat nominee for president. From that day until Thursday, Harris has refused to be interviewed—a comprehensive media blackout for the entire 39 days—but Thursday she sits down for her first interview with anyone, having chosen CNN’s Dana Bash as her interlocutor. Harris will be accompanied by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

No doubt Walz is there as a blankie of sorts, a hand-holding helpmate to steady the notoriously nervous-on-camera Vice President who is prone to word salad answers, every one of which, if uttered, will greatly damage her campaign. It will thus be important for Bash to establish early on that she has a set of questions for Harris, one for Walz, and one for both of them and that they respect the audience’s right to hear answers from the person the questions is directed to.

Harris has a right to be nervous. Bash is a professional and will not ask questions about the importance of abortion rights or an assault weapons ban as we know what Harris thinks on these issues. The electorate needs to learn things about Harris that we do not currently know.

Harris has never struck many people as being up to the job of vice president much less president. As former President Trump is fond of reminding people, Harris was a risible figure as recently as the day before Biden’s incapacity became obvious at his debate with former President Trump and the subsequent crashing poll numbers obliged him to leave the race. Since that moment, Democrats and their colleagues in legacy media have been going 24/7 to turn Harris from a subject of derision into a brand new and highly polished candidate, one with no connection to Biden or the past three-and-a-half years.

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Bash’s job is to explore in fair fashion whether Harris is ready to be president. Bash is a fine broadcast journalist, the equal of any I have worked with, and I have worked with almost all of the major networks’ major names. Bash and I helped moderate four GOP presidential primary debates in 2015-2016, and I recommended her to the Republican National Committee this past spring as a trustworthy professional for the debates it was then awarding.

But CNN is, as a whole, very left wing and very much part of legacy media which has been complicit in helping Harris hide thus far. This one interview will define Bash’s career much like Candy Crowley’s career was defined by her intervention into, and helping hand wrongfully extended to, then President Obama in his second debate with Mitt Romney. Bash does not want to enter the Hall of Shame for Journalists. She doesn’t have to be a bulldog or an ambush artist. She just needs to ask the simple and very direct questions the electorate needs answered.

CNN ANCHOR: DID HARRIS ‘WAIT TOO LONG’ TO SCHEDULE HER FIRST INTERVIEW?

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Here are questions which Bash should pose to Harris:

1. President Biden named you as the lead in the effort to stem the flow of migrants across our southern border in March of 2021. That did not happen. Why?
2. How many people entered the country without invitation since you and Joe Biden took over?
3. What was your role in the withdrawal from Afghanistan?
4. In your acceptance speech you noted the horrors that occurred in Israel on 10/7 as well as the loss of innocent life in Gaza. Was it your intent to in any way equate the massacre on 10/7 with Israel’s actions in Gaza since then?
5. Did Israel have the right this past weekend to strike Hezbollah in a preemptive attack on the terrorists’ missile force?
6. Does Israel have the right to strike Iran to preempt another attack from Iran?
7. If Israel is attacked by Iran, would it be legitimate for Israel to destroy the oil export facilities on Kharg Island?
8. If China attempts to invade Taiwan, will American military force be used to defend the island nation?
9. Should the Supreme Court be expanded in its size?
10. How much of GDP should be spent on the Pentagon?
11. How do you fix the recruitment crisis our military is experiencing?
12. America’s ability to lead and indeed dominate in AI and supercomputing requires at least a doubling of our total domestic energy output. That is easiest to accomplish with new nuclear power plants.  Do you support building them?
13. You were absolutely against fracking in your 2019 presidential campaign. What is your policy on fracking now?
14. What is the highest marginal tax rate you want to see enacted into law and at what level of adjusted gross income should that rate apply?
15. What is the most significant issue on which you have disagreed with President Biden?

Note that these are all direct, simple questions. A rule of serious journalists is not to pose multiple questions at the same time and only the last question above includes a request for two answers as those answers are inextricably connected. One question at a time obliges the guest to focus and respond to that question. Bash is very good at her business. If she stays true to the mission of informing the public, an already excellent reputation will grow even stronger.

Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: The cover-up, the coup, and Kamala


Hugh Hewitt By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published July 23, 2024 5:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/morning-glory-cover-up-coup-kamala

It wasn’t the plan, and it wasn’t smooth. But when the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s physical infirmity fell apart, the left wing of the Democratic Party, led by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama and supported by the American Left’s vast “dark money,” carried out a coup. Out with Joe and in with Kamala. The out-of-power Clinton clique tried to prop up Biden but to no avail. The American Left is nothing if it isn’t ruthless in its drive for political power. 

The Democratic Party is lurching left, just as it did in 1984. That year the Democrats gathered for their convention in San Francisco; this year it will be in Chicago. But no matter the city, the leftist pull of the Party’s power centers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Manhattan and the Beltway is never out of power within the party, though it prefers to pretend that there are moderates in the leadership. 

With the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris, the American Left will openly and inarguably be at the controls. Then candidate Barack Obama pretended on 2008 to be a centrist, but he governed from the left and shifted the entire party to the left. President Biden’s disastrous term cemented the left and its ideology into the driver’s seat of the Democrats. What Kamala Harris says over the next three months as she rhetorically tries to tack to the middle does not much matter. She and her party are from and for the American Left’s vision for the United States. 

We have rarely seen that agenda on full display. It’s been 40 years in fact since the mask was last off the Democrats in a presidential election. It was a different set of radicals atop the party then. The country was bitterly divided in the 1980s over how to confront the Soviet Union, and the American Left’s embrace of appeasement was on full display. 

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President Reagan had run and won in 1980 on a platform of “Peace Through Strength” and his first four years had been confrontation over confrontation with a Democratic Party being taken left by its activists demanding a “nuclear freeze.” Reagan began the Defense build-up that would eventually cause the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Democrats did their best to stop both the defense build-up and Reagan’s full-throated opposition to communism. 

A young activist named Randall Forsberg issued a “Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race” in the same year as Reagan’s first of two sweeping victories. The insurgent left wing of the Democratic Party, picking up the pieces of the rout of Jimmy Carter, embraced the “Nuclear Freeze” as a central tenet of their party. In the early 1980s, a staff writer for The New Yorker, Jonathan Schell, wrote a series of essays for the magazine about nuclear weapons and then published a revised form of them in a best-selling book, “The Fate of the Earth,” which soared up the best-seller lists.  One of his colleagues, Bill McKibben, wrote a memorial to Schell in the magazine not long after Schell’s death in 2014, which revealed that Schell was ahead of his time in anticipating what the left would do in the aftermath of the triumph of Reaganism. 

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“Some months ago, I phoned Jonathan,” McKibben wrote. “By then gravely ill, he’d abandoned work on a book in part about climate change, a subject of great mutual interest.”

Schell was in the final months of his life when McKibben called. “But he hadn’t stopped mulling over, with his characteristic penetration,” McKibbon continued, “his great topic, which really was the fate of the earth.” 

The “nuclear freeze” movement was an umbrella for the American Left, which had sprung up during the Vietnam War. That movement was busy burrowing into academics and thereafter into public education and beyond. Christopher Rufo in his best-selling book of last year, “America’s Cultural Revolution” laid out in extraordinary detail the left’s “long march through the institutions.” 

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Demonstrators hold hands and vocalize as they march towards Central Park during a massive nuclear disarmament rally where 750,000 gathered to demand a freeze on nuclear arms, New York, June 12, 1982.  (Lee Frey/Authenticated News International/Getty Images)

The nuclear freeze movement was the organizing slogan of the American Left in the Reagan years. It was based on the fundamentally flawed belief in appeasement of enemies. Whether because they are socialists like the European left, or even Leninists like China’s Xi Jinping, Democrats don’t like their core beliefs on full display. So, America rarely gets a full-frontal exposure of what the left edge of the Democratic Party really wants. Even today, when climate change theology permeates everything on the left, rarely does the American Left spell out what its agenda means for the average voter. 

Democrats spelled it out in 1984 when Walter Mondale and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro went all in with the American Left. “MONDALE PLEDGES IMMEDIATE EFFORT FOR ARMS FREEZE” was the headline in the September 6, 1984, New York Times.

The American electorate did not care about the Freeze Movement’s mass marches. It did not buy into the rhetoric of the left which captured the Democratic Party during the 1980s. “Under Mr. Reagan,” the Democratic Party’s platform to stop Reagan in 1984 read, “the nuclear arms race would continue to spiral out of control. A new generation of destabilizing missiles will imperil all humanity. We will live in a world where the nuclear arms race has spread from earth into space.”

President Reagan, in the mind of the Democrats, “has contributed to the decline of U.S.-Soviet relations to a perilous point. Instead of challenges, he has used easy and abusive anti-Soviet rhetoric as a substitute for strength, progress, and careful use of power.”

Former President Ronald Reagan and Henry Kissinger seen standing together
Former President Ronald Reagan, the late Henry Kissinger and Howard Baker laughing during a GOP fund raising dinner. (Photo by Larry Downing/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

The “San Francisco Democrats” as then U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick labeled them at the Republican Convention in 1984, got crushed by the American electorate that year. But “leftism light” under the banner of Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis fooled no one four years later and Vice President George H.W. Bush brushed Dukakis aside. 

The American Left would remain dominant within the Democratic Party until Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council drove it out of sight before his successful campaign for the party’s nomination in 1992. The thumping the Democrats had at the polls in 1994 after “Hillarycare” crashed and burned reminded the Manhattan-Beltway media elites, again, that ours is a center-right country. 

When Ambassador Kirkpatrick took the stage at the 1984 GOP convention, she reminded the audience that she was herself a Democrat as President Reagan had once been and began by quoting Harry Truman who had said four decades earlier that the “elements of our strength are many. They include our democratic government, our economic system, our great natural resources. But the basic source of our strength is spiritual. We believe in the dignity of man.”

Kirkpatrick then contrasted the Democrats of Truman’s era with those of 1984:

“That’s the way Democratic presidents and presidential candidates used to talk about America.”

“These were the men who developed NATO, who developed the Marshall Plan,” Kirkpatrick continued, “who devised the Alliance for Progress. They were not afraid to be resolute nor ashamed to speak of America as a great nation. They didn’t doubt that we must be strong enough to protect ourselves and to help others.”

“They didn’t imagine that America should depend for its very survival on the promises of its adversaries,” Kirkpatrick added.

“They happily assumed the responsibilities of freedom,” she said, approaching the defining moment of her speech. 

“I am not alone in noticing that the San Francisco Democrats took a very different approach.”

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So was born the term “San Francisco Democrats” and it has endured, though the fortunes of the American Left ebbed from that moment until now. Perhaps it is a forty year cycle: Every four decades the Democrats openly go “full San Francisco left wing extreme” and get blown out in the November election. 

Their cover-up of Joe Biden’s infirmity blown by the debate with President Trump and their lawfare strategy proven an enormous mistake, the American Left has gone all in again, with Vice President Harris replacing the infirm incumbent.  No matter whom Harris picks as her running mate —even if it is the old school liberal Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, there will be no blurring of the edges of the socialism the Democrats wholly embrace, no watering down of their appeasement policies of the four years of Biden and the eight of Obama. 

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Democrats are going to put a choice before the American people: A mangled “managed decline” of the U.S. overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris or a renewal of American strength under President Donald Trump. 

It’s as clear a choice as America has had since 1980 and 1984. Pray our center-right join with the old school liberals in the FDR-Truman-JFK-LBJ mold to finish the American realignment away from the American Left.

Prayer is in order because we really don’t want to live under the control of Kamala Harris, the Squad and the dark money web behind them. That they are planning a radical agenda isn’t in doubt. If the American Left somehow pulls off a miracle out of the wreckage of their bait-and-switch coup from “Scranton Joe” Biden back to the San Francisco Democrats, the bell will be tolling for all of us as well as our allies like Israel, NATO and in the Asian Pacific theater. 

Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: Blue America v. Red America


Hugh Hewitt  By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published June 11, 2024 5:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/morning-glory-blue-america-v-red-america

The United States today, effectively and enduringly, is not one but three nations. There is a “Red America” a “Blue America,” and an “I don’t care” America. Rarely do those in Blue or Red America agree on matters political, or reconcile with friends and family estranged because of politics, and increasingly they do not congregate together.

What used to be differences that were accepted and understood have become breaking points among families and former friends.  We are far, far from “civil war” or even 1968 levels of antipathy, but there is a separation between Blue and Red America that is deep and deepening. 

This is most manifest in the struggles of the many businesses that purport to “do news.” Only 32% of Americans say they trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount,” according to Gallup in a survey from last October, a low point equaling the previous bottoming out in 2016 and a small decline since 2021 (36%) and 2022 (34%).

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The legacy media’s slow motion credibility crash has led to a collapse in audience and revenue for most such platforms. The core reason seems obvious: The legacy media seethes with contempt for “Red America,” and Red America knows that legacy media is overwhelmingly staffed by Blue America. In turn, “Red America” has walked away from those platforms.

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The Red America/Blue America split manifests in the polling in the presidential race, but also on almost every major issue of consequence. Support for Israel is the most salient such issue at this moment, but the same divide separates “pro-life” from “pro-abortion rights camps,” as well as with the divisions over public education’s lurch left, gender ideology and pretty much every cultural and most economic debates.

Before he became one of a handful of the great British statesmen of the 19th, Benjamin Disraeli was a successful novelist. In his “Sybil” from 1845, he wrote about a divide in language that returns to remind us of conditions not just in Victorian England but today in the United States. There existed in the United Kingdom then, Disraeli wrote, “two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy, who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings as if they were inhabitants of different planets.”

This is our condition today, and increasingly any institution that is obviously aligned with one or the other of the two Americas cannot expect the patronage of the other. This legacy media, overwhelmingly, indeed suffocatingly “Blue,” has simply walked away from Red America. Red America noticed. And they have overwhelmingly stopped watching and reading the Blue media.

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The assertion that “legacy media” has simply become “Blue media,” cannot be proven  because most employees of “Blue journalism” refuse to admit their POVs, but most people I speak with intuitively know the assertion that “legacy newsrooms are Blue” is true. If we gathered all the creative staff of the old networks, plus CNN, as well as the staffs of the old brands in newspapers, and got honest answers to six questions, we could get this “proven”:

For whom did you vote in 2016 and 2020? Are you “pro-life” or “pro-abortion rights”? Do you own a gun? Do you attend church more than six times a year? Are there two genders? Do you support the State of Israel’s right to exist and right to defend itself?

My guess is that more than 90% of the assembled legacy media journalists would provide “Blue America” answers to at least 5 of these 6 inquiries. Red America, by contrast, would prove the opposite answers in at least 4 of the six. If a news organization is overwhelmingly populated by “Blue America” journalists, Red America viewers, readers and listeners are going to walk away. In fact, they already have.

Now the question is: Does legacy media want to survive? If so, it will consciously change its staffing and its subject curiosity and ruthlessly throttle biased coverage. It isn’t hard to diagnose what has gone oh so wrong with legacy media generally, but it does require great resolve to fix.

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: Which nation leads ‘the West?’


Hugh Hewitt  By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published May 7, 2024 5:00am EDT | Updated May 7, 2024 5:05am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/morning-glory-which-nation-leads-west

Which nation is the leader of “The West?”

To answer that question, you must first define what “The West” is. 

There are a hundred different definitions, and indeed an entire PBS series devoted to that question. “Civilization: The West and the Rest with Niall Feruguson” debuted in 2012, and the accomplished historian issued a companion book at the same time and with the same title. 

“In ‘Civilization: The West and the Rest,’” the summary of the book relays, “bestselling author Niall Ferguson argues that, beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, the rule of law, consumerism, modern medicine, and the work ethic.”

Those characteristics are fine and easily applied to exclude from “The West” tyrannies such as the People’s Republic of China, Russia and Iran and all of their puppet states or proxies. But it does not include the essential ingredient: freedom. “The West” is defined by this essential, must-have feature: Some significant measure of individual liberty. That liberty must include the rule of law and not the rule of despots or oligarchs. There is no rule of law where the law can be easily manipulated or avoided. There cannot be in any member nation of “The West” a secret police that operates without restraint and oversight but solely on the direction of unaccountable despot(s).

The members of “The West” have free elections at regular intervals and guarantee freedom of conscience, speech and almost always movement within their boundaries to their citizens. Constitutions of member states may be written as in the United States, or unwritten as in the United Kingdom. 

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Nations in “The West” may be large or small, rich or poor, and since the end of World War Two at least, can be found on every continent. Countries can be part of “The West” and then lose that status as has happened to Venezuela, or it can aspire and eventually join or re-join “The West” as has happened with many former members of the now defunct “Warsaw Pact.” Poland is one such country, as are many others surrounding Ukraine. Ukraine aspires to be part of “The West” and is fighting and its people suffering and many thousands dying to keep that dream alive. Japan was a tyranny and an empire but, defeated by the Allies in 1945, it is now among the West’s leaders. 

Even as the definition becomes clearer, the first question becomes more and more difficult to answer: “Which nation leads the West?” 

Until December 7, 1941, the leader of “The West” was the United Kingdom, standing alone after the defeat of France by Hitler’s Germany in 1940. After Pearl Harbor, the United States was thrust into that role and has remained there without question until this decade. Until very recently in fact. 

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Now, there are reasons to doubt that leadership, for the United States has failed to fulfill that role since 10/7, slipping again and again into a catastrophic ambiguity about the nature of the alliance of “The West,” and at times throwing into considerable doubt whether we can be relied upon as an ally and as an enemy of tyrants and maniacs. A similar palsy overtook us in the aftermath of our loss of the Vietnam War, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.  President Ronald Reagan cured and restored us. That palsy that marked the late 1970s in the United States has returned. 

The U.S. remains by far the wealthiest and strongest nation in the world, but it is at present divided at home and deeply confused about good and evil, friend and enemy. President Biden, already infirm and increasingly incoherent, seems to be headed towards incapacity, but he is, by operation of the Constitution, the commander-in-chief of our supremely strong military. We cannot know what he is like in private and many Americans suspect he is not in full control of the Executive Branch. Certainly, many suspect that some among our allies are concerned about his “leadership.”

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President Biden’s infirmity and growing incoherence has indeed caused the whole world to wonder if anyone at all is in charge of the country. Of course, few will say this out loud. America’s power to punish is still robust even if its president isn’t. So, our allies pretend that all is fine, while our enemies plot and plan. But since the collapse in Afghanistan signaled to the world that the United States was run by a band of weak bumblers headed in title if not in fact by a very old man of limited ability, it is hard to argue that the United States is “leading” ’anything at all these days.

If “The West” as understood as the family of nations committed to everything laid out above has any leader at all right now, it seems like Israel is the only candidate qualified to step up into the vacuum left by the U.S. paralyzed by the weakness of its leadership. But Israel is also under siege on the world stage and at war with ruthless enemies, and the United States is of a divided mind about Israel, with the left wing of the Democratic Party apparently afraid that Israel might actually win and destroy the military capabilities of Hamas and perhaps after that Hezbollah. 

If the United States cannot proudly stand with Israel on the side of victory by Israel over an evil terrorist puppet of an evil theocracy, then we have to, at least for a season, given up title to leadership of “The West.” Israel is the unlikeliest of all nations to become the most courageous defender of the West’s highest and best traditions, but there it is: Alone and besieged, with weak-kneed allies and an absurd world media elite that has lost any idea of why a free press matters, this nation reborn in 1948 is still very young, but it is very much a nation of warriors and however rancorous its internal politics, it has not lost sight of its purpose. 

Israeli and American flag MIT
An American and Israeli flag wave in the breeze on either side of signs that discuss IDF soldiers and people kidnapped by Hamas.  (Nikolas Lanum/Fox News Digital)

In his introduction to a book of essays, “The City and Man,” the most significant political theorist of the last century, Leo Strauss, wrote this:

“However much the power of the West may have declined, however great the dangers to the West may be, that decline, that danger, nay, the defeat, even the destruction of the West would not necessarily prove that the West is in a crisis: the West could go down in honor, certain of its purpose. The crisis of the West consists in the West’s having become uncertain of its purpose.”

Israel is not uncertain of its purpose. America or at least its present Executive Branch quite obviously is. If there are any other nominees for the job of leading The West, by all means nominate them, or work to restore America to its former position. Until that happens, every citizen of the West looking for a nation committed to the freedom of its citizens and willing to defend that freedom at the cost of extraordinary losses of life and treasure, will need to study the example of Israel, and be willing to develop the weapons it will need to deter the enemies of freedom who have quite openly organized against “The West.”

Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Brett Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/TV show today.

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: Joe Biden’s antisemitism problem


Hugh Hewitt  By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published April 23, 2024 5:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/joe-bidens-antisemitism-problem

President Joe Biden has an antisemitism problem. It is large and growing larger. It is his problem, and he can’t shed responsibility for it. In a nutshell: The people who work for him are not doing their jobs to stop discrimination against Jews in America. Anyone with eyes and ears can see and hear what has been happening in America for six months, and a climax of sorts was reached this weekend at Columbia and Yale Universities. Police have taken some action against the violent protesters at the New Haven and Upper West Side campuses of the two schools, but how did it reach this point? Why have the Biden Departments of Education and Justice been MIA? 

The problem manifests immediately on the landing page of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights where any visitor finds this notice right off the bat: “The majority of OCR staff are working remotely because of the pandemic.”

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTERS: 5 DRAMATIC MOMENTS FROM A WEEK OF CHAOS

Huh? The pandemic is long gone everywhere except the DOE. Everyone in the federal government should be at their desk and answering their phones or at least making it through a few emails a day. That would not be enough though. There should be task forces of DOE and DOJ personnel dispatched to every campus where these outages are occurring. Take the pictures. Make the first-hand reports. Become witnesses, not desk jockeys.

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Even folks “working remotely” from the vast Department building at 400 Maryland Avenue SW in D.C. ought to be able to do the easy stuff of answering emails. The portion of the website titled “Race, Color, or National Origin Discrimination” includes what should be known to every DOE-OCR employee: “Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”

There is an online form for filing a complaint about unlawful discrimination  —but it hardly seems necessary when every news organization and social media platform has produced coverage of the antisemitic harassment at Columbia and Yale and before that at Harvard, the University of Michigan etc.

JEWISH, PRO-ISRAEL COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR SAYS HE WAS BLOCKED FROM ENTERING MAIN CAMPUS: ‘THIS IS 1938’

Nevertheless, the organization “Campus Reform” has stepped up to wake up DOE-OCR by filing complaint after complaint about the rolling waves of anti-Semitism on American campuses.

Campus Reform bills itself as “America’s leading site for college news.”  It also brands itself as a “conservative watchdog to the nation’s higher education system,” one which “exposes liberal bias and abuse on the nation’s college campuses.” Maybe that’s why the Biden administration seems to be ignoring its emails: Complaints from conservatives don’t count.

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“Our team of professional journalists works alongside student activists and student journalists to report on the conduct and misconduct of campus administrators, faculty, and students,” the organization adds. “Campus Reform holds itself to rigorous journalism standards and strives to present each story with accuracy, objectivity, and public accountability.”

ANTISEMITISM ON CAMPUS SURGES AS AGITATORS TAKE OVER

Good for them and they have indeed been relentless in cataloging many of the antisemitic incidents and filing the complaints required by the Department of Education. To what end?

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Dr. Zachary Marschall is the editor-in-chief of Campus Reform and in January he opined that the “beginning of the end is here for unaccountable, radical campus indoctrination.” Nearly three months later, however, the hatred is metastasizing, not abating, and not for lack of notice.

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Marshall and his team have filed scores of complaints against the highest profile offenders like Princeton. But nothing has happened. No funds have been cut off; no civil rights actions filed in federal court by DOE-OCR in conjunction with the Division of Civil Rights at the Department of Justice. Why not? It’s certainly not for “lack of notice.”  The answer has to be in either the incompetence or the ideology of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, or both. 

The StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice has brought a private suit against MIT for the antisemitism there, but DOJ has not joined it. Finding any DOJ suit against any college or university for antisemitic acts since Oct. 7 is impossible. They aren’t in that business. Like the DOE-OCR, the feds at Justice have taken a vacation from enforcing civil rights laws when Jews are the victims.

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In sharp contrast, the State Department appears set to sanction units in the Israeli Defense Forces that somebody at State believes are committing war crimes of some sort. Astonishing but true: Team Biden can find defendants to accuse of bad acts inside of Israel but can’t muster any response to our civil rights meltdown in the U.S.

At what point do American supporters of Israel and especially American Jews realize that the Democrat Party has reverted to the policies of the State Department throughout 1940 to 1944 —the era of Breckinridge Long? Don’t recognize the name? Read this.

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Too harsh to compare the bureaucrats of today with Long? Maybe it would have been in October or even early November. But there has been six months of growing antisemitism in the U.S. generally and creeping anti-Israel policies inside the Biden administration specifically. It will be up to voters to punish this disgusting abdication of enforcement of the country’s civil rights laws coupled with a turn against our ally Israel. 

Let’s hope no student has to be killed before DOE and DOJ acts.

Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Brett Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/TV show today.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: Israel’s war of survival


Hugh Hewitt  By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published April 2, 2024 5:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/morning-glory-israels-war-survival

Do you know what you are talking about when you opine on Israel’s war of survival? 
 
“Give me five minutes with a person’s checkbook,” the late Billy Graham remarked, “and I will tell you where their heart is.” 
 
That famous dictum is no longer true because… who uses checkbooks? But a modern corollary is now applicable: “Show me the podcasts you follow in your feed and actually listen to, and I’ll tell you whether you are genuinely informed about ____.” 

CAPTURED HAMAS TERRORISTS SAY GROUP IS ‘COLLAPSING FROM WITHIN,’ SAYS ISRAEL’S DEFENSE MINISTER
 
Podcasts have become an alternative to news programs—network, cable or on the radio—and to newspapers. Sports pods came first as fans of specific franchises are “super consumers” of news and analysis of the clubs they follow. My feed is full of Cleveland sports for example: “Terry’s Talkin’” with Terry Pluto and David Campbell of Cleveland.com, along with “Orange and Brown Talk” and “Buckeye Talk” from the same platform with different hosts who cover the Cleveland Browns and The Ohio State University Buckeyes football have been in my podcast feed the longest.  

Israeli tank
An Israeli soldier on top of a tank on the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Sunday, March 17, 2024. (AP)

Also on the feed is the relatively new “Kings of the North” pod, hosted by Doug Lesmaires and Bill Landis, which has forged a concept that “northern” college football deserved its own pod—as opposed to, say, dreaded SEC pods that don’t understand that the best college football is played north of Tennessee. It’s quite entertaining, as well as my other regular sports pods. That’s what the best sports pods are: entertaining and informative.  
 
Of political and general news pods, there are now thousands competing with sports pods. I enjoy “Getting Hammered” with Mary Katharine Ham and Vic Matus because it is funny and topical, and I feel like I am listening in to conversations my adult children might be having. It does cover some news, but mostly it provides a dive into the informed perspectives on the news of a different age cohort.  
 
But if the subject you are interested in is Israel’s war in Gaza, and quite likely the imminent, much expanded battle between the IDF and Hezbollah on the northern border of the Jewish state, you have to be much more selective.  
 
Thus, I have become a daily listener to the Times of Israel’s The Daily Briefing (especially when the platform’s senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur is a guest) and it’s “What Matters Now” pod which also often features Rettig Gur, who has become something of a must-listen to interpreter of the war for non-Israelis.  

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I discovered Rettig Gur on the “Call Me Back” podcast hosted by Dan Senor, a pod on which Senor interviews key observers of the war in Gaza and the likelihood of another front that exploded in intensity in the north. Senor is an American who seems to know pretty much every journalist and many officials in Israel. 
 
Senor’s March 21 interview of Israeli War Cabinet member Ron Dermer was perhaps the first “strategic” pod I have listened to. Dermer quite obviously had many messages to deliver from the War Cabinet to the American public that supports Israel’s war. He picked Senor’s pod because he wanted to speak to that audience specifically. It was a wise choice. Senor is a seasoned interviewer but, in this episode, like almost every other episode, Senor is eliciting information, not dealing out his opinions.  
 
Finally, I’m not Jewish, but I am also not blind to the surge in antisemitism in the United States to truly staggering levels, so I make a habit of listening to every “Commentary” pod that appears as well as relevant ones from The Free Press, the platform pioneered by Bari Weiss which has exploded in popularity as an alternative to legacy media.  
 
The latter is usually a new take with a new voice on most episodes, but the Commentary pod has a recurring format: Editor-in-chief of Commentary Magazine John Podhoretz leads a daily conversation with his Executive Editor Abe Greenwald and two or three of his key contributors—Matt Continetti, Seth Mandel and Christine Rosen—through every aspect of Israel’s war and its impact on Jewish Americans of the antisemitic Krakatoa that went off in the states after 10/7, as well as a good mix of domestic American politics as campaign 2024 heads into its third turn.  

Bari Weiss
Bari Weiss launched The Free Press, an important alternative to the legacy media. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

What “JPod,” as Podhoretz is known online and off, does is simply run through the current developments with his gang of very, very smart voices—say, a focus on the abstention of the U.S. on last week’s Security Council Resolution decoupling a ceasefire from release of the hostages or on the views of American Jewry on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Commentary pod also welcomes guests like Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Eli Lake or Eliana Johnson. They also welcome—wait for it—the remarkable Rettig Gur now and again.  
 
Finally, I make a point to listen to Donniel Hartman, 66, and Yossi Klein Halevi, 71, on their “For Heaven’s Sake” pod, whenever it appears, because these are two very smart old Israeli friends who are public intellectuals of great reputation in Israel who seem to me to be left and center-left (and both anti-Netanyahu) and thus certain to introduce me to some Israeli thinking that isn’t necessarily going to make it into news reports I ordinarily read. They also represent voices from my age cohort with references throughout to their 50-plus years of Israeli history and politics.  

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Bottom line, I’d have half as many facts and views of the war if I only listened to two of these four podcasts focused mostly on Israel’s war of survival. If I relied only on American legacy media, I would have a terribly distorted view of the war and would be blind and dumb to vast amounts of crucial data about the war.  
 
Thus, on Friday’s night “Special Report”—Gillian Turner sitting in for Bret Baier—the “Winners and Losers of the Week” segment came up, and I rattled off these pods as the “winners of the week” because of their collective coverage of this terrible but necessary war. I recommend all four of them to you because so much of the coverage of the war in Gaza and what seems likely to be a war in Lebanon requires a lot of information and assessment that most reporters and pundits simply don’t have the time to acquire.  

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Give me five minutes with your podcast feed, and I’ll know not just your passions, but probably your point of view on politics generally and whether or not you are in a position to even articulate an informed opinion on the war that Israel is waging. Give them all a try. Start, perhaps with Senor’s conversation with Dermer from last week and his latest interview or Rettig Gur which posted early Monday morning in the U.S. 

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I would be happy to listen to a pod that was news from the Palestinian point of view, but I am afraid there just isn’t anything that can be relied on given Hamas’ stranglehold on Gaza’s Arab population. If you have a suggestion, leave it in the comments. I’ll give any serious pod a chance. But if you are an American journalist or elected official who is commenting on the war without reference to the Israeli point of view—not just the government’s positions and statements but the Israeli public’s almost completely United attitude towards the war—perhaps say nothing until you are least informed of the facts in Gaza and on the northern border. To get those facts, you are going to have to go in harms way and out of your American news comfort zones.  
 
Try it. You may not change your mind, but at least you will be less in danger of holding a risible opinion untethered to the reality of the situation in Israel. 

Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and this column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: An offer they can’t refuse


Hugh Hewitt  By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published February 29, 2024 5:00am EST

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/morning-glory-offer-they-cant-refuse

Earlier this month the Senate rejected a “compromise” on the border and sent a bill to the House that funds Israel’s many needs following the 10/7 massacre, Taiwan’s defenses, weapons for Ukraine and a significant spend on America’s defense industrial base. Now Speaker Mike Johnson has to decide what to do with it because he needs more support from his Caucus than the bill as currently written garners from the House GOP caucus. The best strategy for the Speaker? Make everyone an offer they can’t refuse: Build the wall.

The key to getting the Supplemental passed lies in a Washington Post article from February 27, the headline of which tells the story: “The Border Wall Has Never Been More Popular.”

The critical two paragraphs:

“Multiple recent polls have shown support for building a wall along the southern border creating a majority.

“Late last year, it was Quinnipiac University and Fox News polling that showed between 52 and 57 percent supported its construction. On Monday it was a Monmouth University poll that pegged support at 53 percent.”

Those are eye-popping numbers because the wall is former President Trump’s signature issue, but the collapse of security at the border and President Biden’s shrugging of shoulders at the flood of migrants who have crossed the border since he became president has changed public opinion dramatically in Trump’s and the wall’s favor.

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Trump had the border under control by the end of his first term and has promised to do so again in a second term.

Biden, in the sharpest contrast of the campaign ahead, abandoned the policies that led to control of the border and eight million people entered the country without permission in Biden’s first three years. That number has likely now passed 9 million total “encounters” at the border —and that number does not include “got-aways”: The illegal immigrants who do not enter through a port of entry and are never “encountered” by law enforcement anywhere. The “get-aways” include the cartels’ worst customers carrying the most fentanyl and the Chinese nationals who don’t want to be fingerprinted and then released.

It’s a mess. It’s a huge burden on all the states and cities flooded with migrants. It’s a threat to every kid who tries one pill because they think they have bought a Xanax online but it’s a knock-off laced with enough fentanyl to kill. And it’s a national security nightmare.

BIDEN, TRUMP TO MAKE US-MEXICO BORDER STOPS THURSDAY AS MIGRANT CRISIS ROILS ELECTION

Only 450 Chinese nationals were “encountered” at the border in Fiscal Year 2021. In FY 2022 “encounters” with Chinese nationals soared to 2,176. “In 2023, it ballooned to 24,314,” according to NBC News and in the first quarter of FY 2024, estimates are that another 19,000 have already entered and the surge in this demographic is increasing. That’s a national security issue of the first order. When the Soviet Union existed, do you think Ronald Reagan would have allowed 40,000 Soviets to enter the country and vanish into its interior? Of course not, but Joe Biden has done the equivalent of that by doing nothing.  

Migrants in San Diego sector
Migrants are encountered by Border Patrol in the San Diego sector on Feb. 17. (Fox News)

When discussing this Chinese subset of the migrant flood with three former national security officials from the Trump era this past weekend, they guaranteed me that tens of thousands of Chinese nationals don’t slip easily out of the Chinese Communist Party’s control. They are very alarmed that the vast majority of these migrants are military-aged men.

Whatever one thinks about sanctuary cities, or California extending Medicaid to illegal immigrants (at a cost of more than $2 billion annually to a state with a $68 billion dollar deficit) the reality is that Americans of all political perspectives save the hard Left have awakened to the fact that this can’t go on.

The border with Mexico is 1,954 miles long. 900 miles are considered “passable.” When he left office, Trump was adding miles of Wall daily to try and get as much of the 900 miles of Wall needed built. But as soon as Biden was sworn in, construction stopped, and the film of migrants walking around the unfinished Wall or through openings created by the coyotes began playing. Americans noticed. They want The Wall and they want it now.  

With funding for most of the Supplemental already enjoying majority support in the House, how to pass the necessary bill? Tack on funding for the wall as well as language that makes it clear that construction is to restart and conclude in a matter of months. That will also require language in the new law that approves that construction “notwithstanding any other law or treaty with any nation or sovereign Tribe.” That language blows past the obstacles to the Wall’s construction posed by the federal Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act while also mandating construction on tribal lands. This is America. We built the Interstate Highway system. We can build the Wall in a matter of months if the will, the money and the clear direction exist in the Congress.

Want the Supplemental? Build the Wall. It is that simple. 

Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and this column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his forty years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: No Border Wall, no deal on Israel and Ukraine


Hugh Hewitt  By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published January 18, 2024 5:00am EST

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/no-border-wall-no-deal-israel-ukraine

“Ninety-one percent of Republicans support the building of the wall…” 

That’s the policy and political reality behind the about-to-emerge “immigration compromise” negotiated between President Biden, Senate Democrats and a handful of Republican Senators. But it is the reality the Senate Republicans are about to ignore and not merely ignore, but actually demonstrate contempt for, and for the party that elected them.

The “supplemental” bill about to emerge promises to be a complete disaster for the GOP. One for the books. There is still time for Leader McConnell to lead a retrograde movement away from the fiasco.

McConnell has pulled off many miracles before. He’s the best legislative leader the GOP has had in my lifetime. He saved the Constitution with his refusal to allow hearings on the Supreme Court vacancy following the death of Justice Scalia. McConnell preserved the First Amendment through litigation over decades. He’s put together crucial Senate majorities only to see lesser political talents destroy them with party nominees he told everyone could not win.

McConnell got former President Trump elected because of the Leader’s “no hearings on any nominee” stance which made Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees the key to the upset win in 2016 by the former president. McConnell will work with Trump again for the good of the Republic. McConnell’s two best pieces of advice —”First, you have to win” and “You can start too late but never start too early”— are worth the cost of his brilliant memoir “The Long Game.

Will McConnell save the GOP once more?

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We need to get Israel aid. We need to get Ukraine aid. We need to secure the southern border. These are all pressing national security needs. They are of equal importance to America.

If we send the wrong sort of aid to Israel or Ukraine it will not help them win. If we don’t build the 900 miles of fence where it is needed on the 2000 miles of southern border, Americans will continue to die from fentynal, more millions will walk across “UN encountered,” along with the 8 million who have been “encountered” in the three years of the Biden Border Era. The Wall isn’t one of five things that need doing. It is the first thing that must be done if the other things that need to be done are going to work.

REPUBLICANS ACCELERATE PROBE INTO BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S ACTIONS TO HOUSE MIGRANTS ON FEDERAL LANDS

The Wall is a necessary but not sufficient national security measure. To repeat: It is the first thing that must be done. Other things are useful —more Border Patrol, more return flights, more detention facilities, more Administrative Law Judges and changes to the actual asylum and refugee law. All of it.

But none of it matters without the Wall. The Wall is the “signal” amid the noise. It actually gets the message to the endless column of millions trudging north. That message is “Closed save by appointment.”

Officials at the southern border with Mexico
National Guard agents place a barbed wire wall on the banks of the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, on the border with Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua State, Mexico, on March 8, 2023.  (HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

This is not a hardliner position. It is the moderate position. Most “moderates” on immigration reform including me are people who want to care for the stranger when they get here. Most of us are aware that only a small percentage of the millions crossing illegally are undoubtedly dangerous, but they are dangerous indeed, and those who engage in human smuggling are depraved while possible terrorists should be understood as 10/7 types. We moderates are also concerned with innocents caught up in this river of misery that has to be damed before those on this side of the order can’t be helped.

If Democrats say “No” to the Wall, then it is no, and the GOP walks away from the talks, explains why, and campaigns on the Wall.

All three of the remaining possible GOP presidential nominees want the Wall. The Senate candidates the GOP needs to win the 2024 elections and thus the 2025 majority all want the Wall. Only a handful of Senators and their staffs have persuaded themselves that the Wall isn’t necessary. Wake up. It is necessary, and the 91 percent aren’t wrong. They are your bosses.

The supplemental without the Wall is far, far worse than a dead end. It’s a cliff. We won’t climb back up to a moment of clarity like this for decades, if ever. And the House GOP should never approve it anyway, and I doubt incumbent GOP senators who support it will in turn find themselves supported by 90 percent of the Party. Who is selling this? On what grounds?

Please, Senate GOP, the momentum of a terrible ride is no reason to stay on the runaway train. Get off. Now. Walk away.

Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and this column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his forty years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT

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Trump Telling GOP Brass He Will Forgo A Third-Party Run: Sources


waving flagPosted by , Senior Politics Editor, The Huffington Post and Washington Bureau Chief, The Huffington Post

Posted: 08/26/2015 03:02 PM EDT | Edited: 08/26/2015 05:28 PM EDT
URL of the original posting site: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-telling-gop-brass-he-will-forego-a-third-party-run-sources_55de06eae4b04ae4970577d3?kvcommref=mostpopular

WASHINGTON – Businessman Donald Trump has told several top Republicans that he will swear off the possibility of an independent bid and commit to running his presidential campaign under the party’s banner, according to several sources. Such a move could endear Trump further to Republican voters who have remained skeptical about his allegiance to a political party he joined relatively recently. Trump had drawn sharp criticism from GOP leaders concerned that a third party bid would effectively guarantee a Democratic win in the general election.

“I know you don’t need any advice, but I’m going to give you some. You will do better in the Republican primaries if you just swear off the third party, because a lot of Republicans will never vote for someone who, like Ross Perot, will hand the election to a Democrat,” influential radio host Hugh Hewitt told Trump during an interview in early August.

“I’ve never heard it put so strongly,” Trump responded. “When you said it the way you said it, that’s very interesting, so I’ll be thinking about that.”

Michael Cohen, a top Trump aide, did not go so far as to confirm that the businessman would take the step of forsaking a run as an independent. But he did tell The Huffington Post that Trump never had “any intent” of campaigning as anything other than a Republican. “He just wanted to ensure that the establishment would treat him as fair as they would treat any of the other candidates,” Cohen said. “And I believe, right now, they are treating him fairly. It is my personal belief that the RNC is treating Mr. Trump the same as the other candidates, and he will live up to his agreement not to run as an independent.”

Trump, for his part, has long said that he was holding out the possibility of an independent run as leverage. But according to sources, he has since determined that the threat was harmful to his current chances.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee did not return a request for comment.

A top Republican source, however, cautioned that any decision Trump will reportedly make should be considered a loose commitment at best, since he is known for his political impulsiveness. A stray insult from a fellow Republican could, theoretically, change his calculus.

“[Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger] Ailes thought he had a deal, too.  Then Trump called Megyn Kelly a bimbo, again,” noted one GOP operative, referencing the supposed truce between the network chief and Trump. Asked specifically if Trump would be making a formal announcement, Cohen replied, “Only Mr. Trump can sign that oath. And when he does, you can rest assured, he will live by it.”

During an interview with Hewitt on Wednesday after this story was published, Trump was asked about it  whether he would forgo an independent run. “It’s not something I want to do and at some point I will actually totally commit,” he said, in reference to formally running as a Republican.  “I didn’t think it was appropriate to commit during the debate,” he went on. “You know, I was a little surprised they even asked me at the debate but that was OK. But at some point, look, I want to run, I’m leading in the polls by a lot, I want to run as a Republican.  I want to get the nomination and I want to beat the Democrats.”
This story has been updated to include Trump’s comments to Hewitt on Wednesday.
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