Divisions Within Political Movements: The Heritage Foundation

I don't know. It's the Brian Lera Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we conclude our three-part series this week on debates and divisions within different political groups in this country. We discussed disagreements within the Democratic Socialists of America on Monday, the Democratic Party yesterday. Today we focus on America's conservative movement, especially as represented by the Heritage Foundation, the think tank. that produced Project 2025. The New York Times, maybe you saw it, had a detailed article last month about what it called the crackup of the Heritage Foundation and what it described as an ideological and generational civil war taking place within this highly influential institution of the right. A watershed moment described in the article was when Heritage President Kevin Roberts posted a video that defended Tucker Carlson, who had been widely criticized, as the article says, for inviting 27-year-old white nationalist and anti-Semitic influencer Nick Fuentes on his show. The article says in the wake of the video, dozens of staff members departed the Heritage Foundation. 18 of them wound up at former Vice President Mike Pence's new think tank, advancing American freedom. Our guest for this segment is one of those people who's quoted in the article and went to the Mike Pence think tank. It's Andrew Hale, now a fellow at advancing American freedom, specializing in economics, trade policy, and international relations. He is a dual citizen of the United States and the UK. and has worked in both the British and American governments. Andrew, thanks so much for coming on for this. Welcome to WNYC. Thank you, Brian. It's a pleasure. We'll get to your expertise of trade policy and economics generally in some detail as we go. But let me start with your quote in the article, which was that you were willing to debate policy at Heritage, but not to, quote, sit here and discuss whether the Holocaust happened or not, unquote. Was that actually being discussed at the Heritage Foundation by the time you left? Yes, I left the Heritage Foundation, you say not because of any policy matter, and there are good arguments on all sorts of policy angles. I left because of the recent anti-Semitism as well as the misogy scandals that emanated last year. And I should say that this was actually being discussed, discussions among new hires.

Frequently accurate arguments promoted by Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens that shed doubt on the historical consensus around the Holocaust or the origins of the state of Israel. Indeed, I witnessed new hires claim that the... This was something that was going around social media, publishing, they said that publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, the father of Glenn Maxwell, had paid for the rights to all the history textbooks used at American public schools and that everything in them about the Holocaust was a lie. And I would ask them, I'd say, is this something you gleaned off Facebook? And they'd say, oh, no, Facebook is for old people in their 30s. We're on Instagram and TikTok. And they say, look, it's right on my phone. And sure enough, I looked at their phones and they showed it to me. And this is what was. going around. And I suggested they perhaps not get their history from TikTok or Instagram or X. And I recommend that they get their history from books and read about, you know, go to libraries, those big building with books. I think we have a real problem with education. We need a public education campaign to educate some of the younger generation who are sadly spending too much time on their phone and having this reinforced with algorithms. How do people react when you press back that way? Well, anyone who sort of challenged this, basically they're all the people who challenge this are gone. I'm not aware of anyone who challenged this that would still be there. And quite frankly, I think a lot of this, the leadership of the Heritage Foundation has to take some ownership of this because even when I first started, I delivered a presentation on free markets and free trade to a group of young people under the age of 30. Indeed, the majority of the Heritage Foundation staff are actually now under the age of 30, as older and more experienced and qualified staff have been replaced by younger staff. And after this presentation, two young people came up to be and said, that was a very interesting presentation. We had no idea that you were Jewish. And I responded to that question. I said, well, I'm not aware of any Jewish ancestry, but I like Jewish people. And I asked them why they would say that. And they respond, well, people believe in free markets and free trade are the globalists. And the globalists are the Jews. And I'm sure all of your listeners might be aware that the term globalist is a dog whistle for Jews. And this was not helped at the Heritage Foundation by the fact that Kevin Roberts, the president was constantly blaming globalists, the globalist for America's problems. It's one of his most overused terms and his very limited lexicon. So, you know, when people raise these concerns to Kevin Roberts or other leaders, they would. feign ignorance, say, oh, I didn't know this was happening, and nothing would be done. And indeed, one of them, of course, Evan Myers was someone who basically, you know, at all stock, maybe you can Google this, took offense to being invited to a Shabbat dinner and expressed outrage and also expressed views that he didn't believe women should have the right to vote.

Did they fire this person? Did they discipline this person anyway? No. They recommended him. They've had a going away party format. He's now working for Congressman Riley Morris' speechwriter. And so your viewers need to know that these people actually have left the Heritage Foundation in some cases, and they're now close to positions of power, which is very disturbing. But you're saying people with views like that are the dominant rising population within Heritage to this day. Yes, absolutely. What they have done is I have a friend of mine who's currently suing the Heritage Foundation for anti-Semitism and misogyny. And what the chief counsel said to her lawyer was that, oh, we're not anti-Semitic because we have Urum Hazuni joined the Heritage Foundation Board of Trustees this summer in June. But this is more window dressing. I would actually argue that I'm kind of a Jewish conservative leader, right? Well, he's a national conservative, NatCon, and I understand he lives in Israel, but the board has no interaction with the staff at the Heritage Foundation. So he, you know, and he lives in another country, and I'm sure he comes to the Heritage Board meetings, you know, quarterly or maybe biannually, and his wine and dine by Kevin Roberts and drinks Kevin Roberts Pulead. But these people... knowingly or unknowingly are providing cover for these bigots at the Heritage Foundation. He may not know in fairness to him because, as I said, he may just been very honored to be invited to join the Heritage Board of Trustees. Actually, we'll talk more about the NatCon wing as we go. But just one more on these particular things you've been describing. The Times article also says these debates about... the World War II era at Heritage went so far that, quote, a sizable of newer staff members were fans of Pap Buchanan who wrote a book about how Churchill, not Hitler, was the instigator of World War II, unquote, from the article. That must have piqued your interest as a dual U.S. and UK citizen. If you heard it, did you hear anything that made that conversation? I did, in it. I did. I heard it in October of last year, and I should say that when the founder of the Heritage Foundation died in July of last year ago, he was a last restraining influence at the Heritage Foundation Board of Trustees. That was Ed Fuller. That was like the dam busted loose. And these people came out of the woodwork, exposed their true colors. And I remember being so shocked when I was at a meeting. And someone just casually said, oh, yes, during the 1930s, the Jews were lending all the money. And everyone got into debt and Hitler came along and just tried to save everything. And Winston Churchill was this villain who caused World War II. And I just... I literally was speechless. I had never heard this before in my life. And again, I think it was always there. But when Ed Fuller died and he was still on the board, he was also on the board of the organization I work for now. And he was obviously deeply concerned about these movements. But it just busted loose after he died in July because there was no more restraining influence the board. And of course, since last October, the good people on the board, over half the board has resigned. And they've been replaced by sort of, you know, yes people to Kevin Roberts, who will just do his bidding.

Listeners, we invite your calls and text for Andrew Hale, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, now with the Mike Pence think tank, advancing American freedom. As we conclude our three-part miniseries on divides within political movements in this country, first priority if you consider yourself a conservative of any kind. Do you see an old generation of conservatives as out of touch with what the country needs now, especially if you're a younger conservative, 212? 433, WNYC, or conversely, do you see the new, let's call it MAGA generation of conservatives as too radical or destructive or bigoted, as Andrew Hale has been describing, or destructive to American economics or democracy, but you still identify as a conservative or a Republican or anything else related, 212, 433? WNYC, 212, 433, 9692. And again, we did similar segments the last two days on divides and debates within the Democratic Party yesterday and the DSA on Monday. Today it's about those in what the New York Times calls the crack up of the Heritage Foundation. And more broadly on the right, 212, 433, WNYC, 212, 433, 96. 9-2 call or text. Andrew, is there a larger context you could describe of New Right versus Old Right, ideological change at heritage or more broadly? The Times calls it ideological and generational. It says, for example, there are quote, New intellectual factions who believe that decades of globalism, you've already used that word, had destroyed the identity of the nation, plus the post-liberal Catholics, a growing force among conservative elites who believed that free market economics and social liberalism had undone the fabric of the nation, and the tech oligarchs who believed in the capacity of Silicon Valley to restore the dominance of the American nation. unquote from the Times article. I'm curious if you would put it similarly, or what's the bigger picture, as you might describe it, of the generational divided heritage beyond the way out there, Holocaust denial and Churchill started World War II, not Hitler kind of stuff. You're absolutely correct. What we've been discussing, Brian, are the online social media phenomenon, like the Tradwife movement. That's where a lot of the massages come from, or the pseudo-intellectuals that have been hired at Heritage, like Scott Yenner, who argues that men should be paid more than women, etc. Or the Groyper movement online, founded by Nick Flentis, and that's where a lot of the anti-Semitism comes from in other horrific tendencies. But there's a number of things happening on the right, and there's, as you mentioned, there are the Catholic Integralists who would like to rip up the U.S. constitution and replaced with a theocracy. And that is where we get into sort of Republic of Gilead territory. And I met plenty of those at the Heritage Foundation elsewhere in Washington.

But there's a broader movement on the right, as you mentioned, called post-liberalism. And these are the JD Vance people. A post-liberal movement emerged from books like Patrick Deneen, a former traditional conservative, but now he shares platforms with JD Vance and argues that the U.S. is the product of fringe Protestantism. It's cut off from the sort of broader stream of Western civilization. And basically, they argue the U.S. Constitution. the America that we now know that came out of it was totally individualistic, which spawned gay marriage, abortion, transgenderism, and there are all sort of inevitable results of the ideas in the Declaration of Independence. And this is what Patrick Danine has argued, if you read his book, Why Liberalism Failed, the idea that we have a sort of natural God-given rights that enable us to run our own lives without interference from government. That's what I would believe. They don't. They believe that government should impose a religion on the citizens. And this was a, and I say it was a good innovation of the U.S. Constitution that our Constitution argues government should not impose religion on its citizens. But post-liberals like PAC Deneen believe that all these innovations of our founding documents and our founding fathers is those are bad innovations. I'll finish with this. Post liberals argue that, you know, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are correct when the Constitution guarantees sake of text, marriage, abortion, pornography, and all these things the post-liberals do not like. The post-libers want to rip up all of this. Our founding documents replaced with something they call the common good. Do you have a take on why? The young right is trending in these directions to the extent that it is. You know, we've talked in this series about generational change on the left, more openness to post-Cold War socialism given the economic challenges for young Americans today, things like that, plus U.S. support for what many see as genocide in Gaza. Do you have an analysis of the roots of the kind of radicalism or just wrong-headed economic thinking, as you see it, on the right, especially the young right? Well, yes, and actually I saw this. This really played out the Heritage Foundation because 293 people have left the Heritage Foundation since Kevin Roberts became present. And over 75 since lost October when the misogy and anti-Semitic scandals broke. And I actually think we're back in the 1930s. In the 30s, we had the America First Committee, which was anti-Semitic, isolationist, populist and protectionist. We had Charles Lindberg, who was viscerally anti-Semitic and all the above, until President Roosevelt neutralized him. We had Father Steve Witkoff. Charles Kaufman with his anti-Semitic radio program in Michigan. And we had at the time in the 1930s a Smoot-Josh Hawley terror fact, which was a huge tariff war that turned the Depression into the Great Depression. You had a huge economic uncertainty and hardship, and people started to blame minority groups, particularly Jews. And I see a lot of that's happening now as young people are coming up and they're not benefiting.

from what their grandparents and parents benefited from the post-war economic boom. Let's take a caller on the anti-Semitism aspect that you've been describing. Margo in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hello, Margo. Hi. Thanks so much for having me on. I'm nervous to talk about this. This has been going on for a while. It's so important for us to remember that... this started or this was rooted in what the Heritage Foundation claimed was a fight against anti-Semitism, which they called Project Esther. And I think this is just one of the many examples that we see right now everywhere where these right-wing groups are claiming to protect Jews. I'm a Jewish New Yorker by using things, you know, by arguing that there's anti-Semitism. And really what's behind it is a white supremacist attempt to separate to break down the walls between church and state to create white supremacies. And they're using us. And I just encourage every listener to look at what they called Project Esther as if they were trying to protect me and other Jews when really that's not what is going on in this. Now, do I remember correctly that Project Esther... came out, I think, in 2024 from the Heritage Foundation titled or subtitled a national strategy to combat anti-Semitism, something like that? Margo? Exactly. This is just the kind of thing that tries to get us to think that people who are really pushing for Christian supremacists and white supremacist views are trying to protect Jews. And on the right wing, it's really just a cover for attempts to go after everyone that the system should be protecting. When they pretend to be protecting me, they're actually hurting everyone. And if we as Jews and everyone can band together to fight these attempts, work together, you know, in solidarity against racism, against everything else, instead of being duped by these supposed efforts to fight anti-Semitism, we will all be safer. Margot, thank you very much. Andrew, you're... I'd like to answer that if I could, because I was there. I'll note that, yes, you were there. I don't know if that was your lane, but she's really, you know, suggesting that Project Esther as a strategy to combat anti-Semitism was a false flag in that respect. It wasn't really that. Well, they were actually not, they were an organization, an umbrella group that was housed at the Heritage Foundation, because the Heritage Foundation, although they've just sold one of their buildings, they have a lot of property in Washington. They have a lot of event space. So they were housed at the Heritage Foundation. And when the anti-Semitism scandal broke last October, they left. very quickly. And they pulled out. And so I would actually have to say that I would disagree with your, she raises a very good point, but I disagree with her assessment. That was certainly courted by older people at the Heritage Foundation. And I can assure you that the Groypers and the people that the young people we've been talking about earlier in this program did not like Project Esther, wanted nothing to do with it. And indeed, when they were invited by Project Esther to attend a Shabbat dinner.

that they took offense. Particularly, you can Google this, Evan Myers, took such offense to be invited to a Shabbat dinner. I actually think someone like that would benefit from that cultural exercise and broading his horizons a bit. But that was the sort of generational divide at the Heritage Foundation. I think that the project Esther and the people involved it had very, very good intentions. There's talk of actually housing that organization. It's left Heritage. They need office space. They need conference space. And so they're trying to find a home elsewhere. But they have left the Heritage. Foundation. And I believe that the people involved the Esther program who have left the Heritage Foundation have very, very good intentions. Jim in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Jim. Hey, Brian. So I just, you know, I'm young. I was in college just like a year or two ago and just with friends and everything. Like I'm going. This is my perspective. I feel like it's There's a lot of problems going on. Everyone's worried about higher prices, whether they have a future, right, if they be able to buy a house, have the same prosperity as their parents did. And the more traditional parts of the parties, like, you know, right, even the left, right, like it doesn't seem like anything's going on. Anybody has, anybody has a solution to it. So younger people are turning towards. more radical ideas, more radical explanations. And, you know, to the point of Nick Fuentes and everything, the conflict in Israel, again, I guess, it seems is the lack of power of the United States who, you know, we know it's like, you know, the most powerful nation on Earth, can't seem to, I don't know, extricate itself or figure out how to end what's going on there, do something about it. Nick Fuentes was using that to change the conversation or associate the state of Israel with the whole Jewish population. And I don't know. I just think it's people taking advantage of the alienation. Yeah, Jim, thank you very much. What do you think about his analysis, Andrew? Well, I mean, somebody, you know, in that generation, just out of college, as he said. Well, exactly. I think JD Vance is speaking to some of this. If you look, for example, at the JD Vance's economic policies, and I did work with his staff and drafted a bill with them when he was a senator for only two years. He was consistently voting with Elizabeth Warren and the political newspaper identified Jaddy JD Vance and Elizabeth Warren as the Senate's new power couple. And if you look at the Democratic Party platforms of 1980, 84, 92, The economic policies, their trade policies, their tariff policies are identical with JD Vance's policies. And he speaks to a lot of young people like your caller who basically are concerned about the fact that they can't buy a home. There is a cost of living crisis. I would actually argue that... We have done this to ourselves in the sense that we have over 40 trillion in public debt and national debt. And we're paying 1.4 trillion annually on the interest of that debt. And this is going to continue as a problem. Inflation will hit people like your collar. It'll hit normal people who are striving and saving and struggling to have the sort of life that their parents and grandparents had. And quite frankly, I don't think that Nick Fuentes, who's certainly tapping into a problem, but then, of course, he has glorified the rape of women.

He's glorified the Taliban. Joseph said Stalin was cool, Adolf Hitler, and said the most horrific, anti-Semitic, outrageous things, along with other influencers. And I don't think he's the answer. But people are listening to him, and he's certainly tapping into this and getting a lot of clickbait. And I think that's really why some of these people like Candace Owens do this. I think they do it for clickbait. And they're trying to be the more outrageous they are, the more attention they get. Yeah. And I mean, this, I think, historically, you already brought up an analogy to the 1930s. Historically, is how authoritarian's get into power in many cases, right? There are real problems. I think just as the caller was describing, there are real problems that then, let's say, haters like Nick Fuentes or others, can tap into and leverage for their own, you know, malicious ends. Absolutely. I mean, Nick Fuentes is the Charles Lindbergh of today or the Charles Coughlin up today. Yes, absolutely. When we come back from a break, we'll continue with Andrew Hale, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, now with Mike Pence's think tank, advancing American freedom as we continue in part three of our... three-part miniseries on divisions within political movements in this country. We did within the DSA on Monday, within the Democratic Party. Yesterday, today, within the Heritage Foundation, as was deeply reported by the New York Times recently, and generalizing from there to on the political right with Andrew Hale. And when we continue, we're going to get more into his professional specialty, trade and other economics. Stay with us.

Brian Ler on WNYC as we continue with trade and economics expert, Andrew Hale. formerly of the Heritage Foundation, now of Mike Pence's advancing American Freedom think tank on the divisions within the Heritage Foundation and more broadly, generationally and ideologically on the American right right now with your questions and comments as well. 212, 433, WNYC, 433, 9692. Andrew, here's a... A comment in a text from a listener who I think identifies as conservative. It says, please don't conflate MAGA. with this radical anti-Jew group, led by Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and their ilk, they've totally gone off the reservation and turned against Trump's policies. Trump doctrines and MAGA are still pro-Israelian, not anti-Semitic, nor racist, nor sexist, nor homophobic. We include America first conservatives, including minorities, women and gays, and lead positions, as Trump does in his administration. I know we have a lot of listeners who would disagree with that, you know, the MAGA in America firsters not being racist or sexist or homophobic. But what's your reaction as somebody who is on the right? And we'll get more into, you know, considering how critical you've been of some on the right, we'll get into why you still identify as somebody on the right. But what's your reaction to that text? Well, I would certainly the Trump element of MAGA versus the JD Vance element. I think it's your color raises a very important point. President Trump's preferred think tank is the America First Pulse Institute, AFPI, funded by Brooke Rollins, who's the current Agriculture Secretary. And they have provided one third of the cabinet. 84 of the most senior top level presidential appointments in the administration and hundreds to mid to lower level positions. And they're not necessarily social conservatives. I know several very prominent gay people there. and others. But like I said, they don't do a lot of fanfare. They don't shamelessly self-promote by the Heritage Foundation. They write the policies for the administration very secretly. They don't put big banners on the side of their building like the Heritage Foundation does. And really, I saw this first time when I was at the Heritage Foundation during the whole project 2025 debacle. Kevin Roberts awesbrook Rollins to be under his

umbrella of over 100 organizations under project 2025 and she said no she was doing her own thing and and we've seen the fruits of that but what was interesting was Before, it was early on in Project 2025 and at Heritage, Kevin Roberts and the Heritage Foundation was endorsing Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, as the primary candidate. They want to be president. And Kevin Roberts even had anti-Trump stuff on his ex-page about January 6 and Trump's adultery. And then as soon as Trump were on the primary, all that was erased. They rejig project 2025, said this was always for President Trump. Chris Losevita and Susie Wiles pushed back and said absolutely not. Trump disavowed it said he had nothing to do with it. He certainly has not read a page, one page of that 900 page book. And like I said, it was just all more sort of shameless self-promotion and a sort of media narrative, which many in the press and in the public have thought that heritage was behind President Trump and Maga. It was not. They were supporting Ron DeSantis. They're grifters. They just wanted to be with the winning candidate. And of course, we saw how that blew up in the press. So now let's get more into your professional specialty, trade and other economics. You were quoted in the Times article saying about the Heritage Foundation. quote, free markets, free trade, they don't do that anymore. I was the last person there promoting that, unquote. How would you describe basically what you value with free trade and free markets and what the new economic thinking is at Heritage, in contrast to that? I guess you gave us maybe a little bit of a preview, and you talked about a JD Vance, Elizabeth Warren, access in the Senate. Well, I do come from a free trade background. And of course, the Heritage Foundation, one of the reasons why I went there is they had a 50-year-plus history for championing free trade and free markets, which was their original mission when Ed Fulner and J. Van Andel founded the Heritage Foundation over 54 years ago. Indeed, I had the J. Van Andal position and named position after J. Vandall. He was a... former chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce. And literally, I found my job more and more difficult to do because as Kevin Roberts took over, he wanted us to align everything, which whatever was the sort of latest fad in terms of trade policy. And quite frankly, I had to remain true to my values. And when I left, I was the last person to believe in free trade. And Trump basically, and I've always predicted this when they came out with their Liberation Day tariffs. I know the law. I've been working on this for years. I said the courts are eventually going to shut this down. And they had legal advice from Department of Justice lawyers and others who told them that this was illegal. And they decided to do it anyway. And now they're spending billions on refunds and even processing those refunds. So in the end, when this is all said and done, they will not have raised any money from this. They will actually have cost the taxpayer billions in these tariff escapades of President Trump, much of which is illegal.

Well, I guess you kind of just responded to my next question, but I would like you to talk a little more about the basic argument that we hear from both the left and the right against free trade that... Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton-style free trade, bipartisan in that respect, and openness to immigration, that critique more from the right, have been a disaster for the American middle class. Like allowing so many manufacturing industries to move their jobs to China and Mexico and elsewhere, that pushed down wages here. And so did the number of low-skill immigrants over a period of decades. you know, sees it as a giveaway to U.S.-based multinational corporations who could pay people less in other countries while making more profit for their shareholders. The new right might even agree with that, but also sees the immigrants willing to work for less as adding additional downward pressure on wages. I think American unions used to take that position, too. They don't so much these days. But these are substantive arguments. So how would you begin to respond? They are substance arguments, and those are the arguments I like to participate in, not the ones about whether the Holocaust happened. And so basically, there's two issues. There's one, there's manufacturing, and the other one is immigration. Now, for example, it was actually President Obama, who was our deporter-in-chief because of the time the Rust Belt, the working-class people in the United States, voted overwhelmingly Democrat. That has changed, shifted in 2016, when many of them moved their voting demarcation from the Democrats to Republicans to vote for president. Trump. But if you look at, you mean, because that's why the Democrats were very much against this illegal migration then. Then, of course, when those people left them, they moved towards open borders. And I'm thinking right now of a chicken factory in Georgia, which was rated by ICE. Almost everyone that worked there was illegal. and they were being paid below market value. ICE came in, took those people away, and they then, the company put out local advertisements in the local community, and local people in this rural poor area were then hired to work in this factory at a competitive wage. Now, the company's not making the profit margin. It was making before, but it's still making a profit. So I don't buy the argument that we need to have... illegals or a influx of people coming to this country to do low-skilled work. And also to my friends who say, oh, I need my nanny. I need my, excuse me, maybe you should take care of your own children. Maybe you can clean your own house if you can't afford to hire a nanny or a housekeeper at a competitive wage. So like I said, there's two issues there. The other thing you talked about manufacturing. Well, so much for making manufacturing again. Actually, a new factory building, heaked under Joe Biden. And actually, we've had a decline in manufacturing consistently since President Trump has come into office. There was a slight boost to the economy when large corporations started to try to front run the terrorists by huge volumes of stock in Stockton warehouses.

But small businesses couldn't afford to do that. So they've been really decimated by these tariffs. But then you look at, for example, we've lost over 85,000 manufacturing jobs in the first year of President Trump's presidency. And manufacturing has contracted. Our industries need cheap intermediate goods because we make high-end goods. And here in the United States, we're not going to make, for example, rope. We're going to import that from a GSP country. And so basically... We wouldn't employ people to make rope. We would simply have a factory and have someone turn on the machine, the machine would make rope. So we actually make high-end goods, not legacy products. And those industries need cheap intermediate goods. And, of course, our industries, our people are paying those tariffs and the higher prices because of that. So prices have increased and tariffs have contributed to the rise in prices that people see for things in the shops. on tariffs as it happens in the news this morning, as I'm sure you know. President Trump has just paused his latest deadline to impose steep new tariffs on some imports from Canada. I see you wrote an op-ed in the Hill last month. Related to this, he wrote President Trump in his first term, declared the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the greatest free trade agreement in human history. Then you say in Trump's current term, he appointed lefty economist Peter Navarro and Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick. And sadly, President Trump has now made it clear he thinks we are better off without the U.S.M. I'll ask you in a minute why you'll call Peter Navarro of all people a lefty, but on the issue, Trump negotiated the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement to replace NAFTA, which he was so critical of. Did the USMCA improve on NAFTA as you saw it? Yes, it did actually. And I think NAFTA was from a previous generation. And there had been a number of presidents and candidates who said that they were going to reform or get rid of NAFTA. And he actually, to his credit, did it. And he was guided in that process by Ambassador Robert Leidheiser, who is a lawyer who served in every Republican administration from Reagan to Trump. And he did things by the law book. What we're seeing now is a sort of Peter Navarro. And he is a left. He ran for the Democrats as a candidate in California. He is a far left environmentalist. But Trump is aligned with him because he's someone who has been promoting terrorists for some time. And Peter Navarro is very much aligned with a think tank in Washington called the Coalition for Prosperous America. And they don't want us to trade with any country anywhere. They see trade as something is intrinsically bad. Indeed, I spoke with their trade policy director, Charles Benoit Canadian, who lives in Florida. And he said he didn't want to see any trade between the U.S. and said they should just buy local and grow local. We should do the same. They don't really understand the importance. of how international trade and exports, we have produced more apples in the state of Wisconsin, sorry, the state of Washington that we could possibly consume ourselves, alone in other states. We have to export those apples. And so I don't think these people quite understand the benefits of free trade and our exit. We do need export markets as well. Just on Peter Navarro, I mean, he's been a very prominent Trump ally and appointee since the first Trump term. Why do you call him a lefty, something Trump would never call himself?

Well, Trump actually does have people from the left in his cabinet. He has Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. And Peter Navarro did run as a candidate for Congress for the Democrats. So he definitely has been a card-carrying Democrat. There's no question about it. And he comes from left-wing academia in California. Now, President Trump, in my opinion, is not a conservative. He's a New York City property dealer who was a donor to Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign. He was a registered Democrat most of his life. And I just think he saw an operation. opportunity to take over the Democratic, the Republican Party, in the same way that the Democratic Socialists of America, you know, couldn't make it on their own. And they even identify the Democrat Party as their enemies. They've now decided to simply co-opt it and take it over as Trump has taken over the Republican Party. So Trump has really been a populist who's brought a lot of disparate groups together under one umbrella. And he's changed the demographics of the Republican Party. As I said, in 2016, many Rust Belt working class people changed their voting demarcation. from a Democrat to Republican to vote for him. And we've seen the obvious fruits of that. What's the heart of your own conservatism? How would you define it or describe it? I'm basically a free market, free trade person. I believe in limited government. I believe in, you know, I don't believe the government knows best. I believe in freeing up enterprise and freeing up individuals. I think that's why America has been the greatest and most successful country in the world. As you've mentioned in earlier, I have a dual background. I'm British as well as American. I've lived in the United Kingdom. I've seen how they've had flatline growth and a huge, massive state. They're in a situation now where their welfare bill is larger than their... income tax revenue that is a recipe or disaster it will lead to collapse and so I like I said I obviously would veer on the side having lived in both those countries with very different approaches to economics. Obviously, I veer on the freedom, the freedom of the individual, and the freedom of the economy that I see in the American system, which has been so successful since this country's past 250 years. And so as a last thought, as we run out of time, what you just touched on, I see we're on the BBC this summer on the ginormous topic of what to expect in the United States is next 250 years. And one of the things you emphasized was what you see as a massive and threatening national debt problem. Trump doesn't talk much about debt. He does spend a lot of money. He's always promised no cuts to Medicare and Social Security, even as he has pushed cuts to much smaller and less expensive entitlement programs. The left has its own relationship to that. Just give us your take. briefly in like 30 seconds on what needs to be done in your opinion and how you see the divide on the right on that, since that's our topic.

We have to come. The largest national security threat to the United States is our over 40 trillion in public debt. And neither of the Democrats, Republicans, seem to have the will to deal with something because they deal with short-term solutions because they have to get elected so quickly every few years. This is a huge problem we're not dealing with. You know, we had Doge, which we took a few billion off here and there. If you got rid of every government department in Washington at the federal level, except that the Pentagon and the entitlement programs, you'd only take off one trillion off the national debt and we're paying $1.4. trillion annually on the interest of the debt this is a Ponzi scheme that will eventually crash and when we have that crash we're going to have mass hardship in this country that we have not seen since the 1930s Well, that obviously could start a whole other conversation, but it is where we end this one. And that concludes our three-part mini-series on current divides and debates within the Democratic Party, the DSA, and today about what those in the New York Times article, or about what the New York Times article called, the crack up of the Heritage Foundation and more broadly on the right. We thank Andrew Hale now with Mike Pence's think tank, advancing American freedom. them after leaving heritage. Thanks very much for being with us today. Thank you so much. And that's the Ryan Larry Show for today, produced by Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Amina Serna, Carl Boysrand, and Esperanza Rosenbaum with help today from Melanie Maritch, who's been helping us out recently. Melanie, thanks for these days. And Megan Ryan, the head of live radio, guiding it all. Stay tuned for Allison.