The Filibuster, Trump's Trip to China, and The Rise of Antisemitism

In 2025, Americans lost more than $21 billion to fraud and identity theft. That's why so many people are turning to Aura. Aura helps protect your identity with fraud alerts, dark web monitoring, and up to $5 million in identity theft protection. And if you become a victim, Aura's 24-7 U.S.-based support team is there to help. Don't wait until your identity is stolen. Start your free trial today at Aura.com slash safe. That's Aura.com slash safe. Welcome to today's podcast, sponsored by Hillsdale College, all things Hillsdale at Hillsdale.edu. I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there. And, of course, I'll listen to the Hillsdale Dialogues, all of them at Q for Hillsdale.com, or just Google, Apple, iTunes, and Hillsdale. Good morning and grace, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Welcome to the Wednesday edition of the Hugh Hewitt show. There's a lot to cover today, but I'm very, very grateful that a majority leader of the United States Senate, John Thune, has joined me this morning. Senator, welcome back. Good to have you. I believe it is the case that when you sign up to be majority leader, there's a clause in your contract that says you're obliged to defend the filibuster, even when people who want you to defend the filibuster deny so on camera. Isn't that not in the small print? Yeah, I think you are correct, there you. This is a conversation, as you know, has gone on for many years, many decades and through multiple administrations and congresses. And it's just a, you know, I mean, again, the founders, when they designed the country, one of the ways they divided power was they took the Article I branch to the government and made it a bicameral process in which one of the... institutions, the United States Senate, was non-majoritarian. They wanted a counter-majoritarian institution. The Senate represents that. It's hard sometimes. I know people, it's hard to explain and not something that we all learn in physics growing up, but there's a reason why the Senate is the way that it is. It's designed to slow things down, make it more deliberative, and to give the minority in the country of wasting our government. Now, John Thune, last week, 10 days ago, President Trump was my guest. And normally I just asked the president questions, and he's the best interview in America. No offense, leader. But yeah, he just is. But in the middle of that, he turned around and said, well, you don't support the filibuster, do you? You want to say, yeah, yes, I do, Mr. President. He did not ask me to explain that I think it's the first line of defense to the Supreme Court being attacked. and that it's therefore important to keep it where it is. How do you defend, and by the way, my listeners hate the filibuster and they get on me whenever I defend it. How do you tell people? How do you explain it to them? Well, I mean, I think historically, and you know this better than anybody, you know, if you're a conservative and you want to protect conservative policies, priorities, principles, you know, the Democrats have been the majority in the Senate more years than not, and their agenda is a aggressive, expansive agenda because they're all about growing government. And conservatives through the years have been able to use the filibuster to protect against.

a lot of crazy ideas the Democrats have, like expanding the Supreme Court. And, you know, adding D.C. and Puerto Rico estates and federalizing our elections and abortion on demand and, you know, redistribution of wealth in the kind. I mean, there's a whole bunch of just, you know, sort of crazy left ideas that they would turn to, were it not for the fact that Republicans were able to. because of the legislative filibuster prevent that from happening. So it's something that's protected. Conservatives a lot more than it has liberals, that's for sure. And it protects the court. And I think it's probably unconstitutional to expand the court anyway, but for another day, I want to move on to the second argument that the president makes often, though he didn't make it to me, the Senate isn't getting enough done. In fact, you cleared the nominations backlog, did you not? Yeah, we did. In fact, we're way ahead of where we were where he was in his first term because of the changes we made. And that's an executive calendar issue. And again, something that unconstitutionally the Senate is responsible for. And another reason why you want to have a majority in the Senate, especially in Trump's the last two years of his term, because we're still going to have judges coming through. We're still going to have executive branch nominees coming through. And the Senate is the place where those... those get confirmed. And so it's going to be really key and critical that we keep the majority. And I think that, you know, you talk about issues like the court, Hugh, or gun rights or any of those things historically. You know, somebody has suggested, and the president does too, he probably did to you when you talk to them about, well, the Dems are going to do it anyway. Yes. And the truth of matter is, it's a hypothetical. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. But if somebody has once described it, the Dems at some point may... try and steal the car, but we're not going to hand them the keys. And all that stuff I mentioned that they would do if filibuster was gone or things that we would then own. And I just, I don't think that's where Republicans in this country want to end up or want us to end up, but it's very hard to explain that, to your point, to an audience that really doesn't care about that. They just want to get results and they want to get them fast. Well, that leads me to my next question. I get that argument. The Senate hasn't done anything. The working family's tax cut continues to roll out in its benefits, especially in the area of school choice. I mean, school choice is revolution. I believe Ted Cruz put that into the one big beautiful bill, aka the working family's tax cut. But do you think the country is quite aware yet how big a bite of legislation that was? It's the most consequential thing I've done in my time in public life, and if I don't do anything else, we got the first entitlement reform we've gotten in my entire time in office. The Medicaid getting rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse, and the Medicaid program, SNAP program, were historic in terms of their accomplishments. But to the broader point, yeah, it included 100 pieces of legislation, school choice. You know, ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which will expire. That was a one-year deal. That's all we could get past the parliamentarian. Newborn accounts for kids. Childcare tax credit, something the Democrats talk about but have never done anything about. And this president, President Trump, working with the Republican Congress, achieved that. So, and, you know, there are so many things in there. It's hard. And I think that's one of the reasons the challenges we've had, is it.

You know, getting out there, it becomes, there are so many things you can shoot at. And I think, you know, as we talk about this out on the campaign trail, we've got to home in on the things that are impacting people's daily lives and remind them about some of the things that we've accomplished. Well, one of the things that is underway now is another reconciliation process. And I hope that there is defense spending in there, but at least there's got to be Department of Homeland Security in there. Where does that stand right now, John Thune? Well, right now, of course, the Reconciliation 2.01, the first one we did last year, which did literally a decade of legislating in one bill, now we're going to have to fund, you know, the DHS, both ICE and CBP through a reconciliation bill. But there is a talk now, because we have a third bullet available to us, a third legislative vehicle, what a reconciliation 3.0 might look like. You know, the House is going through that process. We are, too, having conversations about timing and what it might include, et cetera. But we are looking for good ideas, ways to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in government, reform entitlement programs, make them run more efficiently, and obviously look for tax policies that will allow the American people to keep more money in their pocket and quit sending so much to Washington. The one thing that's clear all the time I've been here, and that is that when Democrats are in power, they grow government. And it's very, very hard to unwind that. But even when they had unified control of the government during the Biden administration, they did two big reconciliation bills, which dramatically expanded the size of government, spent $4 trillion, and it wasn't paid for, and created all kinds of crazy policies and Green New Deal policies that we're now paying a price for and trying to... to go back and unwind. And that's why it's really important that we keep majorities here in the Congress. And right now with a Republican president, it's a historic time. So if there's another reconciliation bill that we think works and that we can get through both the House and Senate where the margins are very narrow, we'll take a hard look at it. Can we hone in for a moment on Chairwoman Susan Collins, Senator Susan Collins from Maine? I spent a lot of time in Maine. She's beloved. She's like St. Susan up there. She is chair of appropriations, and she's a little bit skeptical of the trillion and a half dollar defense budget. And I'll find a chance to talk to her about it. But what do you understand her concerns to be about that? I think part of it is, and I've sat down with her, in fact, just yesterday, to talk about appropriations. And obviously what has traditionally happened to you around here is that every dollar you increase you get in defense budget, Democrats demand an increase in non-defense. spending. So they get, you know, more of their social spending in exchange for our national security spending. And so she's trying to figure out how, what's the, you know, the number we can achieve, do the most we can. She's a big defense hawk as are most Senate Republicans. And particularly now, when we live in a very dangerous world and a very, you know, I would say challenging threat environment, we need to make sure that we're paying attentional national security. We've always...

said in this office, if you don't get national security right, the rest is conversation. You've got to be able to defend the country, and right now that needs to be priority number one. So she's working through how can she optimize what we can do on defense to take care of the country's national security needs and still fund the other agencies of government, but not in a way that explodes cost. And I think that's the... The challenge is the chairman of the corporations committee you face here in the Senate. You've got Democrats who have very different priorities and the Republicans do, and you have to figure out how to strike that balance. We've got 45 seconds, Senator. I think Senator Susan Collins will hold on to her seat against Graham Platner because he's a nut. But what about the rest of the map? How do you feel about it? They'll still spend $100 million against her. Are we going to get out spent? Are we going to hold on to the Senate? Well, we're doing really well on Senate leadership funding, fundraising. NRC is doing really well. RNC is doing well. The Democrat candidates, because of Act Blue, raise a lot of money. But Maine is a good case in point. Susan Collins will have what she needs. And she's running against a flat-out crazy guy who Democrats never would have used to want it to defend. But this year, for some reason, he's become their darling. So I think we're going to be fine, but we've got our work cut out for us. John Thune, always good to talk to you, leader. Keep coming back. I appreciate the time. Majority Leader John Thune. I'll be right back, America. Stay tuned.

Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, joined now by Noah Rothman. Noah is the senior political writer at National View, regular desk on the program. Noah, our friend Matt Contenetti, was on yesterday after the Nick Christoph column, the despicable column came out. And I asked him if we aren't living in an age not so different from the Dreyfus affair in France in the late 1890s and early 1900s. where all of France became infected with anti-Semitism overnight. And Matt pointed out that actually was a preview of coming attractions in Europe. And I suggested anti-intellectualism. He has other arguments. What is going on? It's profoundly dispiriting and really troubling. And I share Matt's assessment on your show that a lot of these accusations are actually confessions on the part of those who issue them, especially in light of the report conducted by an independent Israeli women's rights NGO, which outlined in graphic and gratuitous detail, the degree of sexual depravity and... inhumane violations that were committed on the course over the course of October 7th. And since that atrocity, we have seen a mania erupt across the Western world. My colleague, Abe Greenwald, attributes anti-Semitism to a sense of helplessness, which also manifests in hostility to the outward world. It's an ideology for losers. And it explains their loserdom in a way that absolves them of responsibility for or any agency over their lives. And you can see the attractiveness to it. I delve into a lot of this in my book, my forthcoming book, Blood and Progress, a Century of Left Wing Violence in America. And it's hard to promote a book that you're actually kind of disappointed with because I'm very disappointed with the subject matter. It's really dispiriting. And one of the things that I go through in that book is the degree to which anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, is a Soviet project. And a lot of those narratives are still with us, drawing on the scholarship of Isabella Taborovsky, Paul Hollander, Paul Berman, etc. The degree to which the Soviets, after the 1967 and 1973 wars, in which its investments in Arab military has showed to have no return on that investment, demonizing the Zionist project became a Soviet geopolitical imperative. And they invented narratives around the idea that Israel was a white colonialist outpost in the Middle East, that it was chauvinist, that it was racist, that it was militant, that it engaged in starvation campaigns, that it was a genocidal power, that it was slaughtering Palestinians en masse, that it was using rape systematically as a weapon of war. You hear all this today.

These Soviet narratives are still with us. The militancy that they inspired is still with us. And indeed, it's getting worse. So now you see lawyers who happen to be Jews getting thrown off cases because they can't be expected to be impartial when the issue is Judaism. You see groups that are anti-as real on student campuses getting thrown out. I'm sorry if you continue. I haven't seen that story yet about the lawyers. That's a disbarment offense if you actually throw a lawyer. No, it goes on and on and on. It goes on and on and on. And it's pure sectarian religious hatred. And it is becoming something so powerful that even the New York Times suspends its rigorous fact-checking operation. I've been through it. But they just did put it aside because the accusation was too titillating. It was satisfying too many demands from the audience. It was giving them license to be losers. And that's what they want. It is a subset of a larger problem. And I want to put it to Matt yesterday. I put it to you. Idiocracy was a funny movie. It's now a reality in which we're living. People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Xavier Becerra, his interview yesterday. Did you see any of that, Noah? I saw the clip, the extremely embarrassing clip, but I didn't see the whole interview. Okay, and he's the best they got. So we're taught all of California. The best they've got is Xavier Becerra, who's a zero when it comes to intellect. So is the problem that stupid people have taken over democratic politics? Stupid people have taken over politics, period. I'm sorry to be so crass about it. But for the most part, anybody who would subject themselves to this torture, to subject their families to this torture, to have their reputation smeared on the basis of factually deficient allegations, which is just part and parcel of the game now, nobody would want to go through that. Nobody with merit would want to go through that. And the people who... I really admired in politics, they're all on their way out the door. They're going to go make money in the private sector and contribute meaningfully to the sum of human knowledge and human flourishing, perhaps more so than they would in the public sector. But the people who are attracted to politics now are, if not narcissists, which some of them are. masochists. I'm not talking about different things. Some of the people I just had on John Thune, very bright man, great man of character. Tom Cotton's on once a week. He's one of the good ones. Yeah, Tom Cotton, very bright man, man of great character. I can run down a long list of very smart people who are in politics, but I despair of the next generation because you really have to check your brain at the door to put up with this stuff now. And

To go to work in journalism when you're going to be surrounded by whoever is running the New York Times, who in their right mind would do that? Yeah, I just don't know. I mean, and it's everywhere when you start looking for it. It's a piece I haven't written yet. I'll probably write it today. But there was totally unrelated. I was just scrolling through axios. And there was this piece on how Americans are no longer interacting with their neighbors. It was citing an American AEI, an AEI study. And one of the lines in that study was, without casual conversations with neighbors, who are often from other races or have different religions or political ideologies, people risk becoming more isolated. So I want to click through to that study to see if AEI had identified the degree to which Americans were just too ethnically or racially hostile to engage with their neighbors. And that's just not there. It's not there. The allegation was not even made. Indeed, it said that people who are religiously affiliated are more likely to engage in their neighbors. No denomination there associated with it. She just made it up. But she made it up because she knew it would sell. The audience wants to hear it. The editors want to hear it. It's too good to check. So this fact gets laundered into the conversation, and it's just out there. It's live. It's never going to be taken back. And you can say, I don't know if you're a churchgoer. The reality is, the only thing that encourages me on a weekly basis is when I go to my own church, my mass. Huge crowds, very diverse, young, old, all different races. I went to my daughter's church this weekend, full to the rim and brim with lots of kids and lots of parents and lots of different people. I think religious America is just fine. It doesn't matter to the nomination. You can be Hasidic Jew or you could be a tradrad Catholic or anything in between. Everything is just fine. I just think we're less religious as a whole. And the legacy media is a-religious. We are. And I am not in a church. I was not raised in a church. I do not take my children to a church. But I have really robust relationships with my neighbors. And I'm not hostile to the practice of religion. Indeed, I'm pretty friendly towards it because I see it as the societal glue. It's extremely valuable. And I'm very optimistic about the future of this. And I love the American people. And I think they'll muddle through this and we'll get to the other side of it better for it. But I have no hope in the institutionalists who run our major organizations, major government. mental institutions, major societal institutions, not at the ground level, not at the municipal level. But in the broader sense, those who have a national platform increasingly seem inclined to sacrifice national comedy and their institutions good standing just to maintain the good graces of an unrepresentative activist class that is busily taking a sledgehammer to the foundations of this country. And that does make me really, really nervous. It should make you nervous, too. Then, Noah, if you have time to stick around, I'm going

to raise the question of whether or not New York Times v. Dan Sullivan's standard ought to be relaxed and changed in the next segment. And if you want to participate in that, please stick around. Don't know if you can. Didn't ask you about it beforehand, but if you can, please do. I'll be right back, America. We're putting libel and slander on the table because maybe it's time to change that. I'll be right back. Welcome back, America. I persuaded Noah C. Rothman to stick with me. Blood and progress comes out soon. I'll do a very long interview with Noah about blood and progress when it drops. When does blood and progress drop, Noah? Next Tuesday. Really? Yeah, it's upon us. You've got to send me a copy up north so that I can get ready for a longer interview on Wednesday or Thursday. Everyone out there pre-orders so that we can get Noah on the New York Times list. They're going to probably try and erect a sleuth gate to keep your order sheets from showing up on the New York Times bestseller list, don't you think? I have no idea. I want this to be a cultural crusade against the New York Times, though. I appreciate that. Stick it to the New York Times, buy a copy of my book. That's brilliant. That's it. And put them on the list. So, Noah, this is, it's not a legal question. It's a cultural question. The culture of the United States, as embodied in our legal precedent, New York Times v. Dan Sullivan and others, is for robust free speech, even when it hurts people's feelings, even when it's lies. You have to really go out of your way. to libel and slander a public figure, and I've been the beneficiary of that. I haven't had to worry about speech on the radio or on the television for 35 years I've been doing this. But with people like Nick Christoph not being checked by anyone at the New York Times, is it about time to re-examine all of the legal structure that allows anyone to say anything about anything at any time, no matter how much it harms or distorts the truth? Well, I'm not a lawyer. I didn't go to law school, and I can't tell you the contours of the, and the precedents that went into Dan Sullivan v. New York Times. I am skeptical of the premise. I understand the impulse to want to impose consequences on reckless institutions like the New York Times that would violate its own standards in order to propagate blood liable narratives like that. And maybe you can. But then... you're going to confront the problem that I think we're dealing with, which is not a supply side problem. It's a demand side problem. And so, yeah, maybe you impose some caution on the New York Times of the Washington Post. But then it's live on social media. So then you revise Section 230 in order to go after social media companies, make them publishers, make them liable for what people say on their sites. And then that conversation goes underground, where it can no longer be policed, where it just festers and metastasizes outside the view of respectable polite society. So I don't think going after it and driving it underground is the answer, because the problem is that people want to hear this sort of thing. And what people want in this country they tend to get. What we have to go after is the demand, not the suppliers.

Now, your old colleague and my frequent guest, and you still appear on the commentary podcast, John Podhorst, has made the very trenchant observation that the Internet has allowed people who ought never to have met to come together frequently. Is there anything we can stop or do about that? Short of minority report sort of stuff. Yeah, exactly, short of abridging America's fundamental civil rights. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part. I'm open to that. I'm willing to be convinced. But I do think that any effort to police thought and speech like that runs up against the First Amendment's freedoms. And the First Amendment has to win in that contest. It protects you and me as much as it does vile libelous anti-Semitic slanderers. And I'm discompeted by the tension there, but I don't understand. I don't see a way to mitigate that. That is a tension that we've had in this country since the dawn of it. And we've worked through it. We do manage to get to the other side of these crises that involve really powerful but dangerous ideas coming to the fore and catching heat. This is yet another one of those periods of tension in American public life. And I don't know what to do about it. I don't think there's a silver bullet, which is part of the reason why I'm in such a downbeat mood today. All right, so let me add one more difficult question. I do not mean to add to the many burdens of David French and Brett Stevens and any other non-left wing nut who works at the New York Times. At they to quit when their platform begins to peddle anti-Semitism? If I were them, I would be first working behind the scenes pretty furiously. to ensure either a correction or retraction of that piece. And if that was not forthcoming, then I would review my options. But my first choice would not be to go public and go nuclear on the first, you know, the first encounter here with my bosses. I would try to work this out amicably behind the scenes first. But if it cannot be... And if the institution wants to stand by this, and they do seem to. I mean, there ran an expose today that Israel is ruining the Euro song contest competition because it's angling behind the scenes for its people, as though this is a vast conspiracy that no other country on earth would engage in. It's the definition of double standards, and the definition of double standards when it's applied to Israel is anti-Semitism, according to the International Holocaust Museum's working definition of anti-Semitism. But this is, it's running really deep in the institution. I would try to save it before I went to war with it. You see, I think the Bari Weiss standard, which is easy for me to say since I'm older and I've made my bones. But the Bari Weiss standard is a standard that ought to weigh heavily on everyone who works there because she just quit. And she has prospered for her principled position. And it's something I think many people ought to take courage from. Noah, I'm looking forward to Blood and Progress. I'm going to text you where to send it to because we've got to have a long conversation about the final edition. I read it in proof, but I don't know what you changed and added. Go get Blood and Progress right now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Actually, just go to Amazon. I think that counts on the New York Times list. Blood and Progress by Noah C. Rothman. Stay tuned.

Thank you, Hugh, Sarah Bedford, is a senior writer-editor at the Washington Examiner. I have a column today urging the president to be more repetitive in telling people why Iran can't have nukes because they're lunatics. Sarah, I know you've had to cover Congress for a lot of years. Did you have to watch the Rand Paul hearings today? I did. I caught, you know, some clips here and there, but no, I didn't, I didn't watch the whole thing, but it's remarkable that it's even happening in the first place, right? Well, it was a really boring two hours because there was one sentence of revelation, which is the CIA changed the report in 2021. It said it was the Wuhan Lab League, just saying we can't say precisely what it is. That's the whole hearing. Does that happen often where senators oversell a hearing and then nothing happens? Sometimes I actually think it's that you could make an argument that a lot of the so-called blockbuster hearings often end up being an oversell. And I guess when I say it's remarkable that it's happening, it's like if you think back to a few years ago the fact that you have a CIA whistleblower, the fact that it's now just so openly acknowledged that there was sort of a cover-up of the fact that there was a lab leak and that the administration knew that. That still strikes me today even as remarkable. Yeah, I just, I think senators are bad at this. Bernie Moreno is not a lawyer. Joni Ernst is not a lawyer. Rand Paul is not a lawyer. Ron Johnson is not a lawyer. Josh Hawley is a very good lawyer, but he was so mad he didn't ask any questions. Ashley Moody is a very good lawyer. And she was so proud of Florida and talking about the free state of Florida that she didn't have, like, who changed the report? I mean, he said the report was changed. over five days from saying it was a Wuhan lab link to we can't precisely say. But then no one asked him, isn't that the obvious question? Who did it? Yeah, and I mean, there's been many years and millions of dollars of resources trying to answer some of those basic questions. But it is sometimes frustrating to see, especially when Republican members, when they go into these hearings that they've hyped up, haven't coordinated their questions, haven't settled on like a unifying list of things they'd like to find out from the witness. That does end up showing often, no matter what this topic of the hearing is on, if that level of preparation wasn't there. So no Democrats showed up, not one. Now, COVID matters to a lot of Americans. We're still mad at not the fact that we didn't prevent millions of death. That was unpreventable. In large part, we got the vaccine out as best as possible. It worked largely well. But the restrictions were ridiculous. It did not harm children. And schools should not have been closed. And we know that now. But how long are we going to talk about COVID? It is a long time ago. And we know that the government screwed it up. How long do you think it's going to go on for? I'm actually surprised how quickly it did kind of fade from politics. You don't hear it on the campaign trail that often. It's not a live political issue the way it was even just a couple of years ago, even though lots of us are still dealing with the fallout from decisions that Democrats made. Like my son was out of school for two years because of the closures here in D.C. We're still dealing with the effects of that learning loss. A lot of families are dealing with that. So I'm actually surprised you don't hear it more often on the campaign trail because it was such a profound betrayal for a lot of people.

people by institutions they trusted. But it's not really a live political issue anymore. Now, instead of the Wuhan lab, I would focus on that, Sarah. I would hold hearings on what happened to the children of America because you shuttered the schools, Democrats, because teachers unions shuttered the school. Are you mad at your school district or your school still? Because I sure would be. Yeah, we left D.C. and moved to Virginia almost 100% because we couldn't continue in the D.C. public school system after all of that betrayal and a vaccine mandate for children on top of all of that when we did return. And I know that I'm not alone in that. There are millions of families across the country that are still feeling angry and betrayed by institutions that your tax dollars fund and that when you really needed them sort of showed themselves to be partisan organs. You know, there is a sleeping giant out there. It is the school closure and the learning loss. And I hope Republicans talk about it on the campaign trail, which brings me to topic two, redistricting wars. How do you score the redistricting wars? We're at maximum partisanship. Virginia's jammed down failed. California's jammed down work. Texas, jammed down work. Florida's jammed down work. Louisiana got ordered by the court to change it. I think Alabama is going to get four Republican seats. Who's up and who's down at the end of the day? Republicans are absolutely up at this point if you ask a Speaker Mike Johnson. He would say that Republicans have netted as many as potentially 10 seats or preserved them in this redistricting fight. It's pretty clear that the Democrats made a massive tactical error with the Virginia referendum, not just because they didn't follow their own state's constitution and getting that referendum before voters. But also because you had some Republican states that were reluctant to redistrict because Texas and California had sort of battled things to withdraw. And maybe they could have just left it there. But after the Virginia Supreme Court and all of that, you saw Florida move ahead. Even before you had the Voting Rights Act. ruling get handed down by the Supreme Court. So I do think that was just sort of a massive strategic error for Democrats, simply because they have fewer states to gerrymander at this point. And if they are going to inspire Republicans into an all-out warfare, Republicans just have more arrows to fire when it comes to redistricting. By 2032, they're only going to be red districts and red states and blue districts and blue states. It's going to get down to that. Let me ask you, Sarah, about the I had John Thune on to begin the show. Transcript, by the way, if anyone. wants to read what he had to say about the filibuster is soon to be posted at hughett.com. John Thune was walking through the budget. Apparently there are going to be two reconciliations, one for DHS and another one for other things. How do you rate the prospects for both of those? I think it's a near lock for the first reconciliation bill, right? The one with the immigration enforcement funding. The only sort of asterisk to that is that the Secret Service funding, some of which would be used for security upgrades to the ballroom, is proving to be a little bit controversial, even with moderate Republicans in the House.

The other piece of reconciliation legislation, you have, you know, John Thune is optimistic, Johnson's optimistic, the White House is optimistic, but it could be really difficult for Republicans to decide what goes in that piece of legislation if it becomes what would be the last train leaving the station before the midterms. That could turn into a real fight over just how big Republicans try to make that. Sarah C. Bedford, always good to check in with you. Follow Sarah on X at Sarah C. Bedford. I hope someone's listening, Sarah, and they decide to do a commission or a special select committee on school closures and their lasting ill effects on kids. That's the live political issue. Hey, America, I want to remind everyone we are raising our annual fundraising campaign for kids to go to camp, kids whose mom and or dad. are in prison or behind bars in jail somewhere. They go to the angel tree camps. They're all across the country. They're as full as they can be. It costs $200 to send a kidney camp. That's the food. That's the counselor. That's the insurance. That's the doctor on site. That's keeping the cabin clean. That's having sunburn medication and mosquito spray ready. It's lifeguards at the lake. It's a wonderful thing. All you have to do is help us. Make the mark. Do that. Well, give a listen to one of the campers. We wake up, we have breakfast, and then we usually play some games. And then if you're older, we might have like a Bible study before worship. We worship until lunch, and it's the blast. You know, everybody's jumping. We're singing. After lunch, we didn't have like free time. We do craft to go swimming. We do all that stuff, all that fun stuff. I mean, I love camp. That's how I want to keep coming back. I want to keep coming back. That's what they always say. They always want to come back. They age out eventually, but then some of them become counselors. If you're moved by that and you want to contribute, whether it's $20, one-tenth of one scholarship or $200 or $400,600, whatever you can do. Call AAA 206-2764. Or call Angel Tree or go to the Angel Tree banner at the top of Hugh Hewitt.com. Secure, safe, click. Make your contribution there and come right back to the Hugh Hewitt. I'm by a former United States Senator Jim Talent, senior fellow at the Reagan Institute Center for Peace Through Strength. Senator Talent, before I get to missiles in Iran, I got to tell you, your friend, John Thune, started the program with me today. And I asked him if it was in the contract when you became... leader at your conference to agree that you would say nothing when the people who want you to defend the filibuster criticize you for defending the filibuster. And he said it was, yeah, in fact, in the small print. What number of senators do you think really hate the, honest of goodness, want the filibuster gone? On the Republican side, I would guess a pretty solid majority now, and I think it's probably growing. The problem is, of course, you, that you have to get to 50 votes in order to eliminate it. And until John Thune can get there, he's not going to actively argue in favor of it, because that just makes the whole conference look ineffectual.

So I think when we get those votes, if we get those votes, we'll see it. And the first crack will probably be on something like reopening the government because you could do a fairly minor tweak. to open the door, and it's the strongest, it's a situation where it's most needed and where you're most likely to get the votes. But until then, you're not going to see John Thune expand on that because it's counterproductive. I mean, all it would do is cause people to dig in their heels the most and make him look ineffectual, and he's not going to do it. And boy, well, we will regret that. We will regret that. It's like Harry Reid, break in the Philippines. We will regret it. Okay, New York Times today, big story. The United States didn't destroy and Israel did not destroy nearly as many of Iran's missiles as we think we did. Maybe 70% of them are buried underground, but conceivably they could be gotten to, and conceivably they could repair their launchers, and conceivably they might have seven out of ten left. Your response. Yeah, conceivably, if we left them alone, they managed to hang on in power. They have eight or ten years to try and rebuild, to figure out new ways of getting money illicitly, to maybe engage more with the narco terrorists and figure out new ways to launder the money because that's pretty much gone now. Yeah, maybe in eight or ten years. Effectively, they have been destroyed. as an effective and organized, aggressive power in the Middle East. I mean, that's how I put it to people. We conducted between us and the Israelis upwards of 20,000 sorties precision strike with Israeli intelligence and our intelligence. It's just not possible that they could have survived that as a major military power. Now, it's easier to see with things like the Navy. We sent the entire Navy. I mean, they still have the fast boats for the IRG. When we clear the strait, which will probably happen eventually, they won't have those anymore either. I mean, you, I said, I think when this whole thing was developing, I think I said on the show that if you were an autocratic dictator of a country with a long coastline along international waters. Don't give the United States two or three months to build up its strategic precision strike capabilities unless you have air defenses that you really trust. And they didn't. Because if you do that, you're going to end up very substantially destroyed. And I'm very, I bet good American money without having been in on any of the, I'm not read into any of the intel the way Tom Cotton is. That's my working assumption. Now, Senator Talent, I am of the opinion that we should believe the New York Times and we should use that article as a reason to go back and want them again and again and again. And by prediction, that's my want. That's my desire. That's the wish that gives, I hope, form to the thought. I want the president to restart kinetic operations when he comes back from China. Do you?

Yes, and I said last night on the show, I think the rhythm or logic of this process... suggest that it's time to do that. Now, I don't, and I think the president will, unless he gets a deal or they're broken before then, I think he probably will. I doubt it's going to be something devastating because I think he has moved this conflict, if you will, into the economic domain because I think he believes, and I think he's right in this respect, that he is really hurting and throttling them. with that and then it also has other benefits for us specifically with regard to the chinese where he is right now because it is showing them how vulnerable their energy supply chains are so but but i think the logic of it almost requires it if and particularly since they're continuing with these lunatic pronouncements that it's time for us to surrender and pay them reparations and the rest of it i think he almost has to send a message to them And I would guess that he will when the Chinese meetings are over. All right. Last question, Jim Talent. Amit Segal, frequent guest on the program, scooped today, I believe it was Amid who scooped. During the last two months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly flew to the United Arab Emirates, met with their ruler, MBZ, the Crown Prince of the Emirates, and they agreed on the Iron Dome deployment to the UAE. They have an effective alliance now. It's extraordinary. Yes. The Iranians really shot themselves in the foot. Yeah, it's further evidence that the Arab states in the region have reconciled themselves fully to the fact that Israel is there. Israel is going to continue and are really cutting up to the idea that, you know, maybe if we actually have peaceful relations with Israel, some of that will be formal. Some of them will recognize Israel, some won't. But if we actually have peaceful relations with Israel, we can accomplish what we really want, which is. to stabilize their governments and advance the economies of their people. And now the other thing that's significant about this, it's pretty clear that the UAE has decided it wants to go out front. It wants to be a champion of that Middle Eastern future, which is a very, very important accretion to our partnerships in the region. So, I mean, they're going out in a limb. You know, it shows where everybody in the region sees it going. They see who the strong men are. who the leaders are. And they understand a partnership like this, policed by the Israeli military power and led by the economic and diplomatic power of the United States, is the future of the region. I think you're right. And I believe that MBZ is a uniquely qualified leader in that region to work with Benjamin Netanyahu. Right.

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is not far behind because Mohammed bin Salman is younger and someone's got to pick up the baton from NBC and carry it forward, and I hope it's Mohammed bin Salman. Jim Talent, always a pleasure. Follow him on X at Jim Talent. I'll be right back, America's stage. Lori, and evening, Grace, America. Hugh, Hugh, he went back for hour three. Coming up, Jimmy Lye's son, Sebastian Lye, joins me. Eliana Johnson later in the hour. But I begin with our friend Mary Catherine Hamm. She is the host of the Getting Hammered podcast, Fox News contributor as well. Mary Catherine, I've got to thank you for this morning's getting hammered episode. It made me laugh because if you lean close to your camera, you'll see that I don't have a Shiner like your three-year-old, but I got a bloody eye because my four-year-old grandson put his thumb into it when I was reading him a bedtime story on Saturday night. These toddlers are dangerous. They're just dangerous. They're brutal. There's a bump on one side of my nose that is from a slight nose break that my second child gave me at 18 months old. Just slammed that head right into my nose. That's the problem with toddlers. They're not aware of the damage they can do. The T-Rex Teddy, he's a six-year-old and a three-year-and-a-half-year-old's body, and he's built like Dick Bacchus, and he just runs right into you. But that thumb in the eye, that's never happened to me before. I had to tell the makeup ladies at Fox last night, it's not pink eye. It's just a thumb in the eye. They believe me. They heard about Teddy before. So Mary Kaplan. This is what they teach you built to Vince classes. He's way ahead of the game. Yeah. Tell people about your three-year-old and the, it's like a Nancy Drew mystery, the story, the missing black eye narrative. It was put down for a nap on Mother's Day. And when I use the term nap very loosely, we'd lock them in their room. We don't lock them in, actually. We closed them in their room. And then many things break loose in there. I don't know. I stay out of it. Once I'm off duty once that door is closed. And, you know, if there's real problems, I'll go in there. But we didn't hear any ruckus. We didn't hear any crying. And then when he woke up from nap, eventually they fell asleep. When he woke up from that nap and I let him out of the room, I walk into the house and I see just like this giant swollen black guy. And we couldn't get a straight story out of either of the young kids. Like, hey, that my daughter was a little quiet about it, which frankly still has me suspicious. Yep. And he got in a tangle with the bedrails as much as I can tell. And was it self-inflicted or did she help? That's the question. What I thought of when I heard you telling the story.

is in a Christmas story of the music with Ralphie when he shoots his eye out. The cover-up begins immediately. So if your daughter hurt your son, there was a lot of briefing going on in whispered tones. It was sort of like the CIA talking to the whistleblower about what he can and cannot say to the Rand Paul committee. All right, let's move on to serious stuff. I liked your redistricting breakdown. I loved it, in fact. And I do like the reality check. that goes with, we're in an era of maximum partisanship. It's not going to end while I'm working. It's probably not going to end when you're working, but we're in the middle of the great sort, and it'll be fine. We'll have blue states and red states, and they'll have all blue and red congresspeople. I'm okay with that. Well, and they'll have blue and red results accordingly, right? Like, that's one of the things that is turning more states, more red, is that people are leaving the blue states because of the policies, right? So you will actually have, like, an interesting contest between these two philosophies. Look, I think it's nice to limit the partisan gerrymanding where you can, but the problem is the places we've attempted to do that, California and Virginia. Democrats are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we definitely want to limit the partisan gerrymandering. And then as soon as they get a chance, they're like, nah, we didn't mean that. Here's what we're going to do. So I just accept that partisan gerrymandering is a part of life in a fallen world. I understand that people are going to do it. Racial gerrymanding, however, is not allowed. And that's the thing they're having a meltdown over. Now, I have two quibbles with the American media. One is gerrymandering is routinely mispronounced. It's gerrymandering, but I'm a scold when I bring that up. And the other is the word decimate, which means to, from the Roman Legion era, you would kill one soldier in ten when the Legion misbehaved. Do you have anything like that that triggers you when someone either says, mispronounces a word routinely, gerrymander, gerrymander, or uses a word wrongly like decimate, which is the Beltway's favorite word, decimate. It doesn't, and it's always wrong. They don't use it the right way. Now, I'm like this about many things off the top of my head, though, and especially in an age of reality TV, it's very painful. I am a stickler about she and I did something or ending with me, like getting the form correct and the order correct. And I make my children do it every single time. And in reality TV, they are the worst at this. It's like him and I's house that we live in. Like, that's not how it works. Don't do that. Very Catherine, I'm a failed parent. I'm a failed parent because my boys say me and Rob are going to go to play golf now. Yeah, I correct them every time. I do too, but it doesn't matter. Somehow it gets hardwired in. All right, let's get to the very serious stuff. Nick Christoff.

the raping dog story. And I'll leave it at that. I talked about it. As Scott Jennings said yesterday, he felt stupid reading. He felt like the intelligence was draining from his body when he read that story. What do you make of that? Well, the first thing I thought was like, this is an IQ test. Like the dog thing is like, are we kidding? You have to be motivated to believe this in order to believe it. The other thought I had is I've written for mainstream esteemed outlets before as a center-right reasonable person. And my every thought is fact-checked within an inch of its life, including just opinion sentences when I am published somewhere like the New York Times. And the idea that this gets into print, I believe they ran it on the front page. Did they not? I don't know for sure. There was one screenshot where it looked like it was very prominently placed. And this is just crazy. It's just a dereliction of duty. It is obviously irresponsible. The lie, of course, is around the world before the truth gets his pants on, right? You can't fact-check it after the case, although we will. But I just think it's transparently wrong and partly meant to derail and distract from the real news, which is the detailed accounts of what happened on October 7th. Now, there are three options to the New York Times and Nicola. And by that, Nick has been on this show dozens of times. I thought until yesterday, he was a good guy. He's written some books like a path appears. He reports on poverty. He takes kids interns on trips to Africa to teach them how to write about human suffering. So I was genuinely surprised and shocked that he ran with this. He could retract it. He could try and rehabilitate himself by giving equal coverage to the story you just referenced, the real rapes, the real brutality, or they could be recklessly indifference to the blowback. What do you think is going to happen? I think they're going to go with reckless indifference because the people they pay a price with are not the people that folks in the New York Times. bubble generally care about their opinion. I think they're going to let it fly on by. I would hope not, but there's been plenty of times in New York Times history where they have ignored things they shouldn't have ignored instead of correcting. And it's not to say that there's not issues in prisons everywhere, right? But like, do the work, report the thing. Don't take 14 people, most of whom are Hamas operatives, and regurgitate whatever they tell you. And don't slander dogs. I mean, he slandered every Jew in the world, every Israeli in the world, but he also suggested that dogs would do that, and I don't believe it. I want to get to Xavier Becerra.

He is a dummy. And I've known that because I used to interview him back in the L.A. days when I was doing the nightly news in L.A. and he was a state assemblyman from the area. Then he became a congressman. Then he got appointed attorney general. Then he ended up at HHS Secretary. He's a zero, part of the machine, but a complete zero. He was interviewed last night by KTLA Channel, I believe, five. Here's my favorite part of that, Mary Catherine. Cut number one. By the way, this is a profile piece. This is not a gotcha piece, right? Well, look, I think these questions are fair. It's in order to learn about you as a candidate. So long as it's about the profile. I don't know how you define profile, but I'd like to begin the interview. The way I describe profile is you talk about all the things that I've done, things I want to do, and along with some tough questions. But not only tough questions. All right, Mary Catherine, I'm going to let you react before I ask you specifics. Yeah, this is Democrat privilege is what this is. He thinks he can tell her what to ask him because he's a Democrat. She's supposed to be friendly to him. We're supposed to work together. You're not supposed to ask me tough stuff. And by the way, when you tell a reporter this, whether they like you or not, they're going to be more likely to ask you tough stuff because you've just tried to dictate to them. This is... similar to the thing that made Katie Porter explode on that local reporter. They're not getting much pushback at all, but they can't stand up to anything because they never get tough questions. And thank you to these ladies for asking them. She hadn't even started asking questions here, but like the mere suggestion that she would was enough to throw him off this much. Now, isn't it normal that if you want to do something like that, you'll say, can we go off the record? Right? That's what you would say. Can we go off the record for a moment? Or your comms team will have called beforehand to say, hey, we don't really want to do a grilling. I'm winning the primary, so can we just establish it? This is just stupid. That's what I walk away from. He's just not very smart. No, this is, yeah, you would have a conversation beforehand about what's the scope of this interview. We want to be comfortable with it. Whatever, whatever. But doing it on camera as both he and Katie Porter have done by this two people here who have made the same mistake and are none too smart in dealing with it because you don't have to have the perfect answer. Just have an answer and don't be a jerk. Well, he failed both of those conditions. He didn't have an answer, and he was a jerk. And boy, if you can watch the tape on the Salem News Channel, I'll play it again. I've been playing it all day. His eye roll, his insinuate. It's just bad. Mary Catherine, Ann, follower on X at M.K. Hammer. Listen to getting hammered, especially today's edition. I'll be right back, America. It was Sebastian Live. Stay tuned.

Welcome back, America. President Trump is still in this hotel in the People's Republic of China after a big welcoming ceremony. He told me last week that one of the things he would be bringing up with General Secretary Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China is the plight of imprisoned, dissident Jimmy Lai. I'm joined now by Jimmy Lai Sun. Sebastian, welcome back. I don't know what to expect. I do believe that President Trump will bring up your father to Xi Jinping. I don't know what to expect. Have you heard anything that gives you encouragement? Thank you so much for having me back, sir. I... I can only pray. You know, my father's health is getting worse and worse by the day. He's not getting any younger. We've been so grateful that the president has been so supportive. And, you know, every time that you've asked him a question by my father, he's answered so passionately. We are at a point now where if my father's not released soon, I fear the worst. Well, I do too. And that's why I think a lot of people are wondering, why are people pressing so hard, including reporters in the Oval Office that I had the president after I had him on the radio, and the television, they were pressing him in the Oval, and he went on a long explanation. He said, it's a tough lift for Xi Jinping because your father caused so much trouble for him. Not illegal trouble. He was acting within the rights of the free people of Hong Kong, and Xi Jinping. It's crushed him. Have you gotten any indication from your lawyers on the ground, people in Hong Kong, that maybe Xi Jinping sees some upside in letting your father go, like maybe getting rid of the ruthless reputation he's earned? I think you're exactly right. There's only upside in letting my father go. You know, when you refer to the, you know, the protest. My father was always for peaceful protest. Every occasion, both publicly and privately, he advocated for peaceful protests. This isn't something that this isn't a person that the Chinese or the Hong Kong regime wants to see die in jail. He's a man who many people around the world see as a hero, a man who has given everything that he has to stand up for these basic liberties. Basic liberties that many people in the world feel that this is something that every single person is entitled to and entitled to demand. So having a man like this in prison is a reminder. of what China and Hong Kong views these liberties that we all hold around the world. It's a reminder of Hong Kong's broken legal system and the vindictiveness of the Hong Kong government who have destroyed that legal system in order to imprison my father. Because as you said, running a newspaper until 2020, until passing a natural security law, was completely legal. Campaining for democracy is completely legal.

So, Sebastian Lai, I went back for a column for Fox News through famous dissidents like your father, like Solzhenitsyn and Scheransky and other people like that. Dictators eventually let people go if they're not crazy. Hitler had Bonhofer killed, and Hitler was a lunatic fanatic who's gone down in history as such. When dictators let people go, they get a gloss on their reputation. Do you think that appeals to Xi Jinping at all? I think this message that China is trying to portray to the rest of the world, that they are this a stable partner, you know, the words that they use. Well, if not even willing to put a 978-year-old man who's in very, very bad health on a plane and send him away, if not even willing to show something as humane. as this and as rational as this in a case where many people including the president of the united states has asked for and said that it would be a meaningful gesture um well then it tells you all you need to know about about uh both china and hong kong and i don't think it's necessarily it's it's definitely not beneficial to them it's not beneficial to them in in the short term is definitely not beneficial to them in the long term Now, the president took with him a dozen of the United States' most high-profile and important business executives. There's no better time to let your father out than when those people are in China. If China wants those people to have their companies come and do business in China, again, a lot of people have backed off after the Hong Kong cracked down, after the threats to Taiwan. Is that message getting, I mean, really, if you want China to reopen the business, you've got to let Jimmy Lai go. Otherwise, people are going to be afraid to go there. I completely agree with you. Look, in going after my father, China has essentially destroyed, sorry, Hong Kong has essentially destroyed its legal system. Hong Kong is a financial center, the only unique selling point of the place. And I love it. I'm from there. But it is a strong legal system and this inherent trust. that business people have with Hong Kong as a financial center. If you're going to break the laws vindictively whenever you feel like it, well, it's no wonder that there's so many people are, as you said, moving away. Now, releasing my father isn't going to go back to pre-national's crazy law, but it's one big step in the right direction. I think people, people would see it that way. It would also be seen, I can't tell you how many people I've advised not to go to China, that They could end up in a vise. They could end up in jail. They could end up with extra security attached to them, their phones compromise. I've done it again and again and again and again. And I'm not alone. And one of the reasons is if the government is as indifferent to your father as it's proved to be over the last few years, why should anyone try them? Do you give the same advice to people or are you just trying to stay focused on your dad?

I stay focused on my dad, but part of that focus is highlighting the injustice that's happened to him. And thank you for sending this message across you, because it's true. Look, everybody sees what's happening to my father and to so many other people in Hong Kong who have been jailed for belief that, you know, I would say 99% of Americans hold. And in fact, many people in America had to sacrifice for Americans hold these beliefs. So if you hold these police, which again, you're entitled to in this country, and you say them in Hong Kong, then you could very well end up in prison like my father. And I think that's what's so egregious about what's happening to him. It's not just the cruelty. It's also the values that my father has fought for are not controversial values by any means in any country. It's value of the free press, of freedom of democracy. And for that, he's being tortured. Sebastian, I have two final questions for you. First, where do people stay abreast of what's going on with your father's case? What's the best website? So we have support jimmelai.com. We also have a page on X. And that's the best way to follow along the story. All right, support Jimmy Ly. Last thing, your father is a devout Catholic. He's a man of great faith, as is your entire family. Has the Vatican been working quietly? I don't expect them to be loud, but have they been working quietly to secure your father's release?

I would not be able to say, unfortunately. If they are, then, I really do hope they are, but I don't know if they are. As you said, my father's faith is what keeps him so strong despite this incredibly harsh ordeal. The last time I talked to you, he had been denied the sacraments. Has been allowed to sacraments again? Since then, yes, because many people have caused uproves saying that this is completely ridiculous, that prisoners of war get taken. And so what reason is it that this man in the maximum security prison is not allowed this very basic human rights? And maybe that is a good sign. We will continue to pray for his quick release and repatriation to your family in Great Britain. Thank you, Sebastian Lai. Our prayers go with you. Stay tuned, America. Thank you for listening to Highly Concentrated, Hugh. And don't forget, one of our great sponsors is Consumer Cellular. 1-800-4-1-4-4-4-1-4-4-4-4-4-4. When you call them, and you should, because you should want to save money, make sure you use my promo code, Hugh Hewitt-U-G-H, you'll get your second month free. if and when you switch to consumer cellular, whatever plan you switch with, you'll get your second month for free. I want you to call and investigate because you're probably paying too much for whatever you're doing right now with consumer cellular. Or you can go online, consumercellular.com slash you. They've got great plans for every kind of person and every kind of data usage. However, they really target people who are 50 years and older. Listen to this. You get a single line with consumer cellular with unlimited talk, text, and data for just $35 a month. That's a single line if you're 50 years and older, with unlimited talk, text, and data for just $355 a month when you call consumer cellular, 800, 411, 44, and everybody, it can be under 50, you can be over 50, everybody gets their second month free when you use my name, Hugh. Welcome back to America. Eliana Johnson is the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon. Follow her on X at Eliana Y. Johnson. Read the free beacon at freebeacon.com. Eliana, I listened to the commentary podcast today. And I thought it was fabulous. And I wanted to go in reverse order. Can you update our list? Because we're on in Kentucky. We're on in Thomas Massie's district. And I'm hoping he gets beat next week. And you broke the story today about his latest flameout. He's a really bad egg. Tell people about it. Oh, sure. I wish I could take credit for breaking it, but this was actually a video that appeared on X yesterday. His former girlfriend.

sat down with an attorney in Kentucky and talked about a relationship. She began with Thomas Massie just about two months after his wife of 30 years died. He had her move to Washington, D.C. and helped get her a job with Representative Victoria Sparts. When that relationship fell apart, she was dismissed from Sparts's office and filed a complaint. Thomas Massie offered her $5,000 to dismiss that complaint, but she has produced. the documents both showing her that Thomas Massie offered her this hush money and a non-disclosure agreement and that the House of Representatives offered her $60,000. And that's what contained the non-disclosure agreement. And she said she's coming forward because, of course, you and your listeners will remember that it was Thomas Massie. the Kentucky representative, along with Democrat Ro Khanna, who led the charge for transparency in the Epstein files. And this woman, Cynthia West, who's a school board candidate in Florida, says she thought it was hypocritical that he's calling for transparency and everybody else's personal lives and in their emails and that he was not transparent. She wanted to bring some transparency to his life. He's such a creep on all the issues. I am not surprised. It took him two months to grieve his late wife, took up with another woman, moved her to Washington. I don't know how he convinced Congresswoman Sparks, who was a freshman or a sophomore at the time, to take her on to her staff or why he asked, do we know if he had her fired? Do we know? We don't know. Sparta's office gave us a statement yesterday when we began asking about this, that she was in a 90-day probationary, that she was in a 90-day probationary role and was let go after lack of performance. And that's the reason. And because she was let go, she claims it was retaliatory and she filed a complaint with the House. The House, in turn, offered her the $60,000 settlement. And Thomas Massie himself offered her $5,000. to stop, you know, litigating with the house and keep her mouth shut. He's such a greasy character. Who's running against him? You knew the opponent's name. Sure. He's facing a primary challenge from a former Navy SEAL. The primary takes place this Tuesday by the name of Ed Galrain, who's been endorsed by President Trump. President Trump is imploring people not to vote for Thomas Massie. And he says, you know, he refers to Thomas Massie as Rand Paul. and says the two of them are always the no votes in the Congress, Rand Paul of Kentucky in the Senate and his mini-mey Thomas Massie in the House. Yeah, and Bini is generous. Since you brought up, Rand Paul, let's merge that with the intelligence community. He gave a speech today, or he held a hearing today, and he promised an open bar, and he brought flavored water. He told us we were going to get a whistleblower from the CIA that was going to reveal all about the Wuhan lab. I watched two hours of my life that I'll never get back. A lot of senators are mad.

Well, I sure hope so, Hugh, and one of the things I hope he focuses on on his talks with the Chinese is to push them to stop talking out of both sides of their mouth. They tell the Americans that they will lean on the Chinese to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and on the other side of their mouth. They say things that they indicate to the Iranians and to the rest of the world that Iran has some kind of rights in the strait so they don't clarify what those rights are. President Trump should push them to pick a side. should be the American side. They cannot talk out of both sides of their mouth. It's the way they happen and maintain this ambiguity. Eliana Y. Johnson from the free beacon, follow on exit, Eliana Y. Johnson, thank you. Stay tuned to America. In 2025, Americans lost more than $21 billion to fraud and identity theft. That's why so many people are turning to Aura. Aura helps protect your identity with fraud alerts, dark web monitoring, and up to $5 million in identity theft protection. And if you become a victim, Aura's 24-7 U.S.-based support team is there to help. Don't wait until your identity is stolen. Start your free trial today at Aura.com slash safe. That's Aura.com slash safe.