Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College, All Things
Speaker 1: Hillsdale at Hillsdale dot edu or I encourage you to
Speaker 1: take advantage of the many free online courses there, and
Speaker 1: of course I'll listen to the Hillsdale dialogues, all of
Speaker 1: them at Hugh for Hillsdale dot com or just google, Apple,
Speaker 1: iTunes and Hillsdale.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: That bumper music could not be more app I am
Speaker 3: guest host Kurt Schlicker, sitting in for the great Hugh Hewitt.
Speaker 3: That bumper music is, of course, the theme to the
Speaker 3: film Exodus, about a bunch of tough Jews who built
Speaker 3: a country and save to people. My next guest is
Speaker 3: Eli Lake. You know him as a Free Press contributor.
Speaker 3: You can follow him at at Eli Lake and he's
Speaker 3: also the author of the Breaking History podcast. Eli. Welcome
Speaker 3: to the hu Hewitt Show.
Speaker 4: Oh Kurt, it's great to be here at Happy Holidays,
Speaker 4: Merry Christmas and early happy New Year.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you very much much. I appreciate it, and
Speaker 3: I also appreciate what you do on Breaking History because
Speaker 3: I just listened to your latest episode, Tough Jews, and
Speaker 3: it gave me something I love, which is a chance
Speaker 3: to learn some history I didn't learn. Tell me a
Speaker 3: little about meyer Lansky's contribution to punching Nazis.
Speaker 4: Well, I would say he's the pioneer of punching Nazis
Speaker 4: because in the nineteen thirties meyer Lansky, at least according
Speaker 4: to meyer Lansky, we should say the historical records of
Speaker 4: its body, was approached by two very prominent leaders in
Speaker 4: the Jewish community at the time, Rabbi Stephen Wise and
Speaker 4: Nathan Perlman, a Republican congressman and judge, and was basically
Speaker 4: asked to say, listen, the American Bund, which is the
Speaker 4: main Nazi movement, is expanding. They are making a play
Speaker 4: to try to win hearts and minds. They're intimidating Jews,
Speaker 4: and we would like you to gather some of your
Speaker 4: tough guys and do what you do best and beat
Speaker 4: him up. And that's what he did. And it wasn't
Speaker 4: just lands gae sets say. I mean, the history is
Speaker 4: really interesting because what I didn't realize that well, let
Speaker 4: me put it this, I didn't really know it in
Speaker 4: the detail until I did the research. The Jewish organized
Speaker 4: criminal class was not only worked with the Italians, and
Speaker 4: we know them as the mafia, but they were in
Speaker 4: this period probably as powerful as the Italian Mob. And
Speaker 4: what it was was an effort to try to say,
Speaker 4: looking at Europe and the idea that you know, the
Speaker 4: fascists in Italy and Germany were not legitimate political ideologies
Speaker 4: that could coexist in a liberal democracy. Sometimes you have to,
Speaker 4: as I say in the in the in the podcast,
Speaker 4: it takes a thug to beat a thug. And that
Speaker 4: is what happened. And so you know, there's the big
Speaker 4: showdown occurred in what is today the Upper East Side
Speaker 4: was then known as Yorkville, and there was Hitler's birthday.
Speaker 4: There was a big rally and Lansky had a couple
Speaker 4: guys infiltrating and a cother couple guys at the exits,
Speaker 4: and he caused the commotion and a lot of Brown
Speaker 4: Shirts ended up having a pretty bad day.
Speaker 3: Well, you had kind of a throwaway line in your
Speaker 3: Breaking History podcast. The Italian Mob, who are famous if
Speaker 3: you've watched The Godfather, you know, not great guys, but
Speaker 3: famously Catholic. They came to Lansky and said, hey, we want.
Speaker 4: To help, and Lansky said, no, it's something the Jews
Speaker 4: have to take care of. Themselves. Lansky is a very
Speaker 4: proud guy when it comes to this stuff. We should
Speaker 4: also say this is a part of this history is
Speaker 4: also that once America enters World War Two, Lanski and
Speaker 4: Lucky Luciani, who basically creates the Five Families, and you know,
Speaker 4: kind of is the modern version of the Mob. Although
Speaker 4: it's hard to say that the Mafi exists like that,
Speaker 4: it really doesn't. But they were approached by the FBI
Speaker 4: and they were enlisted to basically use their network to
Speaker 4: help keep Nazi infiltrators and Nazi and out of the
Speaker 4: ports in New York and the Eastern seaboards. So that's
Speaker 4: another part of that story. So you know, in a
Speaker 4: situation like World War Two, when you're facing the Nazis,
Speaker 4: even America's organized criminals, who of course were in their
Speaker 4: own war against the US government and the law at
Speaker 4: the time, but they were willing to cooperate in a
Speaker 4: moment like that, much the same way, you might add
Speaker 4: the way that you know, the United Kingdom and the
Speaker 4: United States had to had cooperated with Joseph Stalin, who
Speaker 4: was obviously one of the great villains of history.
Speaker 3: Well, Eli, like you and your podcast, you begin it
Speaker 3: talking about Bondai Beach, and you know, it was evident
Speaker 3: that no one's coming to rescue you early on, and
Speaker 3: you close talking about Bondai Beach to reemphasize that, and
Speaker 3: you say, you know, I hope the next time they
Speaker 3: the haters come shooting, I hope they meet some Jews
Speaker 3: who are packing.
Speaker 5: Tell me like that.
Speaker 3: That's kind of a you know, there is an impression
Speaker 3: of Jewish Americans is very, very liberal. My personal experience
Speaker 3: is a little different, but people have that impression and
Speaker 3: the idea of Jews carrying guns in America. And we're
Speaker 3: going to talk a little more about with Saul Litvak,
Speaker 3: who directed a movie called Guns and Moses later in
Speaker 3: the show. But that seems a little unusual. Are Jewish
Speaker 3: Americans starting to say, wait a minute, we were on first,
Speaker 3: we got their first responders.
Speaker 4: I mean, first of all, Australia, as you know, confiscated
Speaker 4: its fire arm, yes, nearly thirty years ago after a
Speaker 4: mass shooting. And I mean, I still would like to
Speaker 4: find out how this father and son Syrian refugees managed
Speaker 4: to get special dispensation to own long guns. I'd really
Speaker 4: like to know the answer to that. How did that
Speaker 4: happen because apparently they were licensed. But in America, I
Speaker 4: am hearing anecdotally and I didn't put it in because
Speaker 4: it's not you know, I don't have statistics on it.
Speaker 4: I'm hearing anecdotally a number of Jews who have applied
Speaker 4: for firearms permits for the first time, and I have
Speaker 4: to say that I don't think it should take it
Speaker 4: to eleven. I think that there are I wouldn't recommend
Speaker 4: at this point, you know, recreating America Hanna's Jewish Defense League.
Speaker 4: They did things that were clearly over the line, entirely illegal.
Speaker 4: But if there are these new groups, and the Hebrew
Speaker 4: word is cho mariem it means guardians, and they're like
Speaker 4: young guys largely who organize. Sometimes they coordinate with a
Speaker 4: local police, but they're like a self defense group. If
Speaker 4: you're gonna even if it's not a lethal encounter, if
Speaker 4: you have these examples that we saw about four or
Speaker 4: five weeks ago in the Upper East Side at Park
Speaker 4: East Synagogue, they were swarmed. They were mobbed by a
Speaker 4: bunch of Palestine Solidarity activists who falsely claimed there was
Speaker 4: a Palestine land sale involved in the synagogue. If you're
Speaker 4: going to target synagogues and you're going to make it
Speaker 4: impossible for Jews to worship when they want to worship
Speaker 4: at their temple, Well, then there ought to be people
Speaker 4: not starting a fight. I'm not talking about vigilantism. I'm
Speaker 4: saying just a cordon, a physical cordon that says no
Speaker 4: make way. These people are here. You know, we're not
Speaker 4: going to be part of your Instagram. You know, protest
Speaker 4: here and get out of here. And I actually think
Speaker 4: if you send the right message, because the end result
Speaker 4: was the American bund didn't take off. After Lanski sent
Speaker 4: his guys to break up those meetings, they learned that
Speaker 4: there were that the Jews, at least in America, were
Speaker 4: not going to be easy targets. And I think that
Speaker 4: when you're dealing with a threat like that, when you're
Speaker 4: dealing with pure hatred, that that is a different matter
Speaker 4: than like trying to win an argument. I'm a great
Speaker 4: believer in civil society, as you are as well, but
Speaker 4: you have some experience in the military, and when you
Speaker 4: are looking evil in the face, whether it's an American
Speaker 4: Nazi or it's somebody who is motivated by the kind
Speaker 4: of absolutely extreme Jihattist ideology that says that Israel shouldn't
Speaker 4: exist at a certain point. You know, you have to
Speaker 4: certify fire with fire.
Speaker 6: That's my view.
Speaker 3: Elilaka the Free Press. Go listen to his Breaking History podcast,
Speaker 3: particularly the last one. They're all good, but this last
Speaker 3: one was fascinating. I had no idea about any of
Speaker 3: this history. Thank you Eli Lake for joining us on
Speaker 3: the Hugh Hewitt Show. I'm guess host Kurt Schlichter, We're
Speaker 3: going to be right back with a lot more.
Speaker 5: To come, Sail of Seventh Seed.
Speaker 3: With Oh boy, Kirk Schwier is back. Look, I was
Speaker 3: an Army colonel, but I'm the green sheep of the family.
Speaker 3: My entire family was US Navy. I'm being joined by
Speaker 3: John Conrad, who has qualified to talk about some of
Speaker 3: his Navy stuff, but he was from what a professional
Speaker 3: would tell you maybe the most important component of American seapower,
Speaker 3: the United States Merchant Marine. Because John, I'm gonna throw
Speaker 3: you a softball. Professionals talk operations. I'm sorry, amateur's talk operations.
Speaker 3: What did professionals talk?
Speaker 2: Logistics?
Speaker 7: Always logistics?
Speaker 3: Card Oh, you're the best. You have been a huge
Speaker 3: voice out there, particularly in the last few days since
Speaker 3: Stnald Trump presented his idea for a new battleship, and
Speaker 3: a lot of people have the impression we're talking the
Speaker 3: old New Jersey or Iowa, which were amazing in their time,
Speaker 3: and of course their time extended to my time. They
Speaker 3: were off the coast of Kuwait during desert storm and
Speaker 3: I was there. Why battleships?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 8: I love those ships too, But the world has changed,
Speaker 8: right the eighty years since World War Two, since there's
Speaker 8: Iowa class were built.
Speaker 7: There are new threats now.
Speaker 8: And you know, there's enormous pushback against this battleship idea.
Speaker 8: I've never seen anything like it in my twenty years
Speaker 8: reporting on that. It's just massive amount of pushback, mainly
Speaker 8: from the left, but some professionals too.
Speaker 7: They don't realize what this is.
Speaker 8: This isn't a reincarnation of the old, but it has
Speaker 8: some of those features like that sure bombardment that you
Speaker 8: know Army and Marine Corps loves so much.
Speaker 7: But what this is really about.
Speaker 8: In the Red Sea, we threw everything at the Hoothy's Army,
Speaker 8: Air Force, Navy, submarines, two aircraft carriers at once. The
Speaker 8: only thing that was effective in protecting those logistics change
Speaker 8: at the choke point where our destroyers they did great,
Speaker 8: but they ran out of ule and ammunition too quick.
Speaker 8: So really think about this as a hybrid between that
Speaker 8: Iowa class and a larger destroyer that can stay on
Speaker 8: station for longer.
Speaker 3: Well, you're not talking something with twelve eighteen inch guns.
Speaker 3: You are talking someone with firepower that can be delivered
Speaker 3: onto the shore. And fire support is the main infantry
Speaker 3: killing system. It's not our rifles. It's calling in fire
Speaker 3: on things. So I love that, But what you're really saying,
Speaker 3: tell me if I'm wrong. I'm just a land lubber.
Speaker 3: Ships that are bigger tend to be able to go faster.
Speaker 3: They also tend to be more survivable. They also tend
Speaker 3: to be able to hold more ordnance and that makes
Speaker 3: that absolutely a fort.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, that's a great way of thinking forward fort. But
Speaker 7: that fort has to be resupplied.
Speaker 8: Right. We have the underway logistics where the best in
Speaker 8: the world that underway replenishment of our carriers given that
Speaker 8: aviation fuel to.
Speaker 7: To the carriers.
Speaker 8: But because of this, you know, bad decisions by previous administrations,
Speaker 8: plus this UN International Maritime Organization all their green rules
Speaker 8: are oilers we have too few of them, and they
Speaker 8: have all this environmental junk on it that's limiting their effectiveness.
Speaker 8: So we're tapping into our merchant marine tankers, but they
Speaker 8: are slower and less effective, so the underway replenishment isn't
Speaker 8: as good as they used to be. Plus these vertical
Speaker 8: launch cells, they can't be replenished at sea, so the
Speaker 8: destroyers in the Red Sea had to go all the
Speaker 8: way back to Bahrain to get resupplied.
Speaker 7: On top of all that, the destroyers.
Speaker 8: We have new leaser weapons, we have new electronic warfare weapons. Man,
Speaker 8: there is we're trying to fit ten pounds of you
Speaker 8: know what in a five pound bag here with these destroyers,
Speaker 8: there's no room for this extra stuff. Battleship gives you
Speaker 8: that whole space to store more fuel, ammunition, but also
Speaker 8: so add new capabilities.
Speaker 3: Well look the old battleships and I've been to the
Speaker 3: uss IOWA here in Los Angeles. Unbelievable, a real it
Speaker 3: is a real eye opener to walk around on that.
Speaker 3: And they saw I was a colonel, so they kind
Speaker 3: of took me in the back and showed me around
Speaker 3: a little more. Very impressive, but you were talking fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred or so crew. Would you have a giant crew
Speaker 3: on one of these or would you be able to
Speaker 3: leverage the AI and automation to have a much smaller
Speaker 3: manning footprint for these new vessels.
Speaker 8: Well, the Navy came out with the initial specs. They're
Speaker 8: thinking six hundred to eight hundred people. And this is
Speaker 8: another question. You know, we can't a carrier group of
Speaker 8: the carrier alone as over five thousand people plus the
Speaker 8: destroyer screen in the submarine. That's a very vulnerable threat
Speaker 8: to send out there to a choke point or to
Speaker 8: start inching closer to China. Because this is a fortress
Speaker 8: and has amazing defensive capability, you can put it out
Speaker 8: there at a little more risky areas than a carrier
Speaker 8: and instead of losing five thousand people, you'll lose six hundred.
Speaker 8: You know this myth, and this is what happened with
Speaker 8: our frigate program, which was just canceled.
Speaker 7: We tried to make it survivable.
Speaker 8: Against anything where you could throw a nuke at this
Speaker 8: thing and it may still float. That's great, but in
Speaker 8: a war, things are going to sync, people are going
Speaker 8: to die. We have to accept more risk, and I
Speaker 8: would rather risk six hundred and eight hundred people than
Speaker 8: five thousand and a carrier. But if you send this out,
Speaker 8: this can be a missile sponge. You know, the Chinese
Speaker 8: are going to shoot a lot of hypersonics and drones.
Speaker 8: Everyone says, well, what's going to happen? Well, bring it on.
Speaker 7: Do you deplete those.
Speaker 8: Stockpiles of those things and let these amazing new weapons systems,
Speaker 8: the laser, the integrated seawiz, the deck guns handle this,
Speaker 8: deplete some of those ammunitions and hold.
Speaker 7: Strategic choke points.
Speaker 8: So now it also is a command and control for
Speaker 8: drone swarms too, which people are forgetting.
Speaker 3: Now, Captain John Conrad, your CEO of gcaptain dot com
Speaker 3: and you follow John and you should at John Conrad
Speaker 3: with a K on Twitter. You know, a last civilians
Speaker 3: out there are gonna be going You mean you're gonna
Speaker 3: draw fire? Yeah? Yeah, that's that's how we as officers think.
Speaker 3: You you you have to fight, and sometimes you move
Speaker 3: out and draw fire so the other guy can take
Speaker 3: you down. But these aren't pushovers. Like I said before,
Speaker 3: and again I'm just gonna lay a lubber. But a
Speaker 3: bigger ship tends to go faster. You tend to be.
Speaker 3: You have the power to go quick, you can move,
Speaker 3: you've got laser defenses, you got missile defenses. This isn't
Speaker 3: a pushover, this is a floating fortress. We have about
Speaker 3: fifteen seconds.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and then here's another, a crazy thing that we're
Speaker 8: just putting on this.
Speaker 7: It's called armor. You know all of.
Speaker 8: These Navy ships they're very thin steeler like the LCS aluminum.
Speaker 7: Hey, how about some of these missiles are going to
Speaker 7: get through? But to have it?
Speaker 3: Didn't the Sheffield have? Did the Sheffield which was taken
Speaker 3: up by an exo set off the Falklands having him?
Speaker 3: Wasn't that aluminum? And didn't we learn from that?
Speaker 7: Absolutely?
Speaker 8: And then Trump wants to bring back the steel industry
Speaker 8: with this. So we get the armor and we get
Speaker 8: more steel.
Speaker 7: Capacity from manufacturing.
Speaker 3: That's a win win win. John Conrad, Captain John Conrad,
Speaker 3: CEO of G Captain follow at John Conrad, another guy
Speaker 3: who wants in America strong and powerful. We all do
Speaker 3: here at the Hue Hewitt Show. Guest goes Kurt Schlickter.
Speaker 3: Stick around. We're back on the Hugh Hewitt Show. I'm
Speaker 3: guest host Kurt Schlickter, Senior Corominisotownhall dot com trial lawyer,
Speaker 3: retired Army colonel, author of Panama. Read the new novel
Speaker 3: it's number nine, and I'll tell you it's fantastic, and
Speaker 3: you can believe me because I was an LA trial lawyer.
Speaker 3: My next yes, used to be a lawyer too. He's
Speaker 3: also recovering from it. I just I just met Salivac
Speaker 3: recently after watching his movie Guns and Moses, which is
Speaker 3: out now. It's available on Amazon for free, and I
Speaker 3: gotta tell you it's a lot of fun. So I
Speaker 3: thought I invite him on here to talk a little
Speaker 3: more with us. Sal Welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
Speaker 5: All right, wonderful to be with you.
Speaker 3: Well, look, you've done something that I don't think anybody's
Speaker 3: ever done before, which is make a a let's say,
Speaker 3: pro Second Amendment, very pro Jewish action film that's in
Speaker 3: the conservative sphere and doesn't look like it was made
Speaker 3: in somebody's barn. It is a real movie, and I
Speaker 3: want to say congratulations. I truly enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, really appreciated.
Speaker 9: And just today we found out that Religion Unplugged. Wonderful
Speaker 9: Publication issued its list of the top ten Faith based
Speaker 9: Films of twenty twenty five, which included some big titles
Speaker 9: like Angel Studios, The Last Rodeo and David and number
Speaker 9: one on the list of top ten faith based films
Speaker 9: of twenty twenty five, Guns and Moses, and the writer
Speaker 9: Joseph Holmes, a Great film critic, mentioned exactly what you're saying, Kurt,
Speaker 9: that it used to be that films.
Speaker 5: In the faith based space look kind of cheesy.
Speaker 9: They weren't at the same quality level as Hollywood, but
Speaker 9: they've come a long way and now you can find
Speaker 9: films that are right up there in terms of production value,
Speaker 9: star power, and sheer entertainment, and thank god Guns and
Speaker 9: Moses is number one on that list.
Speaker 3: Well, look, you've got some great stars on it, don'tant Monroney,
Speaker 3: Neil McDonough who people remember from Justified and Band of Brothers.
Speaker 3: He's always effect they're great in this thing. But your star,
Speaker 3: the main character is a very nice, very kind, seems
Speaker 3: like maybe even on a little liberal rabbi in a
Speaker 3: small community, and he undergoes some changes and ends up
Speaker 3: being a you know, packing heat, and the actor is
Speaker 3: so fantastic you buy the entire transition of this character,
Speaker 3: and he's a lot of fun to be around. He's
Speaker 3: not a cardboard cutout, though.
Speaker 5: Not at all.
Speaker 9: So the actor Mark Forrestein plays the character Rabbi mo Zaltzman.
Speaker 9: And I know a lot of people in the audience,
Speaker 9: you know, served in the armed forces, or serve in
Speaker 9: law enforcement, and they take seriously the idea of using
Speaker 9: a firearm. You know, in Hollywood, it's so ridiculous. When
Speaker 9: somebody needs to learn how to shoot. They put a
Speaker 9: few tin cans on a fence. He misses the first one,
Speaker 9: hits the next one, and you know, in fifteen seconds
Speaker 9: he's a dead shot.
Speaker 5: That's not the real world. It's very difficult to.
Speaker 9: Handle a firearm properly and safely and effectively under that
Speaker 9: kind of pressure.
Speaker 5: God forbid.
Speaker 9: And so we take the Rabbi through real training in
Speaker 9: the movie, based on my own real world training. I
Speaker 9: didn't grow up around guns, but you know, in the
Speaker 9: threat level to the Jewish people has been rising so
Speaker 9: fast and so hard in recent years. I joined the
Speaker 9: volunteer security organization. I learned how to use and carry
Speaker 9: a firearm. I have my concealed carry permit. Please God,
Speaker 9: none of us should ever have a need to use
Speaker 9: these skills, but if we do, we will not be
Speaker 9: a soft target. And we depict that on screen for
Speaker 9: the big screen with Rabbi Mo and Guns and Moses.
Speaker 3: Well solid back again, director of Guns and Moses. What
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting, Well, look, all the problems don't
Speaker 3: get solved with a gun, Okay. I mean, it's not
Speaker 3: like Panama Rat where everything gets sold with a gun.
Speaker 3: I thought was very interesting the way the character interacted
Speaker 3: with a young man who had embraced radical hate group ideology,
Speaker 3: and I found that interaction was actually very moving.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So the way it is a murder mystery guns to
Speaker 9: most is the murder mystery, and there's a killing at
Speaker 9: it at a synagogue.
Speaker 5: Event right in the first scene, and.
Speaker 9: The cops arrest a young white nationalist who has made
Speaker 9: harassing remarks to the rabbi and his people in the past.
Speaker 9: They find the murder weapon in his car. It's obvious
Speaker 9: he did it. Case closed, but it doesn't smell right
Speaker 9: to the rabbi, and since the cops won't investigate, he does.
Speaker 9: And so you have this incredibly unusual situation that it's
Speaker 9: a rabbi who's the only one who believes in the
Speaker 9: innocence of a young white nationalist and who goes out
Speaker 9: to find the real killer. And this kid, who you know,
Speaker 9: ends up hating Jews has probably never met a Jew
Speaker 9: in his life, and so much of that is going on.
Speaker 9: There are people out there who benefit by stoking hatred,
Speaker 9: and the kid was radicalized online. But the Rabbi can
Speaker 9: see past, you know, this kind of superficial hatred and see,
Speaker 9: you know, there's a young man there, there's a real
Speaker 9: kid there.
Speaker 5: He's got a heart and he can be reached.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 9: So often I think when people break bread together, they
Speaker 9: can get past kind of superficial isms that can separate them.
Speaker 5: And that's an important theme in the movie.
Speaker 3: Well, look in Guns and Moses, there's a lot more
Speaker 3: going on than in a lot of mainstream Hollywood entertainment. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: this wasn't put out by a big studio. I think
Speaker 3: it could have been, it should have been. It's certainly
Speaker 3: higher quality. And then a lot of the nonsense, the
Speaker 3: woke garbage that we see tell us a little about
Speaker 3: your journey as a conservative filmmaker and some of the
Speaker 3: challenges you faced.
Speaker 9: Well, I'm glad you put it that way. I mean
Speaker 9: Hollywood is a godless town. Let's just start with that.
Speaker 9: This place is lacking in values. I know you spent
Speaker 9: some time here in southern California. You know it as
Speaker 9: well as any Uddy Kurt. There's just a lack of
Speaker 9: good values, traditional values in this town. They've got their
Speaker 9: woke ideology. It infects everything that they do. And getting
Speaker 9: a movie like Guns and Moses made, I mean, it
Speaker 9: just wasn't going to be possible in the normal routes.
Speaker 5: Through the studios, etc.
Speaker 9: So we were able, thank god, to raise the money,
Speaker 9: to attract top tier talent to.
Speaker 5: The story, to the script, to the movie.
Speaker 9: The difference when people like you said, when you watch
Speaker 9: our movie, it looks like any studio movie. The difference
Speaker 9: is we shot it in four weeks instead of twelve
Speaker 9: weeks like Hollywood would have done, and that required that
Speaker 9: everybody be on board. Trust me, as a director, work
Speaker 9: a million hours a day. Thank god we got it done.
Speaker 9: But where the other big difference is is that when
Speaker 9: Hollywood releases a movie, they spent as much or more
Speaker 9: as they spent on making it to.
Speaker 5: Market it that we didn't have. Okay, we didn't.
Speaker 9: Have you know, five or ten or twenty million dollars
Speaker 9: to market the movie, and so it's been a challenge
Speaker 9: getting the word out there. We're so blessed and thankful
Speaker 9: that the movie's becoming a word of mouth hit. People
Speaker 9: are telling their friends, they're having watch parties. I mean,
Speaker 9: it's a really fun movie. Forget the belief system of it,
Speaker 9: and you know, all the values which are important. But
Speaker 9: at the end of the day, my job as a
Speaker 9: director is to entertain the viewer, and people are entertained,
Speaker 9: but it's just.
Speaker 5: Taking time to get the word out.
Speaker 9: And one other thing, which maybe you've encountered along the way,
Speaker 9: is there are people out there who oppose any kind
Speaker 9: of conservative ideology, any kind of traditional value, and just
Speaker 9: a few and they make it so difficult. I mean,
Speaker 9: we got word that The New York Times had a
Speaker 9: good review of the movie and killed it.
Speaker 5: They wouldn't run.
Speaker 9: Such a review because it's pro Second Amendment, it's pro faith, etc.
Speaker 9: You know, we have a ninety three audience score on
Speaker 9: Rotten Tomatoes. We even have a seventy three critics score.
Speaker 9: It's like that's perfect, twenty points higher on the audience.
Speaker 9: But we don't have as many reviews as we should.
Speaker 9: Have because they will just bury anything that isn't in
Speaker 9: line with the woke ideology.
Speaker 5: And we have to.
Speaker 9: Find alternative, alternative means to get to the audience. I mean,
Speaker 9: there's been a robust conservative radio network for a long time,
Speaker 9: but we're in a culture war. We are in a
Speaker 9: culture war, and we got to have movies that reflect
Speaker 9: our values. And when such a movie comes along, people
Speaker 9: got to support it with their feet, with their wallet.
Speaker 5: Watch it. I mean it's easy to watch it home now.
Speaker 9: We're free with subscription on Prime or you can rent
Speaker 9: or buy on other platforms.
Speaker 5: It's not such a big deal to get it. So
Speaker 5: get it. Watch our movie. You're gonna enjoy it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you really are. You had reached out to me,
Speaker 3: I hadn't a chance to get back to you. I
Speaker 3: saw I was skipping around Amazon. It takes me twenty
Speaker 3: minutes to find something. I saw guns and most that says,
Speaker 3: I'll give it a shot. And we watched the whole
Speaker 3: thing and we legit enjoyed it because, as Andrew Andrew
Speaker 3: Bridebart said, two important things. First, politics is downstream from culture,
Speaker 3: so we got to do our own culture stuff. But
Speaker 3: also it's got to be good you can't ask people
Speaker 3: to watch junk sal litfac director of Guns and Moses.
Speaker 3: Thank you for joining me on the Hugh Hewitt Show. Everybody,
Speaker 3: Guns and Moses. Go out and get it, go out
Speaker 3: and check it out. I'm Kurt Schlickter. I'm guest host
Speaker 3: for the Great Hugh Hewitt. We've still got more to
Speaker 3: come to stick around the bubye suck.
Speaker 9: From them.
Speaker 3: We are back on the Hugh Hewrett radio program. I'm
Speaker 3: guests Ho's Kurt Schlichter and there are two books that
Speaker 3: I want to show you. First, Panama, read the new
Speaker 3: Kurt Schlichter novel. It is a lot of fun. You
Speaker 3: should get it. But I also want to show you
Speaker 3: A Rage to Conquer. It's the newest history book from
Speaker 3: my buddy Michael Walsh, who is now my guest. Michael,
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
Speaker 10: Nice you church a pleasure to be with you here
Speaker 10: from soon to be a foot of snow in northwestern Connecticut.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm about to float away here in southern California.
Speaker 3: I blame global warming because it's never snowed or rained before.
Speaker 10: No snow in December in New England is unheard of.
Speaker 10: So you can just see how much damage we've done
Speaker 10: to the climate. Well, let's face it.
Speaker 3: Well, of course we're relying on history, and your book,
Speaker 3: of Course, is an ode to history. I love it
Speaker 3: because it's twelve battles that changed the Western world. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: Our friends on the left, they're not not so big
Speaker 3: on history. Why is that? Why do they hate history?
Speaker 10: Yeah? I think history that teaches them that what they
Speaker 10: believe isn't true. That is to say, the minute you
Speaker 10: start looking at it seriously, you realize that their premises
Speaker 10: are false, and therefore you move away from the narrative
Speaker 10: that they keep trying to impose. Howard's in the History
Speaker 10: of unquote is the arc of all this. But there
Speaker 10: have been a lot of leftist historians in the first
Speaker 10: half and twentieth century into the second half of the
Speaker 10: century that pushed this narrative America, bad slavery reparations, bigotry, races.
Speaker 10: You know, all their buzzwords come from that. And when
Speaker 10: you learn to not be afraid of their buzzwords anymore,
Speaker 10: because they're not true. First of all, that's the number
Speaker 10: one reason, and that sticks and stones can break your bones,
Speaker 10: but names will never hurt you. Then you can fight back.
Speaker 10: So what I try to do in this book, and
Speaker 10: did in previous book called Last Stands, and now in
Speaker 10: the new book I'm writing, The Wrath of God, is
Speaker 10: to go back to the historical sources and say, here's
Speaker 10: what happened. This is the best summary of all of
Speaker 10: the eyewitnesses and first primary sources that I can find,
Speaker 10: and this is my interpretation of them, and this is
Speaker 10: what I believe to be the truth. That's what historians do.
Speaker 3: You know, Michael Walsh. I you know, I'm on social
Speaker 3: media once in a while, and it seems that people
Speaker 3: are not only ignorant of facts, they're immune to them.
Speaker 3: They simply believe things that aren't true and refuse to
Speaker 3: believe things that are manifestly and obviously true. And it's
Speaker 3: almost Orwellian in the way that they can convince themselves
Speaker 3: that what they're seeing and hearing are not actually what
Speaker 3: they're seeing and hearing.
Speaker 10: Well they want to believe. You know, what's happened is
Speaker 10: that sports has now become the identifying terable for everything
Speaker 10: we do. We choose up sides, and we love our
Speaker 10: Red Sox and we hate those Yankees no matter what.
Speaker 11: That the teams change players, that the city's changed, you change,
Speaker 11: but most diehard sports fans immediately go to the tribe
Speaker 11: and begin to fight the rival tribe.
Speaker 10: It's like the monkey tribe in two thousand and the
Speaker 10: one at the beginning, and we've now.
Speaker 5: Applied that to politics.
Speaker 10: So it's Trump is the lightning rod, and so whatever
Speaker 10: he does is either the worst thing ever or he's great.
Speaker 10: And there's no interpretation, there's no middle ground, there's no
Speaker 10: time for nuanced it's all this emotion driven hysteria. Mostly
Speaker 10: I'm afraid on ex Twitter, some on Facebook as well,
Speaker 10: which I also am on, But I really think this
Speaker 10: is bad for the country, and I think people should
Speaker 10: mostly calm down and shut up. That's what I mostly think.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I think so much, so much is emotion,
Speaker 3: so much is preconceived notions, and then you bend the
Speaker 3: facts to support them your pre existing conclusions. What that
Speaker 3: does is eliminate the whole concept of argument, which presumes
Speaker 3: the chance to change someone's mind. And if you don't
Speaker 3: resolve let's talk history. If you're not resolving arguments through debate,
Speaker 3: what does that leave you to resume resolved arguments?
Speaker 10: Well, I would say fisticuffs and clubs mostly, which is
Speaker 10: the direction that we're heading. You see, the left has
Speaker 10: now basically given permission to shoot us. They obviously did
Speaker 10: it with our friend Charlie Kirk. They've taken shots at
Speaker 10: the president. The left killed three of the four presidents
Speaker 10: who have been assassinated, three of the Republicans. The Democrats
Speaker 10: killed three of the first six Republican presidents. They just
Speaker 10: assassinated them. So this is not anything new, but it's
Speaker 10: their go to default mode and we really have to
Speaker 10: be on our guard against us. They don't like debate
Speaker 10: because they're going to lose. That's the problem.
Speaker 3: I think their challenge is they have trained a generation
Speaker 3: of conservatives and patriots to respond to what they're doing.
Speaker 3: And of course we got all the guns. So as
Speaker 3: Chairman maw who normally they listen to, said, all power
Speaker 3: comes from the barrel of a gun. At the end
Speaker 3: of the day, if if the currency is pure power,
Speaker 3: I kind of like our odds.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, obviously we don't want to get to
Speaker 10: that point and we would prefer reason debate. I mean,
Speaker 10: this changed my mind on some issues after delving more
Speaker 10: deeply into the world, and you're Irish different Georgian and
Speaker 10: I'm irish. That means I'm stubborn and stupid. So if
Speaker 10: I can do it, anybody can do it. But if
Speaker 10: you can't engage in an argument of intellectual argument, then
Speaker 10: what's left, as you just said, but a resort to force,
Speaker 10: and left loves force.
Speaker 3: Well, let's love it. Well, let's let's look at what's
Speaker 3: happening in Europe right now. We have the Europeans saying
Speaker 3: we love free speech. We're just against hate speech and
Speaker 3: irresponsible speech and disinformation, which will all be defined by us.
Speaker 3: And coincidentally, we'll support our regime and undermine any challenge
Speaker 3: to our regime.
Speaker 10: Well, their regime is what I call the EUSSR. By
Speaker 10: the way, let's all let's take a brief moment of
Speaker 10: silence to more in the passing of the Soviet Union
Speaker 10: on this date in nineteen ninety one. And I had
Speaker 10: left that benighted country about six months before, just before
Speaker 10: the coup against Gorbachev, and you can see the country
Speaker 10: was on its last legs and it collapsed just out
Speaker 10: of the blue. Now we have the EUSSR, which is
Speaker 10: headed for the same fate, hopefully more quickly.
Speaker 3: EUSSR do you think that the Europeans have enough manhood
Speaker 3: that wasn't bled out on the psalm, didn't die on
Speaker 3: a you know the fields of Europe in World War Two.
Speaker 3: And of course they're disarmed, and you can't be a
Speaker 3: man if you don't have a weapon. How are they
Speaker 3: going to fight this nanty dictatorship? We have about thirty seconds.
Speaker 10: Yeah, they'll get real quick. The Europeans don't define freedom
Speaker 10: the way we do.
Speaker 3: Clearly.
Speaker 10: When I first moved to Germany in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 10: they said, yeah, America, Yeah, it's okay, Yeah, you become
Speaker 10: a millionaire here, but you could also sleep under the bridge.
Speaker 10: And I said, yes, but Americans think we could end
Speaker 10: up sleeping under the bridge, but we're going to be
Speaker 10: a millionaire. So this is the difference in how they think.
Speaker 10: For them, freedom means Napoleon author wow, dominant wow, top
Speaker 10: down authority well as freedom.
Speaker 3: As my Scottish mother said, all the good ones left.
Speaker 3: Michael Walsh always great to talk to. You go get
Speaker 3: a rage to conquer. It is fan fantastic. I'm Kurt Schlicker.
Speaker 3: This is a hugh you would show stick around.
Speaker 5: We got more to come, folks.
Speaker 1: So many people I know are disheartened that our country
Speaker 1: seems to have forgotten the importance of citizenship, and they
Speaker 1: wonder how a strong sense of citizenship might be revived.
Speaker 1: And so my friends at Hillsdale College have produced a
Speaker 1: free online course on the topic the American Citizenship and
Speaker 1: Its Decline. Taught by historian Victor Davis Hansen, the course
Speaker 1: traces the history of citizenship and explains how it is
Speaker 1: undermined in America today by open borders, by identity politics,
Speaker 1: by the administrative state, and by globalization. Americans taking the
Speaker 1: course will gain a deeper insight about the connection between
Speaker 1: citizenship and freedom, an insight they can share with family members, friends,
Speaker 1: and neighbors. Hillsdale's free online courses are an important component
Speaker 1: of Hillsdale's mission to reach and teach increasing millions of
Speaker 1: people on behalf of liberty and the American way of life.
Speaker 1: So sign up today for Hillsdale's free online course American
Speaker 1: Citizenship and its Client by visiting Hugh for Hillsdale dot com.
Speaker 1: That's h U G h F O R Hillsdale dot com.
Speaker 1: HU for Hillsdale dot com. Start your free course today
Speaker 1: at HU for Hillsdale dot com. Christmas shopping time. Are
Speaker 1: you feel a little bit pinched, Well, if you make
Speaker 1: a switch to Consumer Cellular, you may add some stretch
Speaker 1: to your budget. Consumersellular dot com slash Hugh one eight
Speaker 1: hundred four to one one forty four fifty four. Now listen,
Speaker 1: do not fall for the phone on us Big Wireless offer.
Speaker 1: That phone is not free. Typically the most expensive phone
Speaker 1: you ever buy is the free phone that you get
Speaker 1: with Big Sellure, look at the actual costs of that plan,
Speaker 1: the length of the contract before you get locked into
Speaker 1: what could be one thousand dollars mistake. Right now, for
Speaker 1: limited time only, you get the second month of service
Speaker 1: with Consumer Cellular for free when you use my promo
Speaker 1: code q hug h or visit Consumer Cellular dot com
Speaker 1: slash hugh. It'll be automatic. But if you call one
Speaker 1: eight hundred four to one one forty four fifty four
Speaker 1: and mention Hugh, you get that second month free. And
Speaker 1: here's something my listeners who are fifty and older will love.
Speaker 1: Two unlimited lines of.
Speaker 5: Data two for just sixty dollars.
Speaker 1: That's only thirty dollars per line unlimited data. It's an
Speaker 1: easy way to manage your cost of living. It is
Speaker 1: the best deal out there called one eight hundred and
Speaker 1: four one one four fifty four. Be sure to use
Speaker 1: my promo code Hugh your Pa on.
Speaker 3: The huit U program. I am guest Ho's Kirk Schlicker.
Speaker 3: And of course that's Motorhead covering David Bowie's Heroes. That's
Speaker 3: my walk out music.
Speaker 7: Baby.
Speaker 3: I love it. Ah, this is great. I love Guessosa
Speaker 3: on the Hugh Hewett Shoe. I love being able to
Speaker 3: promote my new book, Panama Read, the ninth Kelly Turnbull novel.
Speaker 3: Go get Panama Read right now. But what I love
Speaker 3: most of all is I get to bring interesting people on.
Speaker 3: And there's few people more interesting than Mark Capudo, who's
Speaker 3: axios is White House Reporter. You should follow him at
Speaker 3: Mark the k Capudo with a C. Mark, Welcome to
Speaker 3: the Hugh Huge Show.
Speaker 2: That I like what you said.
Speaker 3: Hold on, hold on, I'm gonna do the glasses thing.
Speaker 3: We're gonna we're gonna vibe on the same glasses.
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 10: I love it? I love it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got that.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: Look look Mark, I'm writing. I've already written a column
Speaker 3: for town Hall for Monday. Uh, and it's called can
Speaker 3: You Feel the vibe shift. I think there is a
Speaker 3: vibe shift after you know, we had about seven great
Speaker 3: months with Donald Trump at getting things done. Then things
Speaker 3: kind of slowed down. People are kind of asking, hey,
Speaker 3: when's this economy going to turn around? We cat, you know,
Speaker 3: the administration kind of stepped on its own feet a
Speaker 3: few times. But I think in the last week or so,
Speaker 3: with the GDP and the inflation numbers and US sending
Speaker 3: his Loniss to hell in Nigeria, which is awesome, I
Speaker 3: think we have a vibe shift. I think we're turning around.
Speaker 3: I think people are looking around going, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: things aren't that bad. Am I crazy?
Speaker 6: I don't think you're crazy. I don't know if you're
Speaker 6: premature or not. Let's give it a few more months.
Speaker 6: But one of the things that Trump, Scott Best and
Speaker 6: the Treasury Secretary Howard Latnik to a degree, have been
Speaker 6: saying is the end of quarter one, beginning of quarter
Speaker 6: two of twenty twenty six, you're going to start to
Speaker 6: see this confluence of events of lower interest rates, the
Speaker 6: effect of the as they call it, the Big Beautiful Bill,
Speaker 6: all the tax provisions start to kick in, not just
Speaker 6: no tax on tips, but also various depreciation rules, which
Speaker 6: are going to enable corporations to hire more, the borrowing
Speaker 6: costs are going to be cheaper, and on and on,
Speaker 6: and people are going to start to really feel it.
Speaker 6: That's their hope. And to your point, so far, so good.
Speaker 6: The inflation numbers look good. GDP was certainly better than expected,
Speaker 6: and this is what they've been saying all along.
Speaker 2: But again, we want to focus too much on the blip.
Speaker 2: Let's check out the trend line.
Speaker 3: Well, Mark, I think I think we've had an interesting
Speaker 3: couple of weeks. In some other areas. We apparently have
Speaker 3: pretty high public support for the campaign against the drug boats.
Speaker 3: Now we're blowing up Islamis who are murdering Christians in Nigeria.
Speaker 3: It does seem and again I fully support destroying drug
Speaker 3: dealers and Islamis fanatics. I'm totally in on it. But
Speaker 3: there are a lot of Conservatives who are out there saying, hey,
Speaker 3: we were promised no more wars. These are kind of
Speaker 3: like wars. Do you think that's going to have a
Speaker 3: major drag on the Republican Party over the next year.
Speaker 7: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 6: What I do know is that there were a lot
Speaker 6: of predictions of how the Republican Party was going to
Speaker 6: come apart with the seams, how Maga was divided if
Speaker 6: Donald Trump would join Netanyahu's bombing campaign of Iran.
Speaker 2: Trump did.
Speaker 6: It was successful for what Trump set out to do,
Speaker 6: and there was no divisions afterward. Republicans to thegreed that
Speaker 6: they weren't sort of in line and behind the president,
Speaker 6: fell in line, got behind the president.
Speaker 2: So it depends on what it looks like.
Speaker 6: Is if I think if Venezuela is a real sort
Speaker 6: of hot war with an invasion, that might tend to
Speaker 6: really divide the party and cause problems. But I just
Speaker 6: don't get the feeling that that's really on the table.
Speaker 2: Trump is saying everything's.
Speaker 6: Down the table, but some things are more likely to
Speaker 6: be on the table than others. And a full on
Speaker 6: invasion hot war isn't you know? You plug your book
Speaker 6: Panama read. One of the things I've been stressing to
Speaker 6: people when they talk about US adventures in Latin America
Speaker 6: and how they failed. The one success that they point
Speaker 6: to that US policymakers or Trump supporters or the Trump
Speaker 6: administration points to is in Panama. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 6: there was an indicted leader the Menuel Noriega. He had
Speaker 6: stolen his election, his last election. He was therefore declared
Speaker 6: a dictator, and the United States engaged in a hot war.
Speaker 6: They invaded the United States, invaded, snatched him, took him
Speaker 6: back to the United States, he was convicted, and the like.
Speaker 6: And now Panama is a flourishing democracy.
Speaker 2: Now we'll let as well look exactly like that.
Speaker 6: I can't say that, but there is a template for
Speaker 6: the United States engaging these sorts of regime change operations
Speaker 6: in a very hot and aggressive way and not having
Speaker 6: it become sort of a.
Speaker 2: Post Iraq invasion hellhole.
Speaker 3: Well, Mark Ipudo is the look. We've had some problems
Speaker 3: within the conservative movement. We've had some people who were
Speaker 3: formerly part of it who saying incredibly stupid things Candae
Speaker 3: owns and some incredibly crazy things, and we've been told
Speaker 3: that this is going to tear the Republican Party apart.
Speaker 3: I'm interested in whether the White House worries about that.
Speaker 3: Are they afraid we're gonna ideologically tear ourselves to shreds.
Speaker 2: If they are really worried about it, they're not really
Speaker 2: leading it on.
Speaker 6: The main thing I get out of the White House
Speaker 6: here is just sort of a frustration the Epstein files
Speaker 6: has been sort of just sort of.
Speaker 2: A drag administration Trump.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well they haven't been sort of been they haven't
Speaker 6: been able to get from behind the eight ball on
Speaker 6: sort of the messaging of it. But that aside, and
Speaker 6: that's just causing a level of frustration at the media coverage.
Speaker 6: You know, there's a lot of commentary set, especially on
Speaker 6: social media.
Speaker 2: I don't want to just say media, but the.
Speaker 6: Sort of the broader conversation on social media, factoring in
Speaker 6: a lot of liberals is that Donald Trumps in damage control.
Speaker 2: She was about to drop. Why was he lying and
Speaker 2: hiding things?
Speaker 6: But the reality is that what we've seen so far,
Speaker 6: we've been at this for about a decade. I wrote
Speaker 6: about this the other day in Axios for our piece
Speaker 6: about how there was still a lot of time and
Speaker 6: a lot of documents to go before everything was fully disclosed.
Speaker 6: That after a decade of media coverage and public awareness
Speaker 6: of Jeffrey Epstein, after countless investigative reports that have been issued,
Speaker 6: and scores of lawsuits and complainants victims who have gone public,
Speaker 6: and thousands, tens of thousands of emails and now documents
Speaker 6: in some cases, documents that normally would not have seen
Speaker 6: the light of day, and pictures, photographs, thousands, tens of thousands,
Speaker 6: hundreds of thousands of photographs. After all this totality of
Speaker 6: everything we've seen, we haven't yet seen any credible evidence
Speaker 6: that Donald Trump engaged in sex trafficking with Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 6: or sex with a minor. It's just sort of not there.
Speaker 6: So currently where we are now, there are maybe a
Speaker 6: million more documents to go, and then there's the stuff
Speaker 6: that the Epstein estate has. Maybe that'll change, maybe something
Speaker 6: will come out, but it's starting to seem like that's
Speaker 6: not going to be the case at least as of now.
Speaker 3: Well, Mark Computo, you are the Axios White House reporter.
Speaker 3: You can follow him on Mark at Mark Capudo, Mark
Speaker 3: with a CE, Caputo with a C, and uh, thank
Speaker 3: you for coming on the Hugh hewittt Show. Happy New Year.
Speaker 3: I'm Kurt Schlichter. We'll be right back.