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Speaker 1: On this episode of News World. I am delighted to

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Speaker 1: have one of my all time favorite authors back on

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Speaker 1: the show, somebody who I admired greatly, Steven Hunter. I've

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Speaker 1: been reading his books about Bob Lee Sweger, starting with

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Speaker 1: the very first One Point of Impact in nineteen ninety three,

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Speaker 1: to target It in twenty twenty two. He's joining me

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Speaker 1: now to discuss his latest book, The Gunman Jackson Swagger,

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Speaker 1: which I think is best described as a prequel because

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Speaker 1: it follows Jack Swiger on a ranch in the eighteen nineties,

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Speaker 1: well before the rise of Bob Sweger. I am really

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Speaker 1: pleased to welcome back my guest, Stephen Hunter. He is

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Speaker 1: the creator of the Bob Lee Swager novels, as well

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Speaker 1: as many others. He is the retired chief film critic

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Speaker 1: for The Washington Post, where he won the two thousand

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Speaker 1: three Read Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. He's also published

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Speaker 1: two collections of film criticism and a nonfiction work. And

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Speaker 1: his work is very wide ranging, and I must say

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Speaker 1: I find all of it fascinating. Steve, Welcome and thank

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Speaker 1: you for joining me on News World.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me, dude. I'm very excited.

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Speaker 2: I'll try and control my excitement, but I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Well, hopefully our listeners will pick up a little bit

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Speaker 1: of the mutual excitement here. He started at the Baltimore

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Speaker 1: Sun back in nineteen seventy one. I was born in

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Speaker 1: Harisberg and grew up and was tutored by a local

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Speaker 1: reporter who ended up running out sort of a weekly newspaper.

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Speaker 1: It was a great fan of the Baltimore Sun, which

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Speaker 1: all one time had probably the two best political reporters

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Speaker 1: in the country. As it was a great, great newspaper.

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Speaker 1: What was it like to work at the Sun.

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Speaker 2: I got there in the seventies, but the Sun was

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Speaker 2: still in the thirties. Well, no, it was in the fifties,

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Speaker 2: and they didn't understand what was going on in journalism,

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Speaker 2: which was under the aegis of the Washington Post style section,

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Speaker 2: the rebirth of feature sections and deep, long narratives, feature

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Speaker 2: stories that rivaled magazine stories. And I was part of

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Speaker 2: a radical movement to bring the Sun into the seventies.

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Speaker 2: And I was a very exciting time. It was a

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Speaker 2: rough time. There was some labor difficulties. There's a gulf

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Speaker 2: between the old timers and the hot new kids. We

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Speaker 2: ultimately prevailed. I made some very good friends, people whose

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Speaker 2: are still by very good friends. There was a lot

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Speaker 2: of turmoil, There was a lot of dialectic There was

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Speaker 2: a lot of energy in the paper for improvement. It

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Speaker 2: was like a particle version of the Russian Revolution, if

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Speaker 2: you will. We could feel, you know, we thought history

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Speaker 2: was on our side. We were very pompous because we

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Speaker 2: were very young. We were very certain also because we

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Speaker 2: were very young, and we took the paper in what

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Speaker 2: I think was the right decision. And I believe that

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Speaker 2: the suns its next high water was in the eighties,

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Speaker 2: and particularly in the nineties when John Carroll, who had

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Speaker 2: been managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and had a

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Speaker 2: lot of Philadelphia connections with the Inquirer, and he came

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Speaker 2: and he was also a part of the reform movement.

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Speaker 2: I was on the Sun for twenty six years. I

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Speaker 2: believe that in the nineties that was the best Sun

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Speaker 2: since the thirties, well, no, since the forties. Because the

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Speaker 2: Sun was very distinguished in its war corresponded and it

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Speaker 2: had guys on every beach headed in the war. I

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Speaker 2: don't like to criticize it, you know, it's hard for

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Speaker 2: me to criticize it, but it's been bought by someone.

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Speaker 2: It's shrunk enormously. Newspapers all shrunk in the twenty thousands

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Speaker 2: because the classified ads, which was a great river of

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Speaker 2: money that poured through all newspapers, had dried up. You know,

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Speaker 2: all of a sudden, they couldn't afford luxuries like film

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Speaker 2: critics and art critics and feature writers and all that

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Speaker 2: sort of to me, what was the fun the heart

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Speaker 2: of the business. They had to get rid of that,

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Speaker 2: and now they're thin their dour, They've become insanely partisan,

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Speaker 2: and frankly, I am a very low point in my

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Speaker 2: appreciation of American journalism. It's not journalism anymore. It's American

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Speaker 2: propaganda large and some great papers of the posts, I'm

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Speaker 2: afraid to say, and particularly the New York Times, have

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Speaker 2: drifted flow and they've let their Trump psychosis destroy them.

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Speaker 2: I think that all these people are going to look

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Speaker 2: when they're as old as I am, They're going to

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Speaker 2: look at what they did. They're gonna say, Holy, how

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Speaker 2: what on earth were we thinking? I just think it's

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Speaker 2: a shame and a crime.

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Speaker 1: You've been a book review editor, you've been a feature writer,

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Speaker 1: and of course really made your name as a film critic.

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Speaker 1: What was the biggest difference between being a book review

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Speaker 1: editor and being a movie critic.

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Speaker 2: Well, I started both knowing not a whole lot about them.

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Speaker 2: I thought I knew everything about them, and by the

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Speaker 2: second week and I realized I knew nothing about them.

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Speaker 2: So I had to sort of self educate myself. Well,

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Speaker 2: there's the difference between editing and writing. I am not

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Speaker 2: by nature an editor. In fact, my break in the

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Speaker 2: novel writing business came when I got a note from

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Speaker 2: a woman at a publishing house who I'd had lunch with.

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Speaker 2: You'd come through Baltimore. As she said, you know, I

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Speaker 2: know many writers, and I know many editors, and I

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Speaker 2: have to say that you do not have an editor's personality.

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Speaker 2: You have a writer's personality. Do you have anything to

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Speaker 2: show me? Well I did, and eventually that was The

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Speaker 2: Master Sniper, that first book. As I said, that was

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Speaker 2: forty five years ago. I may have those facts slightly rearranged,

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Speaker 2: but I'm pretty sure it actually happened. I'm almost certain

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Speaker 2: that one's for real.

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Speaker 1: I think I've read virtually everything you've written, and you

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Speaker 1: write as though it was a movie.

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Speaker 2: Thank you very much. It's not something I set out

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Speaker 2: rationally to do, but because I had seen so many movies,

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Speaker 2: and the movies are just so into and taken over

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Speaker 2: my consciousness, and I do movie stuff all the time.

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Speaker 2: This book, The Gunman is full of references to movies,

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Speaker 2: and if you want to read it as a sort

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Speaker 2: of a tribute to the America Western, you could do that,

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Speaker 2: and you can decode it and you can have fun

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Speaker 2: with it as a puzzle figuring out what images I've taken,

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Speaker 2: what scenarios I've taken, how I've rearranged them, how I've

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Speaker 2: tried to make them fresh again. For me, that was

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Speaker 2: much of the fun as I bumbled along, you know.

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Speaker 2: I mean one of my issues was how many gunfights

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Speaker 2: have we seen? Ten thousand at least? Trying to figure

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Speaker 2: out some way to make gun fights familiar and yet fresh.

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Speaker 2: And I invested a great deal of time, and as

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Speaker 2: you know, the end of the book is just a

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Speaker 2: cascade of vengeance driven gunfights and just driven gun fights.

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Speaker 2: And I tried very hard to keep them from being generic.

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Speaker 2: You know, I didn't want Warner Brothers TV in the

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Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. I didn't want that. I wanted each of

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Speaker 2: them to have a different texture and a different feel,

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Speaker 2: and a different orientation and a different point of view,

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Speaker 2: and that to me was extraordinary thought.

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Speaker 1: One of the characteristics I would say of your books

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Speaker 1: is that you learn things, and you see specifics, and

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Speaker 1: in some areas your mastery of weapons or of situations

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Speaker 1: is remarkable. And this book is a perfect example, because

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Speaker 1: you know it's entitled The Gunman Jackson Schweger, and you

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Speaker 1: make the point at the very beginning of the book

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Speaker 1: which I never thought about, that our version of what

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Speaker 1: we call say the gunfighter didn't exist in that period.

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Speaker 1: Just talk from mine about this whole notion that the

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Speaker 1: America mythos about the Cowboy and the forty five is

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Speaker 1: a remarkably short period. It is a very intense period,

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Speaker 1: but it's somehow imprinted in our culture on a scale

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Speaker 1: that is amazing.

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Speaker 2: Well, I could say this that one of the missions,

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Speaker 2: if you will, of this book was to restore that figure.

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Speaker 2: I mean, he has fallen into banishment and exile and disrespect,

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Speaker 2: which I think is a crime. When you lose your gods,

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Speaker 2: you lose everything. It's ruinous to your values and to

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Speaker 2: your self confidence, to your self belief. So in one

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Speaker 2: sort of and I don't want it's how pop is here.

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Speaker 2: I wanted to restore that character. I wanted to restore

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Speaker 2: that myth. You're very onto something when you talk about

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Speaker 2: the myth of the gunfighter, the myth of the righteous gunfighter.

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Speaker 2: He's a key figure in our national culture for or

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Speaker 2: literally sixty five years, from nineteen hundred till nineteen sixty five.

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Speaker 2: The Vietnam War sort of eroded a lot of confidence

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Speaker 2: and authority, and I think that had to do with them,

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Speaker 2: also the internationalization of the Western They were taken over

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Speaker 2: by the Italians, I would say brilliantly. Although some people

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Speaker 2: will disagree with me, old school people will disagree with me,

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Speaker 2: but they kind of lost their American flavor. And when

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Speaker 2: they lost that, they sort of diffused and they lost

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Speaker 2: their impact in the marketplace. And the whole generation wasn't

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Speaker 2: raised by the standards, the borol standards, the standards of

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Speaker 2: masculine pride, a need to ensure justice. An entire generation

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Speaker 2: grew up without that. So in some tiny little fragment

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Speaker 2: of a way, I was trying to restore that. Maybe

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Speaker 2: it'll have some impact, maybe it won't, but it was fun.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to give away the plot, but you

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Speaker 1: do have this older man who at the very beginning

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Speaker 1: of the book is sort of coming out of the

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Speaker 1: desert with almost nothing, and who's very stoic, very self reliant,

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Speaker 1: and ultimately when we start seeing him trying to survive

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Speaker 1: and eventually come to realize that in fact, he knows

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Speaker 1: exactly what he's doing. I think it's one of the

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Speaker 1: most compelling people you've written. It's sort of unfolded backwards.

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Speaker 1: You don't start by saying, look at this compelling person.

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Speaker 1: You start by saying, look at this kind of non entity,

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Speaker 1: and then he just kind of like peeling the onion.

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Speaker 1: He just keeps growing and becoming more complex as the

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Speaker 1: book goes on.

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Speaker 2: I thank you very much for those kind words, and

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Speaker 2: you're exactly true to me. That's a familiar arc. That's

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Speaker 2: the bobb Lee Swagger arc. When do we discover him.

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Speaker 2: He's a bitter, ex drunk living in a trailer by himself,

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Speaker 2: deep in the forest, and one of the themes of

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Speaker 2: the Bobbly Swagger books is his restoration and his re emergence,

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Speaker 2: his reacquisition of his superior skills, the re engagement of

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Speaker 2: his mind, the re engagement of his values, the re

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Speaker 2: engagement of his beliefs in his country, and sort of

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Speaker 2: restoring him to his rightful place in society. Underneath the

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Speaker 2: I fea myth. This myth doesn't formably exist accepted by

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Speaker 2: But I see all the Swagger stories as the story

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Speaker 2: of the usurped Prince. I mean, he is by nature,

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Speaker 2: by his skills, by his courage, by his values. He

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Speaker 2: is Nature's nobleman. But cunning operatives have colluded to destroy

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Speaker 2: him and drive him away. And one of the things

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Speaker 2: about the Bobbly Swagger books is that he reinvents himself.

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Speaker 2: He reacquires his old grace and beauty and lethality, and

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Speaker 2: he goes to work. And at the end he's a

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Speaker 2: family man living with a wife he loves, with two

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Speaker 2: successful children, and a part of the community, and is

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Speaker 2: revered by all who know of him. And I never

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Speaker 2: thought that would appeal to me, but in the end

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Speaker 2: it really appealed to me at a very deep level.

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Speaker 2: And I see some of that in the Jack Swagger character.

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Speaker 2: In the beginning, as you say, we don't know who

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Speaker 2: he is, but gradually we understand, as you say, he

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Speaker 2: knows what he's doing. You know, you watch him go

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Speaker 2: from a dirty old man in unwashed clothes riding a

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Speaker 2: nag to the magnificent Western hero. You know, he shaves

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Speaker 2: his beard, he gets our haircut, he puts on his

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Speaker 2: good clothes, he gets his handguns, puts them in the

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Speaker 2: specially made holsters, and he goes to town. And he's

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Speaker 2: an entirely different figure by the end than he was

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Speaker 2: at the beginning, not only in and of himself, but

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Speaker 2: in and of his impact on society. He ends up

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Speaker 2: inspiring four Harvard boys who are utterly worthless, but who

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Speaker 2: under his tutelage, they learn immensely from him, and we

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Speaker 2: hope that they will his spirit onward. And that's what

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Speaker 2: the book was really about. At some level. I found

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Speaker 2: that a very provocative myth. If you will to fill in,

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Speaker 2: to invent, to polish and to offer.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you'll agree with this, but in

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Speaker 1: a way, the book opens with the world impacting on him,

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Speaker 1: and the book closes with him impacting on the world.

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Speaker 2: That's very true. He goes from passivity to assertiveness to

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Speaker 2: I guess you would say aggression. That is part of

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Speaker 2: his transformation. He has to learn what he's doing. You

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Speaker 2: don't get this until later, but what he's doing is

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Speaker 2: he's investigating and he has to learn what happened in

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Speaker 2: certain circumstances. And once he learns that he understands the

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Speaker 2: morality of that situation, he's free to act. And you know,

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Speaker 2: in that sense, he's liberated to become his old self

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Speaker 2: again because he has a confidant in himself that he

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Speaker 2: has confidence in justice, he had conveident wrighteousness, and that

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Speaker 2: process was the pleasure of the book for its author.

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Speaker 1: You have created in the Swaggers, and in one of

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Speaker 1: your novels, you actually go all the way back to

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Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War period as showed the early emergence of

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Speaker 1: the Swaggers and then their movement west towards Arkansas. And

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Speaker 1: now you've taken us into the nineteenth century. And then

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Speaker 1: you've also shared with us the Swaggers who come out

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Speaker 1: of World War one, World War two, Vietnam, and of

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Speaker 1: course more recently a young person who's married into the Swaggers.

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Speaker 1: You've literally created the history of an entire family.

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Speaker 2: I mean, that's absolutely true. And this is remarkable to

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Speaker 2: be a Maybe it does to you in that it

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Speaker 2: was never my goal, and yet I found that extremely

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Speaker 2: compelling as I was doing it, and I began to

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Speaker 2: see the connections between people, and I began to track

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Speaker 2: the characteristics that were transmitted generation to generations and sort

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Speaker 2: of the family opus, the family saga, the family myth.

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Speaker 2: I found that most of it was generated by my

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Speaker 2: unconscious and I just arrived while I was at the keyboard,

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Speaker 2: and I found that really interesting. And I never in

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Speaker 2: my life thought I would do that. It was never

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Speaker 2: one of my goals. I've never read the foresight saga,

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Speaker 2: so I don't know where it came from, except that

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Speaker 2: on my father's side it was an old, wealthy land

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Speaker 2: owning banking family in rural Missouri, and it had a

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Speaker 2: lot of pathologies, a lot of drunkenness, it had some

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Speaker 2: violent deaths. I never went into that deeply, but you're

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Speaker 2: aware of the weight of it it in some degree.

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Speaker 2: I was playing with that, not literally, you know, it's

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Speaker 2: by incident, but just the sense of the weight of family,

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Speaker 2: the weight of inheritance, the weight of family tradition, and

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Speaker 2: how that plays out over the generations. Again, great fun,

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Speaker 2: and I'm glad Newt. I am so glad you're getting

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Speaker 2: it and I hope at least four or five other

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Speaker 2: people do too.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty clear to me you did not sit down

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Speaker 1: twenty five years ago and outline the swagger of saga

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Speaker 1: that in fact is just year by year has grown

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Speaker 1: around you and you've sort of reported on it to

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Speaker 1: the rest of us.

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Speaker 2: That is exactly true. I think maybe it's a fanciful

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Speaker 2: exaggeration of the Hunter family in rural Missouri in the

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Speaker 2: early part of the twentieth century on up through the fifties,

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Speaker 2: but with the addition of lots of guns and lots

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Speaker 2: of gun fights, because I like those. I find them fascinating.

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Speaker 2: But again, I don't want to go too far, and

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Speaker 2: it's not a one on one correspondence. It's just kind

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Speaker 2: of the miracle of bosmosis, of feeling things that can't

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Speaker 2: quite be expressed in words, but only through drama, and

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Speaker 2: that's how it came out. I never would have accessed

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Speaker 2: that pool of information had I not written these books.

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Speaker 2: You know, the books made me invent well, it made

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Speaker 2: me access and from vague memories create a family that

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Speaker 2: I hope people believe in.

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Speaker 3: Sub Wilson Wall, you dedicate the book to the old gods.

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Speaker 1: John Wayne john Ford, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Sam Peckinpah,

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Speaker 1: William Holden, John Wayne again while in Tectragra Sergio Leone,

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Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood, Richard Boone, James Arness, Jack Mahoney, and John

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Speaker 1: Wayne again. I have to ask a couple of questions. One,

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Speaker 1: why Wayne three times?

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Speaker 2: Oh, because I wanted to identify him as a central

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Speaker 2: figure of fifties masculine mythology. I was born in forty six,

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Speaker 2: so I edited the fifties at four and I left

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Speaker 2: them at let's see, No, I left them at fourteen.

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Speaker 2: And that was the high water mark of the American Western.

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Speaker 2: And every night on television when I should have been

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Speaker 2: doing my homework, I was watching Westerns on TV. And

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Speaker 2: every Saturday and Sunday I was going to the movies

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Speaker 2: and seeing westerns, you know, seventeen feet tall by thirty

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Speaker 2: five feet wide, and that imagery, those values, those landscapes,

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Speaker 2: those guns, they just soaked into me because there was

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Speaker 2: just an endless profusion of them. So Wayne was predominant

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Speaker 2: in that world, and so I wanted to pay attention

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Speaker 2: to him. No, At the same time, I have to

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Speaker 2: say that I probably didn't do it at the time,

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Speaker 2: but later as a film critic looking back and going

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Speaker 2: out of my way to see some of his movies

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Speaker 2: that were that proceeded by consciousness, like the three great

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Speaker 2: Calvary Westerns he made with John Ford, and a whole

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Speaker 2: variety of other westerns Hondo and people don't even remember anymore.

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Speaker 2: And I realized that he was the kingdom of the genre,

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Speaker 2: and he was the alpha male of the decade. And

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Speaker 2: I felt that it was a kind of mischievous way

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Speaker 2: to pay homage to that and all those other chaps

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Speaker 2: that I mentioned. All of them great in their own way,

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Speaker 2: but somehow they wouldn't have existed without John Wade as

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Speaker 2: the central totem. I must say, I must apologize here.

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Speaker 2: I left Aunie Murphy out because he made a lot

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Speaker 2: of Westerns, and some of his best movies were westerns.

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Speaker 2: I've done a lot with him in the past, but

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Speaker 2: I don't want to see these people forgotten. It's just

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Speaker 2: too easy to forget. And one of the things I've

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Speaker 2: always tried to describe by books or my work as

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Speaker 2: a ceremony of remembering. That's why there's a lot of

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Speaker 2: World War two with them. I don't want it to

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Speaker 2: be forgotten. I don't know if do kids today know

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Speaker 2: who won World War Two. I am no evidence whatsoever.

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Speaker 2: I'm here and remind them that there was a great war,

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Speaker 2: and there were great men, and there was a lot

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Speaker 2: of blood shed in this country as we settled it

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Speaker 2: for reasons good and bad. I stand squarely facing the past,

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Speaker 2: and I'm really not that interested in the future, even

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Speaker 2: the present. But the past is very alive to me.

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Speaker 1: I'm three years older than you, so we literally experienced

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Speaker 1: culturally the same cycle. One of the names you have here,

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Speaker 1: which I've always felt was underrated and had an amazing

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Speaker 1: ability to dominate scenes, was Richard Boone.

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Speaker 2: Yes, he's a very good actor, and he was charismatic.

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Speaker 2: He was not a handsome man. He had a lumpy

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Speaker 2: face and he had sort of a brusque personality that

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Speaker 2: he was in the Palatin series. It lasted I think

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Speaker 2: six years, and he was just bagnetic, and he went

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Speaker 2: on and had a great career as a secondary lead

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Speaker 2: in all sorts of movies. It's just something about that gruff,

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Speaker 2: grumpy face and its refusal to get excited. It's something

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Speaker 2: bagnetic about him. I like saluting the people who built

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Speaker 2: the movies or build the entertainment screen media on TV

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Speaker 2: as he did. He dominates every scene he's in, even

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Speaker 2: when he's not supposed to. That's right.

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Speaker 1: It reminds me of a very famous story of John

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Speaker 1: Ford finally making The Quiet Man with John Wayne and

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Speaker 1: Marin O'Hara, and she had never worked with John Wayne

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Speaker 1: before and there's a scene where she's supposed to explode

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Speaker 1: with anger and Ford can't get her to explode. Finally

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Speaker 1: takes off to one sign and she says, well, I

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Speaker 1: don't want to take the scene away from Duke, and

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Speaker 1: Ford rux saim and says, Honey, you're gonna get as

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Speaker 1: much of that scene as Duke gives you. Don't worry

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Speaker 1: about it, just explode. But the whole notion that whenever

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Speaker 1: Wayne wanted to, he could dominate anything.

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Speaker 2: That's very true. And he was a comforting presence. What

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Speaker 2: I liked about him, and I also like about Jimmy Stewart,

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Speaker 2: was he was willing to show a dark side. His

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Speaker 2: character in The Searchers is very dark, almost psychotic, and

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Speaker 2: he was willing to go that far, just as Jimmy

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Speaker 2: Stewart was willing to go that far. And it's a

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Speaker 2: wonderful life, and I respect them for that. And you say, well,

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Speaker 2: they're not great actors. Meeting they could never play Hamlet, Well,

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Speaker 2: Lord Olivier could not have been the lead in The Searchers.

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Speaker 2: So you play your strengths.

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Speaker 1: I always fell on their own right. They're actually very good.

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Speaker 2: Actors, Yes, that's true, very professional. They always do their lives,

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Speaker 2: they always hit their marks. They had impatience with people

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Speaker 2: who weren't up to their level of professionalism. I mean

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Speaker 2: that's just to be expected to find that, say, pattern

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Speaker 2: in any professional organization.

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Speaker 1: If you watch them late in their life interacting in

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Speaker 1: The Shootest as John Wayne literally is filming about him

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Speaker 1: gunfighter who's dying while John Wayne is dying. The scenes

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Speaker 1: of Stewart and Wayne are amazingly touching.

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Speaker 2: I think, yes, so I agree with you on that

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Speaker 2: that's a very fine movie. The novel by Glendon Swarthout,

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Speaker 2: which I quoted in the beginning of my book, there's

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Speaker 2: two really good, vivid westerns, so good that they were

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Speaker 2: big best sellers, and they stood out from their genre

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Speaker 2: and became mainstream hits. One is The Shooters and the

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Speaker 2: other's True Grit. Charles Porters was a wonderful writer. He

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Speaker 2: was a wonderful writer, and both books made very good movies,

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Speaker 2: and we are much the richer for them.

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Speaker 1: What are you now working on? What next adventure should

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Speaker 1: we expect?

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Speaker 2: Well, that's problematic, and I'm trying to sell a book

396
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Speaker 2: like I've gotten enchanted with Believe it or not, Sherlock Holmes.

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Speaker 2: I have a book in mind, a very elaborate plot

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Speaker 2: called Sherlock Holmes Gunfighter. I'm encountering reluctance in some professional worlds,

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Speaker 2: and I don't understand why. One of the problems here

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00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 2: is I'm not that interested in my career. I don't

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Speaker 2: do the career things.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: These younger writers know all the tricks. I don't know

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Speaker 2: any of them. So I don't quite know what's going on,

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00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 2: and I don't know who to call, and I don't

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Speaker 2: know what to do. So right now I'm sort of floundering.

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Speaker 2: But I hope to tell the book and publish it

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Speaker 2: in twenty seven, and then I have one more Bobble

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Speaker 2: Swagger book. I'll just give you the title of that one.

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Speaker 2: I would call it the Bobbly Swagger Overture. And maybe

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Speaker 2: that gives you some inclination as to what it's about.

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Speaker 1: Well, I can assure you whatever you do, and whenever

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Speaker 1: you do it, we will be asking you to come

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Speaker 1: back have another conversation like this.

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Speaker 2: You've been so good to me. I really can't begin

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Speaker 2: to tell you.

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Speaker 1: Well, think about how many hours I've gotten of joy

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Speaker 1: reading your stuff, so I can tell you you've been

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Speaker 1: pretty good to me too.

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Speaker 2: We thank you very much.

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Speaker 1: I want to thank you for joining me. It's always

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Speaker 1: fun to chat with you and range widely. Your new book,

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Speaker 1: The Gunman Jackson Swagger is available now on Amazon and

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Speaker 1: in bookstores everywhere, and I really do look forward to

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Speaker 1: having you come back and join me again.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much, dude, it was a great chat

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Speaker 2: as far as I've concert.

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Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest, Steven. News World is produced

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Speaker 1: by Gingrish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is

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Speaker 1: Guardnzie Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for

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Speaker 1: the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to

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Speaker 1: the team at GINGERSH three sixty. If you've been enjoying

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Speaker 1: News World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and

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Speaker 1: review so others can learn what it's all about. Join

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Speaker 1: me on substack at gingrishtree sixty dot net. I'm Newt Gingrich.

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Speaker 1: This is news world,