Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College. All things Hillsdale at hillsdale.edu. I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there. And of course, to listen to the Hillsdale Dialogues, all of them at Hugh for hillsdale.com or just Google Apple. iTunes, and Hillsdale. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Continuing to talk with David Mamet, whose brand new book, The Disenlightenment, is a fabulous read, as I've said.
But if you don't get it early, you might find it's banned in some places. David, it's good to talk to you again. I want to I want to begin by asking you, how in the world did you learn about the rule against perpetuities? That's very interesting. You know, my dad was a one-horse lawyer and I would always go to his office and...
And I would do filing for him. He had this thing called Commerce Clearinghouse Reports. I would do the filing of all these reports. He was a labor lawyer. And I really loved reading them. I really loved reading about law. And I found it fascinating. And then I read a whole lot of Victorian...
literature. And a lot of the late Victorian literature, Wilkie Collins, not so much to a certain extent, Dick, as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and especially Anthony Trollope, has to do with legal cases. And so there were all of these... obscure terms that i love i love reading dictionaries so i would write them down and look into them
Oh, it was a horrific experience for me because that's first year property law. And that took me right back to 1981. And I thought, my God, how does David Mamet know about the rule against perpetuity, which is always tested and never used? Let me begin by talking with you about your hometown on page 62. Delightful book, but it is going to be banned. So let's talk about the part that won't be banned. D. Them Does. There's a book of essays, and we'll talk about that in a moment.
But you open up my small South Side Chicago neighborhood gave us Larry Ellison of Oracle, Seymour Hersh of the New York Times, Sherry Lansing, who ran Paramount Pictures just over the color line, Shelby Steele. and Malcolm X, and the blues, and skyscrapers, and improv, and great literature. But you're going to have to add now, David Mamet, in addition to, and Pope Leo XIV from Bronzeville. a suburb of Dalton, St. Mary of the Assumption. Is that near where you grew up? No, it's not, but...
My stepmothers lived for years across the street on Astor Street from the Cardinal's office. So I said, dude, you know. Your next door neighbor just got elected pope, but apparently he never he never actually lived in that cardinal's office Okay. I just thought it was great that we have a Chicagoan as Pope. I know we are not co-religionists, but I thought it was great. My only disagreement with you in this book comes on page 235 where you say, I caught the top.
I caught the wave at the top, meaning American culture, the year you were born. I'm a couple of years older than you. I think the best year to have been born in is in 1956, because Vietnam was not an issue for me, and my colleges were not riot scenes. When I got to campus there in 1974, do you think I caught the wave or did you catch the top of the wave? Well, you know, those of us who think that we were lucky enough to be born into the time we were born into.
Are that lucky? If we think we are, certainly we are. Yeah, I found it. You're grateful by turns, grateful and alarmed in this collection of essays. And now where I turn. I'm not shining you on. I spent a year with Montagna's essays as a senior in college, and it finally hit me. This is a series of essays, and I don't know if you ordered them. with particular care as Montagna did, or if you did them in order of dashing them off, which is it, David Mamet?
No, it's certainly the first. I mean, in addition to doing a lot of rewriting on all of these essays, with great, great help from my assistant and colleague editor, Pam Suzumel. The next step is to put them in order. Because it's, you know, Francois Truffaut said a movie should have a beginning, middle and end, but not necessarily in that order. But he was absolutely wrong. Because...
the audience is going to perceive it as a beginning, middle, and end, even if you don't. So you might as well get the wind at your back and use the way that they perceive to help them and to help you. Well, what I enjoyed about it so much was moving in and out of your experience as a director and a writer and then your political observations and quite a lot about Jews in America and Jews around the world.
So to use your own language, you are the protagonist in this book, and I'm trying to work through as the reader, the through line, as you call it, as to what you are doing. Are you an artist honoring Donald Trump? Are you an American Jew trying to jolt some of your tribe? out of the trance they're in in American politics. A word dancer showing off. Is it your reaction to the election? In comprehension, you say.
working through that incomprehension? Or is it all of the above, David Mamet? Well, you know, we have two great American philosophers, the two greatest philosophers of the 20th century. One was, of course, Daffy Duck. who famously encapsulated, you know, Descartes said, I think, therefore I am. And Daffy Duck said, Faye, what's going on here? Anyway.
So that's the question of philosophy. And the other great philosopher, of course, was the Walt Disney, was Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss, who wrote a book called, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
which i grew up with it was one of his first successes and this guy's going down along the street and then he sees a cart and then the cart has got a donkey and the donkey's got a midget on it and the midget's got a hat with a thing on it and it keeps getting more and more and more so this is a compilation of an homage to those two great philosophers, what's going on here, and to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, Mulberry Street being the American century.
But it is jagged, David. There are parts that are very optimistic, and then there are parts which are just completely pessimistic. I want to do the optimistic first. In your essay about the movie Gandhi, you kind of intimate... that as the Indians with Gandhi's leadership told the British Raj, it's time for you to leave.
Is the American electorate telling the left and the Islamists it's time for them to leave? Do you think we've reached that point, a tipping point in which we just collectively say, as we did in 2024, thank you for your services? they're no longer needed, and they will be exited off of the political stage? Well, yes, the one certainly that the American people have said resoundingly. That's enough now. Thanks a lot. Or as we used to say in show business, I love you, honey, but the season's over.
So there's that. But are they going to shuffle off the stage? No, of course, whoever does. And as Victor Davis Hanson said immediately after the election, yes, they were beaten. They're going to have to be beaten a few more times before they realize that if enough people... will tell you you're dead, lay down and die. Do you think the trans issue is the issue on which they will, the hill on which they will repeatedly choose to die, which isn't an 80-20 issue, if not a 90-10 issue?
I don't even think it's a 95-5 issue, though. The volume set makes the 5 sound a lot louder than 5. Do you think that's the issue that will break it? No, I think it's the economy. I think the rest of it are just impossible. Here's what's happening is the left, of course, has chased its tail into making demands which are not only onerous, but absurd. and and blasphemous and it's no it's no no wonder that they don't like religion because what they've done is they created a new religion
having all the forms of the old religions, the Judeo-Christian religion, but worshipping Satan rather than God, if I may. I think you're right. By the way, former Attorney General Bill Barr argued at length in his memoir, one damn thing after another, that the secular left has become a religion and its indoctrination ought to be banned in every public school in the same way that the indoctrination of Roman Catholicism is. Okay, things I learned in the book.
The Breen office administered the motion picture code from 1934 to 1968. Married couples had to be in twin beds. The shift to good, clean fun produced 30 years of drivel. That's in a footnote on page 153. Did it really last until 1960? I don't remember it lasting until 1968. Well, I don't know which of their particular strictures lasted the longest, but the office was in the office was. was in power and if you know if you look at a pre-code films before the motion picture called 1934
Most films are garbage, right? Because if you turn out a bunch of nothing but sausages, it's gonna be very hard to get a magnificent sausage. Maybe some, you know, a small chef's gonna come up and sneak in and take out the pesticides and... put in some actual beef. But most films are garbage. But the particular flavor of garbage that the pre-code films were not subject to was sycophancy.
And sententiousness. That came in to a large extent after the motion picture codes. And what that did was it said to everybody involved, well, we need your complicity in a falsehood. So if the falsehood is that married couples don't sleep together, it's easy to cross-deck that if we accept that into another falsehood, right?
That, for example, that later on, that there were good Nazis. Or, for example, later on, that the American is racist. I mean, of course America is racist, but it's not anymore. But we still see the... The result of that. Go ahead. You talk. Well, okay. I was going to say, you repeat. I don't know much about the code.
But anti-Semitism is all around us. Last week in Washington, D.C., where I am, two young Jews were murdered in cold blood by a kid from Chicago. And so I'm wondering, did the code prohibit anti-Semitism at any time, to your knowledge? I don't know. I think that us Jews were so far below the radar that I don't actually see much anti-Semitism.
excuse me, in the early movies. What I do see very much, especially as you get into the period after World War II, is accommodation through supposedly philo-Semitic films. For example, Exodus and Fiddler on the Roof. and gentlemen's agreement, which are kind of the equivalent of affirmative action for Jews, saying, you know, I guess you're people too.
The real answer to the end of racism, which you see now, is it's none of your frickin' business. Leave me alone. Yes. There's a chapter, and I'm saying here, where you're attending a meeting with other L.A. Jews, and people are... IDF soldiers are talking to you and you say the problem is not them. The problem is us. Do you think you will wake anybody up from the drudgery of the self-absorption?
of American Jewry, which voted 79% for Biden and Harris, which, as you remark frequently, is suicidal for Jews? No. Because, you know, anybody wants to get some wisdom, I suggest they read the Bible, because that's the wisdom of the human condition. It's all there. And as Dennis Prager said, he doesn't believe in the Bible because of God. He believes in God because of the Bible.
it's all in there. And if you look at the 20%, that's exactly, curiously, the same percentage of Jews that left Egypt in the Exodus. 80% stayed behind. They preferred slavery, which is... Same thing, which is exactly what we see today in 80% of the American Jews voting for their own destruction. Jews who vote Democratic are in effect queers for Palestine. That is...
repeatedly showing up in here in a couple of different places. I was with Breakfast this morning downtown with a pretty significant figure in the movement. And I said, and I had your book with me. I was finishing up the outline. I said, I had no idea. I've interviewed David a couple of times. I had no idea he was a constitutionalist. And I would direct people to page 58.
the constitution it is the practical wisdom of men of the world distilled from the combined experience of self-supporting farmers merchants professional men and soldiers its rules exist not to coerce citizens but to restrict government They are in their original form, bright, definite lines, which the government must not cross. And I have taught common law for 30 years, and I've always said it's the rules of golf. Everyone can learn it, written by farmers for farmers. It's not complicated.
Do you think many Americans think it is complicated wrongly, David? I don't think many Americans think about the Constitution, and I think that the... The right, the conservative movement, is a... is a return to constitutional values, whether you call them that or not. Look, somebody said to Rabbi Hillel, can you tell me the whole Torah while standing on one foot?
and he's throwing one foot and said what's hateful to you don't do to your neighbor now go study so that's what the constitution comes down to to the overwhelming majority that voted for a return to constitutional uh government whether they know it or not what they were demanding as human beings and as Americans and as workers and citizens what if it's if what's hateful to you don't do to me leave me alone so that that's whether they know it or not
is the operative question. I want to point out, you're right, that you or I could not perhaps imagine the operation or makeup of a return to constitutional democracy as understandable. That Trump and his supporters did it. is an instance of extraordinary intellectual courage. I don't think I've seen that read or written anywhere that voting for Trump required intellectual courage. Would you expand on that? Yes.
I didn't indicate primarily that it was an act of courage on the part of the people who voted for him, although it was. What I'm suggesting, what I'm stating is an instance of courage on his part, because he was looking at... And obviously he had forbearers, not only in the first American Revolution, but also starting with the Tea Party movement and Russia and those people who came out, those housewives in the Middle West and Chicago said, wait a second.
that Trump looked around and saw something which the rest of us, you know, and I'm getting into the final boarding process here, will say, well, it's terrible, but perhaps in some form it will last my time. And this guy looked at the whole thing and said, no, wait a second, you got it wrong. It's the Gordian knot but it can be untied if we have courage. And so it was his courage and his determination that attracted the like-minded to him.
not only his cabinet but 80 million americans who said my god i didn't realize i know it had gotten that bad but i didn't realize that it was possible to address these problems one by one and by opposing, or as Shakespeare says, or take arms against the sea of trouble, and by opposing, end them. So it's extraordinary intellectual courage, moral courage on this guy's part. And I remember...
I heard that Melania, when he first said he was thinking of running for president, she said, please, please don't do it, Donald. He said, why not? And she said, because if you do it, you'll win. So these are extraordinary people, and I feel so fortunate to have them in a position of leadership, not of my life, but of the government. One observation you made, I don't have a particular page site.
is that the debate revealed Biden, in his essence, incognite, without will, energy, perhaps even the capacity to be president, and that the assassination Trump... attempt on trump revealed trump at his essence fight fight fight courageous and willing to move forward i think that's going to be picked up by team trump and used have you lost friends by the way because you've said nice things about trump Well, I thought they were friends. You know, I turned a lot of friends into acquaintances.
I turned a lot of friends into acquaintances and a lot of acquaintances into antagonists and enemies. But, you know, what the hell? Did you pick up any along the way? Any new friends who are actually artists? Yes, a few friends who are actually artists and a lot of friends who aren't artists but are actual human beings. And these are the people that I want to be with.
You know, it's like people said, someone said, in one of Edith Wharton's essays, she said, somebody said that, the young woman said she wanted to break into society, and Edith said, why? Why? Yeah, why? there's nobody there so who would you who do you want for your friends people about you know people have gone around for years saying well this may not be politically correct but which was the opening wedge in the wokeism right Well, I hope I don't offend them.
My friends now, my colleagues, my associates, and the co-religionaries who devoted to conservative values, which are Judeo-Christian values, are people that are standing with me, and I'd stand with them. I mean, the one person you don't mention in the book at all that I regret and I want your thoughts on him. Mitch McConnell elected Donald Trump, though neither want to admit it.
Because Mitch McConnell held open the vacancy that Justice Scalia's death created, and that issue propelled Trump over the top in 2016. Now, they've fallen out, and it's irreconcilable. But one could not be the other without one having been the other. It's really, they're linked forever. Well, here's something I was reading in the commentary, a Chabad commentary on the Torah. He's talking, and the guy says, they're talking about God.
Right. And he says the guy's late for work and he's looking for a parking space and it's his first day at work. And if he's late on his first day, he's going to be in a lot of trouble. He can't find a parking space. Can't find a parking space. God, he says, God, I've never asked you for anything before. I need a park. Just as he says that the guy in front of him pulls out and there's a parking space right in front of the office. He says, thanks God, forget about it, I found one.
That's actually, that is McConnell and Trump. Well said. There are various unfortunate iterations of anti-Semitism in here. Before we take our break, I just want to bring up one. Jonathan Glazer at the Academy Awards. was the perfect example of when you've run out of sexy diseases to champion, crack open the toolkit and take out the all-purpose tool, which is anti-Semitism. Getting worse or getting better?
Oh, it's getting much worse. It's getting much, much worse. Yeah. Pause right there. Go ahead. All right. Pause back. We'll be back with you. Good morning, Gloria and evening, Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewitt in the Beltway. I have been talking for the past half hour with David Mamet, one of, if not the equal of any of America's great playwrights, about his brand new and wonderful, delightful new book, The Disenlightenment.
It will be condemned. It may be banned, but it's a hell of a read, and David is still with me, and I'm very grateful for that. David, you mentioned repeatedly through the disenlightenment that your racket is the stage, the theater. 70 episodes of television writing generally. And that's great. But you threatened my racket because you say on page 137, anyone encouraged to talk at great length.
will eventually reveal himself as inconsistent, foolish, or mistaken. This is the operation of both the celebrity interview and a criminal interrogation. If too many people read that, I'm not going to get many guests. No, you're doing great. And P.S. I look at all the people on Fox, that extraordinary array of talent and their knowledge and concision and self-control is certainly beyond.
me i have nothing but admiration for them and you brit hume set the standard brett bear keeps it every day and you're right i like working with these people because they're all professional in doing the news Let me talk about three subjects in our last 10 minutes. A is education. You observed on page 66 of the disenlightenment. To have failed to prepare for the test is the bad dream of the Western child.
The horrifying test historically was factual or practical, regurgitate the capital of Prussia or deal with the two trains leaving Chicago. Today's schoolchild is taxed, it seems, neither recall nor to reason. but to assent. You're right, but you're also an optimist that we can change that. Why are you an optimist we can change that?
educational all my life in my young life as a failure and as a ne'er do well and later as a fellow who founded a couple of theaters and acting schools and it all comes down to the education is pretty simple what are you actually teaching when do you know when you've learned it and can you do it What are the signposts along the way? Kids go to college for eight years to take French and they can't order a cup of coffee.
I mean, so what we've done is institutionalized that through the teachers' union and the elite universities where kids are told that actual learning, that's to say actual marketable ability is beside the point and what they're supposed to do. to do is in effect protest or fight to stand around and scream because they've been asked to do they haven't the reason that they're screaming is they haven't been asked to do anything
So that makes children very, very, very nervous. If a child doesn't know the rules, the child is either going to become morose and ingrown, or they're going to become the bad seed and say, well, hell, if nobody else in charge, I guess I better be. That's a dysfunctional family and that's a dysfunctional educational system. That's a dysfunctional country. So the answer is to get government out of education.
How much time does a kid actually need to sit in a classroom listening to some idiot read from a book and call it school? By the way, you provide the greatest... concise example of how to teach with your flea market and five bucks example people have to read disenlightenment to learn how to be a creative writer but that's genius david and people are going to have to read it but i want to go to b Trump. You write a lot about Trump in the book. You write about lawfare from pages 111 to 114.
Were you aware at the time of what a charade Juan Mershon was running, what a joke Alvin Bragg was, what a carnival it all became? Were you aware of it at the start? Of course I was. It's much, much worse than that. It was a coup, and it was a coup that succeeded. And they tried everything, including, arguably, putting him on the spot and letting him...
get shot. This guy was treated worse, certainly treated as badly as Dred Scott or the Japanese under the Karamatsu decision. He was treated as... an enemy that must be destroyed and we're seeing it still today by dehumanizing trump he's got to be hitler dehumanizing the jeep but dehumanizing people which is the the trick of the marxist they aren't human beings therefore we can do whatever we want to
David, I've interviewed him 30 times, and he has a unique way of talking. Have you figured out how he talks yet? Do you know him? I should preface that. Have you actually sat down and spoken with him? I haven't sat down and spoke with but I talked to him on the phone a couple of times when he was still in the movie business and he called me up the entertainment he called me up the day after I did
Bill Maher the last time he's on Bill Maher the last time and Bill leads off and says I know you're conservative and blah blah blah But do you actually believe that the election was stolen? So I I waffled a little bit. I said well, I don't know I can't remember what I said, but it wasn't very courage
on my part. Next morning, the phone rings. Person says, are you available for the president? And I'm thinking, why would Biden call me? And it's Donald Trump. He says, David, he said, I saw you on Bill Maher. I thought you were great, but you know that election was stolen. You know it was. I said, Mr. President,
You know what, your wife? He says, yeah. And, you know, let me bring you up. Let me tell you why. And so he talked for like 10 minutes, walking me through the thing. And he was absolutely right. I wussied out on the subject. I was flattered, very flattered that he called me. But you listen to people and then you put it back up on stage. I was listening last night after I finished The Disenlightenment to Speed the Plow, the Jeffrey Goldberg version, which is on Apple.
iBooks. I was just listening to Doug E. Wood, and I was thinking, you listen to how people talk. I don't know if you could replicate how Trump talks. Do you think you could? No, I don't think I could. Oh, listen, speaking of listening, I just did a new movie with Shia LaBeouf, and I think you're going to like it. It's called Henry Johnson, and it's available...
I don't know. It's whatever the hell is Instagram. So Henry Johnson movie.com. And I know you liked the anarchist very much. And that's been very much like. Henry Johnson. Oh, I will watch Henry Johnson then. I'll find the platform. Last couple of minutes on the essay, most disturbing. What shall we give the sun god? Our generation, your and mine.
was the first to grow up with the threat of instant annihilation. Our children and grandchildren are the first to grow up with instant global communication, which that combination produces fear and fury. Where's it going? Well, who knows? I mean, you know, as our friends the Muslims say, it was all written in the mind of Allah long ago, and that's true. But it's going where it's going. But Rebecca West said something interesting. She said,
Social upheavals are caused by a change in climate. And I think there's a great deal of wisdom in that. But not because of climate change, which is a complete fiction, but because the changes in agriculture, blah, blah. the shift in population, but... What I see is that the hugest changes in civilization have been caused by technology. The first was the industrial revolution in the 19th century, and the next, which is just as destructive, is the computer revelation.
revolution in the last 40 years, which has changed everything. It's changed everything. So everything that was based on methods of production, methods of communication, methods of employment, therefore methods of education has just gone out.
window and people are freaking terrified and some of them are not terrified and say okay let's figure it out they're called conservatives and some of them are running around like the sky is falling and they're saying who is the blame who is to blame oh and obviously it's the jews
And it's Trump and it's the sexism and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the fact is that things have vastly changed. And so what the left is looking at is like they live on the Erie Canal and railroads have come in. Yeah, I saw. Mission Impossible, the final reckoning last night. You called Maverick Top Gun the death rattle of the movies in the disenlightenment. All that Mission Impossible, the final reckoning is, is the Cuban Missile Crisis with better stunts.
And I think that's true. It's the Cuban Missile Crisis. Do you think the Cuban Missile Crisis would have turned out the same had the Internet been around? Because I don't. I think the missiles would have launched because of the pressure from X. I really don't know. It's like saying, hey, what would Spartacus have done if he had a Piper Cub, you know?
David Mamet, you have spent 45 minutes with me. Thank you so much for doing that. The disenlightenment is a joy. What's the name? HenryJohnson.com? HenryJohnson.com. Henry Johnson movie. I will go and watch that. Thank you for spending time, and thank you for agreeing to talk to Ben Dominick. He's thrilled. He's coming by to get the book from me tomorrow to read it, but mine is so marked up, I don't know if it'll be about to make any sense out of it.
Thank you for your time, David. I hope I see you on the West Coast soon, and I'll tell you what I think about HenryJohnsonTheMovie.com after I've watched it. Be well. It's a pleasure to see you again. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of commentary is one of the regulars on the commentary podcast. Abe, this morning I was listening and David Barry's new book came up.
I heard everybody rave about it, but it reminded me. I can't talk to comedians. I have no ability to talk to funny people. And I froze when I was introduced to him. But I will read the book anyway. I like your recommends a lot. I just finished talking to David Mamet for 45 minutes. He is of the opinion that anti-Semitism is skyrocketing and getting much, much worse. Do you agree with him?
I think there's no question I think it's an objective fact yes how much worse can it get in the United States Well, that really is the question of the hour. You know, in some way, when we had the shootings last week of the two young... employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington, it seemed, of course, horrific and shocking, but also inevitable. Hasn't everything that has happened in terms of pro Hamas, pro terrorist activism in this country since the very moment.
that Hamas launched its war of extermination on Israel on October 7th, 2023. Hasn't everything been geared toward targeted violence against Jews? And you have this in combination with a kind of culture of worship on the left of violent figures talking about the guy who shot the United... health care CEO. And now there is also support, particularly from American socialists, hoping to free the shooter.
of those two young Israeli embassy staffers last week. So the lionization of this kind of violence and of the perpetrators of it. um lays the ground for copycat killings and you know we should say clearly the line has been crossed from terror supporters which is what These pro-Hamas activists have always been, even though the legacy media would describe them as pro-Palestinian activists, but they were always nakedly, unapologetically.
Pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist activists. The line has been crossed from terrorist supporters to terrorists. And that's one of those barn door situations, I fear. Now, Abe, I want to make sure my list is complete. The leftist who tried to kill every Republican congressman, I don't know that he was anti-Semitic, but he was a violent leftist. The would-be assassin of Kavanaugh, violent leftist.
the would-be assassins of Trump, violent leftists. I don't want to be guilty of a failure of imagination, though, by stringing together five events, seven events of violence from the left. And not imagining how bad anti-Semitism can get in the United States. I don't want to be one of the silent Germans. How bad do you think it can get? I think it... can get extraordinarily bad. I mean, I think, look, we see, if you look back on 20, was it 2015 in Paris? There was a kind of...
jihadist siege in several stages of the city. And that has happened in European cities to varying degrees at different points. I don't think we're quite there because in part, and this is something that is sort of novel about what's happening in the U.S., the people or... persons who are killing in the name of a free Palestine while chanting Islamist slogans.
in the US are not necessarily Islamists themselves, which is unlike what we've seen in Europe. They are leftists who have been instrumentalized by the Islamist cause and worked it into their own leftist theology, which is not unlike what we saw. in the 1960s among the leftists who worshipped Marxist paramilitary groups in, say, Latin America. Or Botter-Meinhof in the Red Brigade, yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. America's the left always comes to around to the arms of.
the country's worst enemies. It doesn't matter if they're Stalinists. It doesn't matter if we're talking about the Castros. It doesn't matter if we're talking about Che Guevara. And it doesn't matter if we're talking about jihadists. they will find their way into the arms of America's worst enemies all on their own. And that is what's happening. And... It's quite a moment. We are not approaching the moment. We are dead in the moment, and I think that needs to be recognized.
Well, you don't need recommendations from me. But if you read David Mamet's new book, The Disenlightenment, he is with you. And my. You don't need any addition. If you do a symposium on how bad it could get in America, I'd read every page because I don't want to be guilty of a failure of imagination. I just sometimes think I have too much confidence in our political system.
that we would reject the overt appeals to anti-Semitism. But we haven't yet, conclusively. Mamet and I talked today when I was interviewing about the book. He thinks they've been beaten once, but he quoted Victor Davis. They have to be beaten repeatedly at the polls. Do you think that's going to happen? I think that plays a big role in it. I also happen to think, and I think this is an underappreciated point, that Israel finishing the job in Gaza.
will do a lot to send American and Western Jew haters back into their hidey holes. Because, don't forget... The pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist crowd came out chanting jihadist slogans, not when Israel responded to the slaughter of October 7th, but... When that happened, when Hamas massacred, Jews and Israelis on October 7th, because for them, this was about exploiting a moment of weakness. And when Israel looks strong and takes the upper hand and...
changes the state of play to one in which, oh, the Jews aren't weak. Maybe this window of opportunity is closing for us. They go back and hide. So I have a firm conviction that Israeli victory will do a great deal to push back the violent anti-Semitism in the U.S. and around the West. I hope you were right, because I think that victory is coming. Abe Greenwald, follow him on X at Abe Greenwald. Listen to him on commentary podcast five days a week. Thank you, Abe.
Welcome back, America. Hugh Hewitt inside the Beltway today. Joined now by the CEO of Bank of America, Brian Moynihan. Brian, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show. You are a Catholic kid from Ohio, so we may have a couple of things in common. But you're from Marietta, so I guess you're probably a Bengals and a Reds fan unless you've sold out to Boston teams. What is it? Well, two things to that. One, I was a Reds fan for sure, and I was...
Probably a Bengals fan more than a Browns fan. But unfortunately, having lived in New England and my family all growing up there, and the success of the teams has led me to be a Patriots fan and a Red Sox fan, et cetera. That's a bad, bad start. That's a terrible start. But I do know I got to say one thing. Yeah. Buckeyes have got a lot in common. I got to always declare before.
an interview my son's sister-in-law works for you but you don't know that and i'm not going to tell you her name so there's no conflict And I think you probably worked with Regina Pisa back in your fleet days. And she's a very dear friend. And so we're not going to talk about fleet days. But I do want to begin by asking you how Brown managed to escape.
The terrible troubles that have, you are the chancellor of Brown now, and we're going to talk mostly economics and the Bank of America, but how has Brown managed to escape the troubles of my alma mater, Harvard? And your alma mater, Notre Dame and Brown, how did that happen? Well, at the end of the day, every business organization has to have great leadership. So I'm the chair of the board. But our president, Chris Paxson, who just frankly agreed to.
stay on for a couple extra years, which is terrific and a great thing for Brown. We just released yesterday has done a great job of managing through this. And I think her. credibility with the students and the faculty and interdiscipline has allowed Brown to fare well. And when people have done things that were counter to the values of the institution, I took them to task. So she's just done a great job managing through it.
Look, at the end of the day, what these universities do is one that is unbelievable, making individuals like you and me better, coming from both of us from Ohio, from relatively small towns into that atmosphere, be able to do what we're doing, the research they do. And we've got to get this sort out because these institutions need to be successful for America to be successful. They add to America's success. I think the one that I'm from has to get back on the track. But the one you're from...
Never got off of it, so I'm glad of that, and congratulations to your board and your leader. Let me ask you about Bank of America, and the hardest question first. President Trump accused Bank of America of debanking conservatives. Did that actually happen?
No, we don't know. We have 70 million consumers. Last year, we opened 11 million new accounts for our customers and new customers. We have 12 million small business customers. We lend about four or five million of them. We have tens of thousands of middle market companies.
And, you know, we reflect the economies across America's largest consumer and commercial bank inside the U.S. And so we bank everybody. Now, what the president was raising, if you listen to his comments, it was about the amount of regulation that's gone on in our industry. and it needs to be fixed. There are regulations which cause accounts to be closed because of...
what they call BSA AML rules and regulations. There's regulators examining you on reputation risk and things that, that stuff we can push back in the middle and it gotten out of hand. And we, we were clear about that. We just couldn't get anybody to listen to us.
and the administration is listening to us. Oh, that's good. Now, is there deregulation coming to the financial sector because everything else is overregulated? Everything I've ever worked in is overregulated, primarily land use when I was lawyering. Is banking still overregulated? I think at the end of the day, the companies... After the financial crisis, there was an amount of regulation that came to bear. Stress testing, higher capital requirements are always more capital.
requirements, liquidity requirements, scope of activity requirements, and all those all came through and they righted the wrongs. And we've been doing stress tests every year to prove the cap of liquidity were examined. The problem is the... Crisis ended. The U.S. recovered like no one else in the world. The banking system recovered. Then you have the next crisis, which is a pandemic. The banking system is solid and performs well and helps America get through it and help.
President Trump in the early days that you make sure consumers got fair deals and small business lending kept going, etc. Then you had the regional bank crisis where people have made mistakes. Those companies were liquidated. The big banks stepped in to help. Yet all during that time. with the objective evidence that we are well-regulated, had lots of capital, even the regulators saying for a decade or more, we have enough capital.
kept promulgating rules to regulate us more. And the materiality standard was long and the objectivity. So we are looking forward to getting it back in the middle. We don't want no regulation. That would be...
problematic for financial services companies because at the end of the day, we have the trust of people with their deposits and we make loans and we help people build their financial lives. But it's gotten too far swung and we're bringing it up and hopefully it'll come back. By the end of the day, we have a...
We have the best banking system in the world, the best banking companies in the world. It is a great industry for us. If we regulate it too much, we will look like some other places which aren't very good, aren't as good, and that's what we've got to avoid. Now, I make no bones about my ignorance of crypto. I don't know anything about it. I don't know how it works. I'm too old to learn. What kind of issues do crypto present to you as a banker, Brian Moynihan?
I think you have to separate the transactional side of crypto, which is the blockchain and stablecoin and things like that, away from the investment side, which is the... cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, et cetera. And so what you hear a lot about is if we're going to authorize with clarity that stable coins can be used and be backed by dollar for dollar reserves or treasury bills.
and short-term assets, and it's legitimate to engage in the business, which is there's been a lack of clarity. It's effectively a deposit account, and the bank industry will participate in that. As to cryptos investment, we've got experts who can talk about that. There I'd reflect on. But I think the key, though, is if you're going to take money from somebody and hold it.
And then they're going to transact and use it to go out and conduct their daily commerce. And they aren't taking any investment risk or principal risk or trying to make money off that money. They're just having you store it for them to do things.
It is bank-like, so it has to be regulated, it has to be very carefully kept, or lose faith in the financial system if people lose their money because what people do with that money, etc. The regulation going through Congress now has a lot of safeguards in it. regulations will be promulgated. And then I'd expect the core banking industry, so to speak, would be active in it at that point. Okay, that makes sense to me. And crypto doesn't, but that made sense to me.
Let me ask you a couple of discrete questions and get to the big one about the economy. McKinsey, I believe they're Boston-based, maybe New York, is going to shed 10% of its staff in a two-year profitability drive. A, what does that tell you? And B, is that something Bank of America has to look at? Well, I think, Hugh, to put it in context, when the management team came in in 2010, our company had about 285,000 teammates working for us.
Today we have about 213,000. So what happened in those 15 plus years? All the application of technology, simplification of business models, some divestitures, we were able to do more with less people. That is a fact. Technology allows you to do that. But meanwhile, we didn't have to do massive laughs. We planned ahead and were very careful about it. So what we try to do as a company, and we haven't even...
We try to do companies constantly monitor our headcount three years ahead of time to make sure that we're not adding people who may become unproductive due to technology application. It is a relentless fact. But if you look at the United States from the late 60s. From 69 to 2019, the United States went from 80 million people working to 160 million people working.
Well, think of the technology that came on stream in those 50 years, all the different PC, the phones, the smartphones, the Internet itself, search engines, cellular service, all that stuff came on.
And we end up employing twice as many people. So America has this way of redeploying the resources to other productive capabilities. And technology is one of those. I think what McKinsey's doing is reflecting. They may have been a little behind. I couldn't say because I don't know the facts, but we try to stay ahead of the curve. and therefore always managing the amount of teammates we have because I don't want to disrupt people's lives. We have 7% turnover.
200,000 people, actually 14,000, the management team, 14,000 choices not to hire. We won't hire if we think that long term those jobs aren't going to be secure. That's a great perspective. Now. When I got out of college, my friends who went into banking, you might have known Joe Antonellos, or my friends who went into banking adjacent like Regina, banks merged and merged and merged again. My brother was a banker in Ohio.
Is that era over, or is it going to continue to consolidate until, like accounting, we're down to three or four giants and nobody else? Well, using accounting or, you know. pharmacies or diners, all that stuff. You've seen these consolidations in these large platforms, Coke, Pepsi, they bought a bunch of companies along the way. But there's always a role for...
different types of marketing strategies and go into market strategies. So smaller banks and big banks. And so in my hometown where I grew up in Marietta, People's Bank, I think is the largest bank in that part of Ohio. And the fellow who used to run that became a pen pal of mine because it was ironic. He came from Brooklyn, New York.
in that bank, and I came from Idaho, Ohio, ran Bank of America, so we used to correspond. But you always see roles for banks of all different stripes. Will there be continued consolidation? There will be, but I think...
But that is sort of, there's still 4,000 plus banks. It doesn't mean there'll be four. It means there might be less than we have today. But that consolidation really is because the business model, the effectiveness. So that bank in Marietta, People's Bank, has bought a bunch of banks to become a bigger. competitor to us and other people, but it allows them to get scale and efficiency and effectiveness.
At Bank of America, we focus on local markets. We have 97 markets and 97 market presidents who can deliver the entirety of our company. We look at what we do in every one of those markets from small business lending, the branches we have, the financial advisors in Merrill, the private bankers, the commercial bankers.
So we think of ourselves as a big company that delivered one client at a time locally. And getting that right is actually, I think, one of the competitive advantages we have as a company. Penultimate question before I go to the state of the economy. 10,000 people turn 65 every day in America. So the boomers are retiring.
Do you think they're ready for retirement from your perspective of you're not there yet? I'm not there yet, but we're close. You know, we're knocking on retirement's door in a decade or so. What do you think about... Do they have any idea what it's going to be like and is banking ready to help them?
So a couple of things. Yes, we're ready to help them. So we have financial planning tools that we've been working with clients for many years. And whether you want to do it yourself through our Merrill Edge platform or whether you want to have financial advisors who are FSAs or Merrill FAs or private bankers, depending on. what your needs are. But one of the...
Goals we've had is to bring the ability to do as sophisticated financial planning as we can into techniques that can be used by all our teammates to deliver to their clients or the clients do it themselves. So people have to get ready for retirement. They have to save. If you're 65 or 70 today and you retire, you know, the die is cast, frankly. So the real question is.
to preserve people's capability to do what they want to do with their life. It's their life. Our job is to help them live their financial life. We've got to get to them at 30 and say, hey, a little bit saved now does a lot of our time at 35, 40, and help them think through.
the use of their money and what they want to save for. So our life goals program and our life plans, which is not automated, has tens of thousands, tens of millions of people, 10 million people, I think have done it now. They're basically loading up those plans based on their goals. And what you're trying to get with younger people is saying kids to college, second home, retirement, whatever goals it is to.
Invest against that. So the people retiring today have lived through a period of great economic prosperity in America and great growth in wages and stuff like that. But if they're struggling, it's going to be because earlier on they probably didn't save like they should have. That's where...
We match in the 401k at the full dollar for dollar from day one for people and other employers do. We're trying to help people save. But yes, we have the advice tools. They're automated. They're personally delivered. They're there that you can access them. But I think the key about retirement is to actually get into it earlier and more often so that it becomes less of an issue later on in life. For part two of that question, from your perspective, top of one of the country's great banks.
Is America financially literate? 50 percent? 30 percent? 10 percent? I mean, I personally don't think we teach kids how to deal with money early enough. But what do you think? You run the bank. Well, we have great programs. So we built, we went with Sal Khan and we built. tools in education, South Carolina's Khan Academy, and your kids may have used it to learn about physics in high school or calculus or geometry or whatever they learned about. So we helped them build.
Better Money Habits. Better Money Habits is one of the most widely used programs to educate colleagues. We also work with high schools and middle schools around the country. Those teammates we have in all those markets volunteer their time to go in and help them. But I think it's incumbent upon our company and our company.
companies in our industry to help people learn how to manage their financial affairs better and better and better over time. The interesting part of that is also the products allow the sort of help to happen automatically. So we built a no overdraft checking account.
which can't be overdrafted. And because we did that, that obviously puts guardrails on it. And about 40%, if I remember right, of our accounts today are open where people can't overdraft. And people say, well, overdrafts and they get charged and that puts them, you know.
The fees plus the disruption, et cetera. Well, this account can't be overdrafted and 40% of the people open. That is a self-enforcing guardrail. So we do it with product design. We do it with education. But I think we need to keep that. I took home economics at Murata High School, and they taught you how to balance your checkbook and how to put all the entries in. I shouldn't say it because I don't know, but my guess is that's not taught with the same intensity it might have been 50 years ago.
No, it's not. Let me then get to the meat of this. The Big Beautiful Bill, Brian Moynihan. Elon Musk has joined the critics of the Big Beautiful Bill. I like the big, beautiful bill because I know how hard it is to get anything out of the Republican Congress and we can't have a tax hike on the order that would occur if we don't get any beautiful bill or any bill at all. What do you think of the one big, beautiful bill?
Musk's criticism of its deficit qualities. So I think you have to sort really part of your question, Hugh, which is, in the end of the day, the United States is... What is the place to invest because of serious things, the talent, the capabilities, the ability to succeed and fail, the ability to raise capital.
And the tax rate, which is uncompetitive in the 17 Act, they got it to be competitive. And people were moving activities outside the United States because the tax rates were so differentially high in the United States. We have to preserve that to keep.
corporate world, not only corporate America, continuing to invest in the United States. So that was critical. The second question, and Moody's just downgraded to U.S., is this issue of getting the budget closer to imbalance. So its growth rate of... outstanding debt to the economy size starts to tail off and not grow as fast. And I think that...
I just read the comments in the press, but that is a concern that a lot of us have had is we've got to get our eyes and stomach aligned over time. It has not as much to do with this particular bill as it has to do how we're going to operate year after year after year. And this bill preserves the tax.
and does some spending on some items. But the real question is, we can't run a $1.8 trillion operating deficit year after year after year. We have to start paring away. We don't have to bring it to zero. We just have to start making it a little bit less. If the growth comes out of this bill, it helps.
dilute down the size of the debt relative to the economy, then that's a successful way to do it. But we've got to make sure we get that growth or else we then have to course correct on the expense side. And I think that's a tug of war.
the taffy pool that's going on in Congress and everywhere among economists and among the world and the debt markets every day. Is the United States going to stay the gold standard across the world for fiscal responsibility? And how do we make sure it stays on that course?
That is not necessarily the bill. It's more about what goes on around. That's a very useful line. We have to align our eyes with our stomach. I haven't heard that before. Now, when we talked about young people, we talked about 30 to 40 year planning. Can we attack the deficit with 30 to 40-year reforms on the entitlements, which is what I think, you know, raise the retirement age a month a year for the next 40 years? That would...
That would raise it to 69 over 40 years. I don't think anyone would be shocked by that. Is that kind of a change sufficient to the day, Brian Moynihan? Yeah, I think it's a lot of things. And I think if you remember the. Goals Hallowell Commission, I think it was called, I remember that was in the bipartisan people from each side. You know, there was a series of ideas like that and various.
congressmen and congresswomen and senators you know the idea is you're going to have to trim entitlements a bit but with time to your point you can trim them a little bit and it never really disrupts somebody and the warning and the lesson for the younger people Social Security as a percentage, you can make it more needs attached so that you, with all the earnings you get from all the work you do, may not get as much as someone else.
do things like that, and with a little bit over time, it can change it. And then I think the government has to get more efficient and spend less as a percentage of what they're doing. And in the Clinton years, they produced the federal headcount by $300,000 or more, and you can do that. That's good.
because it just keeps growing, even though we've applied tremendous technology. Just think of us. We've gone from 300,000 people to 200,000 people. Why hasn't the government gone down at the same rate? It's just you can operate more efficiently. So they've got to do that on the expenditure side. And then I think, frankly, with some of the medical costs for government-insured populations, both older and older.
lesser high earners. There's a value to all this technology that we're developing through all this research to tie back to some of this stuff, this AI work, distributed ability to... provide higher and higher care. The GLPs, they may be costly now, but they can really change the amount of diabetes and heart issues in the country. There are ways that we can actually, if we keep investing, I think also find ways that we can do some amount of...
health care expenditure relative to GDP. And since the government buys a big chunk of that, it would help them balance their budget. So I think it's going to take a little bit everywhere. all things in moderation. It doesn't take a lot. You don't have to go off a cliff, but you have to resolute that year after year, you just have to keep working at it. And if we show that, then we reign the gold standard. It's not the people expecting.
The annual operating deficit go to zero. They're saying, I just want to see progress. So the growth in the outstanding debt relative to the economy starts to shape off. That's a great place to wrap. Brian Moynihan, I thank you for coming on. I hope you will come back. I appreciate the candor of your answers. And congratulations on everything that the Red Sox and the Patriots do that doesn't involve Cleveland losing.
Thank you for joining me today. All right. Thank you. Hi, it's Hugh Hewitt. Today's podcast is brought to you by Hillsdale College. If you ask 10 different people to define the word capitalism, you'll likely get 10 different responses. This is a word that comes up all the time, but you know what it really means. Hillsdale College offers more than 40 free online courses. That's right, free online courses on subjects like the book of Genesis.
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Thanks, John. You heard it, folks. Take advantage of this opportunity and call now. 800-702-5400. Advertisement sponsored by Legal Help Center may not be available in all states. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Selena Zito is calmest to the world. She's my dear friend in Pittsburgh. I talk to people in Pittsburgh via Selena, and she keeps me safe from them when I drive near Pittsburgh. Selena.
I want you to stop telling the Democrats what not to do. You did it this morning again with one of the best tweets in a long time. And I want to talk about this with people. But if you're not following. Selena on X. It's Zito Selena. And if you haven't ordered Butler yet, her book about she was standing feet from the president when he was shot, you need to go and order Butler. But here's what she posted this morning. By the way, how are you, Selena?
I'm swell. How are you? I'm swell. All right. That's out of the way. Let me read this. This is not how Democrats win back voters. If anyone thinks, quote, this is the way. then they fundamentally do not understand why voters have left Democrats in droves. They also still don't understand this is one of the thousands of tiny cuts that have cost them votes. Tell people what you were writing about, because I could not believe it.
When I read your tweet. So there is believe it was in San Francisco and it's in the school districts and they put. Basically, all of these rules in place that teach children you really don't have to do much or learn much or think or think. to be successful. And they're taking all, they're putting all these guardrails up in terms of... You know, how no one can offend or upset children. And they're taking their intellectual curiosity away. They're taking away their ability to be...
curious and thoughtful and debate things, and they're just making them dumb. Like, they're making them dumb. I would never have seen this story except for your post. So I want to read the post that you quote tweeted. Grading for equity. This is from the voice of San Francisco. Grading for equity in the San Francisco schools eliminates homework. or weekly tests from being counted in a student's final semester grades. All that matters is how the student scores on the final examination.
which can be taken multiple times. Students can be late turning in an assignment or showing up to class or no showing up at all without it affecting their academic grade.
Currently, a student needs a 90 for an A and at least a 61 for a D. Under the San Leandro Unified School District's grading for equity system, touted by the San Francisco Unified School District and its consultant, A student with a score as low as 80 can attain an A, and as low as 21 can pass with a D. This is, I thought it was a joke. But, Selena, thank you for posting it, but don't tell Democrats that's their problem. I don't want them to know that parents hate this.
Oh, they're going to applaud it. And I put in just one of those... you know, thousands of cuts, right? Because why Democrats have lost voters, in particular voters in the middle, right, who aren't particularly ideological either way. They've lost them by things like the shutdown story. COVID. They lost them by things about these mandatory, you know, stay at home, all these rules surrounding their education of their children. And we've seen the fallout of this, right?
And now they're just saying it's OK to not try. And we're still going to give you an A, like show up and do OK and you get an A. I mean, I feel like China's looking at us and saying, like. I can't wait to have that next generation because they're going to suck. Are you insane? It's insane. I went to my 50th high school reunion and I still have a running joke with the valedictorian Molly Maguire about the fact that.
She didn't take Ancient Creek, so she shouldn't have beat me. It's a running joke, right? Because she didn't take Ancient Creek in Latin. And it's a running joke. But the fact is, 50 years ago, you had to... You had to work hard to get good grades. And as David Mamet put in his new book, I just finished talking with Mamet, Merritt. is now a joke. It's actually merit is a downgrade for you. If you're meritorious, you're going to be penalized.
Mammoth's book is amazing, and I have to tell you this. Years ago, I owned a theater in Pittsburgh, and the first play that I produced was Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. And one of the things that I loved about it was Scott Mamet was the way he uses dialogue to bring forth the human condition, emotion, and the experiences around him. He's brilliant at it, and his book is as brilliant.
as all of his plays that I've seen, which is all of them. And I'm jealous that you interviewed him. I talked to him for 40 minutes. And the Disenlightenment... is so full of praise of Trump I was taken aback. Because it's dangerous for David. In Hollywood, you can't be for Trump. He doesn't care. He's America's greatest playwright. He doesn't care. But... Have you read The Disenlightenment? Are you ahead of that? That's good for you. Yeah. You'll write a column about it? I absolutely love it.
Not yet. I'm trying to find a way to possibly interview him. I would love to. Maybe you know someone. I just did that for Ben Domenech. I will do it for you because David likes to talk to smart people. So he'll love that Glengarry Glen Ross. Oh, yeah. Tonight, Selena, I will set that up with Pam, his person. Thank you. And Selena, I got to run. Thank you so much. Butler is available for preorder. Don't miss good stories. Selena Zito dot com for everything. She writes Zito Selena on X.