The Minnesota Fraud Scandal pt. 3

Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College, All Things Hilldale.

At Hillsdale dot edu.

I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there, and of course I'll listener to the Hilldale Dialogue all of them at q for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple, iTunes and Hilldale.

Back to the Hugh Hughit Show. I'm guest host Kurt Schlichter.

And if you were listening right now, right here on your radio dial er on the Salem News Channel app, you would have seen my next guest, Doctor Sebastian Gorka. He is the Deputy National Security Advisor for counter Terrorism. He is a close personal friend. I am very proud to welcome him to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Welcome doctor Gorka.

Greetings, my dear friend, Happy new year. Just one small correction. Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Characterism. How is it to host my former show, Colonel Kay.

Well, I hope I'm meeting your exact standards, doctor Gorka, and I'm glad to say that you haven't gone and activated this retired United States Army colonel and made myself.

That was going to be my next thing.

I mentioned stop playing foot see with US patriots inside the administration and playing with the idea of US reactivating you, because you know, I can text Pete Hegseth right now and I can say, hey, there's an old six who wants to get in the fight.

So one more time.

You played coquettish with that concept, and you may just have the dow on your doorstep.

Oh well, you don't have to worry about me. You have to worry about Arena, and you've met her, doctor Gorka.

We're friends.

But I gotta say I am so proud to have a guy like you, just as an American because you have gone from a very public persona We don't hear anything from you except occasional updates on what you're doing. You are all business, and your business is killing terrorists. And my understanding is that business is good.

Yeah.

The bumper sticker, my friend, is we are back in the business of counter terrorism. It started on day eight of the administration when we walked into the Oval office told the Commander in Chief as a leader vices walking around a freeman who Biden had been surveilling for a year and a half He looked up at us from the resolute desk and he said kill. That man got out his iconic sharpie pen marked the go box on

Four one hundred.

And seventy nine g huddists with American blood on their hands or who are plotting to kill Americans.

That is outside of the Houthy campaign.

That is outside of the incredible work of Dow, the Coast Guard Secretary Rubio, Stephen Miller, Governor nomat DHS who have been taking out with Pete Hegseth's direction, the drug boats, which, let me be very clear, the President mentioned this recently, every single one of those drug boats would cause the deaths of between twenty and fifty thousand Americans. Every single time we take one out, we are saving tens of

Kurt Ah Well, doctor Gorka, thank you and thank your team. Now, I know as a leader you are only as good as the people who work for you. And while of course you're not going to reveal their names, can you tell us a little about the kind of people you get to orchestrate in your symphony of righteous retribution against terrorists?

Yeah, this is when you realize how blessed you are as a man. So yes, I'm responsible for counter terrorism for the most consequential president of the modern age, President Trump. But it only looks so good and the figures are only so incredible because of the team who works for me in the National Security Council.

Our work is classified. I live skiffed life today. You are familiar with that.

Yes, spending very wrong days in a secure compartmented information facility doing classified work. I have detail ees from across the government. I have a direct hire who is my deputy. But these I'm just going to say this, And if I had the good book in front of me, I'd swear on the b and I said this to the head of Hi. Everybody I know in government, every single member, every single director in my CT, my characters and directorate, is a rock star.

Whether they've come from the Department of War, whether.

They're from the intelligence community or other parts of the US government.

You know, it's like the President.

I give them, you know, a mission statement, I give them the concept of operations, and they just execute.

I don't need to hold their hands. None of them is a prima dollar.

And you know what's really rare in this stinking city you are fully aware of that is people without egos. None of my directors has an ego. All they care about is a mission and they are amazing patriots.

Doctor Gorka, I'm going to keep you over into the break for our podcast viewers, So let's just take a quick pause and then we'll start up again with doctor Sebastian Gorka here on the Hugh Hewett Show. Doctor Gorka, we're back in the podcast portion. I still think like a kernel, what is the end state your unit is looking for to achieve by the end of twenty twenty six, in our words, one year from now, what do you want to be able to brief?

Oh, that's perfectly put. So the end state is very simple. I have one metric for the President and for all Americans, whether they vote for President Trump or not, if you're a US citizen, if you're a US taxpayer. I want to make the five top jihadi entities in the world which are capable of and have the intent to execute what we call external operations, that's mass casualty attacks against US citizens on the mainland or elsewhere. I want to

To the President.

If he approves it and signs it, we will see the hammers of hell come down on these entities even more than they have in the last eleven and a half months, and we will look. Here's another metric, and it's kind of facetious, but it's true.

I want to put people like me out of a job.

There should not be a senior director of Canaterrorism in the NSC. In terms of other threats like China, like Russia, like Iran. We shouldn't be dealing with you know, rag tag jihadists in the most powerful building in the world. I want to suppress them until they become an irrelevance.

That is my dream.

Ah, doctor Gorka, that's a wonderful dream. You helped me out with my book The Attack, which postulate a mass terrorist attack on the United States of America. He gave me some great feedback on big picture stuff and also, Chris, I some of my description of AK forty sevens if I remember correctly. Let me ask you, though should have right now, because you know we've only had a year and we had open borders.

For four years.

How would you assess the internal threat in the United States of America And what can individual Americans do to ameliorate that threat? We got about thirty seconds.

Yeah, number one, we are fixing it with the likes of Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Governor Ome. We are getting rid of the worst of the worst who are let into this country by Biden and Harris. But I will say, you are the first line of defense, so don't expect Uncle Sam to always be there to protect you. If you can do so where you live, do what I do. Get licensed, carry a gun, protect your family and your loved ones. But we are cleaning the mess up right now that we inherited from President.

Auto Pen and doctor Gorka.

Let me add go out, go find the Red Cross, learn urgency medical care, stop the bleeding.

You can save lives.

Doctor Gorka, thank you, and please pass on the thanks of this entire audience to your entire team, because you know that's what leaders do. Thank you so much, Doctor Gorka. Happy New Year, and God bless America.

We're back on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

I'm guess Ho's church Schlickter, and of course that's the Plimsul Southern California's Oh Peter Case.

And the Gang Rocket Gosh.

I love this music and I love the chance the guest host the hu Hewit Show because I get to pick it and I also get to have my pals on and one of the guys. I listen to him every week, just like I listen to Hwit Show. He's on the Ruthless Podcast. He's one of the fellas. John Ashbrook, Welcome to the hu Hewit Show.

Sared, how you doing?

Happy New year, Happy New Year.

I'm doing great.

You guys on the Ruthless podcast have had an incredible twenty twenty five, haven't you.

Well, it's been a whirlwind. I mean, it's hard to believe. We started out in January of twenty twenty five, and Caroline Levitt and President Trump were nice enough to let us ask the first question of any podcasters at a White House briefing. So it started with that and then continued through the summer. We had some great interviews, but a lot of laughs, and we've got more in store, I think for twenty twenty six.

Well that was my next question. What are we looking at in the near future for the Ruthless guys? Are we looking at a Fox TV show? Because you guys have linked up with the premier conservative television network.

Well, I don't know about that. I do know that what they asked us to do was just more of what we've been doing all along. And so we had a third show this year. Who knows what whether we'll end up adding another one in twenty twenty I guess, I guess we'll see. But I mean, we thought that we were going to head into January with our ongoing coverage of the Democrat Civil War. But this story out of Minnesota and Ohio and probably every other state, you can't you can't look away. I mean, this is the

Cap to that guy.

It was amazing. I mean, I've been guest hosting for four days. We're in the middle of a news desert, and I've been I've been milking the Somali scandal like a Wisconsin cheesemonger. So I mean, it just keeps giving and giving.

It doesn't it it does, It doesn't. You can't make it up. The guy I was just talking to Dwayne a minute ago, and you reminded me about this guy who at a press conference today and said that we would like to cooperate, but all the papers were stolen, our financial records. You can't make it up.

One of those maga burglars who comes in looking for your looking for your tax receipts, I'll show them.

Man, it's you know, if it would be. It's you know, it's so funny, but also like that, it's just so much money. And all of us pay taxes every April fifteenth at gunpoint or would go to jail, So you send your taxes. You hope that the government bends them wisely, but clearly they're just dumping it down a money pit with these crooks who are who are just stealing so much. And also, you know, medicaid is for poor people who who need help, you know, and so they're stealing it.

Well, I think John Ashberg of Ruthless, I think this is just beautiful as a Republican because it hits them on you know, it hits them on every level.

Right in the Gonads.

It is attack on immigration because we've imported this this culture that's now eighty five percent you know well government dependent and is running these the giant theft rings we.

Have, uh.

We we have uh the.

The the failure of welfare state on display for everybody. And we also have, thanks to uh Tim Waltz, an amazing display of the inability of Democrats to perform the basic blocking and tackling of government.

I mean, it's like a win win win.

If you if if we convened a council of renowned, uh cynical right wing consultants to figure out the perfect scandal, they would come up with this one.

We're going to use. I mean, I figure we use this as.

A stically a suppository for the Democrats all through up to the midterms.

What do you think.

I think it's a great idea. I mean, the truth is they are just really really bad at governing. Look at every single blue state in this in this country. Look at every blue city. You got crime problems, you have budget problems. You've got Democrats promising everybody everything and not delivering on any of it. And then people are stealing things right up from from under them, and they're just like, well, you know, maybe we should let them

Well that's.

What are you talking about, man, I mean the basic level of journalism. You're supposed to question what the government is telling you. But evidently when the Democrats says it, they take him at their word.

Well, you know, they.

Instead of speaking toe truth to power, they stuck the toes of power.

It's it's it's disgusting. I mean, uh, we.

We've got about a little less a minute left, Johnbrook, how do you think I think the economy's coming kicking back. I think America is going to hit another boom. I think we're going to do fine in the twenty twenty six midterms.

What do you think.

Well, I'm not super optimistic about the twenty twenty six midterms, to be honest with you, Although the more fraud that's uncovered in these Democrat run cities, the worse their brand that's going to look, and the better the chances for Republicans will be in terms of the economy. You know,

Well, John Ashbrook of Ruthless, thank you for joining me on the h Hewitt Show. Please let Josh Holmes know that I am a supporter of his porn staff.

I think it.

Looks great, and everybody stick around because I'm guest.

Knows Kurt Schlicker, and we got a lot more to come.

There are trial lawyers, and there are trial lawyers, and this next guest is one of the latter.

He's Ted Frank.

He's the director of Litigation at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute. You've probably seen him on the Twitter machine at Ted Frank ted fri ns k and he's a pal of mine who turned me onto Pinkerton's Barbecue in Houston.

Ted, Welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

My pleasure.

It's a real honor to be here.

Thanks. What happening.

I know it's your first time on the Hugh Hewitt Show. Can you I know your background, but in about twenty seconds, can you sketch it out for the audience so they know who's going to be giving him some insights.

Sure.

I'm an attorney that leads a conservative public interest law firm, the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute hll I dot org.

We've bought against class action lawyers.

We've fought against government overreach, especially California First Amendment violations, and we have some litigation now pending against left wing NGOs that organize disruptive demonstrations in the cities that block roads and keep people stuck in traffic for hours.

So when people talk about law fare, you guys are the ones who counterattack.

That's exactly right.

Oh well, there's no better defense than a good offense. And I say that as a guy who's primarily a corporate defense attorney. For years and years and years, ted people have been seeing what's going on in the law. It seems like organized resistance to Donald Trump among primarily Democrat appointed district court judges throughout the United States. You and I both practice in the practice or practiced in front of district court judges, and you know, normal people

How would you.

Characterize the last year of litigation?

There seems to be special rules that apply to Trump that don't apply to other presidents. And we just have a number of district court judges that are making effectively lawless rulings and putting themselves in the position to rule the executive branch or control the military, or order planes to turn around, or order Congress to spend money that

What can.

You know?

The criticism is Supreme Court. It is, well, you're not acting normally. You're you're doing things that you know you're you're breaking down guardrails. And my response is, way, man, the guardrails are gone. The Supreme courts reacting to bizarre procedural and bizarre substantive rulings. And when you have to react to things that are weird and wrong, you can't do that by being the same way you were when there was some kind of coherence to it.

I don't even think the Supreme Court is doing something all that different than what it's been doing for the last ten years. They're they're enforcing the law, they're calling balls and strikes. The administration doesn't bring every case before the Supreme Court. I think they're they're picking and choosing their cases and picking the cases.

That are most likely to win. And even then they don't win all the time.

And and uh often to the disapproval of Justice Alito, who's spoken out against what the Court is Last week in Trump the Illinois.

Well, Trump vi.

Illinois was a case involving the deployment of the National Guard, and I look at that, and.

You know, it was a very.

Textual based kind of decision with without a lot of concern for the practicalities. The practicality being that the President could just go, Okay, if I can't use that statue to bring up the National Guard, I just declare the Insurrection Act in effect and sending the active duty Marines. My objection, Ted Frank, is that you know, we are litigating things in a way they shouldn't be litigated, and it's going to lead to jarring and off putting results.

I think that's right, and I certainly have some concern that there are people in the left that like it that way, that they're really working to tear down down the guardrails of the judicial branch as a check on the presidency in the hopes of discrediting it down the road for either court packing the next time they take the Senate and the Presidency at the same time, or for their own sort of constitutional crisis in disregarding the

Well, you know, once again a huge problem in our society is so many people and positions of authority within our institutions have never been in a playground fist fight.

You can only pull so.

Many blocks out of the Djenga tower before Article three comes crashing down.

I think that's right.

And you know, we hear the left talking about, oh, let's add six more Supreme Court justices, And in one sense, I like that, because my best chance to be on the Supreme Court is as appointed to the swing forty third votes sometime in ten years.

But it really would discredit the court.

Once you start saying, the Court is this political institution, and we will appoint people who will act politically.

If they're going to act politically, then they're just a political force, and they're going to be treated as a political force to be defeated and evaded and countermanded. You know, you brought some up interest, You brought some interesting up to me. You are a litigator. You are a fine litigator. I know the difference between good ones and bad ones, and you are a shockingly good one.

And would you.

Ever consider being a disrecort judge? Would Donald Trump come knocking?

They probably think my life expectancy is too short to do that. But I think I'm past the age where people get appointed to be judges in the twenty first in the yeah, in the twenty first century. But I you know, I'd be flattered to be considered to be a judge. I imagine i'd get some questions at my that they'd have a lot of tweets to pour through at my nomination hearing. But I I certainly wouldn't complain if if, if, if somebody envisioned that for me.

Well, look there there are you know. Of course, we currently have nine Supreme Court Justices. I I hear some talk that perhaps Justice Alito may retire next year, maybe Justice Thomas.

What what do you what?

What?

What do you think about that?

I mean, certainly I hear the same rumors everybody else does, that that that Alito UH would would find it wisest to retire at the end of this term and.

Uh be replaced while he knows that.

There's a Republican Senate there to replace him and and not block.

Or keep this seat empty. The rumors.

I you know, I one thing I hear about Thomas is that he plans to do this as long as he's healthy and if he gets replaced. I don't know that he cares so much about the political nature of what would happen on his replacement. On the other hand, maybe he does, and he's looking to break Douglas's.

Record and get replaced at the end of this term.

Well, Ted, Frank, thank you for joining us on The Hugh Hewitt Show. I'm guest host Kurch Schlichter. Sticking around, We got a lot more to god.

Welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

I'm guest host Kurt Schlichter, Senior commonist at townhall dot Com. Former trial lawyer, retired Army colonel, author of the new book Panama Read, the ninth in the Kelly Turbul series. It's a novel, It's fun, it's exciting. It was the number one political thriller at Amazon for a while. Panama read You need to go out and get it. I a is a conservative author. I came up with Andrew Breitbart. Andrew said, you guys, you gotta make your own culture.

Go do it yourself. And I did.

But there are some people who are taking the book industry by storm. And one of those guys is Tony Daniel. He is the editor in chief at ARC Press. You can follow him at at Tony Daniels seven seven seven. Tony was also my editor at Regnery for my last nonfiction book, We'll be back, Tony. Welcome to the show. Hey, how's it going, Kurt, It's going great.

What's the mission of ARC Press?

Well, basically, we're doing exactly what Andrew Breitbart said. He you know, he famously said politics is downstream to culture,

Well, tell me, Daniel.

One of the things I noticed dealing with other publishers because right Noor he was not my only publisher during the time, and observing from outside is so much of the traditional press now it's no longer the hard bitten editor, you know, chomping on a cigar with his red pen.

It's these Maxwell Perkins exactly.

It's these ssrright gobbling chardonnay wine women complaining that you don't have enough transsexual, lesbian Hindus who are differently abled in the stories. And all the stories are are things like you know, where the turtle cries at dawn and it's like, where's a man going to find somebody to read in this heap of woke garbage?

You want to change that?

Absolutely, We're you know, we're aiming at a at a male, regular guy audience. Now, of course guys read, they read, uh, they read thrillers, they read science fiction. They they like mysteries, hard boiled mysteries and police procedurals. And so we're coming at it from a genre sort of angle in order to give guys things that they actually like to read again instead of, you know, the publishing world has become this.

This sort of.

I don't know how you would say it. They they they are appendage of politics. They want everything has to be a left wing grievance, as as you know, interpreted by some of most of the editors have graduated from the Seven Sisters, went to New York and never had another job or another life. In fact, most of the editors in New York, you may notice, all have the exact same accent yes, which is yes exactly, so you're.

Going to get the.

And the audience has just skewed female and female of a certain variety over the last ten fifteen years, and.

Men have just sort of been excluded.

There's a few like you and like people like brad Or or Andrew Claven.

Elroy is still around.

You know, and car but we had sort of the generation of people that died that were great conservative based writers that came from the tradition, and they haven't been replaced at the rate that they once were. We've lost the community, and I think that, just like Andrew Breitbard, I'd like to try to re establish that storytelling, fiction, character, plot, and setting, not just political polemics, as important as that is.

Yeah, you've got and Andrew Andrew Breitbart made no bones about it.

You've got to be good.

It's it's not enough to say, hey, this book is conservative, you've got to buy it. You've got to like it. I don't do that. No, no guy I know does that. You've got to give him something there that they want. And I think, if I say so myself, I'm on nine Kelly Turnbull novels. I've sold hundreds of thousands of them, including the latest Panama Red, which you should go get on Amazon. But the secret is, and I get these emails, Tony, and I get these reviews where they go.

Kurt, it's fun. It's not a painful duty. We haven't yet.

When you read it, you have a good time. And let me let me ask you something here. Here's my my feeling as a writer. I think that your books should be all good parts. If it's not interesting, does it make a cool point? If it's not, or if it's not funny, you cut it out? Is that so hard?

I think that's an excellent, uh, an excellent paradigm for for a great fiction book. I mean all all books, all great novels turn on character, plot and setting and you get those three things right, and you will.

And if you are writing from.

A perspective of real life, coming from something you know as a writer, you're going to interest readers in that and you're going to pull them in and it could be something like the thriller aspect of your books. But the truth is, I also think you're quite a good literary writer within there.

Oh don't say that on the hack.

I know, I hate, I know you got you.

And like one of our art writers, Larry Correa, always talk about, you know, like that's just entertainment, but both of you guys have are have really top top not top lecks. You're really good at it, and and that's what you have to do.

You have to go for that. When you're an editor.

You have to find a writer that can deliver that to the reader, your other reader's representative when you're an editor, So you you.

Look for that.

You look for you look for somebody that can tell a story first and then and if it comes from tradition and a full understanding of life, it's probably going to be conservative, you know, just because that's reality, you know, and that makes the best books.

And that's as simple as it is.

But nobody seems to follow that that formula, but I intend to with the arc.

Well with ark.

Now we have our our press is going to be doing great things in the future. You've got a big book coming out from Larry Correa. My wife is a huge fan and uh I, you know it's all. It's been a pleasure working with you in the past, Tony Daniel. I urge everybody to go out and check out art Press. You find him online, see what they thought, and give him a shot and give that man in your life or woman a chance to read something that's not woke garbage.

And this is a k.

Dog in the white Beamur are about to put the hammer down on the Huehuet Show. I've guess it was kirch Slickter. One of my favorite people in the world is joining me now. It's Selena's Zito and she is a Washington Examiner columnist, the author of Butler. You can follow her at Zito Selena where I saw that she tweeted that convoy the CW McCall chest Night is what fifty years old in twenty twenty six, Selena.

It is and I don't you know, I tweeted that I don't think people have an understanding of what a cultural impact that song had and then also spawned a couple of television shows and movies. But but but also people forget why because that was in the middle of the energy crisis, right, and truckers are being regulated to death, and they became this sort of symbol of these independent

I think you're right, of course, it was a bi centennial. This is the bi centennial plus point two five. There was another thing. The Cbee radio was kind of a early social media kind of thing because it.

Was a way that people could communicate.

That's what fascinated me, is a suburban kid about it, because you could just talk to regular people, and there were no gatekeepers.

I thought that was really interesting.

There was no gatekeepers. My dad had a Cbee radio. He was not a trucker, although at one time he was a teamster, but we used it. We communicated with my uncle who was a trucker. We took tons of road trips.

You can.

You can tell that's where I'd get my love of road trips from.

But man, you just felt so.

Empowered to be able to have these conversations, and it was a real sense of being part of something bigger than self.

Yeah, it was really kind of cool. Now it's being a kind of cool. You have had perhaps the coolest year of anybody in twenty twenty five not named Donald Trump. He had a number one best seller in Butler, which I high recommend. It's not just a story of the assassination, it's the story of the whole campaign and the whole country. So you also went bear hunting. So what's ahead for Selena's eto in twenty twenty six? How are you going to top that?

Oh?

Well, there's so many things that people do in America, And I'm sort of like Micro's little sister, right, I'm always willing to jump in and try something. I also went twelve hundred feet down in a coal mine and dragged poor Senator Dave McCormick along with me.

Take that army guy.

Yeah, worked in a steel mill for a day. Like, if I'm going to cover it, I'm going to do it. And that's that's sort of my motto. And if people don't follow me or don't read me, the way I approach recording is is to I don't fly, and I don't take the interstate. I only take back roads and I try to stay and learn from a community. But being on theund and basically just hanging out with people, most importantly listening to people. I think that that's missing

Well, you know, Selena, I think I think what I'm gonna do is I'm see if I can reach out to some of my pals, see if I can get you embedded with some National guardsmen doing annual training for a day or two so you could see what these.

Oh I've done that, I've been embedded on the border. Nice, I've embedded the Coastguard on fourth of July and there was a tornado that came and so by regulation, I had to get off the boat and I had to jump. And people have to understand, I'm five foot tall, so my end seem it's not that long. But they made me jump from the boat to the shoreline, which was about five feet.

So there was that because I had.

To get off the boat.

Well, I well, I once sent Hugh Hewett to Kosovo for a week, which I don't know if he's ever forgiven me for. But in any case, Selena Somali daycare nightmare. First of all, I never was in daycare. My mom did the old fashioned seventies way. She gave me a key and said you're on your own kid. But with this this giant scandal, you actually talk to normal people. What are normal people? Are normal people talking about it? And if they are, what are they saying.

What they're saying is we're not surprised if you are handing out money like that and you are too lazy to be accountable, and you're trying to appease a section of society so that they you then earned their votes. There's going to be a lot of people looking the other way when things happen, and I suspect we are going to find this out about a number of different things, not just the the Somali refugees. I think this is going and this was the last chapter in the in Butler.

There is a true reckoning in my profession.

I understand that, but I think there are a lot a lot of people looking, not looking, not questioning, not asking questions.

UH in a lot of big.

UH government aided charities that that need more scrutiny. Reporters nowadays are more interested in what's going to drive the most clicks. To me, the most interesting stories that I have done this year hardly got any click at all. But it didn't matter because they were really good, well reported stories. To me, it didn't matter. I'm sure it mattered to my bosses.

They didn't matter.

My job is to get in there and find out the story and then listen. And we've taken our focus off that as reporters.

Well, Selena, we only got about twenty seconds left in normal America. How are people feeling about the economy. I'm feeling pretty good about it. But you know, I'm in Los Angeles, so it ain't exactly normal America.

Well, so I'm.

In western Pennsylvania, and the thing that's really big here is the development of AI data power centers and the energy need to dis serve it. That's creating a lot of good paying jobs.

Well that's good to hear. Selena Zecho, Happy new year to you. I hope twenty twenty six is even better than twenty twenty five, if that's possible. I'm Kurt Schlickter, guest hosting for the Great Hugh at Stick Around Somar s gets out on stage at the Leering Center. They're cranking def Leppard and making it rain on. Kurt Schlichter here on The hu Hewitt Show, guest hosting rounding out twenty twenty five. It's been a great year. It's been an amazing year, and twenty twenty six is even going

Matt, I do Kurt First. Happy New Year's Eve, also known as Amateur Night.

Wait, wait, well there's more.

You are a United States Marine, as the sign behind your head tells the entire universe. You're also very open that you you had a battle with alcohol holism. You have been sober for a long time, and I think it's right night to talk about sobriety.

No, I agree.

You know, it's funny everyone talks about resolutions every New Year's Eve, and as we know, what like twenty five percent of them fail within the first couple of days. You know, sobriety is a lifestyle change. I've got seventeen years of it in March, and I'm very open about it.

Well, let me let me ask you, Matt and I.

You know, I don't want to dwell on it, because you know we I do want to talk about your new book coming out, but.

Uh, just it.

You know you when I have hung out and when we hang out, look, I drink alcohol. I will not drink around you. I think that would be disrespectful. Does it bother you when you're out with people and they.

Drink, not at all.

In fact, I recently joked that if when I was back in my drinking days, especially the heavy drinking days in the mid nineties, you know, you'd go to a bar and there'd be like the bikini gold Schlager or Jaegermeister girls like I could be in a room full of those people nowadays and it wouldn't even phase me for a second.

So my foundation for sobriety is pretty strong.

You know.

I remind people once I got.

Sober and stayed sober that if I weren't sober, I'd probably be dead.

Unemployed, alone, or all of the above.

Well, you know I have a very extreme Oh, go go ahead, well before, I have a very extreme personality and when I used to go out, we used to joke, especially in the Marine Corps, it was somebody's going to jail, someone's going to the hospital, something's going to be set on fire, or all three.

And I can that's Friday night at the Army Barracks.

Well, Matt, before we move on to your books, because I do want to talk about them. We've been talking a lot about books today and how important it is for books written for men about madly things. If somebody has someone in their life with an alcohol or substance problem, what can they do to help.

The first thing they could do is if they know somebody like I who's been sober for a bit of time, they can reach out to a person they know and trust. But the other thing they can do is call alcoholics anonymous. There are anonymous phone lines where someone can guide you through those first steps. I will tell you that, you know, I had struggled with it for years, but it took me realizing I had a problem to actually commit to it. And I tried to quit before. But you know, it's

Well, you've got a great life.

Now, you've got a career in public service, you've got a wonderful family, and you also have a new book coming out, and you have a history of books.

Tell us about your new book.

So the new book is called The Council, and it comes out in April of next year. And this book is probably the best thing I've written. It's a very intense, visceral story. I'm known for writing these roller coaster, action packed thrill rides, but this one, which is a rocket ride from page one, But it's really about a group

Well, you know, you've written books before. You have a whole other series of books, and they're traditionally published. It's getting hard to publish fiction that you know, it's action packed and focused on men. So much of it is focused on you know, I'm a young writer and acting as a professor at a college, and I have lots of feelings.

There's my novel.

Well, when I I decided to write, I actually said, okay, what would I sat down and wrote what I would want to read. And that's how my first book, Overwatch, ended up getting published with my Logan West series.

At Simon and Schuster.

And now I'm with Blackstone and they published this book. They published my life last book, The Neighborhood. But it's a hard business, you know what. There's a lot of things they don't tell you. They can promise you the moon and the stars, but the reality is is in traditional publishing, it's all about sales and that's it. You could be the most talented writer since Hemingway and it

Well, but people love your books.

The feedback that you get is incredible, as is the feedback I get, including on Panama read my novel.

We all got to promote Baby, but the cancel.

What have people been saying about the council. Now I've had a chance to I've had a chance to look at the cover. I haven't read it yet.

Yeah.

No. We actually got a couple early reviews, and I was very happy to hear that one of the thriller sites that reviews the books coming out next year actually called it the leading contender for Thriller of the Year for twenty twenty six and this person had.

Already read a bunch of them by a lot of the big name authors.

So I was very flattered and humbled to get that because at the end of the day, yes, I want the book to sell well and I want to keep doing this, but it's all about entertaining the reader, and it's the readers who matter the most.

Now, my books are the Kelly Turnbul series. They're explicitly conservative, are your books explicitly conservative or do they just get coded right wing because they're about like men doing manly things.

No, so I intentionally kind of stay apolitical and my thrillers. In fact, in the Logan West series, I had a blue dog Democrat, which I'm not sure that exists anymore as the president. And I just you know, when I read a book, I want to be entertained. I don't want to be lectured to. Now you're the exception to the rule. You're as I told you, personally, you're the most successful self published author I know. And people love your stuff because you're an excellent writer and because it's

Well, Matt Bentley, you have a great twenty twenty six to you and your lovely family. I'm sure we'll probably talk when I'm driving home up the four o five. Thanks for joinings like a Plan, Thanks for joining us on the Hugh Hwitt Joe And because as kirch Slicker, we still have more to come to stick around.

Welcome back to America. I'm Hugh Hewett. I'm reminding everyone Angel Tree is underway. We only have a couple of weeks left to get as many presents to as many children who have a parent in prison as possible. Angel Tree is sponsored by Prison and Fellowship. We welcome on the show every year because they're so good at what they do, which is bring Christmas to children who have

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Hugh.

We're back on a Hugh Hewitt Show.

And of course that bumper music is just like Honey by the Jesus and Mary Chain, one of the coolest songs of the eighties, which took place long before My next guest was born. Sarah Bedford is He is the Washington Examiner political investigative reporter.

You can follow it Sarah C. Bedford. Sarah, Welcome to Hugh Hewitt Show.

Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you for pointing out that I'm young in that intro.

Love it?

Have you ever heard the Jesus and Mary Chains? Just like Connie before?

I hadn't, but I enjoyed it.

Its beautiful.

It's an incredible song. I have a long story about the first concert. Everyone else was goth I wore a Hawaiian shirt. It was amazing. Anyway, let's get to the let's get to the good stuff. Somalia Gate. How big is this?

This story is so fascinating to me, and I think even if you set aside the immigration angle, and it is a crucial angle of this story, but if you just look at it as a welfare fraud story, you have working class people in Minnesota who are working really hard to afford their daycare bills. Childcare is enormously expensive. I know I have a one year old. It's a really big part of family's budgets. And so for a regular voter to see that millions of dollars are going for these warehouses to.

Sit empty, to enrich a favored group of people, regardless.

Of their race, that alone makes it an extremely potent story.

Well, Sarah, I think this hits Democrats in three different places. It hits them on immigration, it hits them on welfare, and it hits them on the ability to effectively govern. I mean, it is a win win for Republicans, and I hope we use it as a suppository all through the next election cycle.

Yeah, that last one is so crucial because Donald Trump, for the first time in my lifetime that I've seen in politics, had sort of made democratic governance a real live issue, when for a long time it's seems like sort of part of the background of politics, it was sort of acknowledged that crime was higher, things were more expensive, life was just a little bit worse in blue cities and states, and that was just sort of baked into

Well.

Sarah Bedford of The Washington Examiner, Yeah, the Democrats are upset about this, but so is your profession. Now, I assume you went to some sort of journalism school. Did they teach you that the right thing to do is get on the phone and call people or get out there and knock on doors, because that's what Nick Shirley seemed to have done, and he seems to be running circles around the established journalist professionals.

His impact is really really impressive, and not least of all because there have been stories about fraud in the Somala community in Minnesota for years, and under the Bid administration there was a huge bust of a two hundred and fifty million dollar fraud ring as a result of excess COVID spending, and it never broke through in the way that Nick Shirley's one YouTube video has. Even though it was The New York Times, it was covered by

Well, Sarah, you're in Washington, you're a political expert. We're going into twenty twenty six. It looks to me like we're going to get the economy cooking again. And of course, I, as we discussed earlier, I grew up in the eighties. I remember the Reagan boom. I remember the first Trump boom. I think we're going to have another boom. We have about twenty seconds. How do you think the Republicans are going to do in twenty twenty six?

History would say that they got an uphill battle, right that the Inn Party usually suffers in the midterms. A boom might blunt some of that, but it would take something like an economic boom to spare them from the inevitable, which is probably losses.

Okay, all right, well, say Sarah Bedford of the Washington Examiner, the political and investigative reporter.

You can follow her at Sarah with an H. C.

Bedford, and you should stick around as we finished the year. If you're on the uhuite show, I'm guess it's kirch Schlichter here right now.