I remember in 2008 how many of us listeners mentioned to Hugh (and this happened on Michael Medved’s show, too) that Obama is a Socialist (really, he’s a Marxist) and he refused to let callers continue, dismissing them immediately. He later admitted that Obama was a socialist in 2012. Too late, of course.
Since he’s been on MSNBC and other mainstream shows he’s defended the MSM personalities to his listeners and talked about how nice they all are. It’s difficult to listen to his interviews of some of these people as he never gives them any difficult or challenging questions. With them he’s become a shill and it’s embarrassing and it’s obvious.
When Robert Mueller was appointed as a special prosecutor he was lavish in his praise, insisting that Rod Rosenstein had hit a home run because Mueller would just focus in a narrow area, Russian collusion with Trump or his team during the election and since. Who’s telling him this stuff, I wonder? Who is he getting his information from? Chuck Todd? I haven’t heard him lately on this subject but I knew that the appointment was a disaster and that he (Mueller) would not be confined to the original task — you know: the one that would actually help the country if he investigated it and reported on it in a timely fashion. Mueller is a pig I’m sorry to say. He’s a friend of Comey’s I guess and, if so, it shows very bad judgment on his part. Mueller is a very bad guy. Louis Gohmert says this:
So, we’re not dealing with honest people here. We’re dealing with dishonest, manipulative people and I know that people keep saying, “Gee, you know, I trust Mueller. He’s an impeccable character…” He is not. He’s dirty. He is mean. He is vindictive. He did more damage to the rank and file of the FBI than any FBI director in history, including J. Edgar Hoover. He created a program that forced thousands and thousands of years of experience out of the FBI. Why? Because his ego could not allow anyone to be in the FBI with more experience than him, that might make a suggestion that would question some of the stupid decisions he made.
Why doesn’t Hewitt know this? (The Gohmert quote above was made on Hewitt’s show when he was on vacation and Rose Tennent was filling in for him, BTW.) Here’s the link to the whole interview. It’s pretty disgusting and very depressing.
Then this latest stupid virtue signalling that he did when he recently interviewed Dennis Prager about Prager’s tweet that raised such a storm of controversy:
The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.
Hewitt interviewed Prager on July 17th and said: “I don’t agree with you on this tweet on both what it says and, more importantly, how it was perceived.” This is a stab in the back of his friend. We all can see this is virtue signalling for his friends in the MSM. He probably has to say this or they wouldn’t have anything to do with him if he was seen as defending Prager.
Myself, I loved Prager for saying this. It’s obviously true and the sentiment is dear to my heart. What bothers me about Hewitt is that he has slowly gone into the lion’s den and met the Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve been listening to his podcast from the very beginning — I think it started in 2009 or 2010 and I think he was great and is still very good at many things that are important to the country and the conservative movement but I’ve watched this slow motion move into happy talk about the media as he’s become more involved with them.
Hugh, these people are not your friends. If things get difficult for you they will not come to your aid. You’re being played for a sucker.
Hugh is so far down my list of where I go to learn things that this doesn’t really concern me. But it is always sad to see talent wasted. There are more venues out there of high quality than I even have time to pay attention to. Thanks for explaining how Hugh has limited himself, Larry.
Well, I like Hugh overall. He’s a good interviewer, one of the best because he does his homework.
I parted with Hewitt in the run-up to the 2012 election. His incessant Romney-shilling was transparent, and his denial of any such thing was an insult to the audience. Glenn from Dallas called him out on it, and he kind of folded.
I used to listen to Hewitt all the time. I cried when Chowdah bit the dust. I remember James Lileks doing Andwoo Sullivan on the bigotry of weather. I was *in there*, man, and I could not stand Hewitt’s long-running maneuver to the left. Hugh has been leaving for a long time, and if he’s finally gone — here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?
The Romney gambit was weird, wasn’t it?
I haven’t heard Lileks lately.
I still enjoy the Friday discussion with Larry Arn, history and the Constitution stuff. Arn is quite forgiving with regard to Trump’s rough talk. His perspective is tempered by knowing what happened in history.
I worry that he thinks he can pull off a sneaky entry into the tent and that he can change things from the inside. He might be right but it must be difficult to have to pull his punches in such obvious and public ways.
BTW, he might be doing some of this with advice from Arn. Arn is a Churchill fan and the secret to secret maneuvers is to not let on to the public what you are doing. Time will tell but I prefer the hit them in public and hit them hard like Trump does.
Both approaches have their precedents — I prefer Trump’s because it’s been so long in coming and so under-nourished that the conservative side of the public have had it.
They moved his show to the graveyard shift on WIND in Chicago about a decade ago and I haven’t heard it since then. But I think he’s way too impressed with himself, and has probably been turned since the TV opportunities are greater for a squish.
I don’t think he’s been turned but he’s severely compromised.
He’s making a ton of money, I bet. That’s the other explanation for the whole sad story.
Limousines and first class tickets and entry into the A-list ranks is tough to turn down. He’s not there yet but if his personal income has taken a jump over the last year or two then this is another factor to consider.
I heard him recently and he didn’t want to criticize MSNBC since he has a show on there. How does one stay a Conservative and not disagree with MSNBC?
Back in the day I loved Hugh’s show. He had a wonderful balance and asked good questions. He is in a business and he has the brass ring of national cable TV before him. Maybe he can become as big as Kathleen Parker.
I think he hopes he can change MSNBC more than they can change him.
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He’s auditioning to replace David Gergen as the MSM’s
favorite tame Republican.
Outwardly, it looks exactly like that. This is my real worry — he is really being convinced that the right is as the left has portrayed us.
I never listened to him on the radio, but I used to be an avid reader of his website. I remember how he shredded the Bush-era amnesty bill before it was defeated, pointing out that the supposed border security measures in the bill were legally meaningless, and how he attempted to make a case that the terrible polling for GOP senators before the 2006 election was wrong, because of complicated reasons. Oops.
Anyway, at some point I pegged him as a globalist, and gradually lost interest in anything he had to say. I don’t even remember the year.
With that in mind, I’m not surprised to find out now that he’s drifting to the other side. Eventually, I expect he’ll make it all the way over. Perhaps one day he’ll stage a coming out party by making a nasty attack on all those lowly conservatives who used to listen to his show, to better ingratiate himself with all his new MSNBC pals.
Meh. I don’t care, because whatever he does, I’ve stopped listening. Good luck to him.
That Mueller support and puff piece he did when he was appointed has me the most worried. Where does he get this kind of perspective? From his ivy league friends?
And also his disrespecting Prager’s fantastic success in going hard at the media as the big problem in the country. I love Prager’s clear reasoning and examples of the negative and nasty things that the media is doing.
LK,
It appears that you’re a fan of Hewitt, which I’ve already said that I’m not. I can’t shake you from that, nor should I make such an attempt, but I will express my opinion that soon you won’t be.
It’s not you, it’s him. He appears to have chosen to stand eleswhere, not with the sort of folks who support Trump, or get chased away from a certain political website we both know of.
I hasten to emphasize yet again that I’m not attempting to tell you who to listen to, or to assign to you any opinions.
But it certainly seems to me that the old left/right political divide is gradually realigning into a new globalist/nationalist paradigm. People aren’t necessarily going to end up with the same friends or allies as this shakes out- and my guess is that Hewitt will end up in the globalist camp.
I haven’t, and apparently you haven’t either. At least you still have Dennis Prager.
X: I really do think you are right to point out the realignment. I hope for this because the previous stodgy Republican and conservative coalition was untenable and moribund.
Two things to keep in mind about Hewitt:
1) He did vote for Trump and told others to do so and he never became a NeverTrumper (but he came close) — this shows that he’s not part of the major problem that became evident in the 2016 election but he was a squish.
2) He has the notion that the media can be made to change away from the extreme leftists who they now are in thrall to. I’m skeptical but I will never stand in the way of people who can actually change things there.
If you listen to him on the many TV shows he gets onto these days he is a refreshing voice of reason in at least a relative way (his other panelists are so doctrinaire leftist). You have to give him credit for this — listen and let me know what you think before you condemn him completely.
Finally, also, he’s very articulate and well-informed on a bunch of mainline conservative things and he’s not gone over to the left on these items. If he moved to where he is from the left we would be very happy with what he says.
“If you listen to him on the many TV shows he gets onto these days he is a refreshing voice of reason in at least a relative way (his other panelists are so doctrinaire leftist).”
I’ll freely admit, again, that I don’t pay any attention to Hewitt and cannot predict the future. Maybe he’ll succeed in changing the media from the inside, which would be awesome.
But I doubt it. That he remains willing to tolerate appearing on these endless leftist-dominated stacked-deck panels strongly implies that he hasn’t figured out how the left operates and what it is, which is a terrible failure for any pundit.
In any case I remember watching people like Bob Novak and George Will spend their time getting shouted down by the swarm of leftists on these panels in the 1990s. Hence I’ve seen enough of that sort of thing to conclude that it’s pointless.
Again, good luck to him. But I’d suggest he find a better way to spend his spare time.
And Prager is really incredible on his clarity about the left. And especially how the leftists and liberals are not the same. This is a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nTMYEsomvc
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I think most if not all of these so called ‘conservative’ pundits are a bunch of blowhards left over from the Carter admin.
That is why I haunt this place. Genuine folks here.
Used to listen to HH everyday. Gave him up completely when he shilled for the ExIm Bank.