Pete Hegseth - Our Fight For Freedom: How To Protect America From The Aggressive Leftist Agenda

Full transcript: Pete Hegseth on London Real

2:16 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Pete Hegseth, the American Army National Guard officer turned author and broadcaster. You co-host Fox and Friends Weekend, America’s number one rated cable morning television show and are a leading voice on the front line against the woke ideology dividing America, fighting against the growing threat of radical leftism in education, media, and religion. You served your country in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, and hold two Bronze Stars and a combat infantryman’s badge for your time overseas. You continue to serve as a major in the National Guard and recently deployed to the nation’s capital during violent protests which threatened businesses, monuments, and the White House. Your new book, American Crusade, Our Fight to Stay Free, celebrates all that America stands for while motivating and mustering fellow patriots to stand ready to defend and save the USA. Pete, welcome to London Real.

3:08 Brian, thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. Hey, great to have you here. You know, before we get started, I just wanted to announce that we are streaming now on our new digital freedom platform, which is a censorship free independent broadcasting system that is of the people, by the people, for the people, and available exclusively on our website at freedomplatform.tv. Can everyone watching us now please share this link via the sidebar to any and all of your social media channels?

3:30 Let me just repeat that. Can everyone watching please share this now via the sidebar to any and all of your social media channels? This is important. Simply ask your friends and family to give us 15 minutes and then they can decide. Pete, I pledge to you and everyone watching us that none of this conversation will be edited, censored, removed, or banned, and that anybody in the world can watch the full version of this episode free at freedomplatform.tv.

3:52 Thanks to the generous donations of over 34,000 people around the world we affectionately call the London Real army. For anybody wanting to become a founding member of the digital freedom platform, you can visit freedomplatform.tv/g to notate and fight with us on the front lines to protect our human rights. Here at London Real, we’ve been a platform for free speech since 2011. And Pete, I’m excited to have you here today. I wanted to jump in with this picture you posted on Instagram because, you know, it says a thousand words and it’s the one you posted when you were on duty in DC at the protests and the riots and you’re just so uniquely qualified to talk about this because you’re on the ground protecting these people and also protecting the citizens. I don’t know of any journalist out there that has the experience you have even the real time experience and I’m wondering like what can you tell us about that experience for you and what’s really happening on the ground because the left tells us one thing and you know some media tells us the other thing but you really got to see it. What was that experience like and and it was interesting. So I when the the riot started they mobilized the Washington DC National Guard which I’m currently a part of. Uh I was down there shortly thereafter and on the ground uh in sort of the biggest moments when the protest protesters turned riers were laying siege to Lafayette Park and the

5:08 White House. I was actually there the day after uh what happened with St. John’s Church and the president there. So I so I was in the middle of it and around it. I’ll tell you there were a couple times I was on the riot shield side of the line and I was waving at and could see the Fox News reporters on the other side, great colleagues, uh doing their job. But it’s one thing to be on on the other side of the line. And you’re right. Uh listen, call it news, call it opinion, call it journalism, whatever you want. Folks in in my business, there aren’t many really any that I can think of, especially on the hosting side that have a military background. And so it gives you a a flavor not just of war and peace, but in that moment when you’re holding a riot shield, standing next to black Americans, black females, white Americans, white females on the line doing their job and you see and hear the reality of the vitriol coming from the so-called protesters and then you watch the objects fly at you. Uh you watch the fires burn, you watch the clashes with your colleagues and it really does color the reality of what’s happening. We all know there are peaceful protesters.

6:12 Fine, we can say that. But what you can’t lie about, even though Democrats are trying to lie about it today, is that that has morphed into, call them Antifa, call them anarchists, call them rioters, criminals, whatever you want to call them, domestic terrorists. They’re seeking to use this moment to to destabilize the United States of America, delegitimize our police forces, and use it as as opposition to Donald Trump I we had on Fox and friends. Just two days ago, we had Jim Klyurn on, Uh, the South Carolina Democrat, and we interviewed him, and I asked him about, you know, he. He denied that there were any federal buildings under siege in America. Uh, let alone in Portland. And I said, Are you watching another network?

6:53 The reality is we’re living in alternate universes, even in our conversation. They deny you heard Jerry Nadler deny that Antifa is even a real thing, called it a myth. Uh, so having been there, it gives you a sense of what these federal officers are facing. The thankless job that they have. And the reality that you can’t give up a federal courthouse and.

7:12 If the local officials won’t protect it, you need to uh and and yet they accuse these these folks of being the Gestapo and other hyperbolic words like that. So, I try to bring my own on the ground experience to my reporting, to my commentary. Uh, and I try to, you know, stay in touch with tons of cops and, uh, vets, guys still serving, saying, “Guys, give me the ground truth. What are you really facing?” That’s what people deserve to heard here, not an edited version based on what the so-called elite media thinks should be happening or thinks who the bad guy is. Uh, and I I try to keep my ear to the ground as much as I can. And can you kind of spot right away in the crowd, you know, who’s the peaceful protester, who’s the angry person and maybe who’s, you know, a specially trained protester or maybe someone who’s, I don’t know, been, I don’t know, I’m not saying paid with an agenda, but, you know, has the projectiles and is really pushing the envelope. Can you see that?

8:07 Very much so. Uh, you can you can identify. You see who’s on the front. You see plenty of people yelling. They’re angry. Angry. They’re right up in the face of I mean the nasty things I heard the Black Lives Matter protesters say to black females and black soldiers.

8:22 Uh it was it was it was embarrassing. It was humiliating. It was insulting. It was cruel. Uh yet those men and women stood the line as proud Americans alongside us uh in every way obviously.

8:34 But what you could spot past that first line are the people with the backpacks, with the helmets, with the masks, going to each other, talking to each other on cell phones, trying to determine where we’re deployed, where there are gaps, where they should move next, where they can move the crowd. There’s no doubt there are agitators, black and white, um, who are who are there for a very specific agenda, paid or unpaid, uh, to agitate, and they try to use the group. It’s very much like an insurgency that we face in Iraq and Afghanistan. to use the population that’s with you to hide amongst, to use as shields, to conduct the kind of operations you want. And then when that works and it accelerates, um, that’s when they get the reaction they almost want, which is the police having to hold their line. And then they claim it’s the police’s fault, not the agitators who are throwing Molotov cocktails or rocks or bottles at the officers. So they want the clash because they want to create a perception that the police are the enemy. when having spent any time with any of these law enforcement, they know their rules of engagement. They know why they’re there.

9:34 They understand the First Amendment. They don’t want to mix it up with anybody. But if you’re going to assault them, they have a job to do. Yeah. How is the morale with people on the ground, you know, when it comes to police and, you know, National Guard there, you know, around this, you know, without without the support and like you said, also just the the abuse they get, it must get exhausting as well.

9:55 Yeah, it does. I mean, listen, mine was a temporary deployment. Uh I’m not doing that on a nightly basis, but I’m also hearing from and in touch with a lot of officers that are. And of first of all, they do their job because they love their country and they love their community and they’re doing it the right way. And that’s that’s the vast majority vast vast vast majority. Uh but but second of all, when you see the demonization of you and your brothers and sisters for simply doing your job, it does impact your morale. It does impact the feeling you have about how safe you’ll be when you do your job. And then the the well-known Ferguson effect is real. If you feel like you’re going to be uh scrutinized for any action, why would you be proactive or aggressive uh in in in encounters that you have when you could instead stay in your patrol car or you could instead not intervene?

10:44 You’re going home at night. Yes, the criminal activity happens, but if you tried to intervene in the first place, uh you might have been the one who was deemed the bad guy. So you you get the crimes massive crime spikes you’ve seen we’ve seen recently in Chicago and New York and cities across America. So morale is is not good and it is we’re losing officers to early retirement because they say why do I want this? Uh and you’re demeaning a profession that we’re going to need the best of Americans to enter into. So, it’s it’s a bad place and it’s not going to get better because these inner cities are run by defund the police woke leftist Democrat mayors who are catering to the loudest socialist left-wing voices in their community because they’re scared of them. Uh, and and that’s why we can’t be scared of that and need to fight back as hard as we can.

11:30 You know, I lived in New York City for about four years. I can’t imagine that place without a strong police force. I mean, you’re still going into the city on a regular basis, right? Does it feel different to you? I mean, do you get a feeling of it’s a little edgier?

11:44 Uh, for sure. Listen, I have not walked the entire city, been out and about. I go to my job, I’ll walk around the neighborhood a little bit, and then come back. But it is a ghost town compared to what it what you’re used to. It It does have an eerie feel about it. There aren’t people out unless they absolutely have to be. Businesses are boarded up or shut. Um, people stay in their homes or they’ve already left. Uh and and what the NY what Bill Delasio is yelling at the NYPD to do is go, you know, inspect bars to make sure people are social distancing as murder rates spike across and graffiti and vandalism across the city. So priorities are misplaced.

12:22 Citizens are fearful. They’re fleeing the city if they have the means to do so. And then you’re and then you’ve got big corporations saying, “Why would I want to stay here?” uh which means you ultimately start to lose a tax base when companies realize they don’t have to be in Manhattan. You can work virtually and why wouldn’t I go somewhere where my wages aren’t confiscated and I actually feel safe. So you’ve got multiple pressures being put on the city of New York City and I don’t see when it changes especially you know when it might change November 4th. Uh if if if the wrong outcome happens a lot of it feels very political and uh and thankfully hey the NYPD are out. I see them. U they’re doing their job. It’s just when when there are real big clashes and real big crises, uh it’s just not the same.

13:07 Yeah. You mentioned political. I mean, we’re watching this from over here in the UK and it it seems just massively magnified the fact that the elections coming up and it seems like, you know, the left is using this as any last ditch effort to spoil that. Is it that simple or is it more complex than that? It’s more complex than that. This is just the latest iteration. It’s sort of the icing on the cake. If you consider what’s been done to this president over the last, you know, four years from the surveillance of his campaign to what they did to Michael Flynn and the attempts to undermine his administration from the beginning to the deep state to the Mueller investigation to impeachment uh to screaming racism at him at every turn. Now they’re trying to talk about the economy being his fault even though everyone understands the impact of the China virus. And now they’re trying to say you got to lock it all down. And it starts to feel very political because look at the debate right now happening on in Washington DC. Nancy Pelosi’s put forth a $3 trillion bill that’s a grabag for every leftist priority they’ve ever had. I mean the priorities of it are ballots and bailouts. They’re bailing out blue states that can’t manage their budgets to begin with. Their pension funds are out of control. And then there’s money for the US Postal Service and mailout ballot facilitation. And then they want to blame Trump as if the

14:25 Postal service being messed up was his fault when we all know how it’s been. So this is the latest iteration of a leftist rejection of the Trump presidency from the beginning, which is really just a rejection of all the people that voted for him and what they believe in. and I think is the tip, it’s the tip of the political iceberg of how deep the tentacles of the left are in American society. And that’s we don’t need to jump into my book now, but That’s a lot of what my book talks about is that politics feels like the last quarter in which Patriots and conservatives can still win. Because you look at media, you look at social media, you look at culture, you look at entertainment, you look at education. Uh, you look at churches, you even look at the military. Leftists and political correctness have have seized on these in businesses big businesses seized on.

15:16 Them in a way that uh is surrounding freedom and and Donald Trump is sort of standing strong against all of that, a thwart all of that and November 3rd is that here’s the other challenge. What with all this mail and ballot nonsense and everything else, it’s not clear we’ll know anything on November 3rd either. And that’s the scary part. How long could that go? Chaos and confusion is something the left often uses. So, it’s it’s bad. And I wrote the book before COVID 19, but the subtitle of the book is Our Fight to Stay Free. And boy are we in the middle I mean of a fight to determine whether a small gym in New Jersey where I live can open safely with social distancing and proper protocols when Walmart right down the street has tens of thousands of people going through it every day the same registers the same aisles. Uh they can do it but the little guy can’t. And I think that that’s a that’s a basic friction of freedom that hopefully we won’t stand for.

16:12 Yeah. you mentioned, you know, all these other areas kind of being co-opted. You know, we’ve had our own brushes with censorship from tech platforms, you know, something that never happened in eight years. And now I literally have a handful of people in Silicon Valley, some that were in front of Congress this last week that are determining, you know, policy for freedom of speech um for billions. It’s it’s hard to believe.

16:36 And I’ve had one-on-one conversations with my YouTube rep and you know we’ve got a quarter of a billion views on our channel and you know he always throws up a community policy that changes constantly and he doesn’t even know what it is and it’s just super subjective so they can choose what they want and just shut down the conversation. You know we’ve seen Trump being shut down on Twitter. It’s you know and and that is the way we communicate especially in times of COVID. So like you said that’s kind of been co-opted. You’re right.

17:02 Businesses all feeling like they have to behave and, you know, tow the line of, you know, whatever movement. You know, it was strange to watch that happen with the Black Lives Matter movement and every business just kind of jump on board. Um, yeah, it’s it’s strange. I’m watching I’m watching the National Basketball Association uh with Black Lives Matter painted on the court with players having the option of a social justice message with every player with the exception of one or two this season kneeling during our nation’s anthem. Uh and that that has become the corporate culture. I mean three four years ago we were debating whether players should kneel. I mean there the policy of the NBA was you will stand. Everyone will stand. Now everyone’s kneeling. The policyy’s still there. They’re just ignoring it. And and and you’re seeing it. It’s professional sports is just the most public manifestation of what’s happening in our schools, what’s happening in our rank and file corporations. Uh there is no room for the disscent to say, “Wait a minute. Um what does this all mean? Where’s all the money going? What about their attachment to defunding the police? What? What about the violence? You ask those questions and you’re the bad guy. And then you look around, you say, I thought I thought I lived in a free country where I had the ability to express my opinions. And not to mention the way in which these corporations cater and bow

18:26 To Beijing, uh, which is, I think, even just as dangerous and, uh, and something thankfully President Trump is taking on as well. I mean, when you start to think about the amount of fights he’s fighting, um, thank goodness the guy doesn’t have to sleep that much. Yeah. And I want to get into China later because you got some great thoughts. And yeah, I’m watching from over here. I mean, I’m from San Diego, California. I spent most of my life there. I’ve been over here for about 20 years. But watching people kneel at a um baseball game and everyone’s doing it and then and then the whole thing on Fifth A with the painting, the Black Lives Matter and Delasio, I mean, it just boggles my mind. I don’t even know where to start with something like that. Um, yeah. It’s almost what’s it all about? Where is that mural painted in New York City? Right in front of Trump Tower. Where is that mural painted in in DC? Right in front of the White House where Donald Trump’s inside.

19:14 This is about Donald Trump. This is about hating what he stands for. And they’ve got every other excuse and every other reason for it and they and they pretend to have the facts and all of these things. Ultimately, this is a political movement to try to delegitimize and destabilize our country to try to win an election. and it happens to be Joe Biden. He’s the empty vessel. Uh the shadow president will be nominated soon by the Democrats. Uh but make no mistake about it. Sure, there are people with principled ideas about policing out there. I get it. That’s not what the majority of this is about.

19:48 Will there be a debate? We talked about that this morning on Fox and Friends. Uh as of right now, there are supposed to be three starting on September 29th. uh early voting in some states, however, starts two weeks before that. So, I think the argument the Trump campaign should be making more forcefully is earlier debates so that anyone casting a ballot has seen the contrast. But in the last couple of days, we’ve seen trial balloons put up by a former Clinton press secretary, uh an editorial in the New York Times saying, “Why should Joe Biden should not debate?” And they do it for two reasons.

20:25 One, they sort of quickly acknowledge that Joe Biden’s not capable, which is the real reason why they don’t want a debate, and then they shift over to, well, he’d have to spend all this time debunking all the lies that Donald Trump’s telling and all of that. First of all, that’s nonsense. Second of all, there will be moderators in these debates. They can choose to address it all they want. This is really about a candidate who can’t string a sentence together and is mortified of the fact that that contrast would be laid bare in front of Americans in what you know we always thought previous debates would be I mean and they were between Hillary and Trump uh mustsee viewing in 2020 after all we’ve been through the ratings would be through the roof and that’s what Scares Biden the most he’s been in his basement? He thinks he has good numbers, he’s not capable of running a campaign. I think we will see debates, but I think we will see a knockdown down. Drag them out behind the scenes and in public. And I I.

21:16 Think you’ll see the president insisting on three, hopefully getting three, but Biden probably ending up trying to push for one or two very late uh and potentially sitting it out alto together. Imagine that. All these all this time, all these years, all this resistance, and they can’t have a candidate ever that even wants to once step on the stage with Donald Trump. Uh it’s it’s sad and but it it’s indicative of where we are right now for sure. Is is there any precedent in modern history where candidates didn’t debate for the president?

21:46 Good question. Good question. I I don’t I mean I think the re the wrangling over debates is why they set up the presidential commission that’s supposed to be this nonpartisan commission that determines where they are and who moderates. By the way, who moderates matters an insane amount uh right now. And that will be part of the wrangling of of who st who sits behind the microphone. I don’t think there is at least in modern presidential history.

22:08 Maybe on the number of them, but I you you’d have to hit up a historian. Maybe I’ll check it after this. Would be a useful thing to note on Fox and Friends. Thank you. Uh but certainly not in my lifetime. Uh and not in yours and and with this much consequence and this much contrast. U but but think about the calculation. They must believe their candidate is so bad that they’re willing to risk the blowback of a public saying, “You’re too scared to debate.” Okay.

22:36 Well, you’re too scared to debate, but I’ll still vote for you because I don’t like Donald Trump. They’re willing to try that, then put him on stage. Uh what what the president also can’t do is agree to some sort of a remote virtual one. Uh one in which Biden’s got, you know, 10 pages of notes and and an earpiece in and and and sort of being handled. It’s got to be a real debate.

22:58 Probability of there being a live debate, in your opinion, is it 50/50? Higher? I think I think it’s higher than 50/50. I I think it’s a real gamble. not to do it. Uh but the chances are not uh you know there there’s still a chance that they would bow out.

23:13 Yeah. It’s hard to believe that someone wouldn’t even want to like whether there was a precedent of there not being a debate. I’ve never heard of a candidate not wanting to debate um because it kind of says it all right there. Yeah. I don’t know that Joe Biden’s running his own campaign and and you watch his videos and if it weren’t for the fact that he’s a Trojan horse for leftism, you would almost feel bad for the guy. Uh what what they’re putting him through. Uh they they seized on CO at his opportunity to keep him home and out of the spotlight. Um he doesn’t want to do that. Why would he want to submit himself to that after you saw what President Trump was able to do with Hillary Clinton who was sharp? Uh it’s it’s it’s sad.

23:52 Yeah. Let’s talk about the book. Um, you say that this moment is more dangerous than any in modern history. Talk to me about that and what is an American crusade. Yeah, I try I try in the book to be candid to be honest with myself about not getting stuck in momentism or believing that my moment or our moment because we’re living it is the most consequential. I mean, we all suffer from that, right? this is the biggest election or the but when you actually step back and look at the division in this country the points of views of our Political parties and then you overlay that on previous crises in our nation.

24:25 This does look much different. Because when you’re, if you, whether it’s the Civil War, whether it’s women’s suffrage, whether it’s civil rights. All of those battles, which were fought over what America represents, were fought within the confines of love and reference. Uh, love and difference to and reverence to the founding of our nation, to the Declaration of Independence, to the Constitution. A belief that America is a good and virtuous place, and that we.

24:51 Should we should we agreed on those basic ideas. And Martin Luther King held up the Bible uh in those marches and and in Washington DC saying now is the time to fulfill the gospel, fulfill the declaration, fulfill the promise of our country because America is a beautiful place that should be enjoyed by all equally. It was always pointing back to the founding is a good thing. Today, we’re in an existential battle about whether or not America is a good place. You have an entire generation of kids and now politicians and cultural icons who have effectively said America is bad. Capitalism is racist. Um, and and you they define America as uh built by slaves and stolen from Native Americans and therefore illegitimate and effectively a a a scheme for for white people to discriminate against everybody else as opposed to recognizing the sins of our republic which are many because there’s no per you want a perfect country you you better go to heaven. So America compared to heaven doesn’t look very good, but America compared to other nations around the earth, you understand why it’s so special. But they magnify the sins and make them the only reflection of what America is. So when you’re when you’re debating with or or politically battling with someone who actually hates the very country they want to take power of, it makes our moment that much more consequential. And and if if I may for a moment, what Donald Trump represents

26:22 Is the the expose the exposing of the left. And I’ll use a military analogy for you. So the worst case scenario scenario you can get caught up in uh in the military as an infantry officer is what’s called a near ambush. It means you’re in the kill zone. You’re surrounded by the enemy on the high ground. They’ve got you dead to rights and they’re right on top of you, which means they can choose their shots and you’re in bad shape. you get caught in a near ambush, if you hesitate, wait, and try to, you know, pick a few shots here or there, you’re you’re dead. The only option you have is to immediately seek cover, lob grenades toward the enemy, and then charge toward the enemy. And what Republicans have done as our republic has been seized by the left in the culture, in the media, in our educational institutions, is we’ve sat in the kill zone and allowed them to to crush the narrative of America to impugn capitalism to to dissolve the idea of citizenship. And we just kind of sat there and said, uh, well, let’s work together. Maybe next, maybe when the NE and it hasn’t worked. And we’ve lurched to the left in every way. And what Donald Trump represents is the guy who said, “I’m not taking it anymore. You know what we need to do? We need to punch back harder. We need to lob those grenades and charge their positions.”

27:37 And you don’t know if you’re going to be successful when you do that. But the one upside you, you know, you’re going to have if you do so with some effect is that the enemy has to pop out of their of their concealed location, out of the tall grass, behind the rock they’re hiding behind. And now at least you can see the enemy. You know who they are. at which point you can engage with them.

27:59 And what Donald Trump’s presidency has done is exposed the left. We know who the fake news media are. We know how bad political correctness is. We know um what the deep state is willing to do, how devious Democrats are, and truly how I mean, look at the 1619 project that’s trying to re reestablish a founding date for our country based on the arrival of slavery. We now know these things and it’s our choice as patriots and conservatives to get behind the president in his attempts to fight back against them. So I I think the fact that we’re we’re on two different planets about whether America is a good place makes this much different. 2020’s election will tell us a lot, but it won’t tell us everything because politics is a lagging indic indicator.

28:43 It’s downstream from culture and so far we’re losing on the cultural front. Pete, when did this movement start to where people started to hate the country? I mean, when I grew up, I don’t remember seeing any of that. And I’m just wondering like when did it start to seep in? Where did it come from? You know, one of my mentors says, um, political correctness is a manifestation of the lack of self-esteem. He says this over and over again to me, and I always think, do these people hate themselves somehow? Is that why they hate America?

29:13 I’m always trying to figure out the psychology and trying to figure out where it came from. Well, a lot of it starts with the removal of God. And I don’t say that lightly. I think if you if you don’t recognize that you’re a sinful creature in need of God’s grace, uh you’re you you lack the humility to understand the limits of your own human understanding. Uh the that that that pride and ambition infect the human soul. You start to believe you can solve the human condition alone, that your rights are given to you by a government, not by God. And there’s been a concerted attempt um to erode the influence of God in American life. And our founders understood that righteous people were required to maintain a republic. When did it all start? I mean that the progressive movement is a hundred-year project. Uh if you look at public education, government education, it’s effectively a hundred-year project that started very small to take over our classrooms. Uh it had a big cult and I’m going to oversimplify here, but it had a big cultural moment in the 60s. Uh where there was a rejection of sort of traditional western civilization orthodoxy. Uh and then it those those rebels effectively made their way into positions of power to the point where now they’re the professors uh and the politicians who have who have now rewritten the curriculum uh that’s influencing young minds. And when you see how it happens, it makes sense. The worst ideas on the planet pushed by

30:30 Leftists are first laundered in the Ivy League. It’s it’s Ivy League schools. It’s elite institutions that take the the the weirdest ideas that make no sense, have no common sense basis or basis in Americanism, America’s project, and they start to hold seminars and and white papers and articles, and then they start demanding safe spaces for it on campus and symposiums, and pretty soon students are are getting used to it. And then the New York Times takes it and writes about this new trend. And then that new trend makes its way into the curriculum first at higher levels and then lower lower down. Then they start to hire through teaching colleges and others professors who believe and perpetuate those views. And pretty soon Howard Zinn’s people’s history of America is the textbook being taught which is effectually a textbook that says America is the bad guy of history.

31:17 So you slowly but surely uh take over elite institutions, demand orthodoxy and views and then push that conformity down into educational institutions. All the while using culture which is far more important to introduce ideas um that that uh would otherwise politically be untenable and we’ve seen that you get we had Supreme Court cases that got rid of God in schools. I mean prayer in schools. Um in the 50s and 60s you had Roie Wade. Um all these things changed the way in which we viewed ourselves.

31:49 Pretty soon conservatives were on the defense. Uh and and you start to look around and I went to public high school in the 1990s and I felt like I absorbed patriotism, love of country, uh free market economics sort of through osmosis. It was felt more or less standard in school. If you open up the textbooks of kids today, you wouldn’t recognize it. and administrators beholden to leftists uh especially with this common core ideology being pushed down from Washington. There is an agenda. The teachers that love America are are are fewer and far between. Not to say that teachers are bad guys, but curriculum is dictated. Uh, and then kids want to get good grades and be liked and so they sort of follow the whole view. And and that’s why if I had a dollar when I go out and speak, for every person that came up to me and said, “I had a good patriot on my hands until I sent them off to college.” And then they came back shaming me for not being woke enough, uh, I’d be a rich man. And and that’s how you change culture in the classroom. Abraham Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation becomes the philosophy of government in the next.” They’ve done it in the schools and they’ve done it in the culture and and that’s why we’re surrounded right now.

32:57 You know, you go after socialism in the book and it’s for me it’s hard to fathom that anyone in America could entertain socialism. I mean, if if it’s not hammered into your head capitalism as a kid in high school, at least when I grew up, you know, 80s and 90s, at least it’s assumed. Yeah, it’s just strange because if these kids or these people in the colleges, if they really could understand what a socialist country would look like, you know, it would look nothing like they would do, they would never have the opportunities or any of the lifestyle they would have unless it was capitalism. But they won’t see that and would never see that without a 30 or 40 year delay or going back to history. Is that right?

33:33 That’s exactly right. Uh we have it so good that our young people and our radical politicians uh are able to flirt with the idea of socialism uh because they they they’ve got young people who have not necessarily been taught what socialism was. I mean they they we’ve got anti-fascists out in the streets who don’t understand that Adolf Hitler was a socialist that the USSR has socialism in its name. that socialism is a longheld manifestation of the left. Uh and when you have collective control of the economy and private property, you control individuals and and and basic ingredients like private property. Uh look at the autonomous zone in in Seattle. That’s because people have been taught the utopian Marxist ideas that we can all just get along and we can all just share and it always fails, but they feel good about themselves and they haven’t been taught otherwise. Listen, capitalism is harder to teach. Uh it’s harder to understand the hidden hand of the market, to understand incentives if you haven’t been taught what a what a earnest day’s work means and how valuable it is to the human heart. Uh and and it’s it’s socialism is promising heaven but always delivering hell. And if you don’t pick up a textbook and understand or talk to a first generation immigrant who came from a a country like that, you don’t understand how quickly we could descend into that if we don’t guard the things that have made us the most prosperous country in the in the

35:05 History of humanity. I mean, the amount of medicines and technologies and human advancements. Just walk into your kitchen or your living room or your car or turn on your TV or use your telephone. I mean, this is an a world formed by American innovation and invention. Uh, and people’s lives, billions lifted because of it. Yet, um, to somebody who’s never learned that, America is just not good enough.

35:30 Yeah. Like you said, socialism looks good on paper. You know, to really understand capitalism, Pete, you kind of have to actually get a job as a kid. You kind of have to own a business for a while. And after a few years, you’re like, “Okay, now I see how this works, and now I see I get the best thing.” and the person goes this and I make this decision and I earn my money and then I spend it. You know, you kind of have to live it to really understand it. Um whereas in theory you could see white people are attracted to socialism, but as we’ve seen it doesn’t work. You know, we’re actually really close to Eastern Europe here. And I had a guy stop me on the street the other day who saw our battle with freedom of speech. He said, “Brian, I lived in Romania for 18 years.

36:08 He said, “I came here so I could speak my mind.” He said, “This is crazy that you’re going back to this stuff. My wife is from Bulgaria.” that was, you know, basically part of the Soviet Union for a long time. And she grew up, I was like, “Was there local business?” She said, “There was no local businesses allowed. There was one car. There was one choice, you know, it didn’t lead to any innovation.” So, in some ways over here, we see it a little closer, you know, cuz the past is a thousand miles away.

36:33 We need to stop calling them or allowing them to call themselves progressives because to your point, they’re actually regress regressives. Uh they want to take us back toward things that we have rejected, that people have fled from, that they’ve gotten on boats to leave from. Uh they’ve fought entire wars to be liberated from. And yet we that’s how I mean how quickly we forget things like that. How quickly we forget 9/11 in our own country and and the threat we face from radical Islamists. We do so at our own peril. And you’re right, when we’re insulated in America by oceans, um, by more or less friendly neighbors in the north and south, it’s might it’s much easier to be detached. I mean, what what Europe is facing, uh, especially Eastern Europe and and into Western Europe, uh, is is existential as well. And in some ways, you could tell me better than I could, it feels even less prepared to deal with it than America is, which is is scary to think about.

37:29 It is scary. You know, UK has always been a little bit more aligned with the free market in the US. You know, that special relationship. Europe, you know, as a continent, they do have more of a socialist bent, you know, the state will provide. And so, they’ve obviously embraced capitalism because it’s got them where they are today. But it’s always kind of this underlined thing there. So, when when times like this, they have a chance, they have a tendency to revert back quicker than say a UK or America.

37:53 Um, we’ll have to see that see how that plays out. Tell me about your relationship with Trump because you were, I think, a never Trumper at one point and then you saw something that changed your mind. What was that? I was almost a never Trumper. I start I start the second chapter by saying, “Hi, my name is Pete Hexath and I was almost a never Trumper.” And I say that because I think a lot of people lived that experience. I mean, that chapter of the book is my confessional. Uh, there were some people that understood Trump when he came down the escalator and they were all for him. And to those people, I say, “God bless you.” Um I I like many others was marinating in sort of traditional establishment Republican politics. Even if I liked the Tea Party and what it stood for and all of that. I’m conservative, constitutional conservative, all those things. I had kind of, you know, reflexively supported John McCain, reflexively supported Mitt Romney. And in this race after eight years of Obama, I was looking for the silver tonged, you know, heritage foundation uh dtoqueville quoting uh conservative ready to take on litigate the eight years of Obama’s transformation of America. So I I was in for Marco Rubio and then when he lost I was in for Ted Cruz and then when he was out I thought man alive I don’t know what to do here and I was obviously always a never Hillary. I was never a never Trumper, but there was a moment where I sat there and I thought, I don’t

39:11 Know what to do. And a lot of it had to do with the posi, the positions he took, unconventional Republican positions he took, all of which have proved to be absolutely the right thing to do to cut against the orthodoxy trade and staring down the unbalanced relationships, which a lot of us just had this free trade idea that would just unleash utopia around the world, which is utterly foolish, especially in light of China. Uh, his. His views on immigration, illegal immigration, the need to build a wall.

39:38 The need to make that a top priority, um just wasn’t the top of mind for a lot of people. And then foreign policy where I had been very hawkish and a huge advocate of of the Iraq war and the surge and and finishing the job properly, I’m the still believer still a believer that you know we of would a could have should have if we had if we had fought the war properly. But if you step back for a moment and look at what was our return on investment, you start to realize I can eat I need to eat some Humble pie put America first and.

40:08 Realize that our orientation in the Middle East is ultimately not uh making us safer right now. So after you start to get past your own hubris or your own roadblocks, I I I started to open up to the idea and then I talk in the book about a couple of Trump conversion moments, moments when I started to realize, okay, this is the kind of guy we need right now. This is break glass in case of war. And the ultimate realization was that these ain’t your daddy’s Democrats anymore. This is not a debate about, you know, marginal little few more marginal tax rates on one side or the other or, you know, do we do we secure the border or do we build the wall? No, this is do you love America or not? Do you want borders or not? Do you believe in citizenship or sanctuary cities? Do you support the cops or not?

40:54 I mean, do you believe in American sovereignty or are you a globalist? It it it you stand for the anthem or not. I mean, it became that that that stark contrast we talked about at the beginning of our conversation. And once you look at it that way, it became clear that Donald Trump is a warrior. And the one thing Republicans haven’t been for decades effectively is warriors. We play within the confines of of of the guard rails that the left-wing media and establishment give us. And Trump just blew the rails off and said, “I’m going to play my own game. forget about your political correctness. I’m gonna call the media out for who they are. Uh, you know, I’ll never forget the press conference. It’s Rush Limbaugh said it was the press conference we’ve been waiting for for 20 years where Trump, candidate Trump got a bunch of ridiculous questions and he was like, “You’re a Sit down. You’re a liar. Next question.” And it was I I’d never seen anything like it. And I thought, “Oh, that doesn’t Oh, wow. He’s right.” So, I I came at it earnestly and like a convert of many things. Uh I found myself to be one of his most fervent supporters because I came to it not just because I was like, “Oh, hey, Donald Trump, he’s a superstar. I’m going to follow him.” Not to say that that’s what people did. It was here’s the reason why he’s the man of our moment and here’s the reality of the left and look at how this guy fights.

42:15 Nobody’s perfect, but who’s going to fight harder than him? and and if the left hates him that much, he’s got to be on target. So, uh I break that down through a couple of chapters uh until it’s become crystal clear. And then the guy delivered. You know, if you had hesitations before 2016, is he a conservative? Is he is he really going to put America first? Look at his track record. Um and then of course on the economy, which has been uh destroyed at this point because of the China virus, he was delivering as well. So there’s uh not thankfully he was one of the first politician in my lifetime who actually delivered on what he said he would do probably because he was a businessman and not a politician.

42:54 Yeah, for sure. And you think he doesn’t get credit for, you know, the amount that he’s actually doing, all the different fronts that he’s moving things forward, the energy he has to just be in a lot of places at a lot of times, you know, putting on these big rallies and, you know, big events and I mean I the Mount Rushmore thing I thought was pretty epic. I mean, you know, does have a young man’s energy. He really does. He really does. And and and a true heart for our country and her citizens. Uh in in the time that I’ve spent with him uh in in in observing him closely, this is, you know, this is a guy who found himself an accidental politician because he has he said time and time again that if it ever gets so bad, I’m going to do it beholden to nobody and speak the truth that no one would. Uh I call him the see something, say something president. and he he sees what we all see. For the longest time, very few people were willing to say anything about it or we would whisper to our friends about it and he shouts it out loud or tweets about it and then he does in office what he said he would do.

43:56 I mean, take most people would say, “Oh, okay. I’m against the Iran deal.” But once they get in, then they listen to the State Department and the DoD and they say, “I don’t think I can do that. We’ll try to tweak it a little bit.” He’s like, “Iran deal done. Paris climate accord done. Embassy in Jerusalem moved. done. I said I would take on NATO. Boom. They’re having to fund more because of how I’ve stared them down. Rebuild the military. I’m going to do it. Give Veterans Choice.

44:20 I’m going to do it. Uh and and that’s just a small fraction of of the types of things he’s been he’s been willing to do. Uh people So, it’s refreshing when someone he’s had to reject the advice of establishment adviserss inside his own administration time and time again who said, “You just can’t do that, Mr. President.” and he looks at him and says, “Well, that’s what I campaigned on. That’s what I said I would do. I’m going to do it.” And I think that’s why you see even more enthusiasm amongst his base now than you did in 2016 is because he walked the walk.

44:53 Do you think he’s changed the office of the presidency forever? Of uh of course. I mean, can you imagine going back to the staged scripted once a week press conference uh reading from the teleprompter days? I I just think those at least for the next few iterations are definitely gone. Uh he’s what you get from Donald Trump is an instant indication of where the mind of the president of the United States is, where he truly stands and and and where he’s taken the direction of our country.

45:26 You can’t put social media back in the bottle. The expectations have risen. Uh you want to talk about transparency. I I don’t know have the numbers in front of me, but it’s I find it hard to believe that a president has done more interviews than he has. And you know what? Good for him for doing more of them at Fox News than other places.

45:42 He’ll get criticized for that, but why would you submit yourself u to leftists all day long when you can get your information out um in other avenues where you’re at least treated fairly? Uh, so I think the presidency has changed and and it takes a leader to to cut against the the norms. Everyone everyone in Washington likes to talk about norms. Oh, this is he’s challenging institutional norms. Well, norms are usually there to force politicians to play by rules that Washington set because Washington likes to protect itself and perpetuate itself.

46:13 And it takes someone with courage to walk in and say, “I’m doing it differently.” You know, I really was enjoying the nightly Corona virus briefings back in like March and April. I mean, and look, you know, I don’t talk that much about Trump on this show, but for me, you know, it was a time where everybody was a little bit tender. We didn’t know what was going on. And here was a man that was getting out and talking real for like 90 minutes every night. I actually I thought it was a lot like a podcast.

46:39 It’s unscripted, unedited, long form content. And at one point I thought if this was like an Obama or something, this would all be scripted with language. I wouldn’t even know what’s going on with Trump. I get the real. I can tell when he’s feeling it. He’ll tell someone else to be quiet. It’s just I don’t know. I found that stuff really comforting.

46:56 I forgot about that. You’re right. Those that was some must-see television like we haven’t seen in a long time. Appointment television at night. Everyone needed the information. They wanted the honesty and the cander. Uh and he delivered. Yeah. No, I I I forgot about that.

47:12 It was like kind of showed me who he really was. Um, just to finish with Trump, look, you know, we hear in the polls and this and that and he’s way behind and 15 points down. Where do you think we really are right now? I think we’re close. I don’t I don’t believe the polls. You shouldn’t believe the polls. They’ve been they weren’t just wrong in 2016. I mean, Michael Dauus was up 17 points over George HW Bush at this time in in in that election cycle in 1988. So, polls always oversample Democrats. uh polls are just a snap snapshot in time. National polls are useless in in a state-by-state electoral college uh race. Uh ask Hillary Clinton about that. So, I’m looking at battleground states. Internal polling shows it much closer on both sides than whatever’s public. Uh and so I I also think there it’s a very real thing that you have a lot of silent Trump voters. And I think some people say, “Oh, that’s a that’s a lazy thing to say. You you don’t know that.” I have been across America as much as anybody interacting with Trump voters over the last three years. That’s one of the great privileges I have on Fox and Friends is I do these diner segments where I go across the country and talk to regular folks and we talk about politics and and again time and time again people are saying I run a business or I have a job or I’m a teacher uh or I’m a coach. And if I said anything on Facebook or Twitter about supporting Trump, I’d be done or I’d be demonized

48:34 Or I’d be ostracized. you think they’re talking to a pollster when they’re calling them. Uh it’s just it’s just not happening. And so I there is definitely is an undercount. The question is how much it will be. I here’s here’s the thing. I I do believe that Donald Trump will win handily on election night. I I obviously I’m a supporter. Obviously I’m biased and I acknowledge that. But I think uh in light of where the left has gone uh they’ve created such a contrast that even say white female suburban voters who may not who may be turned off by the uh brustiness of Trump will say I can’t be for the defund the police guys.

49:13 I ju I just can’t do that. So I’m gonna I’m gonna vote for at least for my security. Um so I I don’t buy the polls. And again we’re we’re 90 days out which is still you know nine cat lives away too. Who knows?

49:26 And like let’s play devil’s advocate for a second. Say Trump wins and say Trump doesn’t win. Now fast forward into May of next year. What do those two worlds look like? Because just having him reelected doesn’t take all of the current problems away or or or does it take a bite out of them?

49:43 You think it doesn’t change the the COVID 19 response from the media? I want to talk about CO 19 for sure. I you know that’s true. I mean, I think ultimately, listen, you’ve got a media looking for everything wrong the president could ever do right now in CO 19. And admittedly, it’s been a huge challenge with a lot of information that’s hard to process in real time. And oh, by the way, China lied about it and who in their pocket. So, you’ve got it all stacked against you. If if heaven forbid Joe Biden were to win, all the empathy is going to go toward whether or not the Biden campaign can salvage the CO 19 moment, they’re going to find a way to be differential and favorable to the way they’re handling it. Um, a vaccine probably would have been delivered. uh and they’ll try to dance and say we’ve recovered from what Trump put us in. And in May of 2021, um they’re still receiving fawning coverage because you cannot understate the extent to which the media in America, the so-called mainstream media, are effectively an arm of the Democrat party. They are all in.

50:43 They are all buddies. They go to the same clubs. They live in the same neighborhoods. Their kids go to school together. They are lock, stock, and barrel. One in the same. If Donald Trump wins, uh, the vaccine hopefully would also be delivered and there. But would they ever give him credit? Of course not. Will the resistance continue?

51:01 Absolutely. Will they try to impeach him again? Probably. Why not? I mean, what held them back the first time? Really only realizing they shouldn’t be doing this in the first year of his presidency. It’s what they wanted to do.

51:13 I mean, no one ever mentions that John Lewis, um, who recently passed away was the first one to say he was boycotting Donald Trump’s inauguration. So, the resistance has been strong from day one. There’s no reason to believe it won’t stop. Let’s talk about the Corona virus or China virus as you say it. Um, I mean, this thing has been, you know, weaponized up, down, and left and right.

51:34 And you mentioned the gym in New Jersey. And, you know, we’re watching over here what’s happening in America. We’re dealing with our different version of it here in London and throughout UK and Europe of course. But what do you see when you look at the behavior over the last five months, the treatment in the media, the way it’s gone for and against Trump? I see a president whose instinct is to respect people um and also understand that America at its very core is premised on freedom.

52:05 And so his instinct has been, we will mobilize everything we can to help governments address this issue, but what I don’t want to do is tell you that you have to lock down or tell you that you have to wear a mask, especially when the information initially was totally conflicting. We were told not to wear a mask uh at the beginning. So there’s a lot of misinformation and what he has Said what? He has felt, what you can see in the way he’s handled it. Even encouraging, uh, opening up is, I respect you, the citizen, enough to give you the.

52:39 Help allow you to synthesize the information and have your own risk calculation as to whether or not you’re willing or you want to open up your own Business Whether or not you want to be a patron at that business and recognize. that market forces will dictate companies that are safe about how they do it are going to have more people um as customers and those that don’t won’t. Instead, through a top- down approach where you’re locking everybody down, the big guys, the Walmarts and the Targets and the Home Depots, they’re doing great. Amazon’s doing great. They’re wide open. They’re operating. No interruption whatsoever. Yet the small gyms and the hair salons and the barber shops and the mom and pop stores which are under different phases of shutdown are told indefinitely. Restaurants told indefinitely you’re closed or you’re highly limited in what you can do or only outdoor dining and it picks winners and losers and it exacerbates even more.

53:36 So, I I like the instinct of the president, which is to respect people and to trust them as opposed to the top-down view that we know better than you. Here’s our 9.9month recovery plan that is very disconnected from your life and your own decision-making. Uh either way, he’s going to get blame uh about COVID 19. Uh he’s right to remind people about where it came from from China. Of course, he gets accu he gets accused of being wrong for pointing that out as well. he can’t win. Uh but his is his and frankly it’s it’s an imposs it’s a very very difficult situation to manage. You want to protect lives. You respect people.

54:16 You don’t want people to suffer or lose their life. You could you know that Donald Trump feels that way. Uh at the same time protect the most vulnerable people with pre-existing conditions and allow younger healthier people to make their own calculations. Uh it’s it’s tragic to see the way it’s unfolded and even worse to see it used as a political weapon. Yeah. It’s just, you know, that testing data is weaponized and it really looks like, you know, the Democrats are using it a as a weapon to just shut the economy down, which is like cutting your nose off to spike the face.

54:48 Yeah. And then and then up and then up unemployment uh insurance time and time again, creating a disincentive to go back to work. And you know, when do you pull it back? How do you pull it back? I mean, it all feels like an attempt to continue to grow government, grow dependency. Uh, and if they’re so invested in income inequality, tell me how this helps that at any level. It it just uh it’s really unfortunate.

55:14 Still boggles my mind that we have locked things down, you know, and not found a better way of keeping the economy open for everybody under 50 whose, you know, death rate is so so tiny. It just still boggles my mind that that hasn’t been seen by people. But again, it’s this information’s been weaponized and fear and it’s it’s being used as a weapon to get visceral reactions from people. Throw in some partisanship and you know, you can almost paint whatever picture you want.

55:42 It’s just I never realized that we’re all in an information war until I watched what happened in the last four months. And even what happened to us as a sensor, it’s it’s it’s it’s a little criminal to watch, especially when all the businesses are going down the tubes. It’s just it’s true. Which is which is why the premise of my book is I’m fearful I hope I’m wrong that politics is the last quarter where patriots and conservatives win. There’s still enough of that residual understanding of core rights and freedoms that those people go to the ballot box. Those people are older. Um they’ll pass at some point. And if the information war is being lost, the social media is being controlled, education, how long until all of that strangles politics too, and now you’re in a place where Democrats are open, wide open to be the socialists we know them to be. And then pretty soon you’re looking around and saying, “Where where’s my free republic uh that I thought I had?”

56:36 You mentioned China and you talk about a you know a second cold war with China. Although if you’re talking in America these days, probably people don’t remember what you talking about with the cold war. I remember, you know, I remember back in the day where we were terrified against Russia and it was this arms race and all that. What what is China that most people don’t see in your opinion? Uh completely totalitarian and completely ambitious. Uh they feel like the last 200 years have been an affront to their u millennial long history. They believe that the world order uh not the world order but the the the the way in which America has led the world since World War II is offensive to them and slants the world toward America and they want to remake it all. Uh they don’t just want to be powerful country.

57:23 They want to control their region uh international institutions remake them and the world. I mean this is this is as big of a threat as you can imagine. This is billions of people with a government that runs the economy. See, we thought that e liberaliz liberalizing their economy, opening up markets in China would lead to political freedom or more political freedom and opening up of China. The exact opposite has happened.

57:48 Instead, we’ve enriched their growth. They’ve stolen our technology. Uh they’ve stolen our companies. They’ve they’ve bifurcated allegiances of our companies. And then they’ve used that money to further consolidate their political power to surveil their people, to put people in prison camps, and to build their army. And they have a Chinese dream. I write about it in the book. And it has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with Chinese control. And they’re working all across the globe, not just in in military capacities. They’re building an army that’s specifically built to defeat ours. You know, our military-industrial complex moves slow and it usually fights the last war. So our platforms are not prepared to project against China.

58:30 Theirs are built to destroy ours. One of the there’s a great book on my desk uh called the kill chain written by a friend who says America has a perfect record in military simulated military exh exercises against China at the Pentagon in recent years. We lose every time uh when you actually play it forward. at they use their centralized command to to uh to make decision-making in much swifter ways and then they’re using intimidation of Hollywood, intimidation of our corporations, confucious institutes which they fund in our universities to to propel propaganda about China in our in our institutions.

59:10 I mean, they are all over the place and our elites cater to them because they want to sell sneakers and they want to buy cheap gadgets and we haven’t yet found a way to truly um create to to uh force, incentivize, mandate that our companies show that they’re American companies committed to our system as opposed to willing to become effectively enslaved to to the Chinese marketplace. Uh there we are in a cold war right now with China 100%. And I like what Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo are talking about. It’s just I hope he’s given a second term to continue to stare them down. If not, I mean Joe Biden’s going to slide back into the same lazy foreign policy that assumes China’s rising peacefully and things are only going to get more dangerous. They’re also laying the blueprint for really controlling the population in a scary way through technology, you know, surveillance, social scores, all those things.

1:00:09 Yeah, that’s that’s scary. Um, you know, yeah, with the and the 5G and the face recognition and the social scores. I mean, I read an article New York Times about bringing face recognition into stadiums now because of COVID. And I’m just thinking, is it going down this China route? You know, you have universal basic income or checks that people are going to get. you don’t get the check unless you, you know, do all these things and get your vaccine. I don’t know. It just Do you think we’re immune from that? I mean, the scary part is no country’s actually immune from any of these things if you get far enough detached from your founding. I think actually think our universities are a great example. I mean, Princeton, Harvard, all these places were founded as as u um as seminaries, places that taught theology, that taught God. Uh and now they’re completely godless and gone. Um the same can happen to countries writ large especially when you face a threat eminently that is very coherent uh and very ambitious highly militarized technologically advanced because they stole it all from you uh and you’re still not willing to guard against it.

1:01:11 Yeah there’s a great series on Netflix I forgot the name of it but it kind of shows like the rise of China from kind of the nothingness of the 30s and 40s and to where they are now. And when you see that kind of exponential growth and you see the history, the thousands of years of history, you you get a good picture like, okay, these these guys are here to take over and and this is something they want to do. And you know, Russia just isn’t the player it used to be and probably never will be. They still do some pretty nasty covert stuff, but yep, the reason and the reason is hello because they have no economy. That’s why they can’t play anymore and that’s why they can’t beat us. So again, wake up to the capitalism threat. Don’t get me started. Tell me about you. When you were over in Afghanistan, did you ever think, “One day I’m going to be on Fox.”

1:01:53 Like, do you ever look back at your life and think, “How did I get here?” Or is this a natural progression for a guy that’s always kind of pushing the envelope and exploring and doing things that excite you? Um, I think that last part is why I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised, but it certainly wasn’t a goal of mine to be a host on television. I I was a soldier. I was a vets advocate. Uh, I went back to school and then through doing advocacy for things I was passionate about, whether it was the war or veterans issues, I just started doing more and more uh commentary on Fox. And then one day they asked, “Hey, have you ever thought about asking questions instead of answering them?” And I said, “Hey, I’ll try anything one time. Sure, throw me in front of a camera.” Must have gone okay, although there were a few hiccups. And and and and so, you know, Tucker Carlson was hosting the weekend show. He went to prime time.

1:02:45 They needed a slot there. I had been guest hosting. I got the opportunity. Again, must have gone well enough and now I’ve been I’m doing it full-time. And but to the last part of your point, it really for me is about doing whatever I can wherever I can as passionate as possible for God and country. And you know, that has been fighting on campus, that has been being a soldier, that has been writing books, that has been uh leading advocacy organizations on Capitol Hill, and now, as you said, we’re in an information war. And if I can be if I if you’re gonna give me an opportunity, I I literally get paid to put makeup on, spray some hairspray in, and then talk to two million people giving my opinion. Like if that’s if I if I don’t count my lucky stars every day, uh thank God for this privileged existence, then I’m uh an ingrate because this is it’s it’s a blessing to be able to do and I take it extremely seriously uh because we’re at a critical moment for our country. So no, I didn’t think I’d be here, but uh I’ll take it while I can do it. I mean, it must be also interesting to think like when you were on the battlefield, you know, now with you on Fox, you’re also, you know, a soldier in a war. This is an information war, but yet you’re probably a million times more effective than you could be, you know, out in the field with an M16. Do you ever think about that? How it scales so much?

1:04:06 It is a different kind of war. And and yet you yet, I’ll be honest, sometimes you miss the the the the simplicity of the brotherhood of what you’re doing in that place. a core mission. You know what you’re doing. You know who’s on your right and left. And yeah, you’re fighting a shadowy insurgency, but you know who your friends are behind the wire. Uh, lots of enemies in the media, too. Totally different. I use that comparison with all due respect for the guys who are fighting real enemies every day. But yeah, I I the the the further you get in into the media, the more you start to realize how stacked it is against um conservatives and patriots and certainly supporters of the president, um you you start I I um I hold my head up high every day that I need to give what I try to do is give Voice to the PE, The Forgotten Men and.

1:04:59 Women, the people that I know, the people that I grew up with, the people that I served with, um who I still am very much in touch with who who have effectively been voiceless for a long time. Most people in the media, and this isn’t to disparrage anybody, they went to journalism school and the Ivy League schools and they’ve been training to do this. I didn’t Yeah, I did go to an Ivy League school, but I went to the military and all those things. I didn’t think I’d end up here. So, I try to leverage my real life experiences, relationships I’ve had to bring that common sense everyday man view um that hopefully add some texture other than just what’s the latest news nugget of the day, which is oftentimes the currency of of media. It’s uh it’s just to me a lot deeper than that.

1:05:40 I think it’s a big advantage you don’t have that journalism degree in in ways you’ll probably never know. I think it really is. I don’t have one either and I just think it’s a good thing. Um, I saw you with the t-shirt of Tucker Tucker Carlson 2024. You posted on your Instagram. Uh, tell me about politics.

1:05:57 You had a a a relationship or an experience, you know, run for the Senate in 2012. We were talking about Den Cranchaw earlier who, um, I first heard about before he actually got elected. Now he’s a representative in Texas. Um, politics, what’s it like? How was it for you? What did you learn? And will you ever touch it again?

1:06:16 Uh, first of all, Tucker’s the man. Uh, I love him. Uh, I hope he does run in 2024. I have no idea if he would. I mean, the reason people are saying that is because he’s so good at what he does.

1:06:25 He’s such a trutht teller. Um, and so I that’s why I had to hold someone sent me that t-shirt unsolicited, by the way. So, I I I whoever did, thank you very much. What do you What can you learn? I did run in 2012 in Minnesota. It feels like a lifetime ago. I was utterly unprepared to run. Uh, I didn’t know the terrain, the political terrain of the area. I thought I could bum rush in there. Hey, I’m a vet. Hey, I’m this. on that. Um, it was part of the sort of grassroots tea party Ron Paul moment. I got I came in third at the Republican convention on on the in the balloting. I dropped out.

1:06:58 I ultimately lost to the guy who was the biggest loser statewide in Minnesota state history. So, I I was the biggest loser to the biggest loser. Um, and I really got crushed. And but, you know, God’s got a plan. And it wasn’t for me to go into politics. And I’m glad I didn’t. I write about that the book, too. I mean, it’s not a biography. I don’t write about my life, but it informed where I came from. I think I would have been um too controlled by establishment views of politics to really be the rabble rouser you need to change the system. And so instead, I was humbled. I learned a lot, moved on to different endeavors, and now I’m grateful to be at Fox. Would I touch it again? Maybe. But I it’s it’s wonderful to be totally liberated from calculation. And I mean that. I’m not sitting in the back of my mind thinking, well, okay, I need to move here and I would do this and run out. Done. Zero.

1:07:49 Uh, I’ve got a great job working with wonderful people, fighting for a great president in the best country on earth. Um, if someday a door opened to do something else, I would look at it. But I the only way I’d get into politics is to do it on my own terms. Is to be unapologetic and unafraid. Uh, and go just like the way Trump has. Now, he’s a billionaire, so he can really do it on his own terms, but in a way that says it’s messed up. We need to fight, and I’m not here to make people happy or or or make certain calculations.

1:08:20 Yeah. You know, I had uh you know, Representative Dan Krenshaw on the other day, and I think he had just come from voting on the Hill and and I asked him, I said, “What’s easier, being a a congressman or being in the Navy Seals?” And he just laughed. He said, “This is the hardest job I’ve ever had.” He said, “It’s so hard. It’s frustrating. It requires so many more things that I that I that I never train for. It’s a different enemy. Um it’s it it you know and I respect him for that, but it looks like a very hard job, you know, in that sense.

1:08:48 I believe him and and if Dan Krenshaw says that, then it’s true. Tell me about Tucker. What’s it like? I know he gave you a a forward on the book and and um what’s it like, you know, being around him as much as you are or obviously he’s on the same network as you, seeing what he does. I mean, it’s impressive to watch him. It’s impressive to watch his demeanor and tone and the way he can be like that every night. The writing is amazing. His delivery is amazing. His courage is kind of amazing in the face of fear and criticism on some pretty bumpy nights in America in the last three or four months and yet he sticks to his guns. What’s it like to be around that energy to know him and maybe something you might see in the background that we don’t?

1:09:30 Yeah, he never backs down. Uh and and in this business, the easiest thing to do to make your life easier is to back down or to couch a comment or to provide a caveat or to just avoid the issue altogether or take the easy sort of vague road. Uh not to say that other there’s anybody in particular that does that, but in a particular way, Tucker Carlson uh avoids all of that and goes straight at the core issue of the day. And I had I spent the most time with Tucker back when he was the weekend host of Fox and Friends. This was before the 2016 election, 25 2016. And 2015, 2016.

1:10:10 And what he was is he was the regular commentator on Fox and Friends throughout the 2016 election cycle. So we’d go to conventions and we’d go to debates and he would be kind of the main guest of the show. And every time he got up there, I would stand stand on the side of the stage just off camera and just listen and just listen and learn because Tucker was going, you know, he’s been in Washington for decades. He was going through, I wouldn’t say a conversion moment, but he was going through the same sort of metamorphosis, the same translation, the same understanding of Trump that the rest of us were. He just understood it and translated it way quicker and way deeper than the rest of us did. And it was really cool to see him start to hit on and understand the themes in a way that helped I think millions of Americans translate what Trump was was fighting for. And then they were right to give him the prime time slots and off he went. And you know now everything’s more virtual in COVID. So we we’ll text here and there. Uh but it’s been a while in person. And I just I just respect someone so much who is utterly fearless, lives his convictions. Um and and I think the reason he’s so popular is that he’s willing to absorb the blowback. Uh he’s willing to call out Republicans when they need to be called out. He’s willing to call people out by name when that’s not always uh you know polite society. So I just think the authenticity and I’ll tell you being in

1:11:34 A room with Tucker uh he’s the kind of guy that kind of takes it over in a good way. Infectious personality, huge laugh. Uh he’s always got a story or an insight that you hadn’t thought about. Uh, so there’s a reason he’s uh he and Sean Handy are number one. Also, his production value feels like it’s in his studio. I don’t know if he’s in a studio or home studio, but it still feels like it’s on point, whatever he’s doing. So, makes a difference.

1:11:57 Yeah, very much. I mean, I think all of them. I mean, I think our our prime time lineup is fantastic across the board breaking down the news. They do a great job. Tell me a little bit about you. If I were to ask five of your friends, what is Pete’s superpower? How are you able to do everything that you do? What would they throw out to me? What would be some of the characteristics they say?

1:12:16 Oh boy. Um, I’d like to think that they would say, “Hey, if he if if if he’s passionate about something, he goes at it 100%.” Um, and and I I try to stay true to that. Whatever I’m doing, I want to be the best at it or working the hardest to be the best at it. Um, because and and the reason I’m doing it is because I’m utterly passionate about it. and and that is our country, the freedoms we have, um our Lord and Savior and the things that that matter. I mean, I think that’s the reason I chose a bold title like American Crusade is I think we need a holy war and the righteous cause of human freedom. I think we need to be unafraid of our of our faith, of our founding values, of freedom. So, I I think they would just look at me, I I’d like to think they’d say, “Hey, if you met Pete on TV, you met him in person.”

1:13:05 And I don’t hide anything. I I’m an open book about who I am and what makes me tick. Um, ultimately wonderful family, parents that raised me in and in a in a great way and and good friends. So, I don’t know. I don’t know if there if there’s a secret at all. It’s if there is a secret, it is um a totally flawed but earnest connection to the realization that I am only saved by grace. That I have a Lord and Savior above who has given me a shot um to be redeemed for the sinful nature that I have. And that humbles me like it should humble anybody um to be grateful for what he’s given me and then be unafraid um to fight for the things uh that are good, right, and true.

1:13:56 Did that come from your parents? Uh very much so. Yeah. I grew up in a faithfilled, patriotic home in Minnesota. They weren’t overtly political, but what I would say is that it it’s been forged through life experiences ever since. um traveling around the globe being in Islamic countries um you start to you know I’ve spent a lot of time in Jerusalem recently for Fox Nation doing specials about Israel and Jerusalem um and and The more you learn about Christendom, more you learn about the life of Jesus Christ and then internalize it, the more impact it has on your own heart, and the more passionate I’ve become about believing that, um, it is. It is part, you know, the salvation of the human soul is part and parcel with the ability. Um, to.

1:14:39 Live free and to and to tr truly be liberated as people and the ideologies in the world antithetical to that are the most dangerous and there are there are still a lot of them uh that surround us. Yeah, it is a bold title and a bold picture but it’s actually all very congruent with you. You know, it is so it’s like it all fits. You know, a lot of people can picture but it wouldn’t fit. Um what was the best day of your life and the worst day?

1:15:06 What comes to mind? Oh my goodness. I know. I Yeah, I I the best day of my life. Um I would probably say I was recently married year ago now to uh my wife Jen who is just in the other room and it was a beautiful day because we have a blended family of seven. We have uh she has three, I have three and we have one together, Gwendelyn, who was also born on that day. Um, so I think, you know, the ability to forge a life with someone who you’re um truly connected to to and devoted to is is a really special thing.

1:15:41 And I haven’t lived a perfect life, multiple iterations thereof, but uh she has changed my life in amazing ways and I’m so grateful for her. Uh worst day in my life, um some pretty some pretty down days on the battlefield. um you know, one in particular, I I remember a suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan, uh that took the lives of over a dozen um allies and Americans in Afghanistan that we had to respond to. Um a wreckage on the side of the road that was um seared into my brain and and and doesn’t leave my thoughts often. uh and you start it it it weighs on me the the cost of these wars and and that that it is the best of the best who go fight them and and I and it could have been me in any context. Um I rode that very very same vehicle they rode on just happened to be that day and so understanding that they’ll never have weddings and birthdays and family gatherings and knowing that um because I do I I want to live worthy of their sacrifice. So watching uh human suffering and especially American patriots lose their lives is never a good day.

1:16:51 Yeah. No, I appreciate that. What scares you? What scares me is the thought of um of losing I mean of losing our country. Sounds cliche, but I I don’t I salute the flag and stand for the anthem because America stands for um individual freedom and equal justice. And if we ever deviate from that uh and we lose our country, there’s nowhere else to sail to um where we we still live in history where there are dangerous ideologies that are ascendant. And so what scares me is an untethering, an unraveling uh of our republic. And you know, I wrote the book American Crusade.

1:17:34 And two of the three scenarios don’t end well. And it’s not because I’m not an optimist. It’s because I’m reading the tea leaves. So I that’s why I’m fight with every breath I have to try to preserve our republic and advance freedom uh in the hopes that we can salvage it. But it does scare me to think how close we are to the pre precipice.

1:17:53 Yeah. No. And the book details that in in in in a whole big way. Um what would we be surprised to learn about Pete Hegseth? something that you know is unlike you or uncruserly. Is there something you do in your spare time that might surprise us?

1:18:09 Uh I like I we we just got two cats. I’m not a dog guy. I’m a cat guy. Um that might surprise you. We just got two little kittens. Can’t do dogs too like too much like children. Take too much time and effort. We have seven kids already running around the house. Um you know, you have to build a relationship with cats, but you don’t have to take care of them. So that might be that might be part of it. What else? No, I’m a pretty average dude, you know. I I do TV. I like to read news. Uh I used to love sports so much and now it’s all politics. I love football and basketball, pro football, NBA basketball, but it just it’s been so so frustrating to watch how it’s become, you know, wokeness league. Um pretty boring life actually. Spent a lot of time at home. Uh you know, working out, hanging out with the kids. So, not too many surprises there. You get to that point in your life where you know what you want. You know, the work is super fulfilling. The family is fulfilling.

1:19:04 You take care of your your health and you rinse and repeat. You know, correct. You better than I could. Yes, it works. It works. So, um Pete, I always finish with a few questions. I’m going I’m going to hit you now. If you could pick up a phone and call up the 20-year-old Pete and give that young man some advice based on everything you’ve learned through the military, through media, everything. What would you tell him?

1:19:29 Uh, I would tell him

1:20:28 No, we’re going to keep doing it and uh I’ve just been amazed how many people have supported us with this and how many people want some other place they can go to for real talk and I’m just glad I’m not self-censoring all the time because I would be we couldn’t have had this conversation if I had had to stream it somewhere else. So, we’re doing it here and there’s a real demand for it and it just shows there’s alternatives. So, and look, you know, with all the madness of the last four or five months, I think people are seeing all the cracks in the system. You know, they’re seeing the censorship. They’re seeing all these co-opted agendas where I don’t think honestly, Pete, they could see it when it was business as usual in January. So, in some ways, this crisis, I think, has kind of, you know, showed that to a lot of people.

1:21:07 Hope there’s a silver lining. Yeah. Yeah. I’m optimistic. So, all right.

1:21:10 Keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll hope for the best in uh November. And, uh, thanks so much for the time. I really appreciate you. Next time, let’s do this in person.

1:21:17 You got it. Sounds good. All right, good stuff. Grab the book, folks. Amazon and places where you buy the books. Uh again, share this link in your social and uh we’ll see you next time on London Real. Take care.