The Mueller Report

HUGH HEWITT: Morning glory, America. Bonjour, hi, Canada. From the ReliefFactor.com studio inside the Beltway, I am Hugh Hewitt. Thank you so much for listening to me. That music means it's time for The Hillsdale Dialogue, our weekly last hour of radio. There are 15 hours of radio for me each week on the 15th.  

I am joined by either Dr. Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, or one of his great colleagues from Hillsdale to talk about big things, big issues, and big ideas. Last week it was Professor Adam Carrington. This week it is Dr. Arnn. Dr. Arnn, welcome back. We really liked Adam Carrington.  

LARRY ARNN: Did you? Yeah. He's not that good, though, is he?  

HEWITT: No, we loved him.  

ARNN: Oh.  

HEWITT: Actually, we thought he was great.  

ARNN: Yeah. He's kind of a bright young star of the faculty.  

HEWITT: No, I mean, if you just wanted to take a few weeks off-- you know, a couple of months, three months, four months, we liked him.  

ARNN: Yeah. OK. OK. What if you took time off? Do you think people would be happy about that?  

HEWITT: Oh, I can't take time. How was your trip to the Pacific Northwest? I was afraid you weren't going to come back, or come back with a lumberjack shirt, or you might have been smoking do-- you know, feeding edibles into your food. How did it go?  

ARNN: I was actually in northern California last week, and it was great. And I'm going to Oregon tomorrow. Well, Monday. We have a lot of people who pay attention to us in Oregon, and that's kind of amazing, isn't it?  

HEWITT: It is. But I'm worried about you. Bigfoot could get you. The dopers could get you. When you got to Oregon, if you get out to Corvallis, especially, you ought to be careful.  

ARNN: Oh, yeah. It's a different-- people keep telling me to watch that show Portlandia.  

HEWITT: I don't watch it. No. Because it's so depressing.  

ARNN: They described it to me, and it is what it looks like, the way they describe it.  

HEWITT: All right. Now, look, I've been using an analogy that you will understand. Bruce Catton-- I believe you might even have known him. I just read his books. And I think that Thursday last, before the Mueller report dropped, was the high-water mark of the resistance, and that everything we have seen for a week has been the collapse, the route of the resistance. And in like six different directions. They're retreating everywhere.  

But after Antietam, McClellan did not pursue. And after Gettysburg, Meade did not pursue. But I think this is like when Grant Takes Command-- that was a Bruce Catton book about when Grant takes command in 1860. He intended to fight on that line if it takes all summer. I listened to President Trump in Michigan last night. He is on offense.  

ARNN: Well, is that surprising?   

He's kind of a Stonewall Jackson about stuff like that.  

HEWITT: Yeah, he is.  

ARNN: Lincoln was disappointed in his generals until Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan. Not fully disappointed, but with many of them, fully. And the thing that those guys had was they knew where the battle was, and they stayed in it. And in Virginia, where Grant took way the most casualties in American history in the summer of 1864-- that was a terribly difficult place to fight, and he just kept at it every day and doubled down.  

HEWITT: Doubled down. Now, let me play you a little Trump audio from last night about what's going to come next. Cut number 15.  

DONALD TRUMP: Delusions. The Republican Party is the party for all Americans. It's what we want to be. It's the way we want to live.  

HEWITT: He was saying that. He also said this. Cut number seven.  

TRUMP: They're coming back. They're coming back fast. This has been an incredible couple of weeks for America. The economy is roaring. The ISIS caliphate is defeated 100%. And after three years of lies, and smears, and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead.   

HEWITT: And finally, he said this. Cut number 12.  

TRUMP: They have to be-- I'm sorry. They have to be accountable.  

HEWITT: He was talking about the media, Dr. Arnn did that not sound like someone going over to the offense?  

ARNN: Yeah. And he's been that way, but now he's got something to talk about. Because it is embarrassing. I mean, the two most important parts of the report, I think, are, first of all, we find no evidence of collusion with Russia by anybody close to Trump.  

And then they-- about this obstruction of justice thing-- you and I have talked about this a lot. There's a high constitutional question whether the president would be guilty of obstruction of justice by firing somebody who works for him. And they say that absent considerations of that, without thinking about the fact that he's the president and his constitutional powers, we don't find anything here to prosecute.  

HEWITT: But you have seized on the lawyer's lawyering.  

ARNN: Yeah.  

HEWITT: What Rod Rosenstein agreed with Barr is that, put aside all that constitutional stuff, there is no underlying crime. Which does not make an obstruction case impossible, just unlikely. And I've asked everyone I know, has anyone ever seen an obstruction crime prosecuted without an underlying crime? They all say no. Theoretically, it's possible.  

And Barr and Rosenstein said, it ain't close. Most of this stuff was done in public. They're talking about the president firing Comey. And it's just not even close. So, he's exonerated. Whether or not the left wants to understand that, he is exonerated.  

And I think in that exoneration, there's such energy, and I think there's also capitulation. You know the five stages of grief, Dr. Arnn. Anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance. We're still an anger and denial in the media.  

ARNN: Yeah. It'll go on for a while. But, you know, I would think-- because first of all, it's been very bad. The media's bad. And the media's always been bad. The media was bad in 1788. But this is remarkable, isn't it? How can you, night after night, and week after week, write and talk-- write in the papers and talk on TV and radio--  

HEWITT: And tweet. Tweet to each other.  

ARNN: Tweet to each other about this collusion with Russia, and not mention consistently that the first evidence for it comes from a political hit piece? And that's just, really? In the academic world, there's a lot of lying and cheating in the academic world, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's not growing, but that's just-- you have to teach students not to do that, right?  

HEWITT: Yes.  

ARNN: What is the point against you? Aren't you supposed to mention that, and even first?  

HEWITT: The core finding. And I want to repeat this. After 650 days, 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, assorted technical support, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 witness interviews, 15 cooperating agreements with foreign governments, not one American-- not one, much less the president, or his family, or his campaign team-- not one did a single act of colluding with the Russians, who did, in fact, attack us. Which doesn't surprise you or me because we've known about the Russians forever, right? We were with Reagan. But that is the core finding. And I am amazed that the media this week is doing everything it can not to repeat the core finding, that there were no traitors.  

ARNN: Yeah. Call him, you know-- Brennan, a CIA director, a political one, by his actions, he accused the President of the United States of treason. That's-- wow. [LAUGHS] So anyway, it's staggering. And because it's staggering, and the way it's staggering, it's going to go on in a new guise. I don't think it's going to stop.  

HEWITT: It is. After the break I'm going to play you Senators Cotton, Cornyn, and Hawley, and what they've had to say about that the reckoning we need here at the United States. But before we do that, Dr. Liam Fox said today, there is a question before the House at 2:30 PM in Britain.  

Will the people's sovereignty be honored, or will they breach that sovereignty? Because Theresa May has done some-- she's thrown herself on the sword. She will step down. She's doing everything she can. They're putting the political agreement aside. What's your advice to the leavers? I think the DUP, and everyone ought to go with Jacob Rees-Mogg and get out. What do you think, Larry Arnn?  

ARNN: That's what I think. Yeah. I think, you know, it's a speculation, what's going to happen in the world, if they leave. What the market's going to do. All that stuff. And politicians are very afraid of that.  

And so, there's two kinds of people in the Conservative Party, it looks to me like, who are hesitant about this. And one of them is the ones who never wanted to go, which is a majority of the conservative cabinet. They gambled on this and thought-- they were losing seats to the United Kingdom Independence Party. And they thought, we'll put this to bed by having a national referendum. And then it didn't go the way they wanted. So, there's them. They're reluctant about this.  

But then the other ones are just nervous because it's a huge change and there's no agreement to smooth it along. And my guess is it'll probably be fine, for reasons you and I have talked about.  

HEWITT: It will be fine, but they do have to pull the Band-Aid off. And Liam Fox laid it down. The people voted. And Larry Arnn likes to say, the ultimate question is, do the people rule the government or does the government rule the people? We'll talk about that when we come back to The Hillsdale Dialogue. All things Hillsdale at hillsdale.edu. Stay tuned, America.  

It's Hugh Hewitt in the ReliefFactor.com studio. This is The Hillsdale Dialogue, the last radio hour of the week, with Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College. All things Hillsdale, all of them, are collected at hillsdale.edu. And I encourage you to go there and drink deep from the prudential considerations of how this country was founded and how it ought to be governed. And go to Hugh for Hillsdale for all of our conversations dating back to 2013.  

Dr. Arnn, I want to play for you a little audio. This is Tom Cotton from Tuesday on what he thinks happened in 2016. Cut number 16.  

Do you think they tried to sabotage the transition?  

TOM COTTON: I do, Hugh. I think that they rushed down an ill-considered document that was, again, built on a fake dossier that is actually the only source of collusion with foreign intelligence. Namely, Christopher Steele. They discredited former British intelligence officer, who, no doubt, built most of the allegations in that dossier based on, yes, Russian intelligence services.  

HEWITT: So senior Obama administration officials attempted to sabotage the transition. That's your working premise.  

COTTON: I don't think, based on what we've seen over the last three years, you can have any other working premise.  

HEWITT: I agree.  

COTTON: And I think further inquiry will reveal exactly who they are. Some of them are well-known, some of them are not well known, but further inquiry is needed.  

HEWITT: And then John Cornyn of Texas said this on Tuesday to me. Cut number 17.  

I go back to Strzok and Page, and then the unmasking of sources during the transition, and Senator Cotton and I were focusing specifically on what happened during the transition. I don't know if our IC was involved in this beyond the senior level of the FBI, and I know the FBI is largely, 95%, unconnected to what happened here, and ditto the intelligence community, but do you suspect a false flag was run against the Trump campaign during the transition?  

JOHN CORNYN: Well, I think Director Brennan certainly hadn't covered himself in glory in all this. He seems like he has been on a search and destroy mission from day one, and unduly partisan, and that continues until now. I think they were surprised, like everybody was, that the president won.  

While the counterintelligence investigation might have been warranted based on some peripheral activities by some of these hangers on in the campaign, it's pretty clear to me that the president himself was never told that the Russians were shaking the door handle and the windows and trying to get into the campaign, and given the defensive briefing that Loretta Lynch said was routine, and so he could tell these folks to knock it off or disassociate them with his campaign.  

HEWITT: So, Larry Arnn, that raises, president of Hillsdale College that you are, a fundamental question that you often raise-- do the people run the government, or do the government run the people?  

ARNN: Yeah. And the people we're talking about are in agencies that use force, including force on the American people. And so, they have to be accountable back through the constitutional methods to the people who are elected, to the officers of the government who are elected.  

And so, when there's an election-- you know, there's an article in The Wall Street Journal today that they're taking after the electoral college again.  

HEWITT: Yeah.  

ARNN: Right? And so the electoral college is old, and its purpose is to spread the vote across the country because they're trying to unite a great nation and have all the parts of it count. And there's plenty of ways, massive ways, especially the House of Representatives, for just the popular vote to bear on the country, on the politics of the country and, ultimately, be decisive in them. And the popular vote and the electoral college never diverge very far.  

But nonetheless, this fake-- this investigation and these attacks on the electoral college are both signs that much of our population will not accept the results of an election unless they win, and they'll win by remarkable means. And some of those people are sworn officers of the government. And, I mean, using force kind of officers.  

But, you know, McCabe has been saying in his book tour-- I mean, being printed with approval, that we saw a problem with Trump and we knew he had to be stopped.  

HEWITT: Yes.  

ARNN: Who are they to do that?  

HEWITT: Who are they to do that? That is the number one question. We'll continue talking about it with Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College. All things Hillsdale are at hillsdale.edu, including your opportunity to sign up for the free speech digest, and I mean free, at hillsdale.edu Imprimis. Stay tuned.  

Welcome back, America. It's Hugh Hewitt in the ReliefFactor.com studio. It is The Hillsdale Dialogue, our weekly go big with Dr. Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College. Go big means we focus on the big issues. Not the breaking news that I keep my eye on, the breaking news.  

In fact, there is some breaking news. Over in Great Britain, Boris Johnson has announced he will vote for the May deal. Over in Great Britain, Dominic Robb has announced he will vote for the May deal. And so it is possible that they'll get there.  

Priti Patel has not thrown in yet, one way or the other. And Larry Arnn and I agree they've got to get out. They've just got to get out. So, Dr. Arnn, I want to play for you one more clip. This is Josh Hawley, senator from Missouri. And I compared getting him to the Senate like Baker Mayfield going to the Browns.  

This guy is smart. Roberts, clerk; Mike McConnell, clerk wrote a book about TR right out of Stanford College. I mean, he's really smart. And here's our conversation.  

JOSH HAWLEY: I have said that I believe that we need a special counsel. We also need oversight hearings. It's not either or, it's both and. And, look, I said-- I demanded answers, Hugh, from the FBI. Sent them a letter-- sent them two letters now, actually. Particularly on this counterintelligence investigation that Andy McCabe has told the world about, we've learned about, that they launched against the President of the United States.  

Yeah. This is a spy-- I mean, counterintelligence is a spy investigation that they launched against the president. Because from what we could tell, they disliked his foreign policy stance. I mean, it's extraordinary. You talk about a separation of powers crisis. That's one right there.  

So, I've demanded answers from the FBI. They've stonewalled me. They have tried to just completely shut out me and my staff. So, I said, look, if it takes a special counsel then to get up in their business, then that's what we need to do. And Congress, we need to put these people under oath. Bring them in, put them before the cameras, and make them answer questions.  

But, yes. I mean, we cannot allow what has happened in the last two years to happen again to any other president. And as a constitutional lawyer, I could say my big concern here is the appropriate functioning of our constitution.  

And the elected representatives-- the president, the elected members of Congress-- they're the ones who are supposed to be, on behalf of the people, managing our government. Not unelected agents, whether that's the political leadership of the FBI or anybody else.  

HEWITT: I think Hawley has got it. Your reaction, Dr. Arnn?  

ARNN: I love that guy.  

HEWITT: Yeah.  

ARNN: I mean, if you-- I've been thinking while we were on the break. There ought to be a way to get journalists to take a basic course in government because--  

HEWITT: Oh, dear. That would break the machine.  

ARNN: It's so confused, right? And then here from Hawley, we get clarity. The truth of the matter is that the first and most important thing to guarantee that the government can be strong enough to protect you but not oppress you is they have to ask you permission to do things.  

HEWITT: Yes.  

ARNN: Consent of the governed, right? Everything in America starts with that. It's the first country in history built entirely on that. It's why it's been able to remain free for so long, right? And these murky, messy understandings that we have now that dominate the news-- I mean, the part of the news that I only read about. I don't really watch it. But that, you know, James Comey is some source of authority. And he's not. He's a recipient of authority.  

HEWITT: He's not-- and basic constitutional ignorance. People saying, why did Bill Barr, the attorney general, make the conclusion he did? To which I have responded, Bill Barr is the 85th attorney general. And from the first, Edmund Randolph to him, they are the president's principal agent for the execution of the laws, which is committed to the president by the Constitution.  

That's why he made the decision. Congress doesn't prosecute anyone. Courts don't prosecute anyone. But you know what? A lot of my colleagues lack that basic understanding.  

ARNN: Talking about Barr for a minute. I'm developing a picture of a man with a wry sense of humor.  

HEWITT: Yes.  

ARNN: He doesn't joke a lot. But you know that passage in his report to Congress, where he says that, you know, this under this obstruction of justice stuff? Quite a lot of it happened in public.  

HEWITT: Yes.  

ARNN: In other words, you know--  

HEWITT: Everybody knows what we're talking about.  

ARNN: He was tweeting with the president.  

HEWITT: That is very wry. I hadn't thought about that. Much of it occurred in public. I was thinking of him firing Comey, and that's in public. I mean, the whole obstruction thing is just silly. Robert Mueller punted. And he punted-- my view-- this is all speculation. I'm going to speculate.  

My view is he had 17 rabid anti-Trump people who wanted him to invent a new crime and go after the president, naming an unindicted co-conspirator. And he said, no, I'm not doing that. But I'll do better. I'll make Barr do it. Not me. Because--  

ARNN: Although I hate to do it, I'm actually going to congratulate you. Because you said that Mueller would be a really good guy and he would be objective, and then after that he went and hired-- he did hire a bunch of anti-- a bunch of Democratic operatives. People with real experience in politics, a lot of them.  

And, you know, very elite lawyers as well. They were qualified, as far as I know, and I know many of them were. But it didn't look good, right? And then he's fishing around and all that stuff, right? But the report comes out-- well, we'll see the whole report. But I can't imagine, by the way, that the summary will differ extensively from the whole report.  

HEWITT: And by the way, we will never see the whole report. I want people to understand this. At the Nixon Library, as at the Reagan Library, as at the Carter Library, and the Clinton Library, and the soon to be corrected Obama Library, there's something called a research room and a declassification staff. And they won't let you see things from 50 years ago, unless it's safe.  

There's going to be a lot of stuff in the Barr report about methods and sources on how we surveil Russians that we will never let out, or we will be telling them who our spies are, basically. And so, we'll never see the full report. But they're building up the expectation that by not just throwing it on the table, we are being bad.  

Now, I've got to read for you, Larry Arnn-- Marc Thiessen is a fine columnist The Washington Post. Friend of Victor Davis Hanson's, friend of many of ours. He wrote this morning, "Trump has called for House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, to resign. Schiff is a disgrace," writes Thiessen, "but he is not alone."  

Representative Eric Swalwell of California, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, quote, "in our investigation, we saw strong evidence of collusion." And declared Trump an agent, quote, "working on behalf of the Russians." House Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, declared, quote, "It's clear that the campaign colluded. There's a lot of evidence of that." Close quote.  

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Judiciary Committee, assured us last year that, quote, "the evidence is pretty clear that there was collusion between Trump campaign and the Russians." Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, quote, "there is no longer a question of whether this campaign sought to collude with a hostile foreign power to subvert America's democracy."  

And recently, the committee's vice chair, Senator Warner, declared, quote, "enormous amounts of evidence," close quote, exist of collusion between Trump and Russia. And, quote, "there is no one that could factually say there's not plenty of evidence of collaboration or communications between the Trump Organization and Russians. Period." Except, adds Thiessen, for Mueller, of course. These comments by people with access to intelligence were shameful. Then he goes on to blast John Brennan.  

There's a reckoning. I don't know how we get past this. We didn't have a civil war that had shots fired. Thank God. But we've had three years of just tectonic clashes. And Trump won. He's vindicated. He is exonerated. Not one American did one thing that led to a collusion charge. Not one. How long is it going to take to play out the consequences of this?  

ARNN: Well, I think that two things need to happen, and one them is going to happen. The bad one is going to happen. The good thing that needs to happen is these events should be investigated in order to dramatize and emphasize the point that people who are employed as permanent officials in the government work for people who are elected.  

If you don't have that, you don't have representative government. If you don't have representative government, you've got King George III on steroids.  

HEWITT: Let's repeat that. People who work in the government work for people who are elected, not independent of them.  

ARNN: That's right. And that's the only way that those people can work for us, right? Because they're not going to report to us directly. And this fuzziness, which is at the heart of progressive understanding-- it comes from Germany historicism and everywhere-- that somehow experts are the people with title to rule.  

So, Comey is an expert in law enforcement. And, you know, there's literally 23 million people who work for the government of the United States-- state, federal, and local. Mostly state and local. So, there's millions, right? And the point is, if they have title to rule because they occupy these positions, then we're working for them now.  

And so that point needs to be emphasized. That's why Hawley is right. We should call those people in and we should ask them the question, who gave you the authority to launch an investigation of the president of the United States, and on what evidence did you do it?  

HEWITT: And I expect Attorney General Barr and FBI Director Wray, who are good people, to demand this accounting. I also expect charges to be brought against people who abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, because we are Americans and we do not surveil each other, absent the most pressing evidence of active agency or past active agency with people of foreign governments. I did that for both Bill Smith and Ed Meese. We would never have approved that FISA warrant, Larry Arnn.  

ARNN: Yeah. Well, and as memory serves, when you're a lawyer, you're an officer of the court, if you're working for the Justice Department, that's the second injunction that you have to obey the law carefully. And the point is you can't not tell the court relative things against your position, and they didn't mention the provenance of that dossier.  

And so, a court issued a permission to investigate, to surveil a presidential campaign on incomplete evidence. And that's the kind of basic blocking and tackling you don't do. And so that needs to be gone into.  

HEWITT: Deeply. Hold the third thought. Hold the third thought. I got to take my break here, and I'll be right back with Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College as we look at the week that exploded the resistance and determined that there was no collusion by not one American. Not one was treasonous. And that is what we should be celebrating.  

You're listening to The Hillsdale Dialogue with Dr. Larry Arnn. Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. It's Hugh Hewitt. 51 minutes after the hour. I'm joined by Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College. Yes, this is The Hillsdale Dialogue. You can find everything about Hillsdale at hillsdale.edu. You can get an application for yourself.  

Or if you've got a son or daughter, or granddaughter or grandson, you should go and apply now for the fall class and you shouldn't wait around. I mean, not the fall class, but for the following fall class. Shouldn't wait around. Get serious about this. And go listen to their wonderful courses.  

Dr. Arnn, Senate Majority Leader McConnell announced yesterday that next week they're going to change the rules of the Senate using the procedure designed by Harry Reid, which does not require 60 votes, it requires 51. And they're going to accelerate nominees because the Democrats, who changed those rules to get what they wanted, have played slow down ball to stop what we want, even though we won the election, which is judges, and nominees, and ambassadors. What do you make of this?  

ARNN: Well, I think it's-- there's nothing more important than to-- and in American politics today-- it's much more important, by the way, than the judges, who love to harp about being a lawyer. There's nothing so important as the recovery of the legislative power to the representatives of the people.  

They don't make many of the laws anymore. They make a lot of laws, actually, but 10 times more are made by the bureaucracy. So, you'll never get that done, nor these judges through, unless you abandon this distortion of the filibuster that has become enshrined as if it were ancient history, but it started in the mid-1970s.  

And before that, what the filibuster meant was you could stop a thing if you would stay on the floor and argue or give off to others who would, and the whole business of the Senate had to stop while you did it. So, they're famous filibusters, so they're great debates. And the reason they come to an end is that the pressure builds because the Senate's got other stuff to do.  

In other words, the filibuster, an old thing from the British Parliament, is a way to guarantee that there's a heck of a big public argument. That's what it's for. But they call it unlimited debate. But the way it works now is that an individual member or a committee-- the judge's thing is called blue slips.  

They just go and tell the clerk they enter a filibuster, and the issue goes off the calendar. So, in other words, the filibuster has been converted into a thing that prevents debate. And McConnell and Senator Grassley from Iowa have both taken steps to relax that as regards judges, and I wish they would do it more generally.  

HEWITT: They are going to do it more generally, as of next week. That's what McConnell said. And I'm all for it. And people are saying, what about tradition, et cetera? I have never liked the filibuster because it's not in the Constitution. But each Senate, each body gets to make its own rules.  

And if the Democrats are going to break the rules whenever they want to break the rules, then the Republicans should do that. And I know this sounds a little bit like the 1850s, right? When it was tit for tat and everyone played hardball. But, in fact, they haven't yet changed the rule on the legislative filibuster.  

If we could get to a real filibuster rule, that would be fine. But as for now, I want my judges because to get control of this government, the administrative state, we need judges who will abandon what is known as the Chevron doctrine and make these bureaucrats answer questions. Dr. Arnn.  

ARNN: That's it. And in the end-- it's a very technical world, we love to say. And we have to have lots of regulation at the central source. I don't much believe that myself. I do think that there's a lot of things that have to be regulated that didn't use to be.  

But the regulations that are passed should be reviewed and ratified by the Congress of the United States and by the state legislatures. Because it's nothing but mischief if you delegate the legislative power, as is clear from the Founders.  

HEWITT: And we have done that. And we have done that again and again and again. And there is something called the nondelegation doctrine, which has not been extent in our constitutional law since the '30s, right? When FDR rolled the court.  

ARNN: Right.  

HEWITT: I'm beginning to think-- I think Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are in favor of reviving it. I know that Clarence Thomas is. I think Justice Alito is. I'm not sure where the chief justice is. But we need that.  

ARNN: Yeah, we do.  

HEWITT: We've got to make them do their job.  

ARNN: You know, Leader McConnell, he's giving a talk for Hillsdale College on these themes pretty soon, and I'm extremely interested to hear what he's going to say. I've talked to him about some of these things.  

And, of course, a lot of people say, and they're right, that if the Democrats win the presidency and the Senate next time, and the House, that they're just going to roll, right? And they'll do a lot of bad things. And my comment about that was, you know, they already did.  

But the thing is, whatever we do, shouldn't we have a big public argument about it? Shouldn't it be-- there was a time when what senators said on the floor-- you, by the way, are kind of a recovery of that because you keep interviewing these senators and playing what they say to you, right?  

HEWITT: Yes.  

ARNN: But there used to be a time when the debates were avidly read by people. And we need to get back to that time because that's an argument about how we're to be governed.  

HEWITT: That is exactly-- that's why we do The Hillsdale Dialogue, America. Dr. Larry Arnn, thank you, my friend. Thanks, all of you, for listening. This is a Beltway Show, but I'm going to be back in California at the beginning of the week, then back here at the end of the week. And so, stay with us, please. Stay with us.  

Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Generalissimo. This is The Hugh Hewitt Show.