{"id":1383,"date":"2015-09-04T23:14:49","date_gmt":"2015-09-05T03:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1383"},"modified":"2015-09-04T23:14:49","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T03:14:49","slug":"hugh-hewitt-v-donald-trump-a-third-rate-announcers-gotcha-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2015\/09\/hugh-hewitt-v-donald-trump-a-third-rate-announcers-gotcha-questions.html","title":{"rendered":"Hugh Hewitt v. Donald Trump: A “Third Rate Announcer’s” Gotcha’ Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Radio talk show host and moderator of the next GOP\/CNN debate, Hugh Hewitt, is the latest Republican pundit\u2014and he is <\/em>a pundit, not a \u201cjournalist\u201d\u2014to try to trip up his party\u2019s frontrunner, Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

While on Hewitt\u2019s program on Thursday, September 3, the host\u2014who Trump now characterizes as a \u201cthird rate radio announcer\u201d\u2014made the following remarks to his guest:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking for the next commander in chief to know who Hassan Nasrallah is, and Zawahiri, and al-Julani, and al-Baghdadi. Do you know the players without a scorecard yet, Donald Trump?\u201d<\/p>\n

As anyone who has read my expose of Trump\u2019s history of supporting Democratic politicians and their causes knows well, I am not a Trump-phile. But neither do I suffer from the Trump-phobia that has obviously seized his detractors, particularly his neoconservative Republican nemeses among politicians and the media punditry class alike.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this explains why I can differentiate the reality of what transpired here from the spin that Hewitt and his defenders from The New York Times <\/em>to Hewitt\u2019s employer, Salem Communications, are laboring feverishly to put on this episode.<\/p>\n

To be blunt: Trump is right and Hewitt is wrong: The latter did indeed blast the former with \u201cgotcha\u2019 questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

First, we must be truthful: Hewitt is as \u201cestablishmentarian,\u201d as conventional, a Republican as John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, the Bushes, etc.<\/p>\n

Hewitt has been an enthusiastic, indeed, an ecstatic, cheerleader for George W. Bush\u2019s wars <\/em>to rid the world of \u201cIslamists\u201d by \u201cdemocratizing\u201d the Middle East\u2014regardless of the incalculable costs in treasure and blood that such military-led crusades continue to exact for tens and tens of thousands of human beings, both here and abroad.<\/p>\n

The \u201cwar on Terror\u201d\u2014the war on an abstraction\u2014can only be a war without end. War is the crisis par excellence, and since a war on an abstraction promises to be a war in perpetuity, this <\/em>\u201cwar\u201d is a dream come true for proponents of Gargantuan Government everywhere.<\/p>\n

The Iraq war proved to be a disaster of catastrophic proportions. Yet Hewitt has failed to express any regret, not just for having supported it, but for supporting it as zealously as he has.<\/p>\n

So, it stands to reason that Hewitt, being the John McCain of media talking heads, aches just as badly for Trump\u2019s downfall as McCain himself.<\/p>\n

Second, to those who (incredulously) object that this first point is just speculation on my part, let\u2019s rewind just a couple of months to what Hewitt himself was saying<\/a> before Trump, astonishingly, began providing him with remarkably generous supplies of access.<\/p>\n

While on Meet the Press, <\/em>Hewitt was direct. When asked whether he thought that Trump had \u201cthe temperament\u201d to be president, Hewitt replied: \u201cNo, no he doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he initially blamed both the moderators of the Fox\/GOP debate and the candidates for having neglected discussion of important issues, Hewitt immediately proceeded to single out Trump<\/em> for having \u201cstepped on a lot of important stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

When on Sean Hannity\u2019s television show, Sean asked Hewitt: \u201cHugh, as I know, you\u2019ve been a bit of a critic of Donald Trump.\u201d Without hesitation, Hewitt conceded the point: \u201cYeah.\u201d He then immediately followed up by saying that of all the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, both of the present and of yesteryear, Trump is \u201cthe only one about whom it is likely a Broadway musical will be made.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, Hewitt declared, \u201cis vastly entertaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, his tremendous support among Republican voters, Hewitt assured Hannity and his viewers, \u201cwon\u2019t last.\u201d<\/p>\n

On another appearance of Meet the Press, <\/em>Hewitt made the same \u201cprediction\u201d to Chuck Todd. When the host asked him if he wasn\u2019t just \u201cwishing\u201d Trump\u2019s vast support \u201caway,\u201d Hewitt, unsurprisingly, insisted that he was not.<\/p>\n

Of course, anyone who\u2019s in the least familiar with the media generally, and media coverage of politics specifically, knows all too well that when partisans in the media feign objectivity by either \u201cdescribing\u201d or \u201cpredicting\u201d events, they are doing their best to determine the outcomes that they desire.<\/p>\n

Hewitt, in other words, was as uninterested in expediting Trump\u2019s implosion by way of his remarks as Charles Krauthammer was when he <\/em>told audiences moments after the first Republican debate that Trump\u2019s performance that evening spelled his imminent demise.<\/p>\n

Hewitt is no different from any other neoconservative Republican in wanting Trump around just long enough to boost the ratings of their television and radio programs. His question was indeed a \u201cgotcha\u201d question.<\/p>\n

Third, though Hewitt is adamant that he wasn\u2019t trying to trap Trump, it certainly says something that figures as politically, professionally, and ideologically disparate as Rand Paul and CNN\u2019s Senior Political Analyst, David Gergen, certainly believed he was.<\/p>\n

Even more telling, Rand Paul has by now established that he is nothing if not an erstwhile critic of Trump. Yet while speaking with Sirius XM, Paul asserted: \u201cI also do think that running through a list of every different Arabic name and asking somebody to respond to them is maybe a little bit of a game of \u2018gotcha.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Candidates should certainly know the difference between Hamas and Hezbolla, Shiites and Sunnis, etc. But as for throwing out names of specific Arabic terrorist figures\u2014not heads of state, mind you, but more obscure names of ever changing terrorist organizations\u2014Paul concluded that \u201csome interviewers like to play this game.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Gergen told Anderson Cooper<\/a>: \u201c\u2026I must say, traditionally\u2026that when reporters have asked candidates, you know, who\u2019s the head of this African government or that African government, what\u2019s the difference between Tajikistan and Pakistan\u2026those are regarded as \u2018gotcha\u2019 questions.\u201d This is \u201can old trick,\u201d Gergen said, \u201cand those are \u2018gotcha\u2019 questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gergen added that Hewitt\u2019s \u201croll call\u2026of terrorist leaders in the Middle East\u201d is not \u201cthe standard.\u201d Most \u201cforeign policy experts\u201d probably \u201cdon\u2019t know all those names.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s inability to speak to Hewitt\u2019s \u201croll call\u201d of Middle Eastern terrorists did not, and will not, diminish the Republican frontrunner in the least.<\/p>\n

However, like Megyn Kelly, another GOP hired gun who attempted to undermine Trump with a tabloid-esque question at the debate at which she was supposed to be a moderator but wound up shooting herself in the foot, Hewitt does threaten to diminish himself by way of such transparently dirty tactics.<\/p>\n

Trump is a rock star now, it\u2019s a presidential election cycle, and because she was determined to get personal with him, Megyn Kelly, Fox\u2019s \u201cIt Kid,\u201d is now out in the cold, indefinitely denied passage on the Trump train.<\/p>\n

Hewitt may very well find himself there as well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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