WTH is the House GOP Doing on National Security? Hugh Hewitt Explains what the House Freedom Caucus Means for Defense and Ukraine

The race for Speaker of the House underscored the 2022 midterm
narrative: the Republican Party is increasingly divided, and
unable to consolidate power long enough to effect positive
change. Now Speaker Kevin McCarthy was held hostage by a powerful
“Knucklehead Caucus” (our guest’s moniker for the Never
Kevinites) until its leader Matt Gaetz simply “ran out of things
to ask for.” Some of these same dissenters have now been promoted
to top committees in the House, the results of McCarthy’s
Faustian pact to claim the speakership. Who are the Knuckleheads?
Are they all knuckleheads? And how did this isolationist group of
extremist budget hawks group climb atop the GOP pile? Among the
reasons -- lack of strong leadership in the party, a lack of
national security leadership in the White House, an end to
substantive national debate in favor of social media hot takes,
and more. And all of it is worrisome for the trajectory of the
GOP, and America, going forward.


Hugh Hewitt is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host with
the Salem Radio Network. He is the Former Director of the United
States Office of Personnel Management. He has been a
correspondent at Fox, and was the former president of the Richard
Nixon Foundation. He is also a columnist at the Washington Post.


Download the transcript here.