Samuel's Blog

The Sunday Share: Songs found in unusual places: The Hugh Hewitt Show

November 10th, 2024 at 07:27pm

Given Nice Mr. Donald’s victory this week (I’ll analyse my prediction tomorrow now that it looks like the final states have been decided at last) I thought I’d go back to 2016 and something quite perplexing at the time.

Hugh Hewitt for those of you who don’t know (and I wouldn’t blame you at all for not knowing) is possibly the most boring presenter in all of talk radio…actually no I take that back, there’s a bloke who used to fill in for someone who was much more boring but I can’t remember his name. Hugh is actually quite a nice person, it’s just that he puts together a complete snorefest of a show across the Salem Radio Network.

Hugh worked in the Reagan administration and found his way into talk radio at some stage after that. He is a perplexing character in some ways as he seems to personally be a quite conservative person but suffers from the same affliction as many traditional Republican politicians in that he advocates for conservative ideals until he hits any resistance from the other side and then wants to compromise. This is largely what led to Republican voters embracing Trump in 2016 as he advocated for a lot of their positions and didn’t seem to care about backlash.

Anyway, like most traditional Republicans in 2016, Hugh wasn’t much of a fan of Donald Trump. Every day after Trump secured the nomination it seemed that Hugh changed his mind on whether to support him or not. I considered him to be a good barometer on the support Trump could expect from rusted-on Republican voters as they always had the option to just not vote. Eventually Hugh got behind Trump finally and permanently based on Trump’s list of people he would consider appointing to the Supreme Court as Hugh recognised the Supreme Court and the many Federal Court positions Trump would fill would be of great benefit for conservative politicians for decades to come even if the achieved absolutely nothing else in office.

After Trump won the election and prior to him taking office, Hugh started playing a song every single day as a message to Trump. For a very very boring show, it was extremely surprising, not only because Hugh’s enthusiasm for the song was out of step with the general tenor of his show, but because the song isn’t one you’d expect to find anywhere on the AM dial under any circumstances.

Hugh’s advice to Trump from the song was the “drive it [the presidency] like you stole it”. In other words, just go at getting as much done as possible because you only have a very limited amount of time to do it. While, in 2024, given what happened in 2020, we probably don’t want to offer a president-elect advice about treating the presidency as if it was stolen, I expect Hugh’s sentiment is the same today as it was back then, and Trump’s sentiment certainly appears to be that way. It should be noted Hugh was very pleased by Trump’s efforts to get things done in his first terms and how he seemed to get a lot more done than most Republicans do, so Hugh is firmly behind Trump this time around without any hesitation.

Back to the song. It’s a catchy tune and one worth sharing. I was certainly reminded of it this week.

Samuel

Entry Filed under: The Sunday Share

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