Hugh Hewitt: Who Really Leads the Democratic Party

Social media influencer Hasan Piker is now the face of the Democratic party. Piker wears his Mao jacket and hoses his Twitch audience down with absurd political takes. Piker uses social media to monetize the worst impulses of the extremes in American politics. In the course of doing so, he personally carried the most radical major-party candidate in memory — Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed—to that party’s nomination for the United States Senate. Piker has now gone so “supernova radical” that some Democratic leaders have tried to rebuke him without even naming him—including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. It’s not going to work. Piker—and the socialist fever he represents—is repelling the moderate Americans who love the country especially in the Democratic party. It should not be difficult to say: voters ought to reject Hasan Piker, Abdul-El Sayed, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and I could go on—by name. They also ought to be rejected at the ballot box.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Gloria Steinem died last week, she was mourned across popular culture as a feminist icon.  But her legacy was a mixed one. Many feminist reforms of the civil rights era were necessary and right — including laws against sex and pregnancy discrimination.  But Steinem’s brand of feminism also had an anti-male streak that still poisons relations between the sexes today. She popularized the line: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Steinem promoted the idea that women find their greatest fulfillment through work outside the home—and Generations of women and children have paid the price. She also advocated for the abortion on demand culture that has shaped the course of our nation. There’s no question: Gloria Steinem lived an influential life. But on her impact? The jury—like our country—is split.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The morning of September 11, 2001 was stunningly beautiful. It was a promising day as it started, and yet it would end as a day of horror that would be indelibly etched into the American psyche. Those beautiful skies carried mass murder and terror. Through those skies flew airliners turned into massive bombs, carrying human passengers who were exploded into dust.  The sight of the airliners flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, smoke rising from the Pentagon, and then the towers burning and twisting and falling—all of it shown on television screens over and over again. Americans were shocked and declared that the world would never look the same again. The 25th anniversary of 9/11 demands serious moral reflection. Sadly, the anniversary also underlines massive questions about America’s role in the world, about the war on terror, and about the stark moral realities of our times. We know this, we need to pray. May God bless, guide, and protect the United States of America.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

25 years ago this week, radical Islamists slaughtered nearly 3000 people in New York, Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The deaths took place in Shanksville when a few dozen Americans stood up to fight the Islamist terrorists and thwarted their plans to drive Flight 93 into either the White House or Capitol Hill. Let's roll became a mantra to fight back against extremists determined to destroy America and Western values of freedom and self-governance. The question we face now is, when did we stop rolling? This somber anniversary arrives as radicals make serious inroads into American politics. In New Jersey, just across from ground zero, a Democrat nominee with previous ties to Al-Qaeda and the Sheik behind the first World Trade Center bombing will likely win a seat in Congress. In Michigan, a Democrat spent the weekend at a conference held by an unindicted co-conspirator in a money laundering scheme that benefited Hamas. Ronald Reagan warned that freedom is only one generation away from extinction. Let's roll.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

September 11 is not a normal day on the calendar. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by Islamist terrorists. Yet 25 years later, retired Port Authority police officers are asking Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stay away from the commemoration at Ground Zero. Thirty-seven Port Authority officers died that morning. Now their surviving brothers are pleading: “Please allow us to remember in peace.” Hochul angered the 9/11 community by illuminating One World Trade Center for Muslim American Heritage Month. Mamdani faces a petition opposing his attendance signed by more than 96,000 people—including grieving families. Both intend to attend anyway. Ground Zero—especially on the 25th anniversary of that dark day—does not belong to politicians. It belongs to the dead and their families, the cops and firefighters who walked into hell while everyone else ran away. They do not owe elected officials a backdrop or a lesson in tolerance. One day. One place. No politics. They’ve earned that. Let them have it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Americans who remember that day also remember its aftermath. Along with the shock, horror, suffering and death, there was resolve: We would never forget what happened. And we would never let it happen again. Thankfully, nothing on that scale has happened since. But too many Americans seem less alert to the threat of radical Islamism. A for-profit sharia finance industry operates across America. A North Texas school was established and staffed by relatives of convicted Hamas operatives. And New York’s current mayor has been photographed with an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. For those of us who remember the terror of 9/11, these developments are almost unbelievable. And they’re frightening. Because we know what happens when people forget the past. They risk repeating it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Some people did something,” one prominent Islamist member of Congress put it.  An Islamist candidate for US Senate wrote: those we killed in our response to 9/11 were equally to be mourned as victims just as the Americans killed on 9/11 were. He has also campaigned with a popular broadcaster who claimed the US deserved 9/11.  The Islamist Mayor of New York has posted on X there is no moral difference between those who were killed on 9/11 and those we killed in response. This is how we lose the distinction between good and evil which, many thought, would never be confused again after 9/11. Elie Wiesel wrote, “history is to civilization what memory is to individuals.”  For those of us who remember 9/11 accurately, we can never forget it, nor the fact that vast numbers of people with a medieval ideology still want us dead.  Those engaging in moral equivalence about it are the handmaidens of hate. If ignored, they will be the authors of our destruction—which, Abraham Lincoln reminded us, can only come from within.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

September 11 is not a normal day on the calendar. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by Islamist terrorists. Yet 25 years later, retired Port Authority police officers are asking Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stay away from the commemoration at Ground Zero. Thirty-seven Port Authority officers died that morning. Now their surviving brothers are pleading: “Please allow us to remember in peace.” Hochul angered the 9/11 community by illuminating One World Trade Center for Muslim American Heritage Month. Mamdani faces a petition opposing his attendance signed by more than 96,000 people—including grieving families. Both intend to attend anyway. Ground Zero—especially on the 25th anniversary of that dark day—does not belong to politicians. It belongs to the dead and their families, the cops and firefighters who walked into hell while everyone else ran away. They do not owe elected officials a backdrop or a lesson in tolerance. One day. One place. No politics. They’ve earned that. Let them have it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now, you probably grew up knowing that socialism doesn't work. It sees its control and most importantly seeks to replace God with government. But this ideology is now moving to the very center of our nation's political life. I was born under socialist Islamist regime. I remember when my father's company was taken over by the government. I couldn't wait to turn 18 and escape and find freedom in the West. As these ideologies gain an even stronger foothold in America, we must respond with calm courage and biblical conviction. Silence in the face of evil is not faithfulness.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is among the leftist Democrats who seems to have learned nothing and forgotten everything. Last week, Hochul visited the Islamic Cultural Center School of New York — whose imam blamed Jews for destroying the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks. What’s more, Hochul appeared wearing a hijab. Perhaps she thought she was just respecting a religious tradition but she’s dangerously misguided. The hijab is a symbol of female submission, reflecting the view that women’s bodies are sinful and must be covered lest men be tempted. Our Constitution protects religious liberty, so Muslim women are free to wear hijabs. But it’s ironic and outrageous that left-wing women — who accuse conservatives of plotting a real-life “Handmaid’s Tale” — embrace a symbol of the very female oppression they claim to fear.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.