What stories topped your priority lists this week? Duane Patterson jumps back into the Week in Review from his vacation in Tennessee to discuss the week’s biggest topics. Why has Joe Biden called up the IRR and deployed them to Europe? And should the US pursue NATO membership for Ukraine? Both of us remain deeply skeptical about that idea, but not at Bob Iger’s tacit admission yesterday that Disney lost its fight in Florida. Christopher Wray’s testimony in the House may have been the most momentous story of the week — right up until we found out that the FBI had surveilled House Republican staffers probing the FBI’s bogus Operation Crossfire Hurricane. We also talk about Sound of Freedom, and more!
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Welcome to our VIP feature for Hot Air as well as a members-only show in the Hughniverse! Duane Patterson and I now are doing a Week in Review show for Friday evenings, exclusive to members in both platforms. Duane has been the Generalissimo behind the Hugh Hewitt Show for more than two decades, and we have partnered on weekly commentary since 2007.
Highlights from today’s show include:
- ” I’m not here to bash Hollywood writers, I’m really not,” Duane says of the Hollywood strike. “But I mean, honest to goodness, perhaps if you’re worried about AI, if you’re worried about the creeping automation that may starve you of the job, perhaps you might spend a little more than 5 minutes writing an episode for Nickelodeon.”
- “This is not a writer’s issue,” I say of Hollywood’s struggle at the box office. “This is a gatekeeping issue, and that’s the reason why the media is freaking out over Sound of Freedom.” That, plus the child-trafficking issue may hit a little too close to home in the media and in Hollywood. Duane and I discuss one scene from The Godfather to point out how far that goes back. Duane brings up Roman Polanski for the same reason.
- Duane cites a particularly hilarious example of climate-hysteria hypocrisy as one of his top stories. The Spanish foreign minister “took a private flight over to this site on Great Britain in a fifteen-, twenty-car motorcade on the way to the thing,” Duane explains, “and they pulled over literally a hundred meters away from the cameras and entry point. And this minister gets out of the car and hops on a bicycle with a couple of her security people, and then they take three bicycles the last hundred meters. And that’s showing the world we’re serious about climate change.”
- I bring up John Kerry’s attempt to deny any similar hypocrisy in Congress yesterday and his claim that he never “personally” owned a private jet. “He said I’ve personally never owned a private jet, which is absolutely not true,” Duane replies, “because the Kerry family owned a Gulfstream IV-P.”
- I bring up Douglas Murray’s great line in the New York Post about this shameless dodge, emphasis mine:
“My wife owned a plane,” he said, as though plucking the memory from the distant past.
And how we all must surely sympathize with him. It could have happened to anyone.
It is easy to forget what you own when you’re married to a Heinz.
You could say Kerry suddenly remembered about his family jet in Heinz-sight.
From there, we delve deeply into Christopher Wray’s dishonesty before Congress as well. There’s much more discussion on these issues and others, so be sure to watch it all and join us in the comments!
