Scott Jennings, CNN’s Unlikely MAGA Warrior, Talks Trump and the Media

Scott Jennings has built an unlikely perch in the modern media ecosystem: the lifelong Republican and convert to Trumpism has emerged as a pervasive presence on CNN, often playing the contrarian on a network watched by viewers primed to disagree with him. “Being at CNN as somebody with a contrarian point of view,” he says on the latest episode of Press Club, “is exhilarating.”

On CNN, Jennings goes viral most frequently thanks to his appearances on CNN NewsNight , the network’s 10 p.m. program hosted by Abby Phillip. Jennings calls NewsNight “a true debating show” and the brainchild of CNN CEO Mark Thompson. His role on the sometimes chaotic program, he says, is to give the network’s audience “a glimpse into a line of thinking they might not otherwise get.”

That usually means delivering impassioned defenses of President Donald Trump, something Jennings admits he didn’t expect to be doing when the former president first entered politics. He’s gone back and forth a few times on the sitting president, attacking him in harsh personal terms through the years, only to come back around whenever Trump had ascended to power. “Donald Trump violated his oath of office today. He incited the insurrection. He clearly did not learn any lessons. This is an absolute disgrace,” Jennings said on CNN after Jan. 6. At the time, he called the rioters, whom Trump eventually pardoned, which Jennings eventually defended on CNN, “domestic terrorists” who ought to be “treated like other terrorist uprisings with the full force and fury of the U.S. government.”

By way of explaining his evolution, Jennings tells Mediaite editor Aidan McLaughlin that in 2016, he “didn’t really know” Trump, and by 2020, after the calamitous end to his first term and the riot at the U.S. Capitol, he worried Trump “wouldn’t be able to win” in 2024.

That changed when Trump stormed back to the Republican nomination and by the end of the primary, Jennings understood where his party was: Republicans, he says, “wanted vindication for what they saw were a series of attacks on Trump — Russiagate, impeachments, investigations, lawfare. And the only way to get that vindication was to renominate Trump and have him kick their ass, and that’s what he did.”

Jennings is now one of Trump’s most prominent advocates in mainstream media. “I feel politically closer to him than I’ve ever felt in the last 10 years,” he says, pointing to conservative policies on judges, tax cuts, and regulation. He rejects the idea that his evolution is mere opportunism: “If Donald Trump gets me to where I want to be 98% of the time, that’s about 98% more than any Democrat is going to get me.”

That alignment has made Jennings a lightning rod on CNN — where his unwavering support for Israel amid its brutal war in Gaza is a particularly sensitive subject on air. When pressed, Jennings is dismissive of the horrors Israel has admitted to, including last month’s bombing of a hospital in Gaza that killed 20 people, including medics and five journalists. He also disputes — despite widespread evidence provided by aid groups involved in the effort, as well as WFP chief Cindy McCain — that Israel is responsible for blocking humanitarian aid and food from entering Gaza.

“Hamas started the war,” he says. “Hamas took the hostages. Hamas did the murdering, the raping, and the kidnapping. And we seem to gloss over that in most of this coverage.”

If there’s a throughline in Jennings’s media persona, it’s a refusal to soften his commentary for the room he’s in. That pugilistic posture extends to January 6, even as he says his view of that day and Trump’s role inciting it has not changed.

Instead, he argues the politics of 2024 were forward-looking, and that he doesn’t consider a politician’s past actions relevant to their qualifications for future office. “I’m just not willing to live in the past on it when we’re fighting for the future. I think what is qualifying for a president is determined by the voters,” he says. “The American people had a chance to digest this… and then they made a decision.”

Beyond cable news, Jennings recently launched The Scott Jennings Show, a nationally syndicated radio program aired by Salem in the timeslot before Rush Limbaugh’s iconic old show. He’s out with a book in November, A Revolution of Common Sense: How Donald Trump Stormed Washington and Fought for Western Civilization.

You can subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Aidan McLaughlin: Most people know you from CNN, but you wear a few hats. What are you up to right now?

Scott Jennings: Well, I do spend a lot of time on CNN. I just re-signed at the beginning of the year a contract with them, so I’ll be there for the next few years. And on top of that, this year I decided to write a book. It’s the first time I’ve tried to do it. It comes out in November, and on top of that, about seven weeks ago, I launched a nationally syndicated radio show on Salem Radio called The Scott Jennings Show, and it comes on 2-3 Eastern every day. I think we’re on 175 radio stations now. My program director tells me we’re the fastest-growing show in syndicated radio, so I’m doing a lot. And I do write occasionally. You’ll see a column pop up for me in the Daily Mail or a few other outlets.

You’ve been at CNN for a long time.

Yes. I originally started in June of 2017.

Your background is in politics. Run us through that.

Absolutely. I graduated from the University of Louisville in 2000. And actually, I was in the media then. I was a reporter and a news anchor for WHAS Radio in Louisville, Kentucky. I thought I was going to be in the radio journalism business. But then I was recruited to work for then-Texas Governor George W. Bush and wound up on the Bush campaign in 2000 and set forth on a life in political operations. So I worked for him twice. I worked for a lot of other campaigns along the way. I worked in the White House for President Bush. I moved back to Kentucky at the end of that administration. And from there, I did more campaigns. I started my consulting firm, eventually called Run Switch Public Relations, and built a sort of PR, public affairs, and political consulting career out of that. But it was in 2017 when I got the opportunity with CNN, and I started to shift my time back towards where I knew I wanted to go, which was the media. I still say this: one of the best jobs I ever had was the radio in Louisville when I was in college. I spent more time at the radio station than I did in the classroom. And so, to be back in the media now, to be on the radio, and really to be with CNN, a brand that I grew up watching and revere, it’s really an honor and it’s a blessing.

I think one of the hard things about doing radio — I’m always somewhat impressed by people like Sean Hannity who can just talk for three hours straight, which is not easy. Was there a learning curve for you when you started this Salem show?

So my first jobs in radio — actually, when I was a teenager, I was a board op, as they say, and a disc jockey for a couple of small stations in West Kentucky. And then I went to Louisville and was a news guy. I did moonlight a little bit on the production side. And so some of what I did was every single day, listen to and record and play back Paul Harvey news and commentary, and do the board for Rush Limbaugh. So my talk radio influences were Paul Harvey and Rush Limbaugh. That’s how I hear it when I think about radio. That’s what I hear in my head, and that’s what I’m trying to do every day. I think you’re exactly right about three hours of radio. I’m doing one hour, and it’s a lot of work. One hour of terrestrial radio is about 33 or 34 minutes of content. But I put a lot of work into it every day and try to bring a good balance of news, comment, and usually a big interview. As we record this today, I just finished with Mitch McConnell on the air. I’ve had lots of people on the air already — members of Congress, members of the Senate. I have a huge interview coming up next week that I’ll reveal sometime. I’m working really hard to do what I think a radio show should sound like, which is conversations that you want to hear and news and commentary that you may not hear anywhere else.

We’re in a media ecosystem now that is so incredibly siloed, where everyone is very happy to retreat to an audience that loves them. And it’s become a very lucrative gig to preach to a choir. At CNN you’re often talking to an audience in which probably the majority of viewers don’t agree with your views. Do you see that as valuable?

Absolutely. It’s one of the most valuable and interesting parts of the job, being at CNN as somebody with a contrarian point of view. It is exhilarating, actually. This debating show that we do at 10 o’clock, I think it’s the only show like it on television. It’s a true debating show, and even though conservatives often feel a little outnumbered out there, it’s still, I think, giving our viewers a glimpse into a line of thinking that they might not otherwise get on any other show or on any other network. And so, to be entrusted with that on several nights a week is a pretty special thing. We’ve been doing that format for a little over a year now, and I think 80% of the time we get the cast right, 75% of the time we get the issues right, and when those things are in alignment, I think it’s kind of magical. And when they put it on the air, I think they were just going to do it through the election, and then they decided to extend it. I think Mark Thompson actually deserves a huge amount of credit for trying something here, which is saying, “Hey, the other half of the country would like to hear a point of view as well,” and that’s what we’re doing.

David Axelrod said once that your role at CNN is that you present a view that half the country holds and that is not often reflected in the media outside of, say, Fox News. Is that what you see your role as being?

Yes, I think that’s part of it. I am a conservative and am obviously known as a Republican. So I’m trying to give you an accurate reflection about how conservatives and Republicans are absorbing the news on a daily basis. I’m also one of the few pundits, I think, who actually lives in middle America. I still live in Kentucky. I travel back and forth. And so I’m always trying to give people a reflection about how the news is being absorbed in flyover country, as opposed to in D.C. or in New York City. I think that’s a valuable perspective as well. But look, my view is half or maybe more than half the country doesn’t often see people in media that they think reflect their views, reflect their values, or even can understand their lives on a day-to-day basis. And I think my appearances there are trying to correct for that and appeal to that.

You get into pretty heated debates with your co-panelists on air. What are relationships like when the cameras stop rolling?

I think it depends on the topic. Some topics lend themselves to off-air tension more than others. Certainly, the Israel-Gaza-Hamas situation is extraordinarily tense. The people who come on and argue for the Hamas side tend to be extremely emotional about it. But for the most part, I think the CNN contributors, the community that we have inside of CNN, we’re all very collegial. I’m friends with many of them. You mentioned Ax. I think my best friends at the network are Axelrod, Van Jones — we spend a lot of time together and talk a lot. Ashley Allison, who’s a Democratic operative but from Ohio, we’re very close. I love Harry. This little CNN community is actually one of the best parts of the job. I don’t agree often with what they say, but I respect them. I listen to what they have to say. I think they have the kind of experience that’s informative, and so when they’re part of the panel, I really do enjoy the debates because I think what they have to say is valuable. Again, we can debate it out, but these are the kinds of people that I really respect, and so being part of that community is an honor to be there.

Sometimes those tensions spill out into public. A few years ago, CNN anchor Jim Sciutto called you out on X. Did that criticism bother you and did you feel supported by the network?

No, it doesn’t bother me. Look, I’m a big boy and I’ve been around a long time, and I have thick skin. And that’s part of, I think, what it means to be on the debating show like we are. You’re gonna have hot takes and strong opinions, especially in the context of a presidential election or an administration like President Trump’s. And you just have to accept there are gonna be people who strongly disagree with you and may not be able to contain their own emotions about it. So I don’t really think much of it. My job is to go — I am an opinion contributor. I’m there to tell you what I think is true, and I do approach this job with the heart of a journalist. I don’t go on TV and say things that I believe are unsupported. I don’t go on television and say things that I’ve just conjured up in my mind. I don’t use vague anecdotes that just happen to perfectly fit the narrative that I would prefer for the day, although a lot of people do that. I come on television and try to take what I know to be true, take the facts, and then use those to underpin a very informed conservative opinion. I understand there’ll be people who don’t agree with that opinion, and they’re welcome to theirs as well, but it’s not going to deter me from doing the job the best way I know how to do it.

Trump shocked a lot of Americans when he came back from the political dead after he left office in 2020 and won the popular vote.

Shocked me.

What do you think the press missed about his appeal?

So during the campaign, I began to really understand how Republicans were processing his candidacy. And I said this on the air many times. And I think this is why he had very little trouble in the primary. Republicans wanted vindication for what they saw were a series of attacks on Trump, whether it was Russiagate or whether it was the impeachments, whether it was how they viewed things that happened during the 2020 election, investigations or lawfare. You go down the list of the things that happened to Trump, and they wanted vindication for all of it. And the only way to get that vindication was to renominate Trump and have him kick their ass — and that’s what he did. He got the nomination, and then he kicked their ass and did it in a convincing way, and won the national popular vote and won a not particularly close win in the electoral college. And so, that vindication for everything that they think happened to Trump that was unfair, not just politically but administratively. Most Republicans think that his first term was largely chewed up by unfounded investigations and allegations over Russia. Despite that, he did get the court done. He did get tax cuts done. But he was tied up and weighed down by all of this Russia stuff, and Republicans have hated it since it happened, and they wanted vindication for it, and I think they got it in November.

Like many Trump supporters in the media you were initially not just skeptical, but highly critical of him as a politician and as a person. How do you explain the evolution you had from a conservative who was critical of Trump and rejected a lot of what he stood for to one of his most prominent champions in media?

Yeah. Well, like many Republicans, I didn’t really know him. I’d heard of him. I didn’t know him as a Republican, and I didn’t know him as a conservative back in 2016. I was certainly happy to vote for him, and I voted for him three times and did so proudly and unapologetically. He has occasionally done things that I didn’t agree with. I’ve said that on the air. He often does things that I strongly agree with, and I’ve said that on the air as well. Look, I didn’t know him. He then became the president, changed the Supreme Court, and cut taxes. So I was very, very fond of the way he operated from just a Republican conservative perspective. He did the things that I would think any Republican president would want to do. And then when 2024 came around and he was running for the nomination again, I was worried that he wouldn’t be able to win because he didn’t win in 2020. And it was worrisome to me. I didn’t quite understand it until the campaign was really joined and I started to sense, okay, I can see how the Republicans are lining up behind him, how they want this vindication for what happened to him, and really having him come back and defeat Biden and then Harris after them winning in 2020. It became very clear to me how the battle lines were being drawn as we were getting ready to do our 2024 coverage. I think today, I would just tell you, I feel politically closer to him than I’ve ever felt in the last 10 years. I’m a strong supporter of his. I believe in what he’s doing. I think what he is doing is bigger than just handling the day-to-day issues. I truly believe we’re in a fight for the future of Western civilization. And I think there are two parties right now, and one is standing up for it and one isn’t. And I think he leads the one that is. And so I think he deserves a huge amount of credit for that. I think his political opposition on most days has gone plum crazy, and I don’t even recognize these Democrats. I grew up in a Democratic family. I don’t think my grandfather, if he were still here, would recognize this party.

The way I see it, there are sort of two paths for conservatives in the Trump era. There are those who took the Never Trump route, which depending on your view of it meant sticking by their principles or chasing MSNBC contributor gigs. Then there are those that came around to Trump. People like yourself, like JD Vance, who called Trump America’s Hitler. The cynical view is that that pivot was not the consequence of a realization of the beauties and the possibilities of MAGA, but political expediency. It was very good for your careers. You’re a big media star now. JD Vance is the vice president. What do you say to people who don’t buy that it was a genuine conversion?

Well, I’ve been a Republican my entire life. I’ve voted Republican in every election I’ve ever voted in since 1996. So it’s not much of a conversion to keep voting the way that you’ve always been voting. I’ve never felt like anything other than a Republican. And I think most of what Donald Trump does is Republican stuff, whether it has to do with judicial nominations or tax cuts or regulatory reform or the way he views energy policy. This is stuff that’s recognizable to virtually any Republican. And so, I don’t really feel like I had to do much converting to continue to vote for the party that I think is best to lead the country. And I also sort of reject the idea that just because you might have a disagreement or a dissatisfaction with a politician on one day, that that means you can’t strongly support them on the next day. Is there a politician alive that anybody supports 100% of the time, all the time? It’s pretty rare, I think. And so, yeah, has he done things in the past or said things that maybe I didn’t like, or was dissatisfied with, or would have had a strategic quibble with? Sure. That’s also true of Mitch McConnell, whom I’ve known since I was 16. It was true of George W. Bush, whom I served in the White House. It was true of Mitt Romney, whom I worked for in 2012. None of these people are perfect. And none of them, I would think, if you’re a regular person, you would consider yourself to be in alignment with 100% of the time. But I’ll tell you this: if Donald Trump gets me to where I want to be 98% of the time, that’s about 98% more than any Democrat is going to get me. And in the 2024 election, it wasn’t even close for me or for millions of other Republicans. When you’re looking at a ballot and it says Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, give me a break. And the idea that in order to be a principled conservative, you had to go vote for Kamala Harris, which I heard argued on our airwaves time and again, that did not ring true with any Republican outside of just a handful of people in Washington, D.C. You want to talk about political expedience? The people — these Never Trumpers who went all in to try to argue that voting for Harris was somehow the conservative view — those are the people who I think were acting out of political expedience and for their own careers. They were looking for a way to make money, and a lot of them did. They’ve done very well in consulting. They haven’t changed many votes, but they certainly bought a lot of beach houses.

There are things Trump has done that people find disqualifying. After January 6, you said on CNN: “Donald Trump violated his oath of office today. He incited the insurrection. He clearly did not learn any lessons. This is an absolute disgrace.” You called the rioters “domestic terrorists” and said they ought to be “treated like other terrorist uprisings with the full force and fury of the U.S. government.” Trump then comes back to power and pardons those rioters. Given what you said then about those events at the time, how are they not disqualifying then four years later?

Well, I didn’t like what happened that day. I still don’t like what happened that day, today. I’ve never changed my view of that.

Your view of that day has not changed?

No, it was terrible. I was like everybody else. I was sitting in Louisville. I flipped on the television and saw what was happening. It doesn’t make me feel good today, and I haven’t really changed my view about that. Now, regarding the people who were there, I do think the people who committed violent acts are different than some of the people who got rolled up in it who didn’t and were sort of on the periphery of it. And I do think there’s a distinction to be made between people who committed violence and those who were milling around the outside of it. Over time, all you can do is — and I wrote an op-ed about this in the LA Times and have talked about it on television — I think all you can do is react to the circumstances that you’re presented with in a moment, whether that moment is on that day, January 6th, or whether that moment is now when I have to make a decision about the 2024 election. And there is not a single shred of doubt in my mind that Donald Trump was going to be better to lead this country than Kamala Harris, January 6th or not. I’m just not willing to live in the past on it when we’re fighting for the future. I think votes are prospective. You’re voting for the person that you think would get you closest to where you think the country should go. That was a bad day. I do not like what happened that day. But for me, when he came back and my party spoke and nominated him, and the Democrats spoke and nominated her, it was not a close call for me. That doesn’t mean I’ve rearranged my thoughts about that particular day, but I think voting is about the future, and in this case, I just think the future is better served by having a leader of a political party that actually believes in America versus a leader of a political party that seems to have real doubts about what an American future would look like.

That day — five dead, four cops dying by suicide in the months that followed, 150 cops wounded, the Capitol destroyed. You don’t see that as disqualifying for a president to have caused that?

I think what is disqualifying for a president is determined by the voters. And Donald Trump lived through that day. He left office. He then spent four years, and part of that was coming back. The American people had a chance to digest this. They had a chance to litigate it in their minds politically. And then they made a decision.

Does that mean anyone elected is qualified to be president?

No. I think qualifications for office fall into two buckets: A, are you technically qualified, and he clearly is; and B, what do the American people decide are your qualifications? And look, I’m hardly the only Republican who had reservations about what happened that day and then looked at the situation in 2024 and said, “Absolutely, I am happily gonna go vote for Donald Trump.” That’s what most of my party decided. The vast majority of my party decided that. And that’s what the majority of popular voters decided in this country, because I think most people don’t live in the past. I’m not going to judge him, or really anybody else, in their worst moment or in a moment that I disagreed with, when so much is at stake in the future. And so, I know that is sort of the popular view you’re articulating of the Never Trump crowd — because this happened, he cannot exist in the future. Every decision he makes must be invalidated. We must oppose everything he wants to do. I think that’s frankly silly. It’s happening today on crime. I’ve had a number of debates on CNN where I’ve heard someone say, “Well, because January 6th happened, he can’t be allowed to make decisions to crack down on crime in Washington, D.C.,” which is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Well, the argument, I assume, would be that it’s incorrect to say that Trump cares about police because he just pardoned a bunch of rioters who beat the crap out of police.

No, what I’ve heard them argue is that because they disapprove of what he did on January 6th or the pardons or what have you, then therefore his decisions about cracking down on crime in D.C. or any other city must therefore be viewed as illegitimate. And I don’t think most citizens see it that way. Most people just want to go outside and feel safe. And I don’t think they’re litigating it in their minds that way. I don’t understand that argument — because X happened in the past, we can no longer allow this person to make decisions in the future, despite the fact that he is the legitimately elected president. And here is what I think underpins their argument: they view him as illegitimate. Many of them viewed him as illegitimate in 2016. There are Democrats who still believe — most Democrats believe — the election was stolen in 2016. Most Never Trump people believe he has never been a legitimately elected president. I strongly disagree. I think he was legitimately elected in ’16. I think he was legitimately elected in ’24. And therefore, the decisions that he makes are legitimate on their face because I don’t think he ever stole an election, and I think he won fair and square.

You noted that he didn’t win in 2020. I’m guessing you don’t believe his claims that he did win in 2020?

Well, all I can do is react to what happened in 2020. There were two people on the ballot. One appeared to get more votes — Joe Biden — and then he served four years in the White House.

Typically how it works.

Yeah, and so —

We had a million investigations into this, a bunch of Trump-appointed judges tossed these attempts to challenge the 2020 election. Trump hired two firms to try and prove that the election was stolen. They both concluded that it wasn’t. Why do you think he keeps claiming, even though we all know it’s not true, that the 2020 election was stolen?

There are a lot of Republicans who believe that the rules were changed in 2020 that advantaged the Democrats.

That’s politics.

At its core —

Does not make a stolen election.

Well, there is a belief that rules were changed and changed outside of the normal bounds of how you would change election rules, that mail-in ballots were instituted in places that extended — there’s a lot of belief that that effectively tilted the playing field towards the Democrats.

But that’s not what he’s claiming. He’s claiming that he won more votes and that there was so much fraud that he actually won the election. That it was stolen from him.

I know, I’ve heard that, and I’ve heard people around him say that, and my advice would be whatever documentation and evidence you have of that should be turned over to the proper authorities.

You’ve been a staunch defender of Israel on the air at CNN. What did you make of the IDF’s bombing last week of the Nasser Hospital? It killed 20 people, including paramedics and five journalists, and sparked intense international outcry — so much so that Benjamin Netanyahu issued an apology. We now know from reporting that Israeli troops fired a tank shell at the hospital. Then, after journalists and paramedics ran in, fifteen minutes later, they fired another tank shell. It’s what we would traditionally call a “double-tap strike” — the kind of horrifying thing Assad used to do in Syria. Did that disturb you at all, as someone who has defended Israel throughout this war?

Look, I’m disturbed by all of this because I think from October 7th forward, so many tragic things have happened to so many people. It’s hard not to be disturbed by the entire situation. I think it’s a war, and I think tragic mishaps do happen. I don’t think you can avoid it. I think that it was good that the prime minister acknowledged that. At the same time, again, it’s a war. And I feel like Israel is often held to a much different standard than Hamas. We don’t seem to care about the fact that they play by no rules at all. We hold Israel to the standards of polite warfare, or whatever the rules of war are that civilized nations would follow. We hold their enemies to no standards. They’re still holding 50 hostages. Maybe 20 of them are alive — maybe, hopefully. I don’t think they have any intention of ever releasing them, truthfully. I think the propaganda campaign that’s gone on against Israel is atrocious. I think what we’ve heard about in the West is drastically distorted. I think what The Free Press has reported about the photographs that have come out should be required reading in every newsroom.

Let me ask about the photographs, because I heard you say on CNN that the starvation in Gaza was propaganda and that it was a hoax.

That photo was — the night we debated that, we were debating the photo that appeared in The New York Times and a lot of other Western media that The New York Times itself had to then admit was not what they made it out to seem. And then later, Olivia Reingold at The Free Press analyzed the 12 photos that everyone has seen and found that in every case, all of those kids had some other pre-existing health condition.

All the children that are in The Free Press article and The New York Times article, all of them are suffering from starvation. All of them were severely malnourished. What does it matter that they’re also suffering from other conditions if they’re also starving? One of the kids in The Free Press article had half their head blown off by an IDF bomb.

I think a picture has been painted here of Israel deliberately attempting to create starvation among children. I think that is not a correct perception.

There is starvation in Gaza, and Israel, as we know, is blocking food from getting into the strip.

I disagree with you. I think massive amounts of food have — and are — continuing to be delivered on a daily basis.

All the aid groups —

And I think Israel is helping facilitate it.

All the aid groups that are trying to deliver food into Gaza — Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, etc. — say that Israel is blocking aid.

I noticed you didn’t mention the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is delivering millions upon millions of pounds of food. And they’ll tell you that Israel is not only helping facilitate it, but they’re probably doing more than anyone to get food to the Palestinian people. I’ve personally interviewed the head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. I have spoken to them at length. I have talked to people who are in Israel. I’ve been to Israel since all this has been going on.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has set up three sites to distribute aid, which have basically been turned into killing fields. Gazans have the choice of either starving or trying to get aid and potentially being shot at and killed. The U.N., which previously organized aid distribution, operated hundreds of sites.

My view is that the United Nations has failed massively, and they’re being made to look bad by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is actually doing the job that you would expect the United Nations to do. I think the United Nations has always had an anti-Israel bent to it. And I think in this particular case, that’s the narrative they want out there. This situation, to me, is — and look, you and I are probably going to agree to disagree about this — but I don’t believe the picture that’s been painted of how Israel is conducting itself is fully accurate, based on what we’re seeing in the Western media. I don’t believe it. I’m not gonna believe it tomorrow. I don’t believe it today. And so, I think Israel’s getting attacked by people who have traditionally had an anti-Israel stance to begin with. And I also think that it’s a war. They’re at war with Hamas. Hamas started the war. Hamas took the hostages. Hamas did the murdering, the raping, and the kidnapping. And we seem to gloss over that in most of this coverage. I don’t understand why.

Why do you think so many of the hostage families are calling for a ceasefire and for the war to end?

Well, of course, they want a ceasefire. Of course, they want the war to end. And my position on it is, if Hamas wanted the war to end, they could release the hostages today, and the war would end.

But these families are calling on the Netanyahu government to broker a ceasefire so that they can get the hostages released, right? So they clearly don’t see the war as helping to release the hostages.

Well, I talked to a lot of people in Israel when I was traveling through there. And look, this is just my sense of it. I talked to people who were on the right, and they loved Netanyahu. I talked to a lot of people who are on the left and who hate Netanyahu. I sensed a lot of resolve among the Israeli people to finish this and to not have to live side by side with the people who came into Israel on October 7th. And there’s a lot of pain and anguish among the hostage families. There’s also a lot of pain and anguish among the people who are related to IDF soldiers who have died in this. This has been extraordinarily painful for Israeli society. But the idea that you could just wake up tomorrow and say, “Well, I guess we’re just going to have a ceasefire and go back to the way it was, and live side by side with the people who came in here and murdered us and raped us and beheaded us and terrorized us” — I don’t think that’s realistic, frankly, for them. But I’ll also tell you this: I’m an American. I’m not an Israeli. I think Israel’s our ally. I think we should support our ally. But I’m not certain we should be in the business of telling them — or micromanaging — how they should conduct this war. It’s their war. It’s their national security that’s at stake.

Since we’re funding it, shouldn’t we have some say over it? A poll out last week found that 60% of Americans don’t believe we should be sending any more money to Israel, and that 50% of Americans now believe that there’s a genocide taking place. It seems like American popular opinion has shifted drastically on this issue.

Yeah, it’s amazing what happens when a propaganda campaign is run against Israel. That’s exactly what’s happened. That’s my point.

It’s not much of a propaganda campaign if you can look at a photo that shows 70% of the Gaza Strip flattened into a parking lot.

Yeah, it’s a war. And A, who started the war? And B, why won’t they release the hostages to end it?

We know why they won’t release the hostages to end it. They want the war to continue. Both Hamas and Israel want the war to continue.

I don’t think Israel wants the war to continue. I think they’d love to have their people back. But Hamas’s stated goal is the elimination of the state of Israel and the death of every Jew. They don’t sound like people to me who are too interested in living peacefully side by side.

Free speech is something that a lot of people who supported Trump thought that he would bring back to the United States. There was a feeling that overly censorious liberals created a climate where there were a lot of things you could not say. Did you see that as a motivating factor for voting for Donald Trump?

Yes, I think a lot of people saw it as a motivator for Trump. I think a lot of Republicans look back on, say, the 2020 election in October — the country’s oldest newspaper had its social media accounts turned off because they accurately reported on the son of the likely next president of the United States and his foreign dealings. It seems pretty censorious to me. A lot of Republicans took that personally. So yes.

Now Trump is in office. Is it not hard to square the positing of Trump as a free speech champion in light of the crackdown on the press, but also a few cases we’ve seen: There’s the Tufts student arrested in broad daylight by masked men and sent to a detention center for the crime of writing an op-ed. There’s Mahmoud Khalil, the student at Columbia University, got sent to a detention center, missing the birth of his son, for his speech. How do you square that with this idea that Donald Trump is a champion of free speech? Given he is having people arrested without due process for their speech.

Well, on Khalil, my view is he shouldn’t be in this country in the first place.

Different question.

And he has no right to be here. He’s a guest in this country. And so I —

But I’m not asking whether there’s any legal justification for doing these things, even though they were done without any due process. I’m asking whether it squares with the idea that Trump is a free speech champion when he’s putting people in detention centers for their speech.

Well, I think it goes well beyond speech on Khalil. I think he is here for one reason and one reason only, and that is to foment anti-Western and anti-American protests and worse in this country. I don’t think he should have ever been allowed here. And when it became obvious what he was here to do—bring down the American government and be fundamentally anti-Western civilization — we should have made the decision immediately that this is not somebody we have to have in this country. He can have those views and fine, do it in your home country, but —

But he wasn’t deported, he was detained. He was put in a detention center in Louisiana for weeks.

Well, did you see the activities that he participated in on the campus of Columbia?

I saw no evidence that he participated in anything other than speech.

Oh, okay. Do you think the Jewish kids and the Jewish faculty at Columbia thought, “Hey, all this free speech is good for me?” I don’t. I think their civil rights were violated. I think there’s a reason they entered into an agreement with Trump.

Now you sound like liberals on college campuses who say that right-wing speech is a threat to them.

Look, speech is not a threat, but when you kidnap people by trapping them in buildings, when you have them running for their lives —

He was a negotiator between the groups and the campus.

You and I have a much different view of this guy’s activities. [Editor’s note: An immigration judge ordered the Trump administration to release Khalil in May on the grounds that it failed to provide any evidence he participated in any activities beyond political speech]. But regarding the issue of free speech generally, my view on speech with Trump is how accessible is this person to the media? You said he cracked down on the media. The guy spends hours upon hours every week answering any and all questions in front of the media, in the Oval Office, on the plane, wherever he happens to be. He is by a factor of a million more accessible to the American media and to the political press than Joe Biden ever was. And as far as I know, nobody has to hand Donald Trump a card with predetermined questions from the reporters the way they had to do with Joe Biden. And so when I think about speech and I think accessibility of media, which I strongly prefer, I think it’s good for the media to have accessibility to the president. There is no comparison between Trump and Biden, and surely you would have to admit that.

I want to ask you about a photo that you posted to Twitter recently.

Recently? Okay.

You’ve worked in politics for a long time. I assume you understand the implication of posting a photo captioned “Iowa,” with you sitting on a tractor covered in American flags. Do you plan on running for anything in the next couple of years?

Uh, I don’t have any news to make on that front today.

Why not?

I revere people who run for office. It’s been on my mind for a very long time. My grandfather was a local elected official — he was a Democrat. I think public service is a deeply held thing for me because I’ve spent most of my career around people who run for office, and my family had some involvement in it, so I take it very seriously. It’s not a flippant issue. I’ve always had some interest in it. I don’t really have any news to make on it today, but I’m only 47, and I’ve got a lot of years ahead of me. It’s something I think about a lot. But I don’t really have plans on running in the near term.

Has Trump ever encouraged you to run?

No, no. I’ve never talked to him about that.