The Federalist Radio Hour

Susan Glasser, chief international affairs columnist at Politico, discusses both her own recent trip to Manchester last week, as well as President Trumps recent international trip. Glasser, who was formerly a Washington Post Bureau Chief in Moscow, shares insights on Putin and U.S.-Russia relations. Glasser and Domenech discuss how American foreign reporting and correspondence has decreased. Its a very frustrating moment. You have more access to information and insight and news than ever before, on one hand. On the other hand, [publications] are still chasing scale and they have a lot of people who arent on the ground doing reporting, Glasser said.

Lori Sanders, associate vice president of federal affairs at the R Street Institute, and Gracy Olmstead, associate managing editor at the Federalist, discuss farming, agriculture subsidies, USDA funding in the Trump budget, and the changing relationship between education and employment. What can the government do to improve the employment system for working parents and their children? Sanders shares some proposals to give working families more flexibility. We should be thinking about how we make every single employee--male, female-- more attractive, more productive in the labor force so that more employers want to compete over them, want to offer them these benefits.

Paul J. Saunders is Executive Director of the Center for the National Interest and an expert on foreign policy, national security, and Russia. Saunders joins Federalist Radio to address some of the questions and concerns surrounding Russia, Rex Tillerson, General Flynn, and the dissonance between elites and the American people on foreign policy. Saunders explains the importance of context in understanding why Russia would be involved in U.S. elections. The context is instead, were having a relationship of rivalry and mistrust in which the United States...really since the end of the Cold War has been trying in various ways to promote political outcomes in Russia, he said. Later in the hour, they discuss the nations former and current leaders in national security from General Flynn to James Clapper. General Clapper has taken a much more simplistic approach and doesnt try to make that kind of intellectual effort, Saunders said.

Congressman Dave Brat of Virginias 7th district joins Federalist Radio Hour to reflect on the last couple months of change and controversy in Congress. Brat discusses health care, tax reform, how to respond to an angry electorate, and the importance of a leaders faith. Brat sheds light on how negotiations went down among the Freedom Caucus during the AHCA debates. Weve already gone along with a federal program...which keeps all the Obamacare regulations and the press calls us obstructionists for wanting one element of a free market outcome, he said. What happens when our education system no longer teaches systems of ethics or economics? The hard Left is basically about deconstructing the Western paradigm. Which is roughly speaking, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Rule of Law, and free markets. And you can the Left on three just chipping away. andnbsp;

Mike Riggs is a reporter at Reason Magazine and writes on nutrition and fitness in his newsletter Protein Pancakes. Riggs shares his story of transformation and how he quit smoking, drinking, and lost 90 pounds. Riggs explains the history of drug-use and testosterone therapy in the different fitness circles and professional sports. Things changed dramatically in the 90s when we get an entire field of medicine out of nowhere called testosterone replacement therapy, he said. On another track you have testosterone use for performance enhancement and throughout the 2000s these things basically become deeply intertwined. Later in the hour, they discuss criminal justice reform and what the government is failing to handle the opioid crisis. These medicated-assisted treatment... methadone, suboxone...this keeps people alive while they can get help, he said. It is not a perfect drug. It is not as good as being un-addicted to opioids, but it works.

Stephen Hunter is the author of twenty novels and the retired chief film critic for The Washington Post. He joins the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss writing, movies, guns, and his newest novel in his Bob Lee Swagger series, G-Man. Hunter contrasts the feelings of critiquing others work and putting his own work out their to be critiqued. The same thing is true of critics as is true of serial killers, is that theyre sort of in the same business. Theyre very good at compartmentalizing, he said. I was able to be a novelist and I was able to be a critic and not really let them interfere with each other. Hunter shares on his childhood obsession with guns, and how he creates stories on subjects that are often politicized. Im not on a soapbox, however on another level...on a cultural level if it were, I want it understood that I believe in the gun. I believe in the second amendment.

In the second half of a two-part interview, Pat Buchanan sits down with Ben Domenech to discuss the his own political career, the role faith plays in politics, and how his own populism compares to what Trump offers. Buchanans new book is, Nixons White House Wars. Buchanans speech at the 1992 RNC was a warning that American values were in jeopardy. I really believe the West is very probably in a terminal decline, he said. Its lost its faith. Its lost its empires. Its losing its unity now. It can defend its borders. Its demographically dying. Later in the hour, they discuss how television has changed for the worse, leaving no space for constructive conversations. You were part of some shows that had intelligent people on them who could talk at length about a particular subject, Domenech said. I worry that people are becoming basically dumber because of the political television that we have on all day today.

Patrick J. Buchanans new book, Nixons White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever, details his time as a speechwriter and senior adviser to President Nixon. Buchanan joins Federalist Radio to share stories from times of both success and defeat in media, politics, and the conservative movement. Buchanan describes his first interaction with Vice President Nixon at age 15, and the how it came to happenstance that he would later work in the White House. I went up to him around midnight in the kitchen and said, If youre going to run in 68 Id like to get aboard early, he said. This is part one of a two-part interview. andnbsp;

The Human Coalition is a non-profit that combines the forces of technology, data, community outreach, and womens care clinics to reach and serve abortion-determined women. Brian Fisher, president and CEO of The Human Coalition, joins Federalist Radio to share the unique ways theyre fighting the abortion industry and how men can have a role in the pro-life movement. Theres almost 2 million internet searches a month in the United States for abortion terms like abortion clinic DC...morning after pill Fisher said. We realized that was an enormous mission field. If there was that many searches for abortion procurement terms, if we could intercept them...we could actually rescue children from abortion. Last week, there was an abrupt backlash against a New York Times op-ed that discussed the issues with linking abortion and economics. The culture tends to look at abortion as solving a womens problem and because finances typically play a part in her decision, that somehow solves that, Fisher said.

Hadley Heath Manning is a senior policy analyst and director of health policy at the Independent Womens Forum. Manning shares her insights on Medicaid, the recent healthcare debate, and common sense ways conservatives can improve their health policy messaging. Manning explained alternatives to the current incentives for spending at the state level. Medicaid needed reform before Obamacare. Obamacare made it worse in some sense, Manning said. What [the AHCA] would do is limit the Medicaid expansion that now states get money for spending money on Medicaid. Ivanka Trump has brought working women and issues like paid maternity leave to the forefront of issues at the White House. I hope that Republicans can change their reputation as being stone-cold on these issues, only concerned about cost, Manning said.

The duo behind Politicos Playbook and daily audio briefing, Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer, join Federalist Radio Hour to share a behind-the-scenes guide to their daily newsletter and what its like to cover Capitol Hill. They also discuss how Trump consumes the news, plus potential picks for the new FBI director. Every morning, Jake and I get up very early and start G-chatting, trying to figure out what the message of the day it and trying to be that one-stop shop for people, before they go on television, before they go into that 8 a.m. meeting, Palmer said. Senator John Cornyn and Rep. Trey Gowdy have been some of the names floated for the next director of the FBI. Its hard for me to see that Merrick Garland is going to leave that prized judgeship to be the head of the FBI. Theres no indication that he even wants to be the head of the FBI, Sherman said.

Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor of Reason Magazine, and Mary Katharine Ham, senior writer at the Federalist, address all the buzz as of late about a possible presidential run by Dwayne The Rock Johnson. They also cover recent regulations and policy myths, such as rape touted as a pre-existing condition in the AHCA, and new laws against vaping. If were going to run celebrities, lets run hotter, smarter ones. And the Rock is both hotter and smarter than the celebrities we have been running, Ham said. The Rock is something we can all agree on, and that would probably be ruined by running for office. The now-debunked idea that rape is a pre-existing condition is just one example of media healthcare narratives. This idea that you take the absolute worst case of the absolute worst case ignoring a variety of political facts on the ground, as well as economic realities, Mangu-Ward said.

Todays guest is Yuval Levin, author of The Fractured Republic, and the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. They discuss the extreme amounts of blowback against Trump for the firing of James Comey, how conservatives ought to position themselves in the political landscape, and to think about what conservatism can offer Americans. Levin addresses health care reform and how the process will differ now that its in the Senates hands. These people have all run on repealing Obamacare for the last eight years and now it turns out they want somebody else to do it, he said. In the Senate, the margin just isnt there, and so if something is going to pass essentially every Republican senator is going to have to vote for it.

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution. Hanson and Domenech discuss the breaking news of Donald Trump firing FBI Director James Comey. Hanson also shares insights on Trumps foreign policy, immigration, life on his California farm and the disappearance of agricultural communities. In some ways, Donald Trump has forced change on the Republican partys views on foreign policy. I think [Trump] is Jacksonian or hes nationalist in the sense that he has a tragic view of the world, Hanson said. Trump came along and said the world is a mess, its always going to be a mess, and Im going to create the conditions under which we are not threatened. Hanson described the ways life on a farm develops citizens and a pragmatic way of thinking about the world. Youre responsible for the ramifications of your own ideology, and a problem right now in this country is people always have money or influence to protect them from the consequences of their ideology.

Ashe Schow is a columnist at the New York Observer and senior contributor at the Federalist. She joins the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the latest college campus outrage, particularly directed at Charles Murray, and the other spaces political correctness has invaded like comic books and video games. This weekend President Obama accepted the John F. Kennedy Library Foundations Profile in Courage award. This whole idea of Obama being courageous by doing everything the lefty media likes, everything liberals like, Schow said. Its not courageous to stand up for the people everyone is standing up for. Marvels continues to sacrifice good characters for the sake of social justice warrior approved messages in their comic books and movies. I think what people actually hate is having narratives jammed down their throat when what they actually want is a good story with a good character.