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Benson show. That's invite where

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we bring you the day's

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most interesting interviews in a

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bite-sized package. For the full

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episode visit guybensonshow.com or wherever

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you listen to podcasts. And

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we are joined now by Britt Hume,

0:34

Chief Political Analyst here at Fox News.

0:36

Britt, happy Friday. Thanks for joining us.

0:39

Glad to do it Guy. Always good to talk to you. Britt,

0:41

I want to get your reaction to the

0:43

Trump trial, what we've seen so far, how

0:45

that's playing out, how it interacts with the

0:47

other legal situations Trump is contending with, and then

0:50

maybe we can talk about how this affects

0:52

the election. But based on what you're seeing

0:54

in New York so far, your thoughts please.

0:57

Well, I think that the cases seems to

0:59

fall apart more every day and it

1:02

is to Trump's great advantage it seems to me

1:04

that this trial went first because

1:07

the fact that it is so

1:09

obviously legally weak and

1:12

that the judge is so obviously biased

1:15

and in over his head sort

1:19

of stains the whole prosecutorial effort

1:21

against Trump. It also pushes

1:23

back the days when these other cases

1:25

might come to trial and

1:27

cause him trouble. So I think he's

1:30

at some advantage here, although

1:32

obviously this isn't something you would

1:34

ever wish on him. Do

1:37

you think it's breaking through to

1:39

the average person, the average would-be

1:41

voter, that it is such

1:43

a rigged trial in my opinion? I mean

1:45

the judge donated to Joe Biden for crying

1:48

out loud. I know

1:50

the experts are making a lot of these points,

1:52

but is that trickling down, you think, to the

1:54

public? Well, I think

1:56

that very much is likely that it is

1:58

because it's, you know, It gets a lot of

2:00

news coverage, and

2:02

I think that's – I think

2:05

in a way that's to Trump's advantage. Look,

2:08

I think you look at the testimony

2:11

of someone like Stormy Daniels. Let's

2:14

assume for the sake of discussion, Guy, that

2:16

Jerry believes that her description of what happened

2:18

between them all those years ago is true.

2:22

I think it's probably true, too, although

2:24

Trump denies it. But I think

2:26

it's kind of baked in the cake. People

2:29

know Donald Trump was

2:32

engaged in marital infidelity, that he was a

2:34

womanizer and all the rest of it. And

2:38

it didn't prevent him from getting elected in

2:40

2016 and coming close again in

2:42

2020. So I

2:44

don't think this stuff is – these

2:47

lurid details of his

2:49

encounter with Stormy Daniels is

2:52

making much headway, because I think people already get

2:54

it. And

2:56

then it's, of course, not a crime anyway. Whatever you

2:58

think of the conduct and it doesn't align with many

3:01

people's values, obviously, they have to prove a crime. And

3:04

I think they are maybe struggling

3:07

in that regard, although their theory of the

3:09

crime has been really ripped apart by a

3:11

lot of these legal analysts. Britt,

3:14

then you briefly mentioned these other trials,

3:16

and a few of them have been

3:18

punted out into the future indefinitely, one

3:20

of the federal trials and the other one down in Georgia. And

3:23

you're seeing a lot of people reacting angrily to

3:25

some of these decisions by judges. It seems

3:28

to me like they've got a lot

3:30

of eggs in the basket of putting

3:32

Donald Trump on multiple criminal trials before

3:35

the election, which is a political

3:37

consideration, but it's not really a legal one,

3:39

right? I'm exactly

3:41

right, and I think that some of

3:43

these other cases may

3:45

be more strongly grounded

3:48

legally. I mean, obviously,

3:50

he did hold onto these classified documents,

3:52

for example, that they are accusing him

3:54

of improperly retaining and so on, but

3:58

this case, I think – as

4:00

I've suggested, going first stains

4:03

the whole enterprise. Even

4:05

if he gets a conviction on

4:07

this case in New York, and

4:10

is technically then a convicted felon,

4:14

the meaning of all that is much diminished

4:16

by the fact that people think the whole

4:18

thing is political. And

4:21

when you look at the way this has been

4:23

carried out, it looks political. So

4:25

I think that's all to his advantage.

4:27

But obviously if you were saying, if

4:30

you were for Donald Trump, you don't want him going through any

4:32

of this. I would say

4:34

it looks political because it is political,

4:36

certainly in New York and Georgia

4:38

as well in my mind, there's no doubt. Britt, I

4:41

want to shift gears a little bit here and play

4:43

for you a soundbite, actually

4:45

two soundbites, from Joe Biden.

4:48

This is Joe Biden in 2019, cut one. But

4:51

the idea that we would

4:53

cut off military aid

4:57

to an ally, our

4:59

only true, true ally in

5:02

the entire region, is absolutely

5:04

preposterous. It's just beyond my comprehension

5:06

anyone would do that. Beyond

5:09

his comprehension that we would

5:11

cut off military aid to an ally,

5:13

he also had some thoughts about the

5:15

Israelis in 2006. Amid

5:18

criticism – we played this earlier, Britt – criticism

5:21

that they were killing

5:23

civilians in retaliation against

5:25

Hezbollah, another terrorist organization, here's part of

5:27

what Biden said back then as a

5:30

U.S. senator, cut 32. My

5:32

only criticism of the Israelis is they're not that

5:35

great at public relations. If

5:37

I were them, I would be pointing out why I

5:39

went after the airport. I'd

5:42

be pointing out what the reason was,

5:44

assuming it didn't compromise sources and methods.

5:48

But I don't see how we could say

5:50

– and it's a little bit like the

5:52

same thing we had when we went into

5:55

Afghanistan. When we went into Afghanistan, remember we

5:57

took out a wedding party by accident? Remember

5:59

we took out with these very sophisticated? the

6:01

missiles we had, we accidentally killed some citizens

6:03

who have ever wore more justified than us

6:05

going into Afghanistan? I

6:08

can't think of any worse since World War II more justified.

6:10

Yet, innocence got killed in us

6:13

trying to protect America's interests. It

6:15

is overwhelmingly regrettable. But what

6:17

it should do, instead of

6:19

generating outrage from the rest of the world, it

6:21

should generate outrage from the rest of the world

6:24

to go at the root cause of this thing and

6:26

unite. Unite with us.

6:29

Unite with Israel. And

6:31

not merely the condemnation, but

6:33

setting up the circumstances where this doesn't

6:35

grow again. Great Hume, a different

6:38

man in multiple ways. Yeah, that's

6:41

right. And of course, I remember I

6:43

covered the Senate back in the day

6:45

and I remember Joe Biden very well.

6:47

I saw that whole context, by the

6:49

way, of that last sound bite you

6:51

played. I saw it somewhere. It goes

6:53

on forever because that's the way Biden

6:55

was back then. But striking comments in

6:57

contrast to what he's saying now, not

6:59

just about Israel, but about Afghanistan. He

7:02

said, what is it? He's never seen

7:04

a cause more justified than our going

7:06

into Afghanistan to protect our interests. And of course,

7:08

he's the one who pulls a plug on that. So

7:11

we can see the things that

7:13

have indeed changed with Joe Biden

7:15

and not just on Israel. And

7:17

also his delivery, right? Sort of

7:19

the bombastic, blowhard, blathering on, but

7:21

coherent versus now. Well,

7:25

he wasn't always coherent back then, but he's incoherent

7:27

in a different way now. I mean, now it's

7:29

a case of, you know, he can't remember words.

7:31

He can't remember facts. He misstates them and so

7:33

on. His senility is

7:35

painfully obvious. Yeah. And the

7:38

team around him, apparently, they want to shorten

7:40

his events, shorten his speeches. Less is more. I

7:42

think it's fair to say less is more

7:44

was not the mantra of Joe Biden, the senator.

7:47

Well, that's right. That's right. But getting

7:50

him to say more or less was a good

7:53

idea back then because he was so windy nowadays.

7:56

He's pretty he didn't speak

7:58

at great length anymore. because

8:01

he apparently can't. So getting

8:03

him to be sure is meaning

8:06

very, very short. What's

8:08

driving this change? I mean, 06

8:11

isn't that long ago, and he

8:13

was right about what he was

8:15

saying regarding Israel and Hezbollah then.

8:17

Then 2019, again even more recent

8:19

before he was president, now

8:22

he's making this decision. Why? I

8:26

think it's the politics of the moment. I'm

8:28

not sure it's being properly interpreted

8:30

by him and his political advisors,

8:33

but he's looking around the landscape and

8:36

he thinks, I'm in trouble. I'm

8:39

down on the polls, I'm in trouble in

8:41

the battleground states in particular, and

8:44

I need to do something

8:46

to hold

8:48

on to every single corner of

8:51

my base no matter how remote it may be.

8:54

And at the moment, he's

8:57

been counseled, I think, to distance

9:02

himself from Israel however he can

9:05

because he's afraid of elements of

9:07

his base that are angry about

9:09

Israel and – is

9:11

there a Muslim or

9:14

don't like American foreign policy and the rest of it? So

9:17

that's where he's come out. But

9:19

he's always tended to be that way, to look for

9:21

the center of the Democratic Party or the heart of

9:23

the Democratic Party and then go there. But

9:25

this is maybe not the heart of the

9:28

party. This is a fringe, maybe a growing

9:30

one. Then there's everyone else within his party

9:32

and then within sort of the moderate crowd,

9:34

independent, certainly Republicans that he has tried to

9:36

appeal to in the past. What about everyone

9:38

else that he's alienating? Well, I

9:41

think that's precisely the calculation. And

9:43

wouldn't it be better for him

9:45

in the long run to support

9:47

Israel to give it everything it

9:49

needs and then to be associated

9:51

with a victory by Israel over

9:54

What has become an absolutely

9:56

notorious terrorist organization? The

10:00

depend on now that looked

10:02

shaky Of shaky. At best.

10:04

And it goes back to Afghanistan. a

10:06

point that you made a moment ago

10:09

and you're talking about notorious terrorist organizations

10:11

Morgan Ortega as. Who. Is the former

10:13

a spokeswoman at the State Department during

10:15

Pompei Oh and and the Trump Administration.

10:17

She noted that a Un report. Has.

10:19

Now identified up to eight new

10:21

Al Qaeda training camps. In

10:24

Afghanistan. So this reconstituted

10:26

terrorist threat. In. The

10:28

country that biden abandon with no

10:30

residual force. Here's Al Qaeda cropping

10:32

up again in that country. Brit.

10:35

We have seen this before and

10:37

it ended very badly. Your thoughts

10:39

on that. Like that. What

10:42

you said is exactly right. I'm in

10:44

a desert. wantonly pull the plug on

10:46

that Afghanistan in there are because his

10:48

long time it was popularity of it

10:51

had faded and the list and md

10:53

you know eat more to do that

10:55

for was somewhere along the way during

10:58

the conflict he changed his tune. I

11:00

think he did when his party soured

11:02

on it and there he was. So

11:04

he comes in and says against the

11:07

advice of his military advisors, pull the

11:09

plug into a measly. It was

11:11

gravely mistaken. Decision as you know the

11:14

ceiling about it was it backfired politically?

11:16

Who did it went off badly, was

11:18

badly executed in the city. With it

11:21

or not because of the armed forces

11:23

are bundled up. The because he bundled

11:25

the deciduous have been we couldn't go

11:27

well. it went badly. People tell people

11:30

lost confidence in him and he's never

11:32

regained it and he certainly has regained

11:34

his in my judgment that pull the

11:37

plug on Israel. I'll give you credit

11:39

for continue to support. Ukraine but

11:41

I'm not sure Amazon is that we

11:43

want to do that either. And it's

11:45

is interesting because in Afghanistan in the

11:47

decision that he made in Afghanistan that

11:49

alienated allies and shocked a lot of

11:51

allies. It's. Surprise and emboldened

11:53

our enemies. And now here

11:56

we are with another round of a similar

11:58

kind of thing and it appears. that

12:00

no lessons have been learned, which is a

12:02

theme with this president and this administration. Brett

12:04

Hume is chief political analyst here at Fox

12:07

News. Brett, we always appreciate your time and

12:09

your insights, and we look forward to next

12:11

time. Thanks. Guys,

12:14

stay warm. That was yet another

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