SPEAKER 1: Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome back from lunch. It's my pleasure
to now introduce to you our speaker this
afternoon, Mollie Hemingway. Let me just say a few
words about Miss Hemingway. She is a senior
journalism fellow here at Hillsdale College, a
senior editor at The Federalist and a Fox News contributor. She's been a Phillips Foundation
journalism fellow, a Lincoln fellow at the
Claremont Institute for the Study of statesmanship,
and political philosophy, and a Eugene C
Pulliam distinguished visiting fellow in journalism
here at the college. She has also written
numerous publications for, including the
Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books,
USA Today, Ricochet, The Los Angeles Times, The
Washington Post, The Federal Times, and Christianity Today. She is the author of Trump
Versus the Media and co-author of Justice on Trial-- The Kavanaugh Confirmation
and the Future of the Supreme Court. Would you please welcome
Mollie Hemingway. [APPLAUSE] MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Thank you. [APPLAUSE] OK, you all are
completely ridiculous, but thank you very much. It is such an honor
to be here and I can't believe what we just got
to experience this morning. I was so moved by the music,
the readings, the speeches, and I'm so glad that I
got to be part of it. And I was kind of wondering
if the students realized what they were participating in
or if it will take a few more years before they
realized the significance and how special today was. But we're here celebrating
the 175th anniversary of Hillsdale College. But it is a year with many
important anniversaries. For instance, it is
the 25th anniversary of Al Gore saying one of my
favorite things he ever said. And you realize that
students here on campus are too young to have
actually experienced Al Gore, they weren't alive in the 1990s. So they might not
remember that he was known when he was
vice president for saying really ridiculous
things, and saying some pretty ridiculous
things in the years after being vice
president, as well. He predicted the Earth's
ice caps would melt by 2014. So that's another really
important anniversary. We've had five years with no
ice caps, as Al Gore predicted. But most of his
farcical observations are best forgotten, but one has
proved prescient and revealing, if unintentionally so. In the process of
praising America's legacy of ethnic tolerance
or aspiring thinking that we could do
better in the future, he said, "America
can be e pluribus unum," which he translated
as, out of one, many. It was what in DC was
called a classic Kinsley gaffe, coined by deceased
commentator Michael Kinsley. That's when a politician reveals
some truth that they did not intend to admit. And over a quarter
century ago, he was inadvertently saying
something that has subsequently become something of
an article of faith among many on the left. Having a shared
identity as Americans, shared set of
constitutional principles, and having those laid out
in our founding documents and all sharing them is
increasingly something that people don't desire or see. So let's put a pin
in that and move on to another anniversary,
which is the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Tea Party. On February 19, 2009,
CNBC editor Rick Santelli was on the floor of the
Chicago Stock Exchange and wondered
whether there should be something of a
Tea Party in response to these various
corporate bailouts that were happening
at that time. The remarks were
actually pretty brief, but they struck a huge
chord with average Americans who were fed up with
what was happening in the federal government. This was right after the
end of the Bush presidency that had ended with massive bank
bailouts and the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program
requiring the middle class, average Americans to pay for
other people's mismanagement problems. The movement grew. Grassroots activists gathered
locally at the state level, repeatedly at the
national level, to protest the burgeoning
administrative state and its awarding of
additional power and money to unelected corporations
and unelected bureaucrats. Then came the
Affordable Care Act, rammed through Congress
against the fervent pleas of many Americans. The group was
completely organic, for better and for worse. It had no TV savvy leaders, it
had no public relations staff. Their members were very
much in the middle class, a lot of people had
backgrounds in the military and in business. They were a natural gift
to the Republican Party because they were
just tons of people arguing for what the Republican
Party claimed to support. Lowered taxes, a decrease
in the size and scope of the administrative state,
an easing up or lightening of the regulatory burden. We're arguing for
fiscal sobriety and personal responsibility. And they were really good
at political organization. The movement was
responsible, in 2010, for the largest shift in seats
in the House of Representatives since 1948. Republicans picked up
seven Senate seats, flipped control of 20
state legislatures, and picked up another
six gubernatorial seats. This was really
important at a time when redistricting was happening
and other issues at the state level. But the response to the
group was fascinating. The media couldn't or chose
not to understand the group or viewed them as a
threat and immediately characterized what they
were doing as racist, which is their go-to slur. The Democrats understood
the party of the Tea Party and fought them valiantly. But the response
from many Republicans was surprisingly
hostile as well. Mitch McConnell, who is
a main player in my book that I wrote with
Carrie Severino, said in 2014, "I
think we're going to crush them everywhere." He said, referring
to the Tea Party. I don't think they're going to
have a single nominee anywhere in the country. And he was right,
they didn't that year. He won his primary in Kentucky. Thad Cochran won his
primary in Mississippi, and Pat Roberts won
his seat in Kansas. Other Tea Party or
Tea Party type figures in that and other years
have fared better, including senators Rand
Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Sasse. But McConnell's point stands. He said they would be
crushed, and in large part, by joining with Democrats
and the media and others, the establishment did
successfully crush them. They kept the insurgents
at bay, co-opted a lot of the people that came. Remember what happened with
that Affordable Care Act, people who didn't like it
were told, you just need to elect us to the
House of Representatives and we'll take care of it. And they did. 2010, we just talked about it,
that largest turnover in seats. So the House isn't
enough, you need to give us the Senate as well. And these people got
out there and they managed to take the Senate as
well, and nothing happened. OK, OK. You got to give us
the presidency, too, and then we'll really
take care of it. And so they did that. They, against
insurmountable odds-- seemingly insurmountable
odds, they take the presidency in 2016. And I understand that
it's complicated. I understand the Senate
Majority was very narrow. But it turned out that
they did not succeed in overturning Obamacare. And so with that, there's
this sobering realization that the small government
movement that was the Tea Party kind of died at that moment. It's also, perhaps,
worth just remembering that there was an element
of this in the Reagan administration as well. Many people began
to see the futility of taking on the bureaucracy
and truly beating it back. President Reagan tried to
do this with various things, and they, by and
large, didn't work. Even take reining in the EPA. He appointed the mother of
current Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, to deregulate,
to move regulatory control to the states instead
of at the federal level. And she was pretty much run
out of town within two years. Other efforts seemed to
be met with similar ends. But with the crushing
of the Tea Party, many Americans who
earnestly thought that they could stand
up against the state found out that they were wrong. It left many Americans realizing
that the administrative state, the bureaucracy, the
unelected bureaucracy, could not be dismantled and that
all future political battles might have to be
for mere survival against encroaching forces. Those who argued for
limited government, who know that the
state can only grow at the expense of the
liberty of the people, learned a really tragic lesson. The notion that the
people could demand that the government of
Washington DC be reduced became something of a sad joke. So did much of the conservative,
or the traditional conservative and libertarian arguments that
failed to take into account the new power dynamics in play. And one of those new dynamics
was the sudden lurch left and increasing power
of corporations, not content with the
mere crony capitalism that they'd had before. They now are fully entrenched
within the administrative state, relying on
them for their growth and encouraging progressive
social change to ensure compliance from the people. The more embroiled and powerful
these large corporations become in people's
lives, the more they control the contours
of public debate. Understanding this treatment
of these and other voters, these Tea Party
and other voters, and how they have been crushed
by elected representatives frittering away their
Article 1 powers to the unelected bureaucracy
that serves as judge, jury, and executioner,
in political life, is key to making sense of this
current moment that we're in. It explains why so many
of the candidates that were offered to voters
in the last cycle failed. Now you remember
Senator John McCain gave a gracious concession
speech to Barack Obama. I think that was where
he said, although it might have been later, that
he viewed it as an honor to lose to him. And Mitt Romney's
concession speech was, likewise, quite dignified. And both men were known
for working very well with opponents of Conservatism. But a lot of voters
didn't want that. They didn't want dignified,
beautiful concession speeches or cooperation with
progressive leaders. And they don't even
want to hear people give lectures about
Conservatism that failed to address this new reality. They already realized there
was no taking on of the state, and they wanted
someone who would help them protect their way
of life from encroachment. Progressives promised to
fundamentally transform-- I believe that's a quote
from former President Obama-- America, and they
set about to do it. And leaders, a lot of
leaders in conservatism don't take that
seriously enough. It was kind of silly
how many people expected conservative voters
to just continue to accept this business as usual. At this point, I would like to
do something very unwise, which is slightly pushback against
something Mark Steyn said, so you know how
this is going to go. Very poorly. But the last question
that was asked last night was about the media. And I completely
share Mark's viewpoint that freedom of the press
is extremely important. There is a reason
freedom of the press is bundled with speech and
religious rights and freedom of association. We know that we must be
free to seek the truth, and the press is a very
important part of that, for preserving our liberty. Thomas Jefferson, who wasn't
always great on things, said that if he had to
choose between government and newspapers, he would pick
newspapers because people need to be informed. And I share a love for the
press and it's my life's work, and I really wish
that we lived up to what our responsibilities
are to keep people informed. But I don't think they're
without blame for some of what has happened in recent years. It is my view that
the press, the media, are the primary political
actors in our midst. They're openly
hostile to preserving limited constitutional
government and that hostility is a threat. Conservatives have complained
about media bias for decades. I think Eisenhower was the
first Republican president to do so in his speeches. By the time of
George H. W. Bush, his most popular campaign slogan
was also on a bumper sticker that I remember in his
re-election campaign, which was, annoy the
media, reelect Bush. The media response
to complaints of bias has been to ignore
them or accuse critics of trying to
influence the news improperly. But the big response, the
main response that they have has been simply to get worse. By the 2016 campaign, you
had journalists willfully and openly admitting that
they were not playing things straight, that they
defended this posture, because in their
view, Donald Trump was an existential threat. And when he won
the 2016 election against every single media
prediction out there-- a few people accepted-- the media responded by basically
throwing temper tantrums and endorsing every
crazed conspiracy theory in their midst. The biggest one they
bought into happened to be one shared
by Hillary Clinton. Hours after her election,
she gathered with advisors, and they decided to lean
back into a campaign message that they had worked very
hard to spread but they felt had not gotten enough play. It was that Trump
was illegitimate because Russian
meddling in the election and his treasonous
collusion with the same. Despite this theory
being absurd on its face, the media believed
it or pretended to believe it fervently. This crazed conspiracy theory
dominated media coverage of the incoming
Trump administration in the first few years
of that administration. A dossier with hearsay
allegations was published. And despite what most
average Americans could see, it was silly, it was ridiculous,
it was difficult to believe, the media treated it as if it
were credible and really worth analyzing and digging into. The attorney general
was sidelined from oversight of the
Department of Justice because of media reports
that he was a Russian spy. To this day, the notion of
Jeff Sessions from Alabama being a Russian spy
is my favorite part of the entire Russia
conspiracy theory. It caused a lot of damage. A special counsel was launched. And while it ran through
a great deal of money and rang up many people
on process crimes, the end was a complete dud. There was no
collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Not by Trump, not by
anyone in his campaign, not by a single American. Which is actually
kind of amazing. You would assume that in
a country with hundreds of millions of people
you got some rogue people out there doing something. Instead, they put
forth a novel theory that Trump, by
complaining about falsely being accused of
being a traitor, had obstructed justice. That theory failed
to take root, too, with a heavy assist from
Robert Mueller, who testified on Capitol Hill, so the world
could see that he really did not have control over the
probe whose credibility rested on his name. I remember that day
that he testified, my mother told me that she had
not read the Mueller Report, but she was pretty sure she
had a better handle on it than Robert Mueller did. We also might take a
minute to note media coverage of another story
I'm very familiar with, which is the Kavanaugh
confirmation battle. The president nominated
a respected federal judge for the court, and
the media immediately set about fighting him,
fighting against the nomination. They end up publicizing
lurid allegations without any supporting
evidence whatsoever. This really is a break
from how-- you know, I know we complain about the
media, or people in America complain about the media a lot. But even a few decades
ago, you would have not seen quite this glee
with publicizing these lurid allegations without
any supporting evidence. Most recently,
The New York Times tried to hit him again
with another smear by failing to tell readers
that they-- well, they said they had an allegation
against him, which was a physically improbable and
somewhat ridiculous allegation. They neglected to tell readers
that the alleged victim had never said that
she was a victim, and she had not spoken
to these reporters, but she had said through
multiple friends, she has no such recollection
of any incident. They kept that from readers. The trail of failure associated
with the media in recent years is breathtaking. There was the smear of the
pro-life teens from Covington, Kentucky who were falsely
accused of racial intimidation. Grown journalists
grilling 16-year-old boys about their behavior when
it was the journalists who got everything wrong. There are so many stories
that are debunked, it's basically impossible
to tally them all. The media are not tiring,
they have big plans. They obviously now have
a huge impeachment plan, and it can be viewed that they
are running the impeachment effort more than the Democratic
politicians themselves. The New York Times
recently announced that the implosion of
the Russia narrative had left their newsroom
reeling and that they were trying to
rebuild their newsroom around racial narratives. Interesting, first
off to note, that they built their entire newsroom
around pushing this conspiracy theory that anyone with
even moderate intelligence could have seen reason
to be skeptical about. And when it imploded, the editor
said, that really hit us hard. And now we're trying
to rebuild by claiming that our political
opponents are all racist. And they said this in
a transcript that was leaked that everybody can read. But as part of that campaign,
they launched the 1619 Project to mark the 400th anniversary
of slavery in the United States. The project makes Al
Gore's misstatement of the American
motto look quaint. It's not just out of one,
many, but a reformulation of what the country is founded
upon to explicitly reject our founding documents
and their meaning. Now it is perfectly fine and
even good for The New York Times and all of America to
mark the 400th anniversary of slavery in this country. It's a somber and
important historical marker and reminder of what
humans are capable of doing against each other. That's not what
The Times is doing. It went so far as to say that
this 400th anniversary is the true founding of the
country, not 1776, when our forefathers risked
their lives to say all men were created equal. The lead essay says that
all of that rhetoric was meaningless because the real
reason for the Revolutionary War was to preserve
slavery in America. Never mind that slavery had
been in America for 150 years under the rule of
an English King or that slavery did not start
out as an American institution. There's a huge
difference between saying the country was
founded on the belief that all men were created equal,
and that it took us far too long to realize that
ideal, and saying it was disingenuous from the start. Not to mention how many
Americans gave their lives in the Civil War to
make that promise in the Declaration a reality. We were led into that war, or
we had to respond to that war that we were forced into,
by a man who explicitly made that argument to
the American people in speeches and
official statements, that this was what we owed
because of our founding. From the earliest times,
there were many Americans between the founding
in the Civil War that were dedicated
to fulfilling the promise of our creeds. Chief among them,
for our purposes, we're the founders of
Hillsdale, abolitionists was the first American
college to prohibit, in its charter, any
discrimination based on race, religion, or sex,
and became an early force for the abolition of slavery. A higher percentage
of Hillsdale students enlisted in the Civil War than
any other Western College. Of the more than 400 who
fought to preserve the Union, four won the Congressional
Medal of Honor, three became generals,
and many more served as regimental commanders. 60 gave their lives. That commitment leads to today. And it is in stark
contrast to what we see from a lot of other people. I have a little discursion
here, if you don't mind. Where I've been
thinking, it's been such a wonderful experience
to hear some great minds speak to us these
last couple of days. And it reminds me of just
how different Hillsdale is from so many other
institutions that are in the Conservative movement. I'll put it this way. I'm reminded of how Vladimir
Putin controls his opposition. He has a tight grip on power
in Russia, and one of the ways that he does that is by
allowing what is called the systematic opposition. And the systematic
opposition are people who claim to
oppose him, but are given some seats of power. And he genuinely listens
to them to make sure that he doesn't go so far as
to lose control of his power. Technically, they are in
the opposing party from his, but they're generally
fine with a continuation of his government,
so long as they get to keep their
power and their money. They serve a useful
purpose for Putin. And I think for too
long, too many people in the Conservative
movement in DC, including too many people in its media
outlets, academic institutions, think tanks and
otherwise, have functioned as the systematic opposition
to Progressivism's march through American institutions,
public and private. Technically they were opposed,
and they'd make sounds about opposing the growth
of the administrative state and the broad of the culture. But they were never terribly
successful at returning the country to its
first principles or constitutional order,
despite the millions of supporters who
put them in power and expected just that, expected
not just rhetoric but results. I'm supposed to be talking
about the political divide in America, but it seems to
me that this isn't really a political divide,
all these things that we're talking about,
but a cultural divide. One side believes we are
created with purpose, we seek truth in
order to do good, we understand human nature and
how it is shared by all of us. Our laws come from
these beliefs, and the Founders wrote them
into our documents that form the basis of our republic. Another side embraces
a fervent religiosity, a secular religiosity
built around the exercise of raw majoritarian power. In many cases they
reject reality, even if it means the reality
of biological distinctions between male and female. They reject the very
notion of a divine creator who sets forth rights and
wrongs through space and time. And relatedly,
there is a rejection of redemption and
forgiveness leading to brutal ritual punishments
and mobs tearing down neighbors. Perhaps goes without saying that
along with The New York Times, they reject our current
form of government as well. It's not a political divide. It is so much more than that. And anyone who
thinks that this will be resolved through an
election or something like that is not thinking clearly. These pressures and divides
have been building up for more than a century. Just as Roe v Wade
didn't magically end the debate over
human rights or abortion, a single election, even
a series of elections is not going to bridge the gap
between two dominant cultures. Hillsdale College, under
its very able leadership, understands the
seriousness of the problem and the insufficiency of many
of the current approaches to tackling American problems. We don't need a
rear guard action tisk tisking at the media
for being historically wrong. We need a lot of people,
the kind of people who have the education
that Hillsdale provides, who fully understand these
documents and these beliefs that define us as
Americans, so that we can do intellectual
battle to fight and win. And not to simply
conserve some tiny piece of what we used to have. As our country's divides become
greater and more worrisome, we need more Americans
who understand the history of our founding, the
philosophies that undergird it, and what divided government
seeks to accomplish. This is being done in
the context of a movement in this country to
erase our history, in progressive madrassas,
essentially, that reimagined these things. With a media that seeks
obfuscation rather than enlightenment. The main thing that
gives me hope right now is classical liberal
arts education. My children attend a school,
a classical Lutheran school, that is staffed by
Hillsdale graduates. That is the number one thing
I'm happy about in my life right now. [APPLAUSE] It is unclear, frankly,
if the republic will survive the
progressive onslaught being waged against it right now. But if our founding
ideals are to live on, it will be through the students
educated here, inculcated with virtuous character, refined
through challenging study, and sent forth with purpose. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] And in general, I prefer
to answer questions. So we have time
for some questions. SPEAKER 2: So thank
you Mrs. Hemingway. We do now have time
for Q&A, please make your way to the microphone
if you have a question. MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Or I
can just ramble more, too. AUDIENCE: I was the one that
asked that question of Mark last evening. And I'm very troubled by
what's going on in the media. I guess my question to
you would be, how do we battle the media being
a cabal with the Left and the Progressives when
there's no punishment for them either making it up or twisting
it to favor what they're doing? I understand, like
I said last night, Sullivan v. New York
Times, but there's got to be a way that someone
can hold the press accountable. If somebody falls on
my property in Florida, they can sue me if
I've been neglectful. My gosh, some of
these reporters, they'd have to be blind not
to uncover some of the stuff that they should
be talking about. So I'm sorry for
taking up time, but-- MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: No that's my
favorite thing to talk about. So I would like--
yes, to add to this. By the way, did you know
that Justice Thomas had a little note this last
year where he mentioned that it might be time to revisit
New York Times versus Sullivan. Yes. So the issue there
is that I actually think the press might be the
biggest threat to press freedom right now. And you saw, in recent years,
you saw that media inability to protect people's
privacy actually led to some judgments against
prominent media figures. There was the Gawker case where
Hulk Hogan sued them and won and destroyed Gawker
because of their willingness to just publish something that
had no news value that really harmed his life. And it was the failure of
that media outlet itself and other media outlets
that soften the ground to enable that kind of win
against a media company. And I think you're seeing that
with this willful, deliberate, malicious behavior
by some media folks. The principles in
journalism that we have, that we're taught,
should have been enough to prevent what
happened in Covington. And they weren't. And I'm not saying I
think he necessarily, that this kid who's sued
everybody under the sun-- rah, go-- that he'll win. But he has, I think, a
solid case to get something. They tried to destroy him and
they had no reason to do it. They didn't gather facts
before they did it. And there are some legal
vulnerabilities that they have. But more than that, I think
it's important for people to not ascribe to the media
a cultural power that they no longer have. And this is something where we
have generally regarded them as having the right to set
conversations, to dictate what conversations will be. They get to moderate
presidential debates. And that power was given
to them on the assumption that they would take that
responsibility seriously and that they would be fair. Well, they're not, and they
haven't been for a long time. So people need to start
thinking about other ways to be. The Democratic
National Committee announced that it wouldn't
do anything with Fox News because unlike the
other media outlets, they might get gentle
pushback at Fox News. And it was interesting to
see how people responded to it, including, I think, a lot
of people at Fox were saying, accurately, we're
fair, we should not be punished for being fair just
because other media outlets are so crazy on the left. But it is kind of weird
why Republicans just agree to go on these media
outlets that are extensions of the Democratic
Party that are actually leading the Democratic Party. It seems like maybe
they should think about whether that's
working out for them, or what happens when, to
get to a point of truth, you have to go through so
many of the underlying false assumptions that undergird
each question that it's not worth your time or that you
won't get fair treatment. So anyway, yes there are
some legal opportunities. But more than anything,
I think people just need to stop treating them as
if they have a cultural power that they no longer have. AUDIENCE: Hello. First of all, I'd like to say
I think of you and Kimberley Strassel as the dynamic duo. And we are so grateful. [APPLAUSE] And I just want
to encourage you. I'm sure it's not easy. Two quick questions for you. One is the term progressive,
to me is confusing, because it's been also
applied to President Trump. And so how can the
Progressive's be against Trump if Trump was also progressive. So there's some confusion
about terminology in my mind. And then the other thing that's
even more of interest to me right now is what
would your forecast be for this impeachment
process, as you see it going-- MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Is that it? Just those three easy. I'll just discard
them right away. First off, I just want to say,
I use the term progressive to refer to the Progressive
movement, this more than 100-year-old
movement that really got going with Woodrow Wilson. That has this idea that
human nature can be conquered and that the Constitution
is a barrier that needs to be overcome. I don't like using
the word liberal because I think liberal
is a great word, and so I'm a little
stubborn on that. But progressive also
sounds like a nice word. Oh, we want to progress,
we want to do well. But the actual
movement is very evil and has a lot of bad,
bad baggage that it should be held accountable for. I'll do impeachment but
just really quickly, the first thing you said about
it being difficult to speak against the hive mind. I am not saying that
it's always easy, but I get very
frustrated when people-- I hear a lot of people say, oh,
this moment is so exhausting. And they say, oh, just
Trump is so exhausting. I'm just exhausted
by everything. And you hear a lot of
conservative pundits say this or Republican leaders. Oh, we have to do this again. And I keep thinking, it is
such an easy job, compared to most jobs, to get
to write for a living or go on TV for a few
minutes, or do a radio show, or something like that. That's relatively
easy compared to what everybody else is doing. And that you get to do
it is not exhausting. And if you find it
exhausting, you probably shouldn't do it
anymore, because there are a lot of people who are
counting on you to articulate conservative principles or to
advocate for different things. And if you can't muster that
energy, other people can. So just head on out. But anyway, that's
a little sideline. As for the impeachment-- [APPLAUSE] The impeachment
thing, I predicted he would be impeached
already, so I'm a little bit behind schedule on that. And I don't really know-- I would have just assumed-- like I said, I thought it
would have happened already. So when this started I
thought, well, of course it's going to happen. I take such extreme
delight in how we're still trying
to figure out what we're going to impeach him for. Like the impeachment is
a foregone conclusion, but like well, what
can we find here? Which is not how it should go. And I still assume
that they will. I will say, this rollout is
going much more poorly for them than all of their
other attempts. And that might actually prevent
impeachment from happening. And when the Russia
hoax started, you saw a lot of
people in Washington DC take it seriously on
both sides of the aisle. You almost saw people
hoping it were true as a way to get rid of him, and you saw
a lot of Republican leaders and political pundits and
whatnot say, I don't know, this sounds really serious. And that enabled
things to get crazy. And it gave the people running
this operation a lot of power. And with this thing,
I just thought it was interesting that right
away people were like, eh, doesn't sound like much. Because they've already been
through the Kavanaugh thing, they've already been
through the Russia thing. And all the other
cultural things like the Covington boys and
everything else like that, that they're not willing to just
accept what the media claim are big issues. Not to mention that every
piece of actual information you get, just like with Russia,
they'll promise a bombshell and then when you
read it, you're like eh, that doesn't
sound like much. And so what I'm
mostly interested in is how Republicans don't seem
to be playing along with it. That's surprising to me. They seem to be
pushing back hard. You have people
attempting to censor Adam Schiff for colluding
with the whistleblower before the whistle was blown,
which is just so fishy. And he is a fishy person. And this is a part
of a pattern for him of saying things that are false. You have people in the
Senate pushing back hard against the idea that it is
not legitimate to ask Ukraine to explain why it meddled
with Hillary Clinton in our 2016 election. So it might not go
as well for them. I don't know. AUDIENCE: I'll start by
echoing the compliment about how good a fighter you
are for what we believe in. Thank you for that. MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Thanks. AUDIENCE: You talked about
the passion and the sacrifice and the commitment of
the founding generation. So any thoughts, suggestions, on
how to make liberty passionate again? MOLLIE HEMINGWAY:
It's a big question that I'm not sure I have enough
of a good thing to respond to. But I am hopeful. I'm always kind of hopeful. Part of it is that
there really are some people who seem to
be willing to stand up in difficult scenarios. Part of it is that as
things get more oppressive, I think it makes choices
more clear for people. We are really just living
in the fruition of decades of progressive
education and what it has done to a lot of people. But there are a lot
of people who were not educated that way
and who do love what we have here,
and understand that it needs to be fought for. I wonder if we're too
comfortable to actually have the fight that we need to
have, and that is a risk. But you don't pray that things
get worse so that people aren't uncomfortable. But I don't know. I think, again, it's
perhaps a small thing. But speaking about why we're
here, I do a lot of hiring and I meet a lot
of new graduates. And a lot of them do not
inspire confidence in me or give me hope. But the success rate of working
with Hillsdale graduates has been just unbelievable. They seem to be able to think
critically, write clearly, understand the significance
of what they're talking about. You do that enough and you
start having a good movement. [APPLAUSE] AUDIENCE: How instructive is it
for the future of United States democracy with what's
happening in Hong Kong and with some of the protesters
carrying American flags? MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Could you
explain that a little bit more? What you're asking, sorry. AUDIENCE: What effect
this might have on China itself, what effect
this might well have on our perception of
democracy around the world? MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: I don't know. I think that,
unfortunately, a lot of this was already lost by allowing
Hong Kong to be handed over, and they already were on
a pretty tight timeline. But we were thinking
another 30 years, and it might be much
shorter than that before their oppression comes. I actually have friends
who are missionaries there who were talking about
what they've been focused on since they got there was
just the limited time that they had before China takes over. Really takes over. But realizing that it might be
even shorter is very harrowing. On the other hand,
it is so inspiring to see that they understand
what they're fighting for and why they're fighting for it. And it does give you
this glimmer of hope. You wish that we could do
something to help out with that, which we really cannot do
much right now without making the situation much
worse, probably. But I think one thing
that's been interesting about the Trump administration
is how much the attention has turned to China, as it should
have been for a long time. And even our battle
with North Korea is best understood as a
recognition of China's growing power. They've been so smart
and savvy about how they are building and
accruing power and influence across the globe. But if we lose that
stronghold, that's bad. One great thing, the
financial markets there, China might not want to mess with. And that might give the
people there some leeway to continue with their efforts. AUDIENCE: Mollie-- MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Yes. AUDIENCE: I'm still
stuck back on Benghazi. I just found it incredible. I come from the home
district of Trey Gowdy, and I thought for sure you'd
have her dead to rights on that one. And nothing happened. So if you could
speak to Benghazi. But the other thing that
I'm really excited to know is who writes the democratic
talking points that come out every morning and it
says the same thing all across the media spectrum. Who does that? MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: I mean,
it actually does probably come out as talking points. You really do get--
when you're on TV or when you're in
communications, people just send
you what they think the talking points should be. It is entirely possible
that they are just getting the same shared,
what it sounds like, might be exactly
what's happening. But it's also true
that people sometimes don't need talking points
because they already agree with the agenda. And so they just kind
of know what to say. Yesterday, it came out
that Adam Schiff had worked with this whistleblower
before it came out, which a lot of
people were saying, it seems like Adam Schiff knows
a lot about this whistleblower before it came out. And the media said,
that's a conspiracy theory and you should stop saying it. And it turns out the
people who were saying that we're absolutely right. The New York Times spun it in
the nicest possible fashion. They were like,
OK, Adam Schiff was working with the whistleblower,
in a clearly partisan action designed to get impeachment. But don't worry, it's
all on the up and up. And you saw all the media
people just kind of parrot this. Nothing to worry about. Yes, Adam Schiff
lied to me personally when he said he hadn't
talked with him, but nothing to worry about. But you saw other
people rejecting that, and that made me happy. About the Benghazi
thing, one of the things I've learned by covering these
really complex situations is just how effectively
many people have weaponized complexity, and
also how difficult it is to hold people
accountable when you don't have a lot of
key people helping out. You can control
Congress, but you don't have control of
the Department of Justice where you might be able to
encourage something to happen or what not. The Benghazi report
that came out just showed that a lot of people
who had questions about it were right. And there's so much
more that would be interesting to
look into there about why we were in Libya
in the first place, who had personal financial
interests there and whatnot. But the people are very good
at avoiding accountability. And if you don't have a
really clear plan of action to come up against it, it
probably won't work well. The Russia thing is
maybe the only thing that there will be a little
bit of accountability for it. You have the Inspector
General report coming out within the next month. Inspector General reports
are extremely boring and they're written
almost in a way to preserve the agency
that they serve. But these recent
Inspector General reports from the Department of Justice
have been absolutely explosive. I mean, talking about
really bad things that James Comey has
done, recommending him for criminal prosecution,
even if that was declined by the Department of Justice. Saying about the
damage he's done to the Department of Justice
and whatnot and to the FBI. And I expect this next report
will be more of the same, and that there might be
actual actions taken. Even though it only is going
to deal with surveillance. And Attorney General Barr
and this prosecutor Durham really are looking into
the origins of the probe. And for me, I would
just almost be happy to just get
straight answers. It would also be nice to
hold people accountable. And if they don't hold
people accountable, I worry about, again, the
preservation of the republic. People have already seen,
in repeated fashion, that if you are with
one set of people you can get away with,
quite literally, murder. And if you're with
another set of people, any little thing you do
wrong will put you in prison. And that is not sustainable for
confidence in our institutions. So I hope that even though
people don't want to hold people accountable, that they
recognize that it would be a much worse problem for
the country if they don't. SPEAKER 2: We have time
for one more question. AUDIENCE: OK, right. I recognize in your
talk there about the so-called Conservatives that
aren't quite so conservative. It's a cabal. They side with the Democrats. It's an expression of the
sort of run with the fox and hunt with the hounds. And you know, I get 20 pleas
from the Republican Party to donate throughout the day,
I'm getting them right now. And then I had 41
representatives retiring and pulling out, now 20. So I think you're
absolutely right. You need people that are there
with conviction, not just one-- . Question, You want a question. I'll give you a question. Well, the issue of
a surrogate city, I thought we fought a
civil war about that. And when I talked to people
in the Department of Justice, and they assured
me they were going to go after individuals
who control the cities, because cities don't
declare their-- it's people that make
these statements. And why hasn't the Justice
Department gone aggressively at those individual mayors that
are in charge of these cities? MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: OK, yes. OK, thanks. I thought that was
about sanctuary cities. Well, it is actually a
pretty complicated situation, depending on the laws at hand. And the Justice Department has
gone after some sanctuary city issues, and I think
they'll continue to do so. But if you don't
mind, I actually kind of want to
talk about something else you just raised about
retiring representatives and whatnot. Which I think, this
is one of those things that people have a lot
of conventional wisdom in Washington DC,
that things must be really bad for
Republicans because you have all these Republican
representatives retiring. And that might be. It might be true that
those people who all have this viewpoint are correct. It is also true that
being elected to office does not give you a
lifetime appointment, and that sometimes
it's healthy for people to step down and be
replaced with other people. It has been a very
tumultuous period of time for people on the right and
also for people on the left. But since we're probably
more interested in what's happening on the
right, that disruption has caused a lot of
people to realize that old alliances weren't
as effective as they thought they were. And it has caused some people
to realize that they're out of touch with many voters. That's actually a great thing. And it is also related to
why we're here, in my view, that there are
certain people who have handled this moment
better than other people, certain institutions who have
handled the moment better. Part of it, I think,
actually is groups that are not embedded
in Washington DC seem to do a better job at
resisting the culture there. Hillsdale College other groups
there throughout the country. And we did just start a
graduate program out in DC. But the important
thing about that is, there is a unique
perspective that what ails a lot of what's
happening in our country is this reliance on the
administrative state over and against
our constitution. The way through is to
remember these constitutional principles, our
balance of government, that the legislature should be
legislating, that they should have better oversight of
the executive agencies and enforcing our laws,
including border laws and sanctuary laws and whatnot. But a lot of people
haven't heard this. Despite all of the money
and effort that people have been sending to DC and all
that's been happening there, it's kind of a new
concept for people to realize how to take
on the bureaucracy and how important it
is for self-government. And so I think this is
good that we are now focusing some
additional efforts in DC with this message that is a
little bit different than what has been happening
for a long time. Thank you.
