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Hugh Hewitt — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Career

Hewitt worked in many posts in the Ronald Reagan administration, including deputy director and general counsel of the Office of Personnel Management, general counsel for the National Endowment for the Humanities, assistant White House Counsel, and special assistant to the attorney general.

In 1989, Hewitt became the executive director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. In 1990, he sparked controversy by proposing screening of researchers wishing to use the library resources. Hewitt suggested refusing admission to researchers deemed "unfriendly" – specifically Bob Woodward, whom he characterized as "not a responsible journalist." John Taylor, a spokesman for Nixon, overturned Hewitt's decision after two days. It became the subject of editorial rebuke in The New York Times.

Hewitt left the Nixon Library in 1990. He hosted a weekend radio talk show for the Los Angeles radio station KFI, where he broadcast until 1995. In the spring of 1992, he began co-hosting L.A. PBS member station KCET's program Life & Times, and remained with the program until the fall of 2001, when he began broadcasting his own radio show. Hewitt received three Emmys for his work on Life & Times on KCET, and also conceived and hosted the 1996 PBS series Searching for God in America.

He has worked as a weekly columnist for the Daily Standard (the online edition of The Weekly Standard) and World. He has appeared on programs such as The Dennis Miller Show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Larry King Live, The O'Reilly Factor, The Today Show and The Colbert Report.

Hewitt also became a professor of law at Chapman University School of Law. Hewitt founded the journal Nexus Journal of Law and Policy.

In 2019, Hewitt returned to the Nixon Library as president and CEO of the Richard Nixon Foundation, the nonprofit that co-operates the Nixon Library with the National Archives and Records Administration. He succeeded businessman William H. Baribault. On his first day in the job, Hewitt announced that he would split his time between Orange County and Washington, D.C., and open a Nixon Foundation office in Washington. In November 2021, Hewitt was replaced as president and CEO by Jim Byron.

In March 2020, after Joe Biden won the South Carolina presidential primary, Hewitt predicted that Biden's victory would be of little benefit to his campaign and that Bernie Sanders would perform strongly on Super Tuesday; after Biden took the lead on Super Tuesday and eventually won the Democratic nomination, Politico named Hewitt's predictions among "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year".

Donald Trump

Hewitt moderated several of the 2016 Republican Party presidential debates and forums, where he clashed with Donald Trump. Hewitt said that Trump did not possess "the temperament to be president". In February 2016, Hewitt wrote that, despite being repeatedly publicly insulted by Trump, he would support him should he become the Republican nominee for president. In June 2016, after Trump's controversial remarks concerning Judge Gonzalo Curiel, Hewitt publicly called on the RNC to disendorse Trump as nominee. A week later, Hewitt reversed his position in a Washington Post op-ed. Internal emails showed that a Salem Media executive pressured Hewitt to support Trump, and that the Salem Media executive attributed Hewitt's support for Trump in the aforementioned Washington Post op-ed shortly after to the pressure. Hewitt denied being pressured to change his position on Trump.

On August 3, he publicly floated the idea of replacing Donald with Ivanka Trump on the ticket. On October 8, he called on Trump to drop out of the race after the Access Hollywood tape emerged. Hewitt has said he ultimately voted for Trump.

Hewitt supported Trump's decision to re-shuffle his foreign policy staff in March–April 2018, and place John Bolton and Mike Pompeo in key national security positions. He described John Bolton as "peace-through-strength, 600-ship [navy], Reagan conservative" (as compared to Trump's approach, which Hewitt likened to the Great White Fleet). According to Politico, Hewitt emerged "perhaps the most public advocate for Trump's hawkish new national security team at a time when others, even inside his own party, have voiced increasing fears that Trump is surrounding himself with war-minded hawks who may play to the president's worst instincts."

Amid the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to the first impeachment of Donald Trump, Hewitt floated a conspiracy theory that the whistleblower complaint that set off the scandal was by a whistleblower who was trying to divert attention from his own involvement in a "Clintons-Obama-Biden collusion debacle". He penned an op-ed about the impeachment inquiry titled, "Impeachment-minded Democrats, welcome to Al Capone's vault. Look familiar?" He said that the FBI had tried a "coup" against Trump and that Democrats were trying "another coup". He described the July 25 phone call in which Trump requested that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy investigate Joe Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, as a "nothingburger".

In October 2019, Hewitt defended Trump's decision to remove a small contingent of U.S. military forces from Northern Syria where they served as a buffer between Turkey and Syrian Kurds, leaving Kurds vulnerable to attack by Turkish forces.

On his podcast on October 24, 2024, Hewitt, in a phone call with Trump, stated that he had voted for Trump for president in 2024.

Hugh Hewitt

Comments

‘He Is In The Process Of Winning’: Hugh Hewitt Says Americans Now Feel ‘Debate Was Rigged’ Against Trump

‘I’m Done’: Hugh Hewitt Abruptly Leaves Live Show After Calling Out WaPo Columnists For Making ‘Unfair Election Ad’

Hugh Hewitt

Comments

‘He Is In The Process Of Winning’: Hugh Hewitt Says Americans Now Feel ‘Debate Was Rigged’ Against Trump

‘I’m Done’: Hugh Hewitt Abruptly Leaves Live Show After Calling Out WaPo Columnists For Making ‘Unfair Election Ad’

Article

‘Obviously Of No Use To The Country’: Hugh Hewitt Says All But One White House Reporter Should Be Banned

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Hugh Hewitt Says Harvard Ought To Lose Money As Well As One Other Thing It Values

Hugh Hewitt across IJR

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Early life and education

Career

The Hugh Hewitt Show (radio)

Hugh Hewitt (television)

Political views

Foreign policy

Donald Trump

Immigration

Personal life

Books

Hugh Hewitt across IJR