Newt's World

The Houthis’ slogan is ‘Death to America, Death to Israel.’ They seized Yemen’s capital in 2014. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Israel have all bombed them. They have been sanctioned and designated a terrorist organization. And they are still standing, still expanding, and more capable than ever. On October 10th, a Houthi strike on Riyadh’s international airport killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 300. So how does a militia from Yemen’s northern mountains keep surviving? Nadwa Al-Dawsari, associate fellow at the Middle East Institute and a Yemeni American with more than 20 years of field experience in Yemen, joins Newt to explain who the Houthis really are, how Iran shaped them, why military campaigns have failed to stop them, and where they are expanding next.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With 27 days until the 2026 midterms, mail-in voting is already underway and the polls are moving. Since September, the generic ballot has shifted toward Democrats, and prediction markets now give them roughly a 90% chance of winning the House. But is the race as settled as it looks? Newt brings together two of the sharpest political strategists in the country, one Republican and one Democrat, to make their case. John McLaughlin, President Trump’s pollster since 2016, and Doug Sosnik, who ran the political operation in the Clinton White House, break down what the polling really shows, where the key inflection points have been, and who they think will control Congress on November 4th. With a month still to go, Newt knows from experience: a wave can build fast, and nothing is decided yet.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ukraine has become the most innovative military power in the world, building drones by the millions, fielding ground robots, and wiring the battlefield together with software. Russia is racing to match it. Iran has used $35,000 drones to force the United States to fire interceptors costing millions. And yet, only 8% of Americans are aware that AI is being used in modern warfare. Newt sits down with Jonathan Guyer, program director at the Institute for Global Affairs at the Eurasia Group, to discuss how drones and artificial intelligence are remaking warfare in real time. Drawing on his new report, War President: The Iran Trap, Guyer breaks down what the technology revolution on today's battlefields means for American strategy, public oversight, and whether Washington is paying close enough attention.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In January 2025, Tyler Hassen was running a diversified energy business in Houston. Weeks later, he was inside the West Wing as a DOGE senior insider, named Acting Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management, and Budget at the Department of the Interior with authority over $35 billion in spending and 8,000 federal employees. Now he's written the first book-length account of DOGE from someone who actually executed the work. Hassen joins Newt to discuss Inside DOGE: The Real Story from a Senior Insider — part memoir, part management autopsy. He describes late-night West Wing meetings, an $830 million contract request he says he could have designed in high school, a California water crisis that became an international media firestorm, and the personal cost his family paid. His verdict: the waste was real, the resistance was fierce, and the work is far from finished.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One year after Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University, his friend and longtime confidant Christy Edwards Lawton joins Newt to discuss her new memorial photo book, Charlie Kirk: In His Own Words. Built entirely from Charlie's own posts on X, never-before-seen photographs, and tributes written the day he died by Melania Trump, Elon Musk, Ivanka Trump, and others, the book is organized around the causes Charlie cared about most: faith, free speech, family, immigration, and Gen Z. Christy shares intimate memories from eleven years of friendship — from the lanky 22-year-old she met at a Trump fundraiser to the husband, father, and movement leader he became. She reflects on what it means to "live like Charlie," and why every net dollar from the book goes to Carry the Torch, a nonprofit dedicated to finding and funding the next generation of young conservative leaders.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most political analysts say Generation Z is quietly turning conservative. Rich Baris says the data tells a completely different story. The director of Big Data Poll and the most accurate national pollster of both 2016 and 2024 joins Newt to discuss his new book, Burn It Down: What the Polls Say Young Americans Really Want. Baris argues that young Americans aren't becoming more conservative; they're becoming more radical and revolutionary, convinced the system can't be reformed, only replaced. He and Newt dig into the staggering affordability numbers driving that anger (home prices up 230% since 2000, real wages up just 13%), the rise of "ledger politics" and left-wing populism, why two-thirds of Democratic primary voters now identify as socialists, and the urgent warning Baris has for Republicans heading into 2026: you can't out-resent the left. You have to out-deliver them.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Part Two of his "How to Win 2026" series, Newt makes the case against today's Democratic Party — in their own words. This is the most substantive episode in the series — a methodical, documented case that today's Democratic Party has drifted far from the tradition of Roosevelt and Kennedy into something most Americans simply don't recognize. Using real names, real quotes, real dates, and actual congressional roll calls, Newt builds the argument across eight acts: Democrats calling to abolish ICE and defund the police; open hostility to Israel; a DSA national co-chair calling for abolishing the U.S. Senate on Fox News; candidates who denigrate America on tape; a coalition that rejects free enterprise while a government-run grocery store in Kansas City already proved the model fails; and a brand-new congressional report naming sitting Democrats in what prosecutors call the largest pandemic fraud scheme in American history.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marine combat veteran, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, and military historian Bing West has spent six decades on battlefields from Vietnam to Afghanistan — and he's angry. In his new book, Cat 5: The 2033 War, West argues that America's leaders won every battle in three wars but lost every war, driven by what he calls the "Jupiter Complex" — the dangerous belief that America is so powerful it doesn't need to fight with full resolve. Now, he warns, that same hubris is converging with a crushing national debt and Xi Jinping's determination to seize Taiwan to create a Category 5 catastrophe by 2033. West joins Newt for a blunt, unsparing conversation about an emaciated military still buying legacy weapons, a debt spiral that leaves no room for defense spending, and what the next president must do to hold the line.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.