Hey, this is Glenn Thrush with Politico's Off Message podcast.

This week my guest is the inimitable Hugh Hewitt, conservative talk radio host, interviewer extraordinaire, and now debate host or debate co-host.

Hugh sat through the three-hour marathon Republican debate last week, asked a few questions, and particularly had an interesting exchange

with Donald Trump, with whom he has had kind of a Boswell and Johnson relationship.

A couple of weeks ago, as you guys might recall, Hugh quizzed Donald Trump, even though

Hugh says he didn't really do it, intended as a gotcha, quizzed Donald Trump on the names of some of America's great adversaries, and Trump fumbled

the distinction between the Quds Force and the Kurds.

Well, Hugh kind of cleaned that up in the debate, which angered, I think, some of his supporters

in conservative media.

Megan Kelly said it was a weird exchange and that he was batting his eyes.

I don't think that was really the case.

But I asked you about that, and Hugh Hewitted General is just a really interesting guy.

He started off his career in Harvard.

He developed a relationship with Ray Price, who was a senior advisor to Richard Nixon,

and eventually wound up working with Nixon on a book, becoming the executive director of Nixon's

library and had a brief but interesting conflict with Bob Woodward that Hugh talks about.

In general, this is just a guy who's done a lot of things in his life that most people

don't know about. We touched on a lot of these topics. But the main thing about Hugh Hewitt

is he knows how to talk with people. He's from Warren, Ohio. Just one of those rare instances

where somebody in the business of talk actually is good at it. So here's my interview with Hugh Hewitt.

Music is good at it. So here's my interview with Hugh Hewitt. Well,

let me start with your hair,

...