Donald Trump, Hugh Hewitt, and a Tale of Two Debates

SIMI VAL­LEY, Cali­for­nia—The most im­port­ant per­son at Wed­nes­day night’s Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial de­bate here at the Ron­ald Re­agan Pres­id­en­tial Lib­rary won’t be Don­ald Trump. It will be Hugh He­witt.

The 59-year-old ra­dio host, an es­tab­lish­ment-friendly con­ser­vat­ive and con­sti­tu­tion­al law pro­fess­or with a pen­chant for ask­ing tough ques­tions, has a bit of a his­tory with Trump. He­witt faced cri­ti­cism last month after say­ing on NBC’s Meet The Press that Trump doesn’t have the tem­pera­ment to be pres­id­ent. And earli­er this month, Trump called He­witt “a third-rate ra­dio an­noun­cer” after He­witt’s ques­tion about a spe­cial Ir­a­ni­an mil­it­ary force tripped up the GOP front-run­ner.

But if Trump didn’t ap­pre­ci­ate him ask­ing him about Gen­er­al Solei­mani, just wait un­til He­witt gets to the Ohio-class sub­mar­ine.

That’s a pet top­ic for He­witt, who will join CNN’s Jake Tap­per in ques­tion­ing the can­did­ates at the second GOP de­bate. More pro­fess­or­i­al than po­lar­iz­ing, more col­legi­al than con­front­a­tion­al, He­witt has de­veloped a repu­ta­tion in re­cent years as a tough-but-fair in­ter­view for White House hope­fuls, many of whom enter his arena un­pre­pared to wade in­to the weeds of fed­er­al poli­cy­mak­ing.

Or, in the case of Trump, un­able to dis­tin­guish between the Quds and the Kur­ds.

Trump’s stumble on He­witt’s show—con­flat­ing Ir­a­ni­an spe­cial forces with an eth­nic pop­u­la­tion in north­ern Ir­aq—was blood in the wa­ter for Re­pub­lic­ans who view the real-es­tate mogul as in­tel­lec­tu­ally vap­id and have yearned for his lack of policy know­ledge to be ex­posed. But it also served as a re­mind­er to all of the Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates that He­witt, un­like mod­er­at­ors in the 2012 cycle, will not be ask­ing can­did­ates wheth­er they prefer thin-crust or deep-dish pizza.

“I’m look­ing for the next com­mand­er-in-chief to know who Has­san Nas­ral­lah is, and Za­wahiri, and al-Ju­lani, and al-Bagh­dadi,” He­witt said to Trump on his Septem­ber 3 show, lead­ing to a tense ex­change about “gotcha” ques­tion­ing. “Do you know the play­ers without a score­card, yet, Don­ald Trump?”

“No, you know, I’ll tell you hon­estly, I think by the time we get to of­fice, they’ll all be changed. They’ll be all gone,” Trump replied. “I knew you were go­ing to ask me things like this, and there’s no reas­on. … You know, those are like his­tory ques­tions. Do you know this one? Do you know that one?”

Of course, any­one who has listened to He­witt’s show knows his­tory ques­tions—and in-depth dis­cus­sions of geo­pol­it­ics and de­fense policy—are his spe­cialty. The man who loves to ask his guests about Al­ger Hiss and Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning book about al-Qaida, The Loom­ing Tower, was ap­pro­pri­ately labeled byBuzzFeed’s McKay Cop­pins as “prob­ably the most likely to ask a de­bate ques­tion that knocks a can­did­ate out of the race”—not be­cause his ques­tions are un­fair but be­cause they of­ten re­veal em­bar­rass­ing cracks in a can­did­ate’s know­ledge.

This is par­tic­u­larly dan­ger­ous for Trump. The front-run­ner, in months of speeches and in­ter­views, has fas­ti­di­ously avoided dis­cuss­ing policy de­tails. Last week, for ex­ample, he ar­rived at a rally on Cap­it­ol Hill protest­ing the Ir­a­ni­an nuc­le­ar deal and began his speech by say­ing Ted Cruz and oth­er speak­ers had “gone through all of the de­tails” already, free­ing him to talk in broad strokes about Pres­id­ent Obama’s in­com­pet­ence and his own his­tory of “won­der­ful” deal-mak­ing.

If He­witt had his way, then, Wed­nes­day’s de­bate would prob­ably sound a lot like his ra­dio show, push­ing can­did­ates to en­gage in de­tailed con­ver­sa­tions about com­plex geo­pol­it­ic­al sub­jects. In oth­er words, it would be the worst-case scen­ario for Trump.

For­tu­nately for the front-run­ner, He­witt isn’t run­ning the show Wed­nes­day night.

The lead mod­er­at­or is Jake Tap­per, CNN’s star an­chor, who has demon­strated an ap­pet­ite for ant­ag­on­ist­ic ques­tion­ing and in­terne­cine ex­changes. (He and He­witt will be joined in ques­tion­ing the can­did­ates by by CNN cor­res­pond­ent Dana Bash.) Tap­per, aware of the tough act CNN is fol­low­ing—last month’s FOX News de­bate was viewed by a stun­ning 24 mil­lion people—is ex­pec­ted to mim­ic his FOX coun­ter­parts by ask­ing ques­tions that eli­cit in­tra-can­did­ate dis­putes rather than policy-ori­ented talk­ing points.

If that’s the case, and Tap­per’s goal is to fa­cil­it­ate con­front­a­tions among the can­did­ates, the de­bate will likely be­come a school­yard brawl—right in Trump’s wheel­house.

If, on the oth­er hand, He­witt’s in­flu­ence turns the de­bate in­to a ref­er­en­dum on the can­did­ates’ know­ledge of policy, Trump could look out of his depth.

This is why He­witt is the per­son to watch Wed­nes­day night. And it’s why the Trump-He­witt rivalry is crit­ic­al to the out­come—not be­cause they sparred on the ra­dio, or traded un­flat­ter­ing as­sess­ments of one an­oth­er, but be­cause they want com­pletely dif­fer­ent things out of the de­bate it­self. And be­cause if one wins, the oth­er loses.