Move over, Leonardo Da Vinci. There’s a new Renaissance humanist on the block — at least, according to the internet. You might know her as the global pop star Dua Lipa, and she wants you to read banned books. This past week, the “Levitating” singer unveiled her new “Manifesto Library” in Portugal, which features hundreds of books she claims were once banned or otherwise controversial. Posing with a copy of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a book that has now sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, she tells her 650K+ “Book Club” followers that her initiative opens up “conversations around censorship, resistance and the importance of preserving voices that challenge power and refuse to be silenced.”  There’s only one problem. None of the books in her library were ever “banned” or “censored” in the first place.  Among the other titles in Dua Lipa’s library are George Orwell’s “1984,” a book that has sold over 30 million copies as of 2024, and J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” a novel that is read in virtually every single high school English class across the country. I don’t necessarily disagree with Dua Lipa that we all should read these great books, but calling “1984″ and “The Catcher in the Rye” “banned” books is like calling “Game of Thrones,” one of the world’s most widely watched TV shows, a “banned” show. As I pointed out the other day on X, you can call anything a “banned book” as long as it was removed from an elementary school library that one time in 1978.  That hasn’t stopped the political Left from co-opting the term “banned books” to create an imaginary controversy around censorship. Slapping the label onto virtually any novel with a remotely political bent, the Left frequently pretends conservatives are responsible for instituting Nazi-era book bans and for silencing leftist voices. Walk into any indie bookstore in a blue state, for instance, and you’ll immediately be met with a “banned books” display featuring carefully curated titles promoting a certain political agenda. One such display making the rounds on X contains Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks” (a far-leftist call to violence against “colonizers”), Sally Rooney’s “Normal People” (a novel she herself has called “Marxist propaganda”), and Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” (I will let that one speak for itself).  Nor is the “banned books” trend a recent invention. Back in 2023, for example, the American Library Association referred to an effort to remove sexually explicit content from school libraries as a demand to “censor library books.” These books, meanwhile (the aforementioned “Gender Queer” among them), contained “graphic depictions of how children can masturbate,” as well as “cartoons of homosexual activity,” according to a Daily Wire report. And while these titles were removed from certain school libraries, they remain widely available for purchase on Amazon or your local bookstore.   One can only conclude that the “banned books” trend is nothing more than a convenient way for leftists to promote books with certain ideological messages over others.  Because the same people crying so vehemently about “banned books” when the books promote leftist ideologies are the very people quietly banning conservative-leaning books from ever hitting our shelves in the first place.  You can lament the removal of “Gender Queer” from an elementary school library all you want, but the fact is that the novel continues to enjoy mainstream institutional backing. The same goes for Sally Rooney’s Marxist BDSM fantasy “Normal People” and Caro Claire Burke’s “Yesteryear,” the internet’s latest literary fad attacking conservative Christian “tradwives.” Other recent celebrated titles include Pulitzer Prize finalist “Stag Dance,” which depicts a “Vegas transfeminine gathering” and NPR’s best book of the year “Bellies,” a trans romance that everyone’s favorite celebrity Elliot Page has called “smart, hilarious, and deeply moving.” I am not here to argue that these books shouldn’t be published in the first place. But it is undeniable that the publishing industry consciously prioritizes far-leftist stories, creating a homogenous reading culture in which contemporary fiction has become synonymous with far-leftist ideology.  Don’t believe me? Publishing professions can tell you themselves.  Before a book reaches the shelves of your local Barnes and Noble, it must first go through several stages of the editorial process, the first of which entails the procurement of representation from a literary agent. While several non-fiction literary agencies still (thankfully) devote themselves to conservative authors — someone has to publish Ben Shapiro, after all — the fiction world has become so ideologically captured by the “banned books” mob that it is now virtually impossible to get a book with a more “traditional” message published in the first place. I’m not even talking about books with overtly Christian themes or Zionist protagonists, though those are most certainly no-gos. Literary agents now explicitly declare that they will not even consider “dated ideals of partnership or relationship.” How come the “banned books” advocates are the same people making these lists that effectively ban certain books…? pic.twitter.com/aW3JNcnxFP — Liza Libes (@pensandpoison) July 15, 2026 I don’t speak leftist very well, but I’m pretty sure that means that this agent won’t look at a book that positively depicts marriage between a man and a woman.  One could argue that if these were just the preferences of a single agent, then we wouldn’t have a problem on our hands. But when an entire literary establishment begins declining certain morals and themes, then an entire publishing institution effectively institutes a soft ban on certain books.  Indeed, other agents decline to review “copaganda,” “protagonists who are aligned with American police or military,” or even “morality stories.” Meanwhile, one independent press warns that book submissions “must have a Muslim protagonist,” while a children’s editor at Hachette requests books that “center marginalized voices, especially related to queer women and femmes.” Editors at Macmillan’s Flatiron — the same imprint that publishes Elliot Page and Joe Biden — request “contemporary fiction that centers Black and queer voices” and “literary fiction that explores music and art, friendship, gender, and progressive politics.”  A single editor’s “preference” for progressive fiction and antipathy towards traditional messages does not constitute a book ban, but when large swaths of literary agents and editors across an entire industry begin parroting the same message, then it becomes clear that conservative fiction — or simply books with traditional moral messages in the vein of “The Brothers Karamazov” or “Anna Karenina” — are no longer welcome on our shelves.  The irony is impossible to ignore: the same people who have built an entire cultural identity around “banned books” are often the very people deciding which books never get the chance to exist in the first place. No, conservative books aren’t being banned in public squares or ritually burned at the stake. They are simply being filtered out long before they ever get the chance to find an audience in the first place.  Banned books are in. But they’re not the banned books that Dua Lipa wants you to read or the books that do not belong in elementary school libraries. They are the books with great moral messages that we once venerated as a society but whose contemporary iterations will be forever lost on us because they never made it to our shelves. That’s the book ban that should worry us the most.  *** Liza Libes is a writer and the founder of Pens and Poison. She holds degrees in English from Columbia University and writes about literature and culture at pensandpoison.org. Follow her on X @pensandpoison. This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Bruce Springsteen thinks the best way to love your country is to slam it from one concert stage to the next. Aaron Lewis would rather sing about the values that make America great: Faith. Resilience. Pride in the country. And gratitude that seems to elude The Boss on the latter’s 2026 No Kings tour. Lewis, the Staind lead singer who segued into country stardom with the 2011 EP “Town Line,” pours out his patriotism on his new album, “Give My Country Back.” And yes, the title track is as fiery as expected. Lewis shreds Americans eager to fundamentally transform the freest country in the world. Now we’re standing on the shoulders of the ones that went before Proud of what they did to make it all worth dying for Yeah, you bite the hand that feeds you And it ought to be a crime You wave a flag from somewhere else while you’re burning mine Lewis, 54, tells The Daily Wire his sixth solo album extols a value that’s in short supply today: accountability. “You don’t have to look very far in either direction to see hundreds of examples of there being no accountability left in this world,” Lewis says. That, and a lack of gratitude for the country’s many blessings, can’t help but stick in the singer’s craw. “I’m very lucky. I’ve been able to travel all over the world with the job I’ve had for 30 years … this is the most amazing country on the face of the planet without a close second,” Lewis says. “If you’re 50 years old and older, it’s now your responsibility for your grandkids and children to receive from you a better country than you received from your grandparents and your parents,” he adds. “We’re the only country where it works that way.” “Give My Country Back” finds Lewis weighing in on issues of gratitude and love of country, steeped in his textured vocals and an old-school country spirit. You can smell the leather and grit on his honky tonk tracks. You won’t miss his message, but he says the delivery method for most of his material isn’t meant to push anyone away. “I’m never trying to hit anybody over the head with it … nobody wants to get screamed in their face,” he says. “When you start that, they stop listening.” And he shares his deeply held opinions for a reason. That said, the title track is getting a live reaction akin to his biggest hits, think “Am I the Only One” and “Country Boy.” “I usually know pretty quickly that I did something right,” he says of the live audience feedback. He describes other new tracks, like “Bad Thing To Be Good At,” as an example of an older, wiser musician “owning all of my s***.” The new album, produced by Sol Philcox-Littlefield, finds Lewis collaborating on many of the tracks. It’s a different writing process from the one he embraces with Staind music, and it’s one that took some time to process. “It’s just a different culture in the country world,” he says. “It honestly felt good at first … it took all the onus and weight off my shoulders.” The singer co-wrote five of the album’s 10 tracks, working with veteran collaborators like Jeffrey Steele, Bobby Pinson, Travis Meadows, and Casey Beathard. The difference is in the level of satisfaction he finds when he harnesses a personal outlook, which isn’t quite the same here – “it almost feels like I’m cheating,” he quips. He might return to a more personal approach for his next country release. Lewis maintains a dual strategy for his career. He has fall tour dates planned with Staind while currently bringing “Give My Country Back” to concert venues nationwide. He still draws a clear distinction between projects. “I’ve never pulled any punches whatsoever … I’ve really just said whatever the f*** was on my mind,” he says, an approach that applies to his solo music. With Staind, he follows a different course. “I don’t say anything during the entire [live] Staind show, and at the end I say, ‘goodnight,’” he says. “I do all of my talking … all of my opinions or thoughts or whatever it may be, only when it’s my name on it. I have put in quite a bit of effort to ensure that there is a separation.” Call Lewis the “anti-Boss.” And, since the interview wasn’t for a Staind project or tour, he weighed in on Springsteen’s hard-Left pivot. “He has been a member of the elite class for so long,” Lewis said of the New Jersey rocker, whom he dubs “disconnected” from the working class. Springsteen has taken heat in recent years for his sky-high concert ticket prices, something he has defended rather than addressed, all while he keeps railing against President Trump on stage and off. “Everything he stands for is bulls***.  It’s all just anti-American bulls***. I don’t have any tolerance for it,” Lewis says. The Rutland, Vermont native has straddled two major genres over the past 15 or so years, and he’s not against stretching some more. He envisions another side of his musical life, a trippy, electronica sound that has caught his attention. He’s already mastered two genres. Why not another? He says he’d like to duck away with a collaborator well versed in that style and “just see what comes out of it.” *** Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. He’s also the host of The Hollywood in Toto Podcast. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto. 

Some on the Right have spent the last several months complaining about Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey.” The controversy has largely centered on two things: transgender-identifying Elliot Page playing a male soldier (but not Achilles, as rumors suggested) and the race-blind casting, particularly the choice to feature black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. X owner Elon Musk tweeted in May that “Chris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey.” Earlier this month, the Twitter account Wall Street Mav, which has over a million followers, predicted “financial disaster.” Just a day after its release, “The Odyssey” is already proving haters wrong. Forget the critics’ score (though that is hovering at 95%). On Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave the film an even higher 97% score. It earned $17.6 million on Thursday, the day before its official release, and the numbers keep growing.  Online outrage doesn’t always translate to the real world. And in this instance, perhaps the legendary “Interstellar” and “The Dark Knight” director knew a thing or two about what audiences were craving.  “As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before,” Nolan said in an interview last year. “And what I saw is that all of this great mythological cinematic work that I had grown up with — Ray Harryhausen movies and other things — I’d never seen that done with the sort of weight and credibility that an A-budget and a big Hollywood, IMAX production could do.” In a year dominated by sequels — the year’s top films so far have been “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and “Toy Story 5” — Nolan’s “Odyssey” revives a classic story for a new generation who, if we’re being honest, probably were never going to thumb through a copy of “The Odyssey” (even the Emily Wilson translation favored by liberals). It’s become popular internet slang to respond to a lack of pop culture knowledge by saying “we’re losing the ancient texts.” But when it comes to stories such as “The Odyssey,” we actually are. This means Nolan’s “Odyssey” comes at the perfect time. The archetypes, the themes, and the drama of Homer — it’s all there. Nolan raised some eyebrows by marketing the film with the tagline “defy the gods.” If you know anything about “The Odyssey,” you should know that you cannot, in fact, defy the gods. But in the actual film, Nolan makes that clear.  “The Odyssey” is a big, glorious summer blockbuster based on a pillar of the Western canon. It explores mercy, hospitality, vengeance, family bonds, honor, and, of course, homecoming. The score is bracing, the 60-foot puppet cyclops is nightmare-fuel, and Robert Pattinson is particularly chilling as the suitor Antinous.  That said, Page’s role as Sinon (a character from Virgil’s “Aeneid”), does distract from the narrative. Nolan worked with Page on “Inception” in 2010 (a decade before she began identifying as a man), and he likes to recast actors he’s worked with before. But with just a few minutes of screen time, Sinon’s brief appearances can’t distract from the greatness of the rest of the film.  The race-blind casting, on the other hand, allows for some stellar performances, mostly notably Zendaya as Athena and Himesh Patel as Odysseus’ second in command, Eurylochus.  With the “Odyssey” controversy, conservatives are getting hung up on the details (some more troublesome than others) when the headline is that one of Hollywood’s best directors just made a three-hour long film about a father returning home to his family, facing terrifying monsters and deftly wielding his bow and arrows on the way. It’s beautifully shot, it has mass appeal, and there’s little in the film itself to subvert Homer’s epic tale, which is now reaching a new audience.  Ignore the performative “Odyssey” hate, and go enjoy the film. *** This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Weekend Plans is our exclusive lifestyle feature where we highlight the real off-duty routines of the most exciting people in culture.  This weekend, Emmy-winning ‘Sopranos’ star and host of the “ULTRAFREE” podcast Drea de Matteo chats with The Daily Wire about embarrassing her kids in the streets of Los Angeles, why mornings revolve around her dog, and how one little “picture in a bikini” earned her the $75,000 she desperately needed to save her house. This Hollywood icon may be outlaw country and mobster royalty, but she’s totally punk rock.  * * * Drea de Matteo will be described as a “MILF,” “absolute dreamgirl” and a “booyah hottie” for the rest of time. And she’s perfectly fine with that.  She joins me on a sunny Los Angeles afternoon from her home office, flanked by an American flag in the next room. Delightful chaos erupts as her rescue dogs Moose, Blankie, and her “Chinese mafia princess Shar-Pei” Lucky Luciana tumble through her eclectic Laurel Canyon house, vying for attention. Drea famously paid off a lien against her home using $75,000 she made in her first minutes on OnlyFans.  “It was a picture of me in a bikini, man. I paid off a freaking lien in 75 minutes.” She caught flak for the move from Ben Shapiro, among others. It stung, but she doesn’t hold a grudge. “I got dropped by everybody. In a way that just turned me off so much to Hollywood … All they have to do is tell a Democrat, ‘She didn’t get the vaccine.’ And that automatically pegs you as racist. You’re all the things. You’re a hippie who only eats flowers.” Drea originally sought out the censor-free OnlyFans platform to host her podcast after being canceled for speaking out against the vaccine. The dip in her income was devastating.  “They tried to make a story out of it, like female empowerment,” she recalls. “I was like, no, this is not that. I hope you are never in the position that I found myself in at that time. And it was all born out of the vaccine mandates and standing my ground.” We spitball about her character returning from the dead for a “Sopranos” spin-off, or how a “Sons of Anarchy” reboot might feature her character among the last stars standing by the series’ end.   The HBO hit that transformed television as we know it, “Sopranos” now streams all day. And it’s keeping Drea’s glamorously mob-adjacent Adriana La Cerva persona fresh in adolescent minds.  “It is like a phenomenon,” she laughs. “I don’t know if it’s because, you know, I fixed my face a little bit so I still look the same? Teenagers are skidding on the road in California, like ‘Holy sh*t, it’s Adriana!’ And I’m with my 15-year-old who thinks it’s so uncool … He’s like, ‘I gotta watch it. My whole feed is “Sopranos.”’” Drea laments the fact that her son Waylon “Blackjack” Jennings — whom she shares with Grammy-winning music producer Shooter Jennings — has watched all of “Breaking Bad” but has yet to crack into a single episode of “mommy’s show.”  Unlike some other celebrities, Drea welcomes enduring notoriety as part of the deal. I almost bumped into her last year at Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell’s show in downtown LA. I didn’t want to bug her while she was with her daughter, Alabama Gypsy Rose Jennings, but she says I totally should have.   “My favorite pastime is to give hugs to fans,” she confirms. “I don’t leave the house very much, but when I do — I’m like the Dos Equis guy — I am stopping and taking pictures with a zillion people. I feel like we’re all just this one big universe and that I can’t just shut people out. They love me, and I have to love them back.” She keeps things apolitical these days, but she dives headfirst into topics that pique her interest, such as geoengineering and the weaponization of musical frequencies. But as a native of New York City (Drea says her father was “offered a button” from every crime family but the Gambinos), I have to ask if she’s personally offended by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani forgetting Little Italy on a map of “immigrant enclaves.”  “I don’t want to be that person that gets on a soap box about it because that always annoys me, but at the end of the day, we built that city. The skyline, it’s all immigrants,” she says.  “All of these mayors and governors hate f*cking everyone. I don’t think any of them care about any particular race, nationality, religion. I think they’re all bought and sold, I think they have a script and they f*cking stick to it. He’s the son of a famous movie director. What does he know about running a city? He was hired. I’m an actor — he got hired to do an acting job, too … Maybe I should run for one of these fake f*cking acting jobs and see if they’ll put me in office.” Drea may be too much of an independent thinker to be relegated to any one box.  “We are punk rock,” she says. “This is the only version of punk rock left. So if everyone in the f*cking music industry and the entertainment industry is following that protocol, they have left their punk rock credentials behind.” Nights turn into mornings for the dogs Drea briefly contemplates her morning routine before offering me the timestamp that’s really on her mind: her college-aged daughter’s latest endeavor. “My daughter just started driving last week, so I’m a nervous wreck. What I do is I watch her drive on my phone. If she’s in the car alone and it’s late I sit here for 30 minutes if I have to, just watching what street she’s on, following her phone like a psychopath.” Drea laughs. “She writes me, ‘I got home,’ and I send her a screenshot of her at home, like, ‘I already know I followed you for 30 minutes.’” Drea’s determined to let her daughter grow up under her watchful eye. “Me and a girlfriend were actually sitting at Norm’s Diner until four in the morning while she was at an afterparty, to pick her up and bring her and her buddy home. I want her to have that feeling that I had when I was a kid — that freedom. But at the same time, I can’t really give it to her because I don’t trust people … I am a few blocks away in a car like a psycho.” Considering Drea’s evening routine, I’m shocked she sees mornings at all. “Listen, I’m not sleeping as well as I used to because I am 54 and that happens,” Drea shrugs. But she shares her earliest hours with her longtime boyfriend, musician Robbie Staebler. “We wake up at nine, sometimes we can even wake up at 11 a.m. It depends on what time we go to bed.”  “The mornings are always the same,” she tells me. “It’s a cup of coffee, sitting outside on the front deck with all the dogs. The big one doesn’t stop barking. My boyfriend calls them ‘No reason barks.’ She’s just barking in the wind, hitting her tail on the wind chimes. It’s chaos.” Relaxing into another dimension For someone battling it out on the front lines in Hollywood, Drea’s a pro at letting negative energy pass on by. “The only thing that really stresses me out are continuous EMFs (Electromagnetic Fields) because I’m always researching or doing my work on a phone or a computer,” she says. But when she needs a little rest, she picks up one of the “15 different books” she’s currently reading. “I get my little neck light and a book because my house is pretty dark. I can’t have LEDs all over me. I’ll have a bigger headache.” She’s not kidding when it comes to a diverse collection of reading material, which multiplies as we speak. “I am in all these different dimensions,” she explains of the content she later peppers into her podcast. “I am trying to draw a diagram in my mind and put together pieces of a puzzle from ancient religions, secret societies, astronaut theories, all the different schools of thought, and all the different philosophers.” “I am reading a hundred different books at once and trying to see where they overlap. People are so afraid of a lot of this stuff and then when you really get into it, it’s like, ‘Oh this isn’t really that scary.’” Quality time with “la famiglia” Drea’s mother Donna de Matteo died unexpectedly in 2024. In celebration of her life, and hoping to forge new family memories, Drea took her kids on a six-week adventure through Italy and Greece. “When I graduated high school, she took me and my friends to Italy, to Capri, because that was her favorite place to go with my dad,” Drea remembers of her mother. “We went with a group of 20 people … it was such a beautiful trip.”  “Both my parents are gone and I was like, I’ve been broke for a while. I’m taking a piece of this money and going on a trip with my kids because I don’t know if the world’s going to shut down again … and I don’t know if they’ll ever want to go with me again. Right now, they’re still mine and they have to do what I say. So, we’re going to Italy. Now when they talk about it, they’re like, I can’t believe you took us on that trip. It was really worth it.” But the family already knew how to make the most out of their time together, however luxurious it might be. Especially during lockdown. “We literally ran out of money because of COVID and the foreclosure and everything. So, we did roadtrips nonstop. We would go to Mount Zion or Moab. We spent a lot of time in Utah and Arizona. Lots of national parks and hiking.” She feels this precious time with her kids slipping away. “Everybody’s busy. I wish I could get them to do more. We’ll see.” An outlaw legacy Drea describes how she rearranged an entire room of her house to turn it into a makeshift studio where her boyfriend Robbie’s band could record their latest album. Those tracks are still under wraps, but Drea’s got them on repeat.  Also on her playlist, her daughter Alabama lends keys to her own New York-style punk band, The Pinups, as well as providing under-the-radar vocals on higher profile projects. Drea’s son Blackjack leverages his family’s outlaw country status, with a decidedly unique spin on his rap track “YUHH.” Drea clearly encourages her kids to blaze their own trails. “We are outlaws,” she recalls telling Blackjack. “I go, dude, you are part of a crazy legacy. From my dad to Shooter’s dad [Waylon Jennings], even Shooter. We’ve all gone against the system in our own way. So, this is your life, buddy. Like, you’re born into it. And you are already a rebellious maniac. So, embrace it. Don’t believe what your friends say. Find the right people who mirror who you really are.” She may be a rebel, but Drea lets her heart guide the way. “I lead with one thing no matter what, and it’s love. I know it sounds so corny.” I assure her it doesn’t. “At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the connection we have with people, how we make others feel, and how we love them.”

The passing of Senator Lindsey Graham a week ago shocked Washington. Graham was many things, but he was always interesting, always known for his sense of humor, and always tireless. He seemed to be everywhere at once, a trait that only accelerated with the passing of his fellow members of the so-called “Three Amigos,” Joe Lieberman and John McCain. Graham was one of Donald Trump’s harshest critics a decade ago, but had, in time, become an essential and effective ally of his policies in the Senate. He was hated by many — including some in his own party — for his vociferous neoconservative foreign policy, his aggressive support of Ukraine in the war against Russia, and his status as one of Israel’s best allies in U.S. politics. But he was also hated for his effectiveness — he could get things done, and not just in national security. Pro-life organizations mourned him as one of their staunchest allies on the abortion issue. And no one can forget his brilliant defense of Brett Kavanaugh, in the midst of a Democratic smear campaign and a moment when weak-willed Senate Republicans seemed ready to cut and run.  Graham leaves a legacy of staunch belief, but also, in a rare capacity in this day and age, an earned reputation as someone who was truly respected on both sides of the political aisle. The Daily Wire discussed Graham and his unique life with someone who knew him best: Bob Heckman, a longtime respected consultant for him, John McCain, and many other Republicans. *** Ben Domenech: So, Bob, because we have different guests and people we interview who are known to The Daily Wire audience as politicians, influencers, or the like, I’m sure they’re all familiar with your storied career. But it’s also incumbent upon me to say, how do you know Lindsey Graham? How long have you known him, and what professional background connections led you to develop the kind of friendship you had with him? Bob Heckman: I first met Lindsey during John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008. Lindsey was probably our number one surrogate for John. I traveled everywhere with him, or wherever Lindsey was asked to travel with him. I got a glimpse into their relationship because Senator McCain used to never refer to him by name, but rather, he would refer to him as that little twerp. John would say, “Somebody talk to the little twerp and see if he can go with me on this trip,” or whatever. They had a unique friendship, to say the least. They would bicker back and forth, but they loved each other. And then I worked on Senator McCain’s reelection. In 2010, I worked on Senator McCain’s reelection to the Senate. In 2014, he and a mutual friend, Charlie Black, reached out to me and said, “Lindsey’s got problems from the Right in South Carolina. Would you be interested in working on his race?” And I said yes. I thought the guy was great when I interacted with him. And so I got to know him mostly in 2014, working on that race. And ironically, the candidate we were most worried about from the Right was Nancy Mace. But she actually finished fourth, I think, in a four-way primary, or maybe it was a five-way primary. But I got to know him in 2014. And then in 2016, he ran for president briefly. Lindsey liked to say I always wanted to run for president badly, and so I did. I drew the short straw because Lindsey wanted to campaign in Iowa, and nobody wanted to travel there. So I wound up accompanying him on a number of Iowa trips, and it was delightful. He was great to be around, and we had fun while campaigning. And then from there, I worked on every one of his Senate re-elections, and I stayed in touch with him in between. And he became not just a client, but a very good friend. BD: You got a close look at the relationships that Lindsey had. And one of the things that has been cited by so many different people across the aisle in terms of their relationship with him was how well he got along with Democrats that he had very strong and vociferous disagreements with. It’s pretty rare to see somebody who is known as being one of the most prominent defenders of the pro-life cause in the Senate also be able to get along with Democrats on the other side of the aisle. Why was that? BH: That’s why he was so valuable — his ability to do that. I think there are two reasons why. Number one, he was disarmingly funny. In fact, he’s maybe the funniest person I’ve ever known or been around. He had a sharp wit, but it was never a mean-spirited wit. The second thing is that he was a thoroughly decent person. He was easy to talk to. He was gracious and kind. He never talked down to people. He was always inquiring about your family or personal life. He got to know my daughter, and he asked about her constantly whenever we were together. And I think that made it very easy for people who disagreed with him to actually be friends with him. And I’m seeing some of the tributes from Democrats like Amy Klobuchar. And what comes through to me is the fact that they liked him. He was a likable guy. He was friendly. And as I said, he was a thoroughly decent person. BD: I had multiple disagreements over the course of Lindsey’s career with his policy positions, and I was a pretty vociferous critic of him on a number of different national security and foreign policy steps where I thought that he was making the wrong choice — an opinion that was shared by a lot of folks who were in the Tea Party movement or people who are still around today. What I found to be pretty shocking, once I got to know him more closely, once I started dating Meghan and was around him more, was how little that mattered to him. It didn’t matter to him at all that I had been critical of him. That’s a pretty rare thing in politics. People tend to take things personally. Why did Lindsey have this aspect to him when somebody could be beating him up? Even the vice president, J.D. Vance, tweeted out, “I was getting into arguments with him about Ukraine funding, and then I found out that he was pushing a bill that I cared about through committee at the same time.” Why did Lindsey have that capacity? BH: He was tenacious when he sank his teeth into an issue that he really cared about. You and I both know what those issues were. America’s standing in the world, having a strong military, standing by Ukraine against Russia, solving the Middle East problem, and following through on Iran. And the pro-life cause, on the things that he really cared about, he was absolutely tenacious. It didn’t really bother him if somebody disagreed with him. He had it in his mind that he could somehow convert everybody, which is just a great quality. In 2016, when Senator McCain was reelected for the last time, I was in Phoenix. That was election night. That was the night that Donald Trump was elected president. I was in Phoenix. So was Senator Graham, so was Senator [Joe] Lieberman — the “Three Amigos” together. And I remember on election night, Lindsey and I were watching the same TV with results coming in from Wisconsin, and the race hadn’t been decided yet. And he turned to me, and he said, “How well do you know Wisconsin?” I said, “Fairly well.” And he said, “Are there enough votes left for Hillary to win?” And you remember during the presidential campaign in 2016, he had had some bitter exchanges with Donald Trump. And so he asked me, “Are there enough votes left for Hillary to win?” I started joking, he said, “Shouldn’t you be cheering for the Republican?” And he kind of smirked at me. Well, about 10 days later, I ran into him at a reception, and we talked for a couple of minutes. And I said, “Okay, so Trump was elected. What the hell do we do now?” And immediately he said, “The guy is president. We learn to deal with him.” That was his mindset. He wanted to be in the room when important decisions were being made because that was the only way he could have an influence. And making up with Donald Trump and becoming a Trump partisan was the way to be in the room. So good for him because he accomplished so many different things by doing that. BD: I’ve been making this point in a number of the interviews that I’ve done the past couple of days. I think Lindsey might be the last guy; maybe there are a couple of other guys who are still around, but he might be the last guy in Washington who understood politics just on a root level. He was a political animal. He had the ability to adapt — to take lessons from the voters rather than “The voters have spoken, the bastards.” It’s more like, okay, I’m going to take a signal from this, respond to it, and try to make the best of what they have given me. And in this case, I truly believe, and I wonder if you share this belief, that he made Donald Trump a better president. BH: I totally agree with that. Lindsey was a strategic thinker all the time. He was always trying to figure out how to actually accomplish what he wanted to accomplish. It’s like the old saying that politics is the art of the possible. Lindsey was a thorough believer in that. And I think some of it at least rubbed off on President Trump. You can see from the accolades that have come from people like John Thune that the valuable role that Lindsey played in being able to speak truth to President Trump about the possibility of getting various things done, and how you get them done, and Trump’s own flexibility at times, I think, comes from Lindsey coaching him. BD: One of the accolades that came in, which was truly a surprise to me, but since you’re an old Washington hand, maybe you were less surprised, came from Monica Lewinsky, who tweeted out her appreciation. She said, of course, she disagreed with a lot of what Lindsey believed, but that he was the one impeachment manager who truly defended her against the Clinton machine. It seems like a hallmark of Lindsey throughout his career that he would get truly pissed off when he thought that something unfair was happening, where, in particular, Democrats were coming down on someone who couldn’t fight back. BH: That’s exactly right, Ben. The defining moment of his career was probably the Kavanaugh hearings. When I saw him on TV getting enraged like that — the one thing I knew about him and his personality is that there was nothing fake about that. It was not staged. It was not planned. He saw an injustice being done, and he reacted to it. And in particular, when he said to the Democrats, “I voted for [Elena] Kagan, I voted for [Sonia] Sotomayor. I would never have done what you’re trying to do to this man now.” And he meant that. I mean, that’s where I think John McCain rubbed off on him a lot, too. And that is the commitment to wanting to do politics, but do politics in a civil way. BD: Did you watch that live? BH: Yes. BD: I think there’s a before and an after in the way we view the Senate and the judiciary fights. I was driving across Texas with a good friend of mine, and we were listening to C-SPAN radio. When that happened, we literally had to pull over to the side of the road because we thought, “What the hell was that? That’s amazing.” But the thing that I also took away from it — and this is Lindsey’s political brain working — is that the message wasn’t just for Democrats; it was for Republicans, because everything that we were hearing, everything that I was getting in my email, was from Republicans who were about to squish out — they were about to cut and run. They said, “We have plenty of other good candidates. Why are we going to throw in our lot with this guy? Why are we going to go along with defending him? It’s easier to just cut bait and move on to a different candidate.” And in that moment, of course, I was infuriated by that because it seemed so deeply unfair. But to hear a Senator express that was just unbelievable to me. And I think it’s truly, as you said, a defining moment of his career. When you look back on that moment, do you think that set a new precedent for the way that Republican Senators, in particular, will be judged on — sticking by judicial nominees going forward and holding the line? Because I think that it is, and I hope that there are people who will be able to do that in Lindsey’s absence. BH: Yeah, that’s a great point, Ben. One would hope that it would set a new standard and that there would never be a Robert Bork-type problem. Bork was eminently qualified to serve on the Supreme Court when Ronald Reagan tapped him, but Senators were coming up to the White House saying, “Hey, we’re not going to be able to get this done,” and they backed away. The other defining moment like that, ironically, was Arlen Specter defending Clarence Thomas. And it’s ironic that it was Arlen Specter. But what runs through all of that is the question of fairness. Also, Lindsey thinks like a lawyer. And, like a lawyer, he had looked at the evidence against Kavanaugh, and it was incredibly thin, all hearsay. And then he talked to Kavanaugh, and Kavanaugh denied it all. In his mind, there were no witnesses. There was no proof. And the only person who was in the room who could speak to it denied it. And Kavanaugh had a spotless record prior to that. Lindsey weighed all that, and he thought, “There’s no question in my mind that in a court of law, this guy would be found not guilty of these charges that probably wouldn’t even have been brought against him.” So I think that was part of it, too. But yes, I think it sets a new standard. I sure hope it does because if, as Republicans, we don’t stand for backing our judicial nominees, then I’m not sure what we do stand for. BD: Regarding the humor aspect you mentioned earlier, I know you probably have a bunch of stories. If you want to share some of them, you can. I’m curious, where do you think that really came from? He had such a hard life, a life, by the way, that I think I was familiar with it because I grew up in South Carolina, but I think a lot of people were not familiar with it until this week. There were a lot of people online reacting with shock when they learned about his background and what he had to deal with from a young age. By the way, they were reacting with shock to learn that he’s one of the poorest senators. BH: That’s right. Yes. BD: I think that there was this revelation moment that was happening about where he came from. You don’t normally think of people coming out of that experience and having just a deep sense of humor about life. Why do you think that was what happened to him? BH: I think it’s because of his upbringing and particularly because he spent a lot of his time in a pool hall in a barroom where you have the coarsest kind of ribbing going back and forth, all of it in good humor. I grew up in New York, and I actually was a bartender in a previous life. And I used to tease him that he had a New York-type sense of humor because he was always trying to needle somebody else. And also because there were no bounds on it. If he thought something was funny, he thought it was funny, and he went with it, and there was no restriction as to whether or not it was culturally appropriate or anything like that. I was talking about how thoroughly decent a person he was. And my daughter went to college at Charleston, and he was very, very good to my daughter. He talked to her before she went and encouraged her while she was there. But I recall one of the funniest stories about Lindsey, in my opinion. After he had left the presidential campaign, there was a North Charleston debate. And of course, he wasn’t in it, but I got a couple of tickets through his office, and I took my daughter, who was going to school down there. We met Lindsey as he was coming into the arena, and I introduced him to my daughter, Victoria, because he hadn’t met her before. He had talked to her on the phone, but hadn’t met her. And he put his arm around her and walked her away from me. They talk for several minutes, then finally split, and he gives me a little wave goodbye. And I asked my daughter, “What were you guys talking about?” And she said, “Well, he asked me if anybody was giving me a hard time at the College of Charleston. And he told me that if anybody was giving me a hard time, just to let him know, and he would have them killed.” She’s looking at me with wide eyes, “And he said to me, ‘You know I’m a senator. I could do that.’” BD: It’s “The Godfather” scene. That’s excellent. Last question. People are obviously making note of what is going to be absent from the Republican Conference without Lindsey there. And certainly, I think that that absence is going to be felt in the foreign policy side of things, where he held people’s feet to the fire, where he prioritized Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the different foes around the world as being serious. I view him as being one of the last guys who has the pre-9/11 memory that’s still around. There are many Senators who’ve been around during that, but he was obviously very close to it. And I think that that memory was very important to tell to the younger members who’ve arrived in the last 20 years or so. What do you think can possibly fill that gap? Do you think it can be filled, or is this a situation where the Republican Conference is going to fundamentally change because Lindsey’s voice isn’t there anymore? BH: I don’t think there’s any one Senator who can fill that void because what he brought to it, besides the commitment to what I’ve been calling the Reagan-McCain foreign policy model, was his ability to talk to the president about it. And I don’t think there’s anybody else in the Senate who has that ability. He was also tenacious. I think I used that word before, but he was tenacious about this kind of stuff, too. He never gave up. He never backed down. He had a strong sense of what he thought was right and was going to hang on to pursuing it as long as he could, in maybe a strange sort of way. It reminded me of President Reagan’s commitment to the Contras in Nicaragua. Reagan was never able to convince the country or Congress to back him on that commitment, but he knew it was the right thing to do, and he kept talking about it until his last days in the presidency. To Lindsey, small temporary defeats don’t matter. You just have to keep going because you know what the ultimate objective is. I don’t know that there’s any Senator who can fill that role. There certainly are a number who agreed with him — not as many as I’d like, and I’m sure that they will step forward — but the fact that there really isn’t anybody who has that kind of close relationship with the president makes him unique. BD: Bob, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, and I really appreciate the insight into Senator Graham’s legacy. It’s a big loss. BH: Yes, it really is, Ben. ***