Point of View April 30, 2025 – Hour 2 : U.S. Missile Defense System

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View, Anna Dexter.

[00:00:20] Thank you very much for sticking with us for the second hour of Point of View and a little bit later in the program I am going to open up the phones at 800-351-1212 because I think some of you may have some questions about the issue we are going to discuss. And in January of this year President Trump signed an executive order declaring that it is national policy that we will establish a missile defense shield. A lot of people don't realize that we don't have that.

[00:00:50] I think we're going to learn in today's interview that President Trump's concept for an iron dome for America a la Israel, but much bigger of course for the United States is not a new dream of his, but it is a well fleshed out technology that we need to implement for our country's national security to protect our population. And they've changed the name from the iron dome to the golden dome.

[00:01:19] That will be the United States technology, at least at this point. And this technology should and could have been implemented during the Reagan administration. Our guest, who is Ambassador Hank Cooper, he was instrumental in this effort. He's going to join us in the next segment. He was instrumental in this effort under Ronald Reagan,

[00:01:42] and he believes that we must protect America against ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and hypersonic missiles with space-based interceptors. He was an Air Force officer who, after diligently working in this effort during the Reagan administration, became director of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Some of you have heard of it, SDI, under President George H.W. Bush.

[00:02:08] He continues to engage in this topic because we really do need a system for missile defense. He was designated ambassador to defense in space while serving as deputy United States negotiator for defense arms and arms reduction in Geneva during the Reagan administration. The Reagan administration gave him the title of ambassador for that. And so I have so many questions for him.

[00:02:35] And if you have questions, I'll open up the phones for you to do that. But one thing that's happened on that front already, of course, we've just finished the first 100 days of the Trump administration. And what I'm seeing now is that he's going to turn much more to foreign policy in the second 100 days. So maybe one of the things will be this missile defense system, Golden Dome.

[00:03:01] I posted an article from Defense Scoop up at pointofview.net. And there is a reconciliation bill out there that Congress is looking at, considering, and they've got to pass. It's a $150 billion bill. It includes funding to support development and fielding of the Golden Dome technologies. These are space-based sensors and interceptors.

[00:03:30] Republican leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees released this legislation over the weekend. And it includes nearly $25 billion of funding to begin work for President Trump's Golden Dome initiative. So it's moving. There's movement. So the House Armed Services Chairman, Mike Rogers of Alabama, and the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, Roger Wicker of Mississippi,

[00:03:58] they say that we would get quite a boost with this. And, you know, this amount of money, it actually doesn't sound like that much. And that's the point. It's really not that expensive to deploy these space-based interceptors. This is about building the future of American defense. This is what Roger Wicker, a Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, says.

[00:04:22] It's about building the future of American defense, achieving peace through strength, and ultimately deterring war. But it's $25 million, $24.7 billion, I'm sorry, to help kick off this massive project if the legislation is approved. So if the House bill of $150 billion is approved, inside that is $25 billion for the Golden Dome.

[00:04:48] The vision for the effort was introduced via an executive order signed by President Trump in January. And it looks to field a multilayered homeland defense architecture able to defeat a range of missile threats. And it's a historic investment. America's deterrence, says Mike Rogers, who's head of the House Armed Services Committee, quoting him, America's deterrence is failing.

[00:05:16] And without a generational investment in our national defense, we will lose the ability to defeat our adversaries. With this bill, and he's talking about the entire $150 billion bill, we have the opportunity to get back on track and restore our national security and global leadership. The markup for this bill was yesterday, for the reconciliation bill. It happened yesterday. So this is moving. And so that's why that's the news peg.

[00:05:46] That's why it's important to talk about this system. And there's a couple of articles that I've posted. Well, I posted the one with Defense Scoop. I guess that's the only one I posted. But there are other ones out there that you can find. One is how President Trump can deploy a missile shield for America in just three years.

[00:06:10] That's I think that's what I'm going to major on with Hank Cooper when he joins me. There's a system and it was called brilliant pebbles back in the Reagan years. That's what they called it. And it's really satellites out in space and their interceptors and they can stop rockets from hitting, especially if they're done. If it's done early in the process, if these missiles are detected early on and they're stopped early.

[00:06:41] Hank Cooper says if resurrected by President Donald Trump's great gold dome initiative and supported by Congress, the system could rapidly and quite affordably quickly begin deployment in space. And here's the kicker. He says, especially if Elon Musk helps by applying his well-known technical and business expertise. And of course, he's got his Starlink system.

[00:07:03] And he says that Hank Cooper says that contrary to numerous so-called experts over the years that have claimed that developing and building modern space based interceptor systems would require many years and be excessively expensive. That's not true. These people are uninformed, but he's afraid that they may dominate. And there's going to be a pushback from the quote unquote bureaucracy to this gold dome initiative.

[00:07:32] So we have to be ready for it. And that's why I wanted to discuss this topic today. And so, you know, brilliant pebbles, this program that was you may have if you're if you're my age, you heard of it before back during the Reagan years and the George H.W. Bush years. And unfortunately, it was the bureaucracy that really stopped it back then.

[00:07:59] And there was kind of a military slowdown and pushback even from the Air Force. So that's why Hank Cooper would like to see this done by private companies in conjunction with the government, but not controlled by the federal government, because, again, you can be much more efficient if you go private.

[00:08:22] So I'm just very excited to talk with this gentleman who has been in this fight for literally decades. And he's still in it. Hank Cooper, Ph.D. engineer. We'll talk with him after this. We hope you'll stick with us for more point of view. And if you want to call us 800-351-1212. We'll be right back.

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[00:10:16] He argues that the book is not about the pandemic. It's about the failure of the expert class. It turns out that the expert class isn't so expert after all. Teachers unions promoted hysteria about the alleged dangers of opening schools. Health officials and school boards rarely challenged the push for school closing. And his book is a cautionary tale about what happens when we believe so-called experts and ignore relevant data. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:10:47] Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Welcome back to Point of View. I'm Penna Dexter.

[00:11:06] And I have set the stage in the last segment about the idea that there's $25 billion in the reconciliation bill to fund the Golden Dome Missile Defense Shield. And I've explained also that this is not a new idea. It's something that actually should have been implemented in an earlier iteration decades ago, really, in the Reagan administration.

[00:11:34] And we're going to talk with someone who has been involved in the effort to get space-based missile defense since the Reagan administration. And he is Ambassador Henry F. Cooper. He was a Clemson engineering graduate with a Ph.D. from NYU. He served in the U.S. Air Force. He was science advisor to the Air Force Weapons Lab.

[00:11:59] He was deputy assistant Air Force secretary for strategic and space systems. He was also assistant director for strategic systems of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. And he was a negotiator for defense and space systems under President Reagan. And this negotiation, of course, took place with the Soviet Union. And then he was President George H.W. Bush's Strategic Defense Initiative director.

[00:12:27] And then he's also worked in the private sector. And he is now chairman of the High Frontier of High Frontier and also of Applied Research Associates. Ambassador Cooper, thank you so much for joining me today. Well, I'm pleased to be with you. I'm a little beyond those last positions. Those last two. Okay. Right. I'm 88 and just pleased to be here. I'm pleased you're here.

[00:12:56] And I'm so glad that you're still remaining engaged in this issue because it's actually an opportune moment. And, you know, so I think we should just go to the basics first. Why do we need a missile defense system and why does it need to be space based?

[00:13:14] Well, I think we need Reagan added right to its foolishness not to protect ourselves against the weapons that are most dangerous, which can be launched from far, far away, and carry nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction to wreak havoc. So we need defenses for protection.

[00:13:40] And I believe if they're done right, they also aid in deterring a major conflict in any case. So, and we are largely defenseless. We haven't done the right things over the years. Reagan's had the right ideas. And Donald Trump is providing us an opportunity if we can remember the basics to actually implement what Reagan's ideas were.

[00:14:10] And that's what I'm spending a lot of my time thinking about and trying to encourage the current powers that be to accomplish. So when we think of a nuclear threat, a lot of times right now we're thinking of Iran as sort of top of line because we want to try to prevent them from having a nuclear weapon. But there are actually three very well-established threats, aren't there? Well, I'm worried that Iran potentially also could have nuclear weapons.

[00:14:40] Not lots of them, but they joined in the testing, oh, 20 years ago with North Korea, the underground testing of their nuclear weapons. And I'm sure everybody knows that North Korea has that capability today. But both Iran and North Korea have launched satellites that could be carrying or could be used to carry nuclear weapons.

[00:15:06] And they approach us from the south and launched over the South Pole. And our defenses, such as they were, were originally deployed only to protect us against missiles launched over the Northern Pole. And so we have a site in Alaska and some on the West Coast.

[00:15:29] And we now have at sea and also in some ground locations, sea-based defenses, so-called Aegis missile defense, which are sea-based and ground-based. So we're not completely defenseless, but it's relatively easy to overwhelm it. And both China and Russia now have major capabilities. North Korea is undeniable in its capability.

[00:15:57] And as I say, I worry about Iran. We're trying to keep them from getting a serious nuclear capability. And the problem is that they have had cyclotrons running for a long, long time there. And I'm not sure our intelligence is fully aware of what they've done. So, Ambassador, we have some ground-based defense. We have some sea-based.

[00:16:26] Why would a space-based system be more comprehensive and better? Well, if you're in space and you're in orbit around the Earth, and if the system is deployed in sufficient numbers, you can deal with an attack from anywhere, beginning while even the missiles are rising.

[00:16:49] And if done right, before they can launch the weapons themselves and shoot them down before they arrive over the United States. So being in space is the most opportune place to be. We've known this. This is not a new idea. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 60 years ago, did a major study.

[00:17:19] It's called Project Defender, if anybody wants to look it up. And their conclusion was that the best way to do the job would be from space. It's just that we didn't have the technology then, and we actually didn't have it through the Reagan years. We were developing it, but because of the political obstacles that we ran into on my watch in particular,

[00:17:43] and then subsequently, when the Clinton administration came in, they killed the SDI program entirely. Now Trump is opening the door again to have those same capabilities evaluated, and I believe the right thing to be done is what we knew how to do 30 years ago,

[00:18:07] and I worry that we're going to reinvent the wheel at great expense when we don't need to do that if we go back to the future, so to speak, and exploit the ideas that existed 30 years ago. So we have knowledge, we have technology, and we've had that, but the wheel was lacking, and I understand that there was a lot of pushback from various bureaucracies, wasn't there?

[00:18:38] Yes, there were, and including inside of the U.S. government that got in the way. So, and you use the right term, it's bureaucracy that is the issue. It's not the technology, and it's not the leadership in the technical areas necessarily, but the institutional bureaucratic interests get in the way of doing the right thing,

[00:19:05] and that overlaying with the congressional world which supplies the funding and the interests of protecting constituents' interests makes the problem very complicated to be dealt with. It was that way on my watch. It was that way when even we started key programs, and for example, the United States Navy programs,

[00:19:34] I was fortunate enough to have a colleague, J.D. Williams, a three-star admiral who was in charge of naval warfare at the time in the Pentagon, and he understood and got with me on it, but all the other admirals in the Pentagon essentially opposed the idea. They met in concert with Frank Gelsow, who was chief of naval operations for an extended period,

[00:20:03] but most admirals didn't want to begin such a program because they were afraid that they would be tethered, so to speak, and be given duty to protect land areas rather than fleet operations, which the Navy considered to be its main interest.

[00:20:22] But in any case, we were able to persuade the powers of McGee to begin the programs, and a young man who had that idea came to work with me at SCI, and we began those programs, which in my judgment provide the best global defense capability that we have today. Let me jump in, Ambassador, because we've got a break.

[00:20:48] I do want to allow a listener, if you have a question for the Ambassador about this issue, just a question, not a comment. 800-351-1212 is the number, 800-351-1212. My guest is Ambassador Hank Cooper. We're talking about some serious business here, but something that is realistic and can be accomplished, something that we need to protect our citizens here in the United States of America.

[00:21:18] It's actually been a long time coming. Will the Trump administration be the forum and the opportunity for us to actually do the right thing? We will continue to discuss this right after this message. In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle, not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas. London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon.

[00:21:47] London was in many ways the center of the world economically, militarily, and intellectually. Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers. Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth. It is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today?

[00:22:15] Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox when you sign up for the Viewpoints Commentary at pointofview.net slash signup. Every weekday in less than two minutes, you'll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time. It's free, so visit pointofview.net slash signup right now. Pointofview.net slash signup.

[00:22:47] Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Pena Dexter. And my guest, Ambassador Hank Cooper.

[00:23:16] And some people stay in the fight a long time. And he has stayed in the fight for a space-based missile defense system for a long time, decades. And, Ambassador Cooper, how did you get interested and involved in this issue in the first place? Well, I've been interested in space since I was still sort of a kid.

[00:23:38] I got interested in a firm way when the Soviets launched Sputnik, if anybody remembers what that was. It was the first space satellite system. And we went into a mode of trying to play catch-up.

[00:23:57] And then John Kennedy, of course, the next major thing that happened was that he challenged people when he was president that we would go to the moon by the end of the decade. That was in the 60s. And we made it, of course. John Glenn orbited the Earth and then the first, I forget what year it was, the first landing on the moon. 1968. 1968. 1968.

[00:24:25] So, and I watched all of that and up close and personal. And then I actually was commissioned in the Air Force, as you said, went to graduate school and got involved in protecting our strategic systems, including our space systems against all manner of nuclear weapons effects.

[00:24:48] And we learned with the high altitude testing that all of the systems we had in that period of time were vulnerable to something called electromagnetic pulse. It was, we expected electromagnetic effects, but in 1982. I'm sorry. Yeah. I forget exactly 62 or something like that.

[00:25:17] The starfish crime experiment, if you look it up in the South Pacific, that demonstrated, 1962 it was, that all of our space systems were vulnerable. At the time at Bell Labs, I was working on Telstar, which was our very first telecommunication satellite.

[00:25:41] Rudimentary by today's standards, the first signal was broadcast from just outside of Paris by way of humongous large antenna, 100 ton antenna, to one in Rumpur, Maine as well. And my wife, Bobbi and I went in to watch that very first broadcast. It was Star Spangled Banner and the flag.

[00:26:08] And then I worked on Telstar, as I said, and we lost it very shortly because of this test in the South Pacific. We lost essentially all of our satellites at the time due to trapped radiation and the electromagnetic effects. And so all of our strategic systems were quite vulnerable to those effects.

[00:26:35] And the aircraft, our ballistic missiles and our, whether based in land or at sea and strategic aircraft, the bombers and the command and control aircraft and the communication systems by which the president and the military could manage those systems were all quite vulnerable. Well, in a sense, aren't we vulnerable now with so much dependence? Well, I hope they're not.

[00:27:03] We learned how to keep them from being vulnerable. It took quite a period, but we went through an enormously important period in the 60s and early 70s, which we hardened our systems. And, but we didn't do anything to harden, you know, the electric power grid, for example, that supports the American people.

[00:27:27] And so the grid, which, upon which the electricity to support hospitals and water plants and water and sewer plants and, and all of the, you know, security and police and all, everything we depend on.

[00:27:47] And if we lost that because of a high altitude EMP attack, and it's quite plausible that we could, then most Americans would actually die from starvation and disease because we no longer produce our own food in this country. We import it from various sundry places. And without the electricity, all of that would be, would stall.

[00:28:13] And so, you know, even in World War II, we had Victory Gardens and, and everybody had their own means they looked after for protecting themselves and providing food for their families. And we lived on wells and so on. That's not true anymore. And so it would be a disaster.

[00:28:33] And we could lose it without any explosion in this country if, if high altitude nuclear explosions over the United States shut down our power grid. Wow. Some places have taken care to deal with this. I believe the United Kingdom has, and some of the European nations have, but we continue to ignore this really important problem in this country. Oh, my goodness.

[00:29:03] Well, do you think that President Trump is enough of a disruptor to actually push through and push forward space-based defense? You think he can do it? He's enough of a disruptor to get it started.

[00:29:22] And I don't know exactly what's been appropriated or will be appropriated, but more than enough money has been already designated to be appropriated to build the space system that we need. On the other hand, I don't know how it's going to be spent because we don't have a management structure in place on demand with the right people to deal with it.

[00:29:49] And I'm worried, quite frankly, about all the talk about a Manhattan project and so on. And every time we did something truly innovative in this country, it was by a small team led by really competent technical leadership and senior leadership that oversaw the project and made sure that they were free to follow their technical insight.

[00:30:17] I mean, most people have forgotten it now, but we built the first-size CBM in about four years. And it was done because a young brigadier general, I believe at the time, Benny Davis-Rever, he got all the young PhDs he could. And this was after World War II. And we had lots of young guys in the Air Force.

[00:30:45] And he hired a separate group out on the West Coast. He left the people at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, which was where most of the R&D in the Air Force had been for aircraft and so on. And he went to the West Coast. And within four, a little over four years, I believe, we had actually began deploying our first ballistic missile systems.

[00:31:14] And then the same thing was true with Hyman Rickover, who did the same thing with the submarines. He didn't use the institutional Navy processes. He started what now is called Rickover Tech, I think. I have a grandson that went through it and began the nuclear Navy. And we had never launched a missile from a submarine when he got it started.

[00:31:41] And within four and a half years, we had the first submarine. I forget what was it called, the Nautilus. I forget now. At sea. And so today, when you look at what we're doing and they're talking about, you know, 20 years or whatever in order to build capabilities, it's nonsense if we're really serious.

[00:32:06] We would get a team of really competent people, put it together, and protect them from the bureaucratic interests that I've already mentioned. You know where of you speak because you've seen things derailed. And, you know, the Air Force bureaucracy, you mentioned push back on space-based defense. You had something called Brilliant Pebbles, which I'm going to need you to explain. But it came out of the private sector, didn't it?

[00:32:33] Well, it came from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and a small group there and really key people again. Lowell Wood was the manager of the small task force to put it together. And Edward Teller, most people know who he was. He was the basic inventor of the hydrogen bomb.

[00:32:56] And he didn't pay attention to what they were doing in the Manhattan Project because he was already worrying about what came, what was to come after the atomic bomb. Well, anyway, he got the idea. He visited me in Geneva when I was negotiating with the Soviet Union and invited me out to Livermore to look at what they were doing.

[00:33:17] And I left there to go down to Los Angeles to the people who actually were in charge of the Air Force for doing the space part. And I couldn't get that. Okay, I asked you a question, and then here's the break again. So we will continue on that note. Ambassador Cooper is my guest, and we will be right back.

[00:33:40] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. I'm thrilled to have Ambassador Hank Cooper with me.

[00:34:04] And he had a role in the Reagan administration's strategic arms control negotiations. And Reagan, Hank, supported SDI, didn't he? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, he originated in a speech and at the time said that it might be the end to the next century, which we are now in, of course, before we had the capability.

[00:34:33] But he wanted to begin to study the problem, to conduct the research and so on, so that the American people could be protected against missile attack. And that was the origin. It was called the Strategic Defense Initiative. And Teddy Kennedy, as Senator Kennedy, called it Star Wars. And that was a label of derision that was associated with it.

[00:35:03] And it was to indicate that it was a pipe dream. You know, it was just like the movie and didn't make any sense. And that stuck and was a problem, both while we were negotiating with the Soviets and even when we were – when I was running the SCI program, it was still that way.

[00:35:26] And, in fact, Les Aspen, who chaired the Armed Services Committee, when he became the Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, said he was taking the stars out of Star Wars. And he killed all the space-based research and development and even testing that says that we had experimental work that we were already conducting.

[00:35:51] So, I mean, we've had this bureaucratic disconnect between people who think that you can get your enemies to be nice, and they want to do arms control, and they still do, many of them, in space now in particular, rather than to build the systems that we need to protect the American people.

[00:36:19] That protection comes out of, you know, handshakes and negotiations rather than peace through strength, which, as you know, was Reagan's mantra through his watch, and I think the correct one. And I think President Trump has used the term. I think that's correct. I think he does, too. So, he's got, you know, three years and nine months yet to go and whatever it is.

[00:36:48] And we'll see how far he can get. He's moving at a faster pace than we were able to under the Bush administration along the way. Where I was in the discussion, see, I couldn't even get the Air Force to go up and look at what Livermore was doing, and they were doing it with technology that they could buy off the shelf in the private sector. Wow. And the Air Force believed you had to invent everything from scratch.

[00:37:18] We have a similar situation right now. Now, Elon Musk, as most people know, has sort of been wiping NASA and the Air Force off the map with the modern version of technology that we demonstrated 30 years ago. And the SEI program, you've seen missiles take off and land, you know, and then be relaunched. We did the same thing 30 years ago. Well, it was more like 25 years ago.

[00:37:47] Small rockets and that sort of thing. It was the early stage of Elon's work. I forget what he called it, grasshopper, I think, at the stage before he got to where he is now. Do you think he would get involved in some kind of a plan for a Golden Dome? I hope so. I certainly hope so.

[00:38:07] There have been reports that SpaceX is one of the contenders for at least a major portion of what is in the program. And if it does, and Elon tends to watch everything, you know, you're not going to get him to focus on a single issue. But he will make sure that if his people are involved, that we're using cutting-edge technology out of the private sector.

[00:38:36] Because that's where it is. It isn't in the government laboratories. It wasn't on my watch. We fired the Air Force. Actually, Jordan Monahan actually deliberately fired them and put together a task force with whom I've written the director, a good friend of mine, who was a task force when I ran the program as well, that reported directly to him as the, you know, the director of the SDI program,

[00:39:06] and fired the Air Force and actually cut back all of their programs and diverted the funds into the best technology that could be produced. But, of course, that was killed in the beginning of the Clinton administration. So, I mean, it's a cycle that has to be overlaid with the best technology that can be done.

[00:39:32] And if Elon is somehow involved in the same way that he's been involved with his Doge activities on his own programs, and I can't imagine he wouldn't be, then I'll feel a lot more comfortable about what will come out. I expect we'll waste a lot of money in any case.

[00:39:54] You may not know what entropy is, but that's a technical term for wasted energy that you can't recover. And the issue is how do you minimize it? You can't avoid creating some, and people make mistakes. And we have to have a good sense of the management skills, you know, as I've told some people to pick up the pieces and go again, you know, because the technology there is there to do this job affordably.

[00:40:25] And there will be arguments about how expensive it's going to be, and we've got to get organized, you know, and build a team, and da-da-da-da-da. Well, you do have to have to. You need to do it quickly. You know, I noticed I read just a wonderful piece by Angelica Sirotin, and she interviewed you, and she really chronicled your whole story, which I thought was wonderful.

[00:40:50] But you told her that business minds in our government, you know, exist right now, and that we need young innovators. And then we also need someone to lead them, some kind of a shepherd. And also, I thought this concept, and I want you to unpack it a bit. We've got about two minutes. It's that the president and the secretary of defense need to be very much totally on the same page about this. Yes, absolutely.

[00:41:17] Well, the metaphor I used there was when Dick Cheney asked me, and George Herbert Walker Bush was on board with this, to lead the SDI program after I had critically reviewed at their request what we were doing and what we were doing at arms control and what we should be subsequently doing. And I was well aware of the bureaucratic problems.

[00:41:42] And so I asked Secretary Cheney, I told him, yes, I'd be delighted to do that, but only if I worked directly for him. And he agreed to it with the president's backing. And so that meant when the bureaucracy tried to stymie me, I could go directly to him and raise the issues and get a hearing, and he never decided against me.

[00:42:10] And there were some high-level people we overruled. But once we had done that a couple of times, then I didn't have problems after that with the bureaucracy. I believe the same thing is needed today. Whoever he puts in charge of the Global Dome ought to be selected on the basis of his competence, technically, and he ought to have the backing of the Secretary of Defense and the president.

[00:42:36] And by backing, I mean if he needs the help, he goes to them and expects to get it. Hank, thank you so much for explaining this. I think that it's giving me optimism that we'll actually be able to pull this off. I would just have to say that you're a national treasure because you stayed in the fight, and you're still weighing in on it, and I hope you continue to do so. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for that.

[00:43:04] Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be back on Friday for our weekend edition, and tomorrow we've got a guest host. At Point of View, we believe there is power in prayer. And that is why we have relaunched our Pray for America campaign, a series of weekly emails to unite Americans in prayer for our nation. Imagine if hundreds of thousands of Americans started praying intentionally together on a weekly basis.

[00:43:34] You can help make that a reality by subscribing to our Pray for America emails. Just go to pointofview.net and click on the Pray for America banner that's right there on the homepage. Each week you'll receive a brief news update, a specific prayer guide, and a free resource to equip you in further action. We encourage you to not only pray with us each week,

[00:44:02] but to share these prayers and the resources with others in your life. Join the movement today. Visit pointofview.net and click on the banner Pray for America right there at the top. That's pointofview.net. Let's pray together for God to make a difference in our land. Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries. Point of View Ministries.