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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast. More what you

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hear weekday afternoons on the Drive.
You know Brett Behar, chief political anchor

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of Fox News and anchor and executive
editor of Special Report with Brett Baher.

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But I don't know if you also
knew he's written several books, the latest

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of which is to Rescue the Constitution, George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment

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in It, Brett Baer, you
contend that George Washington rescued the nation and

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the Constitution three times? What were
those three? Hey, thanks for having

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me on. Well, there was
the time of the Revolutionary War where he

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is tapped to be the commander and
he really inspires this ragtag group of soldiers

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to believe that they can win in
really horrible circumstances. Then he is tapped

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to be the head of and in
charge of Constitutional Convention in seventeen eighty seven,

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where arguably without him, it does
not get across the finish line the

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document, nor does it get ratified. And then the third time, obviously,

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is when he's tapped to be the
first American President. And remember,

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you know, I mean, no
one's writing a note for him in the

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Oval office desk. You know,
no one's passing him the torch. He

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is the torch, and he is
making the executive what it is. And

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throughout all this research I find that
he is indispensable and without him, arguably

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we would not have a country.
Brett Behar, I'm a big fan of

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history, and you also may know
some of the other books that Brett bear

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has written to the rest to Rescue
the Republic, three Days at the Brink,

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three Days in Moscow, three Days
in January, and his latest is

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called to Rescue the Constitution. George
Washington, The Fragile American Experiment. I'm

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a fan of history, and one
of the things I've trying to do is

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get past the marblization, if you
will, of our founding fathers. We

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read so much about how smart they
were, how brilliant they were. We

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don't read about their challenges, their
doubts, and their fears. And George

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Washington had plenty of them. He
did, and you know it was not

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godlike, And you're right, sometimes
it's almost myth mythology about some of these

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Founding fathers. But this is a
very real portrayal of these Founding fathers and

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these men they had false George Washington
desperately wanted to get home. He didn't

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want to do any of this.
He wanted to be at Mount Vernon with

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his wife, Martha and her two
children who he adopted and wanted to be

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a farmer. I mean, he
basically was tapped and answered the call each

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time, but reluctantly. And he
writes about that extensively, you know,

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like the other book, and this
is the fifth of the Presidential series of

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books. I'm trying to put the
reader in the room and the narrative so

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that you can you know, it
reads more like a screenplay than it does

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a history book. And I think
that with these nuggets of information that kind

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of really crackle about the time,
I think you can see it like you

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haven't seen it before. So that's
what I'm trying to do. And I

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think it's important for us as a
country to look back at how we were

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founded, especially now Brett Behar you
know him from Special Report with Brett Behar

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on the Fox News Channel and his
newest book, To Rescue the Constitution.

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George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment. When he became the first General of

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the Continental Army. He didn't have
a lot of military experience, but it

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seems as though he had a natural
knack for administration. Well he did,

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and you know, he actually had
some failures in military and the Frenchman Indian

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War. I mean, he largely
was believed to have started that because he

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had some mistakes and you know,
he fell up. His failures actually led

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him to other promotions and and in
that experience he figured out how to talk

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to men that were fighting and how
to inspire them, how to get them

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moving, and it eventually led to
his revolutionary war prowess and talking to men

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who you know, their their uniforms
were falling apart, they didn't have shoes,

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some of them they had bloody feet
in the cold winter of Valley Forge.

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And yet he convinced them that to
stay with it, you're fighting for

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liberty. And they did, and
to the point where the British forces said,

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obviously, live does something to these
forces, because there was no way

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that they should have lost. No, And I often Bret Bear, I

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wonder if if it wasn't so much
an out that the Continental Army out militarized

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the British Army as much as they
outspied them, because Washington always seemed to

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have the intelligence he needed. Yeah, that's exactly right. He had really

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good intelligence. And you know,
throughout the war, Washington's men are underdogs

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and losing many more battles than they
won. They and as I mentioned before,

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they were kind of the laughing stock
of British generals, but they never

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gave up. They won the war. And this British captain Marvel's at the

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end that this rough, hungry,
tired army could beat the British and he

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says to his soldiers, American soldiers
stayed, they fought, and this is

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what liberty could do. So I
do think that Washington had this ability to

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be inspiring and inside the Constitutional Convention, he's not the chattiest guy. He

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doesn't say much, but he works
the room outside of the convention and really

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tries to find common ground. And
that's the hope here is that descent is

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kind of baked in our cake,
but descent meshed with union is really what

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Washington was able to do. Brettbahar, chief political anchor for Fox News Channel,

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his new book, To Rescue the
Constitution, George Washington and the Fragile

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American Experiment. I wanted to get
into the Constitutional Convention because it required a

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lot of something we don't seem to
have a lot of in our Congress right

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now, compromise. And there had
to be a lot between the northern colonies

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and the southern colonies, and the
urban colonies and the more agrarian colonies.

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Yeah, and some of these battles
are the same battles we're fighting today,

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states rights for federalism, representation of
big states and small states. And some

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of the battles were really intense.
And you think about writing about a convention,

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you're like, how is that exciting? But it really is if you

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really delve into it. Many times
we almost fell apart. We almost didn't

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get it across the finish line.
And that's the amazing thing is that we

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almost fell apart from the start.
And it was Washington who really held the

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fabric together. And that's not a
myth, it's real, based on writings

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of not only him, but others
in the room. And you can read

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about it as well. Brett Behar
puts you right there in that room,

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and to rescue the Constitution, George
Washington and the fragile American experiment. Brett

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Bear, thank you for joining us
and I hope you get a break after

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all of this book writing and reporting. It'll come sometimes. Thanks so much.

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Thanks for listening to Later with Lee
Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,

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and remember to listen to The Drive
Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation