New: A Conversation With Representative Wesley Hunt, R-TX

On Wednesday, I was fortunate to have a conversation with an outstanding Republican Congressman, Wesley Hunt, of Texas's 38th Congressional District. We discussed several topics, most notably the Congressman's recent appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point's Board of Visitors. Congressman Hunt has a remarkable family connection with West Point, as not only he but also his brother and sister attended that institution. We also discussed energy policy, as we come from two states that loom large in American energy policy, Texas and Alaska.

You can listen to the interview here. A transcript follows.

(Interview begins)

Ward Clark: This is Ward Clark of RedState.com. I'm here with Congressman Wesley Hunt of the great state of Texas. Thank you, Congressman Hunt, for taking the time to talk to me today.

Congressman Hunt: No, no, thank you for having me, of course.

The Military

Ward Clark: First of all, I've noticed that you have recently been appointed to the West Point Board of Visitors, and you're a West Point graduate yourself, which is impressive. I was just an ROTC guy.

Congressman Hunt: Thank you for your service.

Ward Clark: And thank you for yours. What would you like to see done with the Board of Visitors and could you briefly describe what the Board of Visitors does?

Congressman Hunt: Well, yeah, yeah, sure, that's the West Point Board of Visitors, is there's five appointed members by the President and then also far congressional members that convene quarterly to talk about the state of affairs of the Academy, what kind of training regiments are there to add just kind of an outside perspective to give to the superintendent and the superintendent's team about, you know, how to move forward and how do we continue to create warfighters for the future.

I was a West Point graduate, as well as my brother, who's a West Point graduate, and my sister, who was also a West Point graduate, so my parents had 3 kids, all 3 of which went to West Point. This place is very near and dear to my heart. And so when the President called me a couple of months ago and said, "Hey, Wesley, you got West Point. I want you to make sure that we deal with all the woke stuff," I say, well, "Mr. President, I am your guy, let me tell you."

And I want to get back to warfighting, focusing on warfighting and talking about, you know, how do we create leaders of the future that are going to continue to serve this nation, as we have seen for decades and do it in a way that we don't focus on the way people look, we focus more on their acumen, and their ability to continue to serve this nation.

Ward Clark: Okay. And I see you have quite the family legacy of military service too, which was also impressive.

Congressman Hunt: Thank you.

Ward Clark: While we're on the topic of the military, could I ask your opinion on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the changes he is making in our active military and our reserve components.?

Congressman Hunt: Well, I think I think what Pete is doing is echoing the sentiments of the President, and that's the reason why the President put him in that role and put him in that position.

And that is, you know, how do we move forward, especially with what we just saw yesterday with the Golden Dome being implemented in this country to replicate of the efficacy of the Iron Dome in Israel, and what are we doing to morph away from the United States, getting involved in every single conflict in the world, and to focus on the idea of peace and strength, and this coming on the heels of his extraordinary visit to the Middle East and what Pete has been tasked to do is to do, is very easy. De-wokeify the military, get rid of DEI, focus on warfighting, and focus on trimming down our defense budget, but also putting the money where it best impacts the United States of America, like again the Golden Dome, and then how do we have a very strong military force.

But again, not necessarily having to use it, because of the weakness that we've seen in the military and the United States during the Biden administration. But coming up on the heels of all of that, you know, Pete has a Herculean effort, and I think so far he's done a great job in just echoing and executing on the sentence of the President.

Ward Clark: And there's an old saying that the best weapon is the one you never have to use, and that seems to be President Trump's policy.

Congressman Hunt: So that's the point. Yeah.

Energy

Ward Clark: If I could pivot for a moment, you and I have one thing in common: we're both from the two largest states in the union, Texas and Alaska. Those are both states that are also very key in energy policy. As you represent Texas, what's your take on our nation's current energy policy, and what changes would you like to see?

Congressman Hunt: Oh, well, the good thing is that, the entire Energy Corridor in Houston, Texas, is in my district, so those who are not familiar with the Energy Corridor, the Energy Corridor is tantamount to Wall Street for finance in New York, it’s tantamount for Silicon Valley in California, for tech.

So again, this is the energy capital of the world is entirely in my district, so this is, needless to say, this is something that's very near and dear to my heart, because every single major energy company that has any major play in the entire world or in the form of energy has some kind of footprint in my district or somewhere around the greater Houston area.

Also, with the Permian basin being entirely in Houston and you, obviously being from Alaska from a landmass standpoint and it is the largest state in our union.

Energy policy is critical. Energy independence is critical. Becoming an exporter of a net exporter of LNG is critical. Energy dominance is critical, and with the natural resources that we have right here in our own nation with the Marcellus shale, the Permian basin, in Alaska, the Eagle Ford shale, there is no excuse for us, to relinquish our power and our ability to produce clean and safe energy to Iran and Venezuela and other rogue nations that want to see us harm.

So President Trump understands that and that's why he implemented his policy, a drill baby drill, which basically means we're going to unleash American energy on the world, which is news, which is music to our ears, given the stifling that we've seen of the industry during the bond administration, through over-regulation, restrictions.

Ward Clark: We certainly saw that here in Alaska. Would you support federal support for the Alaska LNG pipeline?

Congressman Hunt: Next question, of course. Okay, of course.

(Laughter)

Ward Clark: Our Alaskan readers will be happy to hear that. We're hoping for that to go through here. Yeah, that's great. How about the various subsidies and federal support for green energy schemes like solar and wind power?

Congressman Hunt: Yeah, it’s not the federal government's job to pick winners and losers. And that's exactly what we saw for the past, you know, 4 years. That game is over. It's over, it's done, look, look, if the oil and gas energy industry is doing their job to reduce our carbon footprints if you believe in that kind of thing, but these are talking points, keep in mind, I personally don't, but I get what we're trying to do to get cleaner and better and safer and part of that is lowering our carbon footprint.

Nobody does it more, no one does it more than oil and gas industry by the use of natural gas, and so, if we are reducing our carbon footprint, then we should get the exact same benefits of renewable energy sources as well, that claim to reduce of their carbon footprint, the funny thing about this is if people are now getting into the game, people know that we need redundancies, it's a mix, it's an all hands-on deck approach because when the wind don't blow when the sun don't shine, you need fossil fuels.

And there's no excuse for us not to be able to use all of those simultaneously in the mix. To ensure that, when the sun does shine, great when the wind does blow, that's great too, but you can't do anything without having natural gas, fossil fuels, and oil as a backdrop.

Ward Clark: Do you see nuclear power having a place in this?

Congressman Hunt: At some point. I wouldn't say in the near future, but definitely it is the future.

Ward Clark: True, there are huge permitting problems and so forth.

Congressman Hunt: Yeah, that's why I'm doing… yeah, massive, it's a big issue right now. And President Trump's focus is not nuclear. To be honest with you, the President, his focus is natural gas.

Ward Clark: One more thing, the big, beautiful bill, I'm presuming, you're a supporter of that, where do you see this finally passing?

Congressman Hunt: No, it, we're going to pass it again. This is a part of the I'll be Constitutional Republic that we live in, and the process that it takes for iron to sharpen, work, to sharpen iron, and to get the best deal done to best benefit the American people.

So we have a 2 seat majority in the House. A very thin margin. We've got this far. The American public, 77 million people put President Trump in office, we have to execute on his agenda and do the will of the American people.

So everyone needs to kind of calm down and relax, we're going to think of there's going to be stuff, bumps in the road, but ultimately, the idea of having no tax on tips, slashing taxes, on NASA, on Social Security and just ensuring that everyday Americans live better with no tax on loans, no taxes on overtime and then allowing people to have more money in their pocket, so they can reinvest that back into our economy is all President Trump wants to do. Let us hammer out the details are going to be fine, but the big, beautiful bill is going to get done, because that's what the American people put us up here to do and I think with this as well, the alternative has given the control of their destruction when the Democrats, which is unacceptable, that'll be a far worse deal than we will ever get by coming together and triggering this thing out, and we all know it.

Ward Clark: Okay, one more question if I may. This morning, yesterday actually, a judge, actually a federal judge, put a hold on the deportation of 8 very dangerous illegal alien criminals. Can you talk for a moment on your thoughts on the current illegal immigration crisis and the legal battles around that?

Congressman Hunt: Yeah, this is what this is a part of the process, seeing, you know, liberals and Democrats are anti-American, and they're anti having our sovereign border, their anti safety for this country, their anti keeping us safe.

President Trump won this election because of their dereliction of duty that we saw for the past 4 years. Again, this is 20 million people entering our country illegally enough fentanyl pouring into this country to kill every American time five times, relinquishing our southern borders to the cartels, President Trump and and Tom Homan, Homan, are the reckonings this country needs and with that being said, you're going to upset a lot of liberalism, a lot of liberal judges and Democrats, and this is their way of pushing back on the American will. But to stop, this is how our process is set up.

It had we have to go through all of this, to ensure that we keep our citizens faith in President Trump and Tom Homan, are going to keep hammering away this, and I will say this as well, that one liberal judge in one district does not usurp the power of the President of the United States of America. So they’re going to challenge it, they going to do the best they can to impede on President Trump's agenda, but in the end, we will be victorious.

Ward Clark: That's good, thank you. One more question Congressman, you're a military veteran, you've served overseas, as I have, I was in Iraq the first time in 1990-91 under General Schwarzkopf. We have an understanding of what's coming up this weekend of Memorial Day that a lot of people don't, how do you plan to spend your Memorial Day?

Congressman Hunt: I plan on spending my Memorial Day commemorating my lost 14 classmates from West Point that I think about every single day and that is one day that I find that I hold songs in my heart, because it's the one day that this country gets to actually honor those the fallen.

And again, this is not like Veterans Day, this is literally the day for the fallen, and so usually I do take the time I take the morning to really think about those that we've lost and a sacrifice that's been made for this great nation and take some time to meditate, pray, and take pause. And to show them some reverence, and to thank them for the sacrifices that they made and but not for the grace of God, you know, as an Apache pilot flying in combat, you know, there's a world where I’m not here either.

So for whatever reason, God spared me; it's up to me. It's up to me to continue to honor those that did not make it back home. And so that's how I spend that day.

Ward Clark: Thank you, Congressman, that's all the questions I have. Do you have anything you'd like to say to the RedState readership?

Congressman Hunt: No, no again, thank you for all you do. And again, the conservative, the Republican way is the way to go. President Trump is the leader of our free world. He may be the greatest leader at this level that I have absolutely ever seen.

And what he has done for our country, because in just a handful of months, has been monumental and life-changing. It's going to benefit us for the better so we got to stick together.

Ward Clark: Okay, thank you! This is again Ward Clark with RedState. I've been interviewing Congressman Wesley Hunt of the great state of Texas. Thanks again, Congressman, for taking the time to talk to us today.

Congressman Hunt: God bless you, have a good Memorial Day weekend.

(End of interview)

You can follow Congressman Hunt on X at @WesleyHuntTX, and view his official Congressional website here.

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