Breaking news from the White House as President Trump prepares to take action on steel and aluminum tariffs and a ban on single-use plastic straws. Steve and Brian break down the impact of the Supreme Court ruling against the administration and how it could impact the future of the administration.
00:01:22.000Yes, we see President Trump often hold their daily press briefings.
00:01:26.000But we're going to go into a different room here at the bottom of the hour as President Trump is scheduled to sign a few executive orders into place.
00:01:44.000And he's going to hit that today in executive order, 25%, kind of a blanket tariff on aluminum and steel coming into this country.
00:01:53.000And then the other one, Steve, well, not so controversial topic.
00:01:57.000But whether or not you like paper or plastic straws, well, President Trump is going to say no more paper straws bought within the federal government.
00:02:06.000And they are one of the biggest consumers as far as buyers of these paper straws, Steve.
00:02:12.000Brian, I don't know if you can see this.
00:02:17.000The whole top of the Financial Times of London today, U.S. and China set for trade war as Beijing launches retaliatory tariffs.
00:02:28.000This is about the situation with China today.
00:02:31.000These tariffs are specifically – these are the first targeted tariffs he's done, 25% on steel and aluminum imports, particularly they've got Canada, Mexico, China.
00:03:50.000Today an onslaught of particularly federal – at the federal level.
00:03:54.000It's pretty obvious, Brian, that the Democratic Party really doesn't have any muscle memory to really combat President Trump.
00:04:03.000The media is a little bit shattered, the mainstream media.
00:04:05.000I'm sure you see that every day in the skulking around in the White House.
00:04:09.000What they've done, they've gone to the courts.
00:04:11.000They haven't yet really gone to the state courts.
00:04:13.000Letitia James looms large over all of this.
00:04:18.000White House's hack federal judge, I think it was O'Connell up in Rhode Island, told President Trump he had to give the – he could not hold no money back for these different operations.
00:04:29.000What are you hearing so far of the White House people about how serious are they taking this onslaught of the federal judiciary against the really – the deconstruction of the administrative state, whether it's done by the Doge team, Elon Musk, or whether he's got Scott Besson or Russell Vogt or Stephen Miller doing it, sir?
00:04:47.000I think we have all three of those individuals you just mentioned.
00:04:50.000I know J.D. Vance, Vice President Vance, spoke on this earlier today about this and kind of weighed in and says, look, we shouldn't have some of these corrupt judges trying to run the White House behind me in that executive branch.
00:05:06.000I think you're going to see – of course, Doge kicks off – the first subcommittee hearing, I should say, kicks off on Wednesday, and that's going to target Medicaid.
00:05:14.000But, hey, they need to look into some of these other things as well and see if we can – we can't get caught up in this nonsense like we did, all these legal battles as President Trump was battling the last four years on the campaign trail.
00:05:29.000This looks like the Democrats only have one page in their playbook, and that is just tie him up in court and not allow him to do the things that he's doing.
00:07:19.740So for people like me that have served in administrations in the past that know the old rules, it's always a little jarring to see the way Trump operates and the way people around Trump is operating.
00:07:30.820In the beginning, sometimes I even flinch, like, I don't think you can do that.
00:07:34.460And then over the course of days or weeks, you realize that he's doing what Democrats do.
00:07:40.120He's saying, I'm the president of the United States.
00:07:48.520It's all going to go to the courts at the end of the day.
00:07:50.600A lot of this is going to go to the Supreme Court.
00:07:53.140You know, can the president decide to impound money that's been appropriated by Congress?
00:07:58.260I mean, you've got to love these Republicans on the Hill.
00:08:01.620They're all, like, so worried about – well, first of all, they're applauding Doge and what Elon Musk is doing with all this waste, fraud, abuse.
00:08:08.060But where were they the last couple of decades overlooking all the spending?
00:08:11.500I mean, they're the ones signing all these budget bills, and they haven't done their job of scrutinizing all the spending.
00:08:24.040You've got – for years when we ran the deal, you had Paul Ryan, and you always had the Andy Bigses and the Rand Pauls.
00:08:34.860You always had people like that, Thomas Massey, right, Mark Meadows back in the old days, Dave Bratt, people that were always – House Freedom Caucus and others, Steve King's, people that were hardcore limited government conservatives that were always voting against these bills.
00:08:51.320And we used to sit up and watch all night on War Room, these appropriations subcommittee votes where they were trying to get into USAID, and they were outing much of the stuff we see today.
00:09:11.660I mean, here you're saying it's a fresh day, but this stuff's been going on for decades.
00:09:16.500The public should have known this years ago, sir.
00:09:18.340There's two pieces – well, there's actually three pieces.
00:09:20.880There's the investigations that are supposed to happen in judiciary and oversight.
00:09:24.400But you're supposed to authorize government, Steve.
00:09:26.320You don't just give it money once a year.
00:09:28.400You authorize it used to be for five years at a time, and that allows you to really kind of do the overhaul of the engine, get rid of the stuff that's not working.
00:09:36.160As Mercy and I were talking the other day, I mean, government just grows, and all these bureaucrats just expect more money, and nobody's asking the kinds of questions about why is the government doing this or that.
00:09:48.840And it's become an absurd process where you have these emergencies like COVID or national disasters, and they up the spending, and it never goes back down again after the emergency.
00:10:00.040It's never kind of like – it just becomes expected, and the Republicans have laid over most of them, not the guys you mentioned, on this idea that they ought to authorize every part of government.
00:10:13.100And if it isn't authorized, it's a rogue outfit.
00:10:16.680And that's what Trump is saying, which is, wait a minute.
00:10:19.600What kind of legal standing does an agency have if they haven't been authorized for 20 years?
00:10:25.260Yes, they're getting these annual appropriations, but that's not enough.
00:10:28.260That's not at all what the constitutional framework imagined.
00:10:32.360And so, you know, if the court actually, you know, looks at the law, I think Trump and Russ Vogt and Elon Musk, they have a fair case to make that they can deconstruct what Congress never seemed to have the gumption to authorize.
00:11:08.640These departments, when they're like education, but they have an ongoing, like every five years for justice, every five years for FBI, 10 years for FBI.
00:11:16.800They've skipped them for 10, 20, 30, 40 years.
00:11:45.640And remember, the appropriations process is supposed to be for discretionary, not all the stuff that's on autopilot.
00:11:51.740That's what they call the entitlements and such.
00:11:54.860I mean, we're not looking at any of that at all.
00:11:57.560That's becoming the biggest part of the budget, the overwhelmingly biggest part of the budget.
00:12:02.000And so my favorite thing about what Doge is doing, and I was dubious because I was like, what the hell is this thing?
00:12:08.000It's kind of made up out of whole cloth.
00:12:09.760But look what it's doing, if nothing else, with transparency.
00:12:14.020And it's shaming everyone who had been voting for all of this ridiculous spending.
00:12:18.980And I think the Democrats are on their heels with Doge, which is why they're going so hard after Musk.
00:12:24.800What's so wrong about you knowing what your government's doing?
00:12:29.000And when they're doing absurd things, you know, it's amazing how next thing you know, no one's standing up to support it.
00:12:35.900And I think this is going to be a big part of the next year with Donald Trump.
00:12:40.640He is mocking the whole governmental system, which is completely broken.
00:12:45.840And I think he's making the Republicans realize they started off being dubious in some of his cabinet picks.
00:12:51.580And, Steve, you told me in a text, like, immediately, Trump gets every one of his cabinet picks because he took a bullet for us and got off that canvas and stood up and fought.
00:13:49.760Well, I think he's got to fight all of this.
00:13:51.920And I think, you know, I'm going to listen to Pam Bondi in this situation.
00:13:56.680I mean, you do want to choose your battles when it comes to the legal front.
00:14:01.780But to me, as long as there's an appeal process going on, then the constitutional fight should be able to continue until we get resolution in the courts.
00:14:11.860Matt Schlapp saying, President Trump's being very selective, taking on all fights.
00:16:38.520Trump first did when he came into office that I think, you know, underscores this problem with media coverage is he pardoned the January 6th rioters, including the ones who beat cops violently.
00:16:51.440And this is something that people in his own administration said he would never do because they didn't think he would possibly do that.
00:16:57.400It's also something that I think in the first Trump term would have had serious consequences for his administration.
00:17:04.840There would have been a big media backlash.
00:17:06.700You know, I can imagine Republicans on the Hill coming out to condemn it.
00:17:09.540His approval ratings would have plummeted.
00:17:13.240Now, there doesn't seem to be any consequences.
00:17:16.300And that might be the fact due to the fact that this has just been such a crazy couple of weeks that it's hard for everyone to keep up.
00:17:21.440Do you see there being any political consequences for Trump in America anymore in the second term?
00:17:28.900Part of it's the flood the zone thing you mentioned, right?
00:17:31.840He's coming at us with so many things all at once.
00:17:34.540It's hard for anybody, whether it be, you know, political opposition or the media or the, you know, the political environment to focus on any single decision that he's made and say, well, wait a second.
00:17:47.560Let's decide whether or not we think there's merit to it or it's a problem.
00:17:51.960Because by the time he finished parting the January 6th guys, he was already off to the races in, you know, withholding up to $3 trillion worth of federal grants.
00:18:03.300And he was dismantling the entire foreign aid structure of the United States government.
00:18:08.060And he was, you know, talking about literally taking over other countries.
00:18:12.700I mean, like, so where do you say, okay, well, I'm not going to cover him trying to take over the Panama Canal because I want to focus more on the January 6th partners.
00:18:20.820Okay, that's, you know, a choice, but the truth is, it's also kind of important that he's saber rattling with our ally in Central America.
00:18:28.180And the other thing that's different, of course, is I think the political environment in Washington is different.
00:18:35.320There's not even a Mitt Romney anymore.
00:18:37.180There was no Republican opposition to him anymore, which there was at the beginning of his first term.
00:18:42.500At the beginning of the first term, you had Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, even Mitch McConnell had from time to time said, whoa, wait a second, buddy, you're going too far.
00:18:54.500But there's really very little Republican opposition.
00:18:57.320And without Republican opposition, since they control the Congress, he gets a pretty free ride and people dismiss the Democrats who don't have any power anyway.
00:19:06.020So the real tension is going to be in the courts.
00:19:08.100We'll see what they do with some of these decisions he's trying to make.
00:19:11.020Everything does feel like it's ephemeral.
00:19:13.220Even the most controversial, most outrageous, arguably, things he decides to do pass within 24 hours because there's something else happening.
00:19:26.760He's considered, you know, by the left, the kind of even handed wise man of Washington, the lead White House correspondent and married to what Susan Glasser at the New Yorker.
00:19:37.900I think she is now formerly Politico, kind of the rural couple of media.
00:20:51.040We're throwing a bunch of parties all over the place to celebrate everybody's coming.
00:20:56.540Matt, talk to our folks about it and why it's so important kind of at the – when we're getting the muzzle philosophy to take on the left and the administrative and deep state, why it's so important to attend now more than ever.
00:21:06.940Well, first of all, I want to tell you, you know, it's four days, so it's a crash course in what's going on in your country.
00:21:12.680And I think the Posse has been a great addition.
00:21:17.900We're going to – Mercy and I are going to thank you for inviting us to speak at your Force Multiplier event, which has now become part of the tradition.
00:21:25.100We're going to have our international summit on Wednesday as well.
00:21:28.280We have countries from all over the world, ambassadors, foreign ministers, political activists sitting around a table and really shaming the globalists on all the ways in which they're radicalizing and ruining the globe.
00:21:43.740And, you know, this international peace is a big part of CPAC, strangely enough, even though it's all about America.
00:21:49.240Because everybody's rooting for America around the globe because without America, they're toast and they know they're toast.
00:21:55.600And I'm just – I'm proud of the people that we're going to have there.
00:21:59.520You know, we're going to have all the cabinet secretaries who have been confirmed.
00:22:03.240We're going to have the White House senior staff.
00:22:06.220We're going to have, you know, Ted Cruz doing his podcast with Ben Ferguson, talking to one of those cabinet secretaries.
00:22:12.240We have the largest owner of Bitcoin in the world is going to be there.
00:22:17.900And I know some people love Bitcoin and other people think this is a problem.
00:22:21.860But we air all grievances at CPAC, too, by the way.
00:25:46.820He's standing on our stage in Orlando as, unfortunately, a former president.
00:25:52.720And, yes, I'm not allowed to announce that the president's coming.
00:25:56.000But I'm very optimistic, Steve, that he usually closes us out, you know, because it's really hard to schedule around Donald Trump because you don't really know how long is long this year and how much of a stand-up comedy routine he's going to give you.
00:26:12.240You know, I had a lot of people who went to the inauguration and said, dang, it was cold out there.
00:26:16.520And I had to walk blocks and blocks and blocks, and I told him, it's okay if the inauguration didn't work out great for you.
00:26:27.660There's an open bar and a buffet, so, like, you just can't beat it.
00:26:33.020No, his best when he's doing some that's formal and he's going off the glass, and I say it's like Mort Saul, the guy that would take today's headlines and take a comedic turnaround,
00:26:42.520but have a powerful, a powerful subterranean message that you got.
00:26:47.760No, I know people, even with the Secret Service, everything has to happen.
00:26:51.580These are monumental speeches when he gives them, so hopefully, and, of course, the press of world events, you never know.
00:26:56.960It's always a call at the last minutes.
00:28:02.360Maybe we'll cover those at the War Room.
00:28:07.340By the way, I hear that Megyn Kelly may do her podcast, and I think I was showing a podcast studio in space that's right next to the War Room where Senator Cruz and Megyn and everybody.
00:28:17.960So it's going to be a great, great setup.
00:30:34.900Folks, that's President Trump, and that has been a bombshell.
00:30:43.980He got rid of the board over at the Kennedy Center, which is high church in the secular, demonic, administrative, and deep state that controls the imperial capital.
00:30:54.880President Trump has removed the chairman of the board.
00:30:57.780He's going to step in and be the chairman of the board.
00:31:22.400I think that's gone viral as these people have melted down.
00:31:25.220So I've asked Brother Kieperman to join us from Passage Press, one of our leading public intellectuals,
00:31:30.960and put on an incredible dinner and really bringing some of the thought leaders in MAGA and others, the broader MAGA coalition, together during the inauguration.
00:31:44.480Sir, so you're kind of—you keep your hand on both pop culture and high culture.
00:31:48.460What are your thoughts about Trump stepping in and brooming the board and getting rid of Rubenstein over at the Kennedy Center?
00:31:54.960Well, it's a beautiful thing, and, you know, I'm just so excited to see finally in my adult lifetime a Republican, conservative, right-wing, call it whatever you want,
00:32:05.200administration and political coalition taking culture seriously.
00:32:09.440And, you know, this is something Andrew Breitbart, of course, talked about at length, that politics is downstream from culture.
00:32:16.360And what he meant by that was the kinds of ideas and the values that permeate the landscape of our country and that occupy people's imaginations are what ultimately manifest into policy.
00:32:34.080And forever, the left has owned all of these vehicles that control what that ideological landscape is in people's heads.
00:32:44.240And so leftism just becomes the sort of water we're swimming in.
00:32:47.880And that's how these ideas, despite being broadly unpopular, become normalized over time.
00:32:53.560And, you know, suddenly one day you wake up and DEI is the de facto law of the land.
00:32:57.820Your kids come home from school, you know, and they're questioning what gender they are and what previously seemed like radical fringe ideologies, you know, are just a part of this ordinary landscape of ideas.
00:33:09.240So it's absolutely critical that the rights start taking culture seriously.
00:33:14.580And there is no better place to do that than, like you said, at the high church, the Kennedy Center, which in all ways is symbolic of America's high culture.
00:33:24.320When you say that, what do you mean that?
00:33:28.800Because President Trump's been quite upset.
00:33:31.300You know, he thinks of culture, he thinks the classic operas, the symphonies, the great plays, the Western canon.
00:33:37.240And obviously you have things from throughout the world because you're you want to get a sampling or understand the greatness of these other societies and culture, too.
00:33:46.320But President Trump's upset because that's not what you're seeing.
00:34:21.360The mission of the program is to, quote, use the arts as a tool for social impact, equity and inclusion.
00:34:27.960The series explores how art can be a catalyst for public healing, decolonization and global change, highlighting the intersection of art and activism.
00:34:38.260They partnered with Black Lives Matter or an affiliate organization called Black Culture Matters.
00:34:44.600They have a program called the Latinx History Project.
00:34:47.920Again, this is just fringe, radical, left wing, woke slash DEI ideology being manifest through the arts and then force fed to the American public, even though they don't want it.
00:35:04.400And it was frankly rejected at the ballot box.
00:35:07.660And I will say that it's not only a good thing that Trump has his target set on the Kennedy Center.
00:35:17.460The American people voted for Donald Trump and the Trump administration and, more broadly, MAGA-ism to root out this ideology from our public space.
00:35:29.680And doing this at the Kennedy Center – I don't want to overinflate the importance of the Kennedy Center – but doing this at the Kennedy Center is a symbolic gesture that the time of woke, the time of this fringe, radical leftist ideology is over.
00:35:44.120No, these centers, by the way, the Lincoln Center in New York, the one in L.A., these centers are the railheads of how the elites control high culture.
00:35:59.480And controlling high culture and twisting it, they control the high ground.
00:36:44.520All you need to do is remove the artificial incentives from these programs from places like Hollywood, and you probably know this better than anyone, and an organic right-wing culture.
00:36:57.480And I think when I say right-wing, I just mean sensible, a culture that celebrates American history and our legacy and the heroes of our past and encourage a positive vision for the future.
00:37:13.140All of this stuff will just happen on its own.
00:37:15.780We don't need to put a heavy hand on the culture.
00:37:19.100All we need to do is remove these malign elements, root out the radical ideology that is infecting and degrading what should be and ought to be great monuments to ourselves, to America, and to the great people who have come before us and created this wonderful culture.
00:37:38.180You've got other ideas also about some of the other agencies, operations, also the ones that are near culture or education.
00:37:50.540Tell me what your thoughts are more broadly.
00:37:54.300So there's all sorts of room to run here.
00:37:57.240And once you start digging into how pervasive these programs are and where money is spent, you start to see opportunities for us, again, to remove the malign influence of the left and allow a healthier, more natural, organic culture to unfold.
00:38:12.780One obvious example of this is the 250th anniversary celebration that's coming up next year.
00:38:19.000This is something that I hope the Trump administration pays close attention to and is willing to put a lot of money into.
00:38:24.840This celebration of what America is will allow us to define our own narrative.
00:38:33.080This will allow us to reassert the symbols and people and our vision for the future that we want the American people to understand and we want the rest of the world to see.
00:38:47.380We need to start thinking long and hard about what kinds of exhibits and where we do stuff.
00:38:53.340I'm thinking, you know, we could do 250 statues to great American heroes across the United States.
00:39:00.960We could reopen the NEH Library for America grant and reconstitute our own American canon, the great books, the great novels, the great history of our past.
00:39:13.980So I want us to pay close attention to these narratives.
00:39:20.240And what we do with the culture will shape what happens with politics in the future.
00:39:24.560Where do people go to – where do people go to get more about this?
00:39:31.020Because this is one where at the top of the first inning, you're going to be one of the leaders in this because you're one of the leading public intellectuals in the MAGA movement.
00:39:38.580Where can people go find out more about Passage Press, your writings?
00:43:35.620You look at the films in previous years in Hollywood's golden age and you compare it to what is nominated and wins today in these best picture categories.
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