The President is on his way over to Capitol Hill to whip votes on his budget, and it's going to be a jam-packed day of hearings, hearings, and meetings with House Republicans. Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John Thune are already on the phone with the President, and they'll be meeting with him this morning.
00:00:00.000Okay, welcome. It's Tuesday, 20 May, Year of the Lord, 2025. An extraordinary morning already.
00:00:06.920It is, I got Dave Brett right in shotgun with me. It is unheard of for the President of the United States to go to Capitol Hill to speak to a conference to whip votes on his budget.
00:00:17.880So already this is pretty historic this morning. Did you ever see it when you were in Congress? Ever heard of it?
00:00:22.500No, no. Once in a while. I stayed in the unions, those kind of things. Maybe an offsite once in a while, but that's it. But no, no, no coming over.
00:00:30.180And he's whipping hard. Okay, here's what we're going to do. The President's in the conference right now. I think it's going to be a little heated because he came in thrown down hard.
00:00:39.900There's some voices in there that say, hey, we've got to get our hands around Medicaid. You're going to blow up the deficit.
00:00:44.460We're going to play a cold open. It's going to go through what the President actually said. We're going to come back. We're going to be covering this live all morning.
00:00:50.980As soon as the President steps out and goes back to the sticks, we're going to cut immediately to this. Let's go ahead for the cold open to this morning's war room.
00:01:27.860The clearing of this first step in the House committee. There's a lot of uncertainty about the next steps. There are moderates who are concerned about salt caps.
00:01:36.840There are conservatives who are concerned about Medicaid cuts not being aggressive enough. There's just a whole lot to be figured out.
00:01:45.920And then, as you just pointed out, the Wall Street Journal reporting that this is going to add to the deficit, which is going to concern the fiscal hawks in the Republican conference.
00:01:55.960So the Speaker of the House has quite a bit of work cut out for him in the coming days.
00:02:01.820At the end of the day, Trump is going to urge them to pass the bill, but it's unclear if Trump is really going to wade in on these specific concerns that various members have.
00:02:10.840And as we move toward the midterms, these more moderate members of Congress who are ultimately going to decide whether the Republicans are going to keep the House are the ones that are going to face some of the most pressure.
00:02:22.700It'll be interesting to see how they respond, particularly to President Trump and the pressure we expect him to exert on them in the coming days.
00:02:30.700Mr. Speaker, what do you want to hear from the President this morning?
00:02:33.320Well, I just got off the phone with the President. He's on his way over. He's excited to talk to the House Republicans this morning, and we're excited to have him.
00:02:42.040This is a big week for his agenda, for all of us. We've been working on reconciliation for more than a year, as you all know, and it all comes down to these final details.
00:02:51.620And I think the President is going to encourage everyone this morning to get in line and get the votes done.
00:02:57.560We need to deliver this to the American people.
00:02:59.140The American First agenda is all wrapped up into one big bill, and we're really excited to deliver it this morning.
00:03:04.620So we're delighted. I'll be meeting the President when he arrives here very soon.
00:03:08.280We're walking him in and introducing him, and I think it's going to be a great morning for the Republican Party and the House Republicans in general.
00:03:14.180So we're looking forward to it. Thanks for being here.
00:03:15.260Is this whole issue still at the evening, sir?
00:03:18.860We're a heart attack away from losing the House, okay? Now we have seven.
00:03:23.360That's a big, because we won some elections, as you probably noticed, and we're going to win a lot of elections.
00:03:27.960We have an economy that's roaring. We took out 5.1 billion, if you take a look, 5.1 trillion, with a T, not a B, 5.1 trillion out of the Middle East.
00:03:39.520They're investing more than that. It's going to be ultimately more than that, what, 180 white-body Boeing aircraft.
00:03:46.940They're spending money at levels that nobody's ever seen. Usually a president goes for a trip, and he loses money. In other words, he gives money. We went for a trip, but we took out $5.1 trillion.
00:03:59.360Nobody has ever seen anything like it, and that's just the beginning.
00:04:02.520So I think we're going to—I think we're a very unified party. The Senate's doing great. John Thune is doing fantastically. He's a great guy.
00:04:10.400And we're going to have a bill, the one big, beautiful bill. I think it's going to be—it's the biggest bill ever passed, and we've got to get it done.
00:04:17.200Tremendous tax cuts for people, tremendous incentives, tremendous regulation cuts, all these regulations that are so horrible.
00:04:25.580And now you found out and find out what happened, because Biden—look, it's a very sad thing what happened, but I believe we're going to start looking into this whole thing with who signed this legislation, who signed legislation opening our border.
00:04:38.900I don't think he knew. I said there's nobody that can want an open border. Nobody. And now I find out that it wasn't him. He auto-panned it.
00:04:47.780Who was operating the auto-panned? This is a very serious thing. We had a president that didn't sign anything. He auto-panned almost everything.
00:04:55.240He opened the borders of the United States of America. And I kept saying, who would do such a thing, allowing criminals to pour in from all over the world, not just South America, all over the world.
00:05:06.440They came in from Africa. They came in from Asia. They came from the Congo. The prisons in the Congo and Africa—these are rough, rough people.
00:05:15.240The prisons from the Congo are empty. You know where they are? They're in this country. Who would sign this? Nobody would sign it. No sane person would sign it.
00:05:25.060You know who signed it? Radical-left lunatics that were running our country. And the auto-panned signed it.
00:05:29.960And they didn't want him. And they were disappointed in getting him because they wanted Bernie Sanders.
00:05:35.500And then after about two weeks, they said, wait a minute. This is a gift. He'll do anything. We're going to use the auto-panned.
00:05:43.160And they used the auto-panned in everything. He didn't approve this stuff because when Joe Biden was with it, he would never have approved it.
00:05:50.800You take a look. He would have never approved open borders. Go ahead.
00:05:53.380Are Republicans still grandstanding in your view?
00:05:56.820Oh, yeah, sure. You have a couple that will grandstand. But I think even the grandstanders should—look, the alternative is a 68 percent tax increase.
00:06:04.600And you can blame the Democrats for that and one or two grandstanders. We only have one or two.
00:06:11.680But you'll have a 68 percent tax increase or you'll get a massive tax decrease. You'll get a tax cut the likes of which we've never had before.
00:06:23.460This is bigger than any Ronald Reagan tax cut. It's even bigger than the tax cut that I gave because, as you know, that's being extended and increased.
00:06:33.180So this is the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. Or you'll get a 68 percent tax increase.
00:06:39.560And if that happens, I mean, what Republican could vote for that to happen? Because there wouldn't be a Republican much longer.
00:06:46.040They would get—they would be knocked out so fast. But we're going up to details.
00:06:50.580This is a—I'm a cheerleader for this party and I'm a cheerleader for the country, much more importantly for the country.
00:06:58.200But I'm a cheerleader for the party. And we're going to go up and I think we're going to have a very good discussion.
00:07:04.020There are one or two points that some people feel strongly about, but maybe not so strongly.
00:07:08.020On one of those points, do you consider some of the proposals on the table in co-pay and provider tax as a benefit cut?
00:07:15.820No, we're going to look—we are looking at one thing. We're not doing any cutting of anything meaningful.
00:07:21.540The only thing we're cutting is waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:07:24.880With Medicaid, waste, fraud, and abuse. There's tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:07:30.380There's incompetent things winning. We have illegal aliens that are multiple killers with multiple murder records.
00:07:37.660Getting Medicaid. I don't think anybody minds that we've got that.
00:07:41.600The Democrats, on the other hand, are going to destroy it because they're going to leave these people on.
00:07:46.060We're cutting three things—waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:07:49.200We're not changing Medicaid, and we're not changing Medicare, and we're not changing Social Security.
00:07:55.760And if I wanted to do those things, I would have done it during my four years that we were doing.
00:07:59.680Mr. President, what's your message to your fellow New Yorker Republicans who are hung up on the salt issue?
00:08:04.600Well, salt is a very interesting thing because the governors of New York and Illinois, you know, the big J.B. who's gone nowhere.
00:08:14.680Probably right now he could be the worst governor in the country.
00:08:17.780But Illinois and Gavin Newsom, those are the people that want this.
00:08:25.240And they're Democrat states. They're all Democrat states.
00:08:27.800You know, Ronald Reagan tried very hard to get this passed, was unable to do it the way we have it, where basically everybody's treated equally.
00:08:37.580He tried it so hard, and he never got it done.
00:08:40.040He was always disappointed. He never got it done.
00:08:42.340We got it done. Now people want to change it.
00:08:45.200So we're going to be talking about that.
00:08:46.820But the biggest beneficiary, if we do that, are governors from New York, Illinois, and California.
00:08:53.860And those governors are the ones that blew it because they weren't able to get it.
00:08:58.460So I think we're going to be explaining that.
00:09:01.160These are all very blue states that I don't really believe.
00:09:04.920If we had honest elections, I don't actually believe.
00:09:07.100I think I would have won California. I would have won New York.
00:09:10.140I even think I would have won Illinois.
00:09:11.960I think if they—we have to—you know, we're going to start this after.
00:19:32.100I know the audience is not tired of hearing that,
00:19:34.160It shows that we're going to blow through the $4 trillion, I don't know, sometime before Labor Day of 26.
00:19:43.020Now, this is why I keep saying for Hassett, particularly Hassett, the NEC, he can go up there and go on Fox all day long and talk about vote counts.
00:19:52.440I don't need him talking about vote counts.
00:19:55.060He's the National Economic Council head, our chief economist, CEA in the first term.
00:20:03.000We need him coming out and talking about math.
00:20:06.260He goes out and gives this cheery kind of happy talk on we got the votes, we got the votes.
00:20:10.140If we got the votes, hey, look, dude, that's fine.
00:20:59.700You've got to look downrange on these things.
00:21:01.540This is how we've gotten into this jam.
00:21:03.120And looking downrange is the fact that I don't think the Treasury Department, the games Yellen played and got us into this jam with Biden, with a compliant Senate Republicans led by a guy from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell.
00:21:53.200The Wall Street Journal, of all folks, come in on the spending issue today and mention the Moody's downgrade and say it's time for the Moody's downgrade.
00:22:01.420If Denver has the chart, it doesn't really matter.
00:22:03.240It just shows we're spending way more than we're taking in revenues.
00:23:57.820There's also a different theory of the case here, which I – and I hope people in the White House and the Treasury – at least – here's the issue.
00:24:12.060The deficits being this large means the debt gets larger because they get added.
00:24:20.480In the refinancing of the debt, my theory of the case or our theory of the case and many people's theory of the case is that that's the embedded inflation.
00:24:48.760And so you add to these deficits, inflation is going to be there.
00:24:52.900So next year, if you look downrange, yes, the tax cut and the supply side, although a lot of the supply side stuff is not permanent, not permanent.
00:25:02.360And if you had more cuts, maybe you can make them permanent because you want a supply side tax cut, which focuses on work, productivity, capital investment.
00:25:14.420The other adult that's supposed to be in the room is the Federal Reserve Bank.
00:25:17.960They accommodated all these moves of $2 trillion deficits without question.
00:25:23.380Now when Trump wants a little tailwinds coming in on the tariff ripple for a few months while we get the $10 trillion in capital coming into the country and the $2 trillion.
00:26:38.680I do think that you've got to do a better case about what you were handed, which is a debacle, a total debacle, by an out-of-control Fed, which makes the case about ending the Fed, also about how Yellen ran this like a banana republic.
00:26:53.740And how the accommodationist Republicans, this was the political class, approved all this spending.
00:26:59.620And listen, in the fight right now, even cutting out some of the spending is what it's about.
00:27:40.920Last night, she issued, you saw the evening show, he had the vice president, Mike Davis on.
00:27:45.040That radical over the D.C. court put a hundred page blistering opinion out of how Trump doesn't control anything as president, as chief executive.
00:27:54.780He said it was unlawful to shut down the Institute of Peace, which is one of the most bogus things that we have.
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00:43:52.420I was telling somebody this morning, I said about the first term, since 2008, but even since 2017, this city has changed from when you were here.
00:44:32.060We have a super powerful, big centralized government.
00:44:37.540And because of mergers and all this antitrust that wasn't around for all the time under Biden, you've had concentration of wealth and power into these oligarchs combined with the capital markets of Wall Street in the connective linkage of these big law firms.
00:44:53.560And that is the old traditional definition of fascism.
00:45:22.960His job is to, first off, let's be blunt.
00:45:26.160His job is, first off, to make sure everybody reads the frickin' bill when Andy Biggs, who's as good a man as you're going to have, has to tweet out, hey, we need more meetings.
00:58:56.360And the Salk guys look like they got blown up.
00:58:59.360We've got Congressman Andy Clyde, who was in the room.
00:59:02.360Congressman Clyde, you've been pretty adamant about you need more cuts.
00:59:06.360Give us your perspective this morning after this extraordinary visit by the president of the United States to Capitol Hill to talk to the conference.
00:59:15.360Well, Steve, it's great to be on with you.
00:59:19.360I'll tell you that it's always wonderful to hear the president.
00:59:27.360And so listening to his perspective this morning was very, very important for us.
00:59:33.360You know, we have got to get this particular bill right.
00:59:37.360We're going to move forward, but it has to be done in a fiscally responsible way, in a way that reduces the deficits and doesn't increase the deficits.
00:59:48.360And also, I would love to see a Second Amendment win in this bill, because I don't see any other way that we take back our constitutional rights other than through reconciliation, which is only a Republican—it's a partisan bill and requires only Republican votes.
01:00:06.360There's no Democrat—especially no seven Democrat senators—that are going to ever vote to give us back our constitutional rights.
01:02:54.360This is the greatest bill that we'll ever- I think it's the most important bill this country just about has ever done in terms of size and scope.
01:03:03.360That's why we call it the great, big, beautiful deal.