00:01:27.000We had a border. We didn't have open borders. He came through open borders. Nobody checked him, totally unvetted. Terrible person, an animal. Should have never happened. Just yesterday, New York State passed a budget pact with provisions to obstruct federal immigration enforcement and keep this a deadly sanctuary state. Just passed yesterday. It's hard to believe.
00:01:52.780So, Bruce, hopefully you'll get that unpassed very quickly.
00:07:02.540And we will pass what we call the Great Healthcare Plan.
00:07:06.700the great health care plan to stop all payments to big insurance companies.
00:07:13.020The government pays the big insurance companies, totally controlled.
00:07:16.980The Democrats totally control them, and they're totally controlled by the companies themselves.
00:07:22.580And we're going to give the money not to the big insurance companies.
00:07:26.240We're going to give the health care money directly to the people so they can buy their own health care.
00:07:32.280They can make sure that they get better.
00:07:34.460you'll get better you'll get far better health care than you have right now because
00:07:39.400the unaffordable care act that's called obamacare the unaffordable care act is terrible it's always
00:07:45.740been terrible you'll buy your own health care the money will go directly to you and you have a lot
00:07:50.300of money left over you have much better health care and we'll stop the radical left's rampant
00:07:55.320looting of your taxpayers dollars and we'll win the war on fraud and you see that it's led by our
00:08:01.300great vice president J.D. Vance. You see what's going on? It's looking good. You see what's going on out there? All those good looking guys up there. They're out there and they're out there. What they're doing is fantastic. They've caught so much fraud. They're in Minnesota. They're in California. They're going to be everywhere. And J.D. and the group are doing a fantastic job. We're finding billions and billions of dollars of fraud, medical fraud,
00:08:31.280Dr. Oz is doing phenomenally well, Dr. Oz.
00:08:55.300All voters must provide proof of citizenship.
00:08:58.240And there will be no more mail-in ballot scams, especially in places just like this, where it's so rampant, except for illness, disability, military deployment or travel.
00:09:13.580We'll be very generous in that regard, but we have to stop it.
00:09:18.540There's no country in the world that has mail-in ballots like we do.
00:14:46.560Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is resigning, effective at the end of June.
00:14:51.700In a letter to President Trump, she writes, quote,
00:14:54.180My husband Abraham has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.
00:15:00.200He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months.
00:15:02.600At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through the battle.
00:15:09.100In many ways, the news of Tulsi Gabbard's appointment to the cabinet was that she was going to be one of the sort of vanguard of former Democrats, in her case, moving the country's foreign policy toward what she saw as Trump's America first commitment to no new wars.
00:15:32.180This is one of his most popular chants on the campaign trail.
00:15:36.000Gabbard was seen as the kind of leading proponent of this in the cabinet and in many ways alongside of Vice President J.D. Vance, Pete Hegsett, the defense secretary to a certain extent.
00:15:48.140And yet what's happened is so interesting in Trump's second term.
00:15:51.280He has not pursued that kind of a foreign policy at all.
00:15:54.120Some, like J.D. Vance, have sort of seemed to transform what they've said in public about the goals of American national security.
00:16:04.100Gabbard never seemed at ease with this pivot.
00:16:07.020Donald Trump, the president of No New Wars, has launched military operations in more than seven different countries over the course of his second term.
00:16:16.700And, you know, the Iran war, it was very painfully obvious when she testified to Congress that she just wasn't fully bored with this.
00:16:24.540And the Federal Reserve has a new chairman and President Trump is making it pretty clear what he wants him to do.
00:16:30.040Kevin Warsh was just sworn in to lead the U.S. Central Bank, one of the most important independent financial institutions in the world.
00:16:37.140He takes over for the embattled term limited former chairman Jerome Powell.
00:16:40.660For years, Powell has been a punching bag for many of President Trump's personal economic grievances.
00:16:46.700Today, Trump hosted Warsh's inauguration at the White House, showing just how invested he is in the Fed's new leader.
00:16:54.960Thankfully, unlike some of his predecessors, Kevin understands that when the economy is booming, it is that's a good thing.
00:17:03.080We don't have to go crazy. Just let it boom.
00:17:05.500We do have some debt we'd like to take care of. And the way you do that is through growth.
00:17:09.740We're going to grow our way out of it so fast. And Kevin, somebody and I feel strongly also, we don't want to see it stifled.
00:17:16.700We want to stop inflation, but we don't want to stop greatness.
00:17:20.900My goal now is to create an environment in which the best people can do their life's best work
00:17:27.100and to face every challenge in the spirit of common purpose and devotion to the national interest,
00:18:59.640But to the point about how is the president of the United States receiving information,
00:19:03.620Certainly what I have been told when I have asked so far in this Trump second term is that the CIA director John Ratcliffe, a former member of Congress from Texas, is much better regarded in the White House and is playing a more substantive role in the Trump administration than Gabbard was.
00:19:25.220She was essentially a politician who was chosen for political reasons, you know, whose views were at odds with a large number of Trump's other advisers, not to mention, it now turns out, with the president himself.
00:19:37.120So I think we are probably seeing the CIA director play a more direct role.
00:19:41.920And again, this is a government that has been at war with the very idea that there is such a thing as a nonpartisan national security apparatus.
00:19:51.900They've looted, they've destroyed the National Security Council and the interagency process,
00:19:59.920things that people here inside the Beltway talk about, Katie, but actually make a difference.
00:20:04.060So I'm told there are very few staff positions filled anymore at the National Security Council at the White House.
00:20:10.420And remember, Marco Rubio is playing both roles, so we don't actually have a full-time national security advisor.
00:20:15.760We've had repeated senior officials in this government who basically treat our nonpartisan experts in government as though they are suspect members of a kind of a deep state conspiring against Donald Trump.
00:20:31.100And so I think the role of intelligence and independent expertise has been devalued very significantly in this Trump presidency.
00:20:39.560Friday 22 May in the year of 2026 the Susan Glasser was getting all worked up there
00:20:48.340wow the interagency process she talked about her favorite fetish the interagency process
00:20:56.880President Trump just left ours in the process of leaving uh New York 17 Michael Lawler
00:21:03.640um who's not always been a fan of President Trump but hey you're in the trenches you got
00:21:08.720to hold that district. He's there one hour and a half, 90 minutes, much of it off the glass,
00:21:15.080as we say, not following the teleprompter. That was vintage Trump. He didn't want to leave. He
00:21:19.360worked that stage for, what, five minutes. President Trump. Now we do understand Kurt
00:21:24.300Mills joins me. Kurt, we're going to get to the Tulsi of it. But Lady Lindsay and the crowd,
00:21:31.820or they're all worked up on Cuba now, Cuba Libre.0.99
00:22:08.060And he's going back to Washington, D.C., and they're implying there's going to be some national security meetings over the weekend.0.80
00:22:16.000So as President Lincoln said, one word at a time, we've just got an insulting reply to, you know, the Pakistani field marshals heading to Tehran.
00:22:29.900You got all this, you know, the Arabs are doing this, the Pakistanis doing that, the Persians are doing something else.
00:22:35.500Kurt Mills, make it make sense to us.0.99
00:22:37.540Where in the hell are we in this whole thing?1.00
00:22:39.200And now that the great Tulsi Gabbard has been, let's be blunt, she got fired.0.59
00:22:44.120I know her husband's horrible about, it's horrible about his cancer.
00:22:52.160And everybody feels for them and has prayers for them.
00:22:54.660But Tulsi Gabbard was on borrowed time.
00:22:58.200And this is Radcliffe and the CIA and the Mossad. This is a hostile takeover of the DNI, Kurt Mills.
00:23:07.420Yeah. So, I mean, look, off the top, neoconservatives will say what she will. They're able to multitask with American taxpayer dollars in the U.S. military, never stop them.
00:23:17.320During George W. Bush's term, Dick Cheney was very frustrated that Bush, while fighting in Iran and Afghanistan, that he would not invade Syria and Iran.
00:23:26.740So this is nothing new from Graham. This is nothing new from career neoconservatives like the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. So it's entirely possible this meeting is about Cuba. However, the Gabbard storyline can't escape notice.
00:23:43.540It's entirely possible her ouster resignation, I think it's sort of a fair ago of different factors, was potentially related, that she was going to leave before a new round of Iran strikes occur.
00:23:58.640yeah i mean correct me if i'm wrong and just let's look at the public record she's been or
00:24:06.300what's been reported it has not been refuted she has been correct on everything she said about
00:24:11.900this is why i think so many people are backers of tulsi and not to get into this thing about
00:24:16.020israel and all that you know i'm just saying if you look at the facts tulsi gabbard i think has
00:24:20.860done a hell of a job at dni her testimony i think has been great and she presented the facts
00:24:26.200as they were and has been bulletproof, I think,
00:24:55.620Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard endorsed him, they were critical.
00:24:59.960The sort of Maha wing and the anti-war independent ex-Democrats and anti-war Republicans who liked Director Gabbard's kind of politics were absolutely essential in bringing Trump over the finish line.
00:26:40.940The exact same thing they told him about the Bay of Pigs, the president, is how they briefed President Trump.
00:26:45.860We know now, and it hasn't been refuted.
00:26:47.920If the White House were refuted, I wouldn't keep bringing it up. But the president was briefed, right, consistently by the Central Intelligence Agency that just like the Mossad and Netanyahu, that a strategic bombing campaign of 24, 48, 72 hours would lead to a decapitation of the regime and a outpouring of hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of the 92 million living in Iran into the streets.
00:27:17.000and they would overthrow the mullahs and the ayatollah just like they kicked us out in the
00:27:22.380shah back in 1979 that turned out to be just like in the bay of pigs bay of pigs is that we're going0.89
00:27:27.920to land these guys and the whole nation is going to get up in an uproar and overthrow castro and
00:27:34.280bob's your uncle it didn't happen in the bay of pigs they asked kennedy for air support it didn't
00:27:38.940happen in iran and president trump kept putting forces in there now they now they hit uh hormuz
00:27:44.480Because the 10-point program they came back with, which I thought was offensive to President Trump and what he stands for, didn't even mention – this is the one they just got – didn't even mention the nuclear program.
00:27:56.480So I think – look, I think you're miles apart on this.
00:27:59.580So, Kurt, why is Tulsi Gabbard, who has been the voice of reason in this entire program – and I think for those people who have supported Tulsi Gabbard, I think we're pretty proud of the job she did, correct?
00:28:11.700Right. Yeah. I mean, look, I just think that she has been sidelined. And, you know, you mentioned Rubio and you also mentioned in the other segment, the interagency process.
00:28:21.480And I don't make a fetish for the interagency process. I think it's usually Blob Muzak to sort of smuggle in business as usual.
00:28:31.960However, if there is going to be an international process of any sort at the upper echelon of the government, it is actually the responsibility of the National Security Advisor.
00:28:42.220This is why the National Security Council exists, as you're well aware, as a former member of the Principles Committee.
00:28:48.120And Nehal Tusi at Politico wrote a very interesting piece, I believe, last month on why is it that the administration seemed unaware that the Strait of Hormuz may be a bargaining chip for the Iranians?
00:29:01.960Why is it that only one set of extreme Israel hawk proposals was set in front of the president?
00:29:09.460Now, I do believe that Rubio, among the hawks, wasn't an extreme hawk.
00:29:14.440I think he'd rather invade Cuba than Iran.
00:29:17.960However, when you're Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, you're supposed to do stuff, especially if there's going to be a war of extreme consequences.
00:29:25.480And it does beg the question, why did the pieces of paper in front of the president's face present such a narrow range of options?
00:29:35.580We're here right now. The president, this is why we want to cut back and forth.
00:29:39.920And Cortez is going to join us about the Federal Reserve chair.
00:29:42.740The president reiterated what I said this morning, point blank right there.
00:29:47.360We're going to grow our way out of us.
00:29:48.540The plan of Scott Besson and the president of the United States was to get a supply-side tax cut, the last chance we had, and to use growth to get ahead of the inflation that Biden had given us and grow our way out of it.
00:29:59.760That's not going to happen right now, just not.
00:30:14.060No, it's – I mean it's spiking inflation.
00:30:15.940And I mean, and Warsh has this whole career before Trump under Obama as an extreme inflation hawk.
00:30:22.120And I know he probably doesn't want to be sued by the Justice Department and get under President Trump's ire.
00:30:28.720But, you know, Warsh has way more of a pedigree as an inflation hawk than Powell ever did.
00:30:33.860And if he goes with what I think he actually believes, we actually may see rate hikes.
00:30:38.460It's in the Financial Times today that Wall Street is pricing in rate hikes by the end of the year.0.95
00:30:42.500Again, as a direct result of an Iran war of choice that I think the president should have taken the off-ramp on and should still take the off-ramp on.0.85
00:30:53.320Well, if this proposal that the Iranians had given us back through the Pakistanis, I mean, those 10 points, half of them right off the top are not acceptable.0.85
00:31:02.780President Trump's not going to read them.0.51
00:31:03.820Remember, President Trump has told us as of last week, when they send the proposals, if the nuclear program is not in the top thing, he stops reading.
00:31:13.740He's told them, hey, this whole thing, his whole thing he says is stop the nuclear program.
00:31:18.980If their responses don't come back to the nuclear program, he says he doesn't even go down the page and read the rest of it, Kurt Mills.
00:31:26.000But they're never going to agree to a complete moratorium on enrichment forever and ever and ever.
00:31:30.500They will agree to – based on everything that I'm aware of, they will agree on a moratorium for 10 years in excess.0.53
00:31:38.640I mean that is way, way, way better than the Obama-Iran deal.0.58
00:31:42.540At a certain point, the US is not going to get the surrender offer that Mossad and the Israelis are saying they can do.0.54
00:31:50.100They're presenting a false choice, which is unless Iran does dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, then we have to go to war.0.51
00:31:56.140And even if the Iranians, which I don't think they will, completely concede on the Iranian file, they'll create new criterion.0.78
00:44:58.340They're going to do everything they possibly can as their swan song to undermine Trump at every juncture and to refuse to do anything sensible for the American people.
00:45:08.560And even Thune, who claims to be Trump's ally, won't do anything.
00:45:11.620No, no, forget that. He's not an ally. He's got to be removed.
00:45:15.080Institutionally, you've had an institutional revolt.0.98
00:45:17.540The Senate is treating President Trump like a lame duck.
00:45:19.820They went home instead of even talking about to save America.
00:45:22.040And now the Federal Reserve, the central bank, the central bank is Saigon 1968.
00:45:26.660It's hostile territory, okay, that we pretend is not.
00:45:30.580And you're going to see something brutal.
00:45:31.880Cortez, thank you for joining us on the kickoff to the holiday weekend.