In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) to discuss immigration reform. We talk about the need for immigration reform, the benefits of deporting illegal immigrants, and how to win the mid-terms.
00:01:03.000It's very relevant uh in terms of convincing you if you want to win the midterms and finish what I call the Trump 2.0 agenda, which is the one I agree with.
00:01:10.000Close the border, lower taxes, fair trade, less regulation, and a smaller government with doge.
00:01:18.000That's why I supported Trump in this last election.
00:01:22.000That's also and freedom of speech and no censorship.
00:01:24.000So if you put that collection of issues, I'll call Trump 2.0, when he brought in a bunch of Democrats, classic New York Democrats, to build out this uh administration.
00:01:34.000That's big part of why he won, is because he was able to convert you know, fiscally conservative, socially liberal Democrats like Trump.
00:01:50.000So he he brought all those Democrats in to win for actual Christian conservatives like you, and I also am a Christian.
00:01:57.000Uh and so in order to win those, he got that base, and then he added something.
00:02:02.000We're going to lose the midterms because Trump has Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi out here doing things that are highly, highly um unpopular with those moderates.
00:02:14.000Those moderates are what won him the election.
00:02:16.000Okay, so please tell me because this is important because you throw it all on your Donald Trump's approval rating.
00:02:20.000And we know, for example, I use this as an example.
00:02:22.000Phelps won Olympic medals in spite of eating McDonald's every day.
00:02:27.000So we can't attribute it to McDonald's.
00:02:29.000Donald Trump, his approval, and there's some debate about that about his approval ratings right now, but I know that they're not ideal.
00:02:34.000It may be, in spite of the fact that deporting illegal aliens has been consistently and overwhelmingly popular.
00:02:39.000In other words, someone can make the argument that that's what's keeping him afloat when you look at the most recent Harvard Harris poll, uh deport all immigrants over 54%.
00:02:47.000The last poll that we had that would be accurate showed that a majority of Hispanic Americans, a huge block of them support deporting all illegal aliens.
00:02:55.000So you're not gonna say that he's unpopular because of deportations.
00:02:58.000That would be a pretty big leap to make.
00:03:01.000So violence in chaos is the thing that the moderates who I represent, as you know, which is why you have me on the show.
00:03:13.000I I think I would encourage you instead of cherry-picking specific polls to just look at the economist and careful with the language again.
00:03:19.000I didn't cherry pick, I picked the most recent one.
00:03:21.000You could use CBS and you could use the most accurate ones and we'll list them all publicly.
00:04:47.000Then you had the protests in uh in LA that got violent.
00:04:50.000He dipped again, not releasing the Epstein files, which I'm I know you want to have see them released, um like everybody else.
00:04:57.000That also caused employment, and now the Chicago ice raids are having them go down.
00:05:01.000So on a practical basis for the people listening here who are you know staunch conservatives or part of the MAGA movement or even part of the Proud Boys, um, losing the midterms is gonna be disastrous for Trump.
00:05:13.000You say you're a moderate, but come on now.
00:05:14.000Throwing in, or maybe part of the proud voice.
00:05:16.000Like this is this is the seven different kinds of misleading this.
00:05:19.000It's it's it's not a good faith, the kind of smoke that you're throwing there.
00:05:22.000Well, people watching are probably the one percent.
00:05:25.000I just went down like conservatives, you know, and then down to MAGA, and then you would say the tip there, and then on the other side it's Democrats, woke, Democrats, and then Antifa.
00:05:35.000But the difference is Donald Trump was elected with a mandate of the masses specifically on two issues immigration, and uh, of course, the economy, because it was disastrous.
00:05:44.000And so when you say that, I didn't see you include because you don't need to go to Proud Boys, radical Democrats, which would be Joe Biden, which would be Kamala Harris, which would be Elizabeth Warren, right?
00:05:53.000People who believe that it's evil to not allow your child to transition.
00:05:56.000Like I think they're more radical than the Proud Boys, to be clear.
00:06:04.000That's the entire mainstream democratic.
00:06:05.000I'm comparing Donald Trump to the candidates on the left.
00:06:08.000I would say there were a lot of the moderates um who now support Trump probably voted for I and sir, almost certainly in my experience voted for Obama and Clinton.
00:06:19.000So my first argument to you is it's critical to not have Trump become a lame duck president.
00:06:24.000You got to win the midterms, you're gonna lose them right now because of what I perceive as people don't like chaos and people don't like the violent nature of the the deportations and then rapid fire.
00:06:35.000The other thing I'd like to appeal to you on is there is a better way.
00:06:38.000We in no point in history of this country did we want to have people with masks on, without their badge numbers, going and tackling people.
00:06:54.000So neither of these things are correct, neither of them should have been done.
00:06:57.000And the difference is one was done against American citizens who were following the law while criminals were aided and embedded.
00:07:04.000And right now, the violence you're talking about comes from illegal immigrants and their supporters and their ilk.
00:07:09.000So I don't have a problem with someone wearing a riot helmet to deport someone who has no business being here.
00:07:13.000I do have a problem with someone wearing a mask during the summer of love shooting paintballs at American citizens, but that's where I'm an extremist.
00:07:20.000What I would say is also, you know, be careful in terms of giving too much power to the federal government, because when President AOC's in and she's coming around with a mask on and then picking up people because you said a homophobic joke or that she perceives it or a trans joke, and then she comes and you know knocks on your door like they're doing in the UK and says, Oh, I need you to come downtown with me because we have to have a conversation.
00:07:41.000Or like they did here like they did here in the States with the the Department of Misinformation and Absolutely.
00:07:46.000Us being demonetized with us being shadow banned.
00:07:49.000Yep, yeah, and he's allowed you were in all of them.
00:08:34.000But I I think I can win you on these two.
00:08:35.000One, you're gonna lose the midterms, and then you're gonna lose all power, and we're gonna spiral back into Trump being impeached and chaos for the last few years of his presidency.
00:08:44.000Second thing I I hope I can appeal to you on is there's a better way.
00:08:48.000You can just go, and I don't know if you saw the 79-year-old who got tackled and he's suing the the he's suing the government for $50 million.
00:08:55.000He owned um you know, and all this is breaking you, so there'll be back and forth on the details.
00:09:00.000I'm willing to bet there'll be a lot of fourth, but yes.
00:09:23.000You say, okay, who ran off, and you give a ten thousand dollar fine for each person.
00:09:28.000Then the next week you come back and you give two.
00:09:30.000The only reason these people are here is to make it better lives, putting aside criminals, and and that's you know, whatever percentage you want to believe it is.
00:10:36.000Yeah rather than spend sixty to a hundred thousand dollars per deportation and lose the midterms and possibly lose twenty twenty-eight because you create too much chaos and you don't make enough progress that you will turn it into a profit center.
00:10:52.000One of the great gifts Trump has is taking something where we're losing money and turn it into a profit center.
00:11:05.000On the employment thing, we are in the lowest unemployment of your lifetime, 4.5% or less uh for the last couple of years.
00:11:13.000We actually need workers, but better to have them documented, better to have them come through a clean process, we all agree.
00:11:18.000So by doing these fines, instead of burning 30 billion dollars a year for four years and burning 120 billion, losing the midterms, probably gonna lose 2028, putting all that wind in the face of the Trump 2.0 agenda, you can actually stop the violence, stop the lawsuits, and win over and not lose the moderates who got you here.
00:11:44.000I think some pretty flawed fr uh, some pretty flawed premises there.
00:11:48.000So I'm not like you said, there'll be a back and forth with this recent one, this man suing for 50 million dollars, right?
00:11:53.000I get that you sort of try and set the stage that ICE is violent.
00:11:55.000But the truth is the examples that we have for crying out loud, you're talking about the media fomenting violence, right?
00:11:59.000Remember a brego Garcia, the Maryland man, turns out MS 13.
00:12:03.000Turns out this guy was a serial criminal.
00:12:05.000Just recently we had this with the ice raids.
00:12:06.000The journalist was it Debbie Brockman, she said that she was arrested for reporting.
00:12:10.000The reality was that she threw an object in an ice vehicle.
00:12:12.000We had another one was Rafi, uh, whatever her name was.
00:12:16.000You guys remember the the Van I's car wash owner was uh arrested, we were told, even though uh he was a citizen.
00:12:21.000The reality is that there were five illegals there, they were arrested, and the raid was impeding officers.
00:12:26.000I've heard your numbers where you talk about the economic one.
00:12:29.000And just give me, I won't take nearly as much time.
00:12:31.000Where you say that costs 100,000 per violent deportation, just kind of like using the number 8 million to 12 million, you always send to pick the low end.
00:12:39.000It's a U Penn study, and by the way, these UPenn studies give a range of 30,000 to 109,000.
00:12:44.000So you're taking the high high end where even if they average it out, they say 70,000.
00:12:48.000But if we go to the DHS, if we go to CD, I said 60 to 100.
00:13:05.000And I will say this, I understand where you're talking about the midterms and you're talking about optics, but we have to also account for the fact that this is yet again goalposts moving.
00:14:31.000I think that Donald Trump would be far worse off if he didn't deliver on the promises, especially the promises that, by the way, with a reason for him being propelled into office on immigration and on the economy.
00:14:41.000But it is morally imperative that we create a culture of deterrence.
00:14:48.000I get it where people say, hey, even though we don't want to deport violent felons, and even though we create sanctuary cities, and even though legal immigrants have to live in this personal hell that we've created in blue cities across this country, there are still people, my God, who are here and just want to seek out a better life.
00:15:02.000But even if we are as charitable as possible, that is what allows, encourages, and abets more slaves on earth than ever in recorded history.
00:15:11.000A huge amount of sex slaves, 300,000 under Joe Biden's tenure, 13,000 of whom have been recovered.
00:15:16.000And I don't know if you had the opportunity to.
00:15:18.000I would highly encourage you to do so.
00:15:43.000And the worst thing you can do is create a strong border policy, but at the same time, give some kind of a path to amnesty or citizenship because it only encourages and will propel the human traffickers and the cartel forward.
00:16:11.000If they knew what I knew, if they wore my shoes for the last, you know, I started a board tour in 1984.
00:16:16.000If they wore my shoes for the last four years, if they stood in the back of the tractor trailer like I did, surrounded by 19 dead people who begged to death, including a five-year-old little boy who begged his father not to let him die, but that was the first child to die.
00:16:31.000When they stand in back there and you smell it and you see it and you feel it.
00:16:34.000When they talk to little girls like I have as young as nine years old that's been raped multiple times by the members of the cartel, when you get down and talk to that little girl like I did, and you see everything innocent and pure.
00:16:50.000Everything innocent and pure within her has been stolen.
00:16:52.000And she has no faith in humanity anymore.
00:16:56.000Wear my shoes for four decades and see the travesties I've seen.
00:17:00.000Go to Phoenix, Arizona and run Operation Ice Storm, where smuggling cartels are ripping each other off for their other people they smuggled because they're worth a lot of money.
00:17:08.000And when alien couldn't afford to pay the smuggling fees, they agreed to 10,000 smuggling fee.
00:17:24.000They would call relatives up and put them on the phone and listen to a relative get tortured and slowly killed because they pay the smuggling fees.
00:17:48.000More children would die, more women will get raped, more aliens will die, more Americans will die, more uh public safety threats will cross the border, more fentanyls won't get in the country.
00:17:58.000I call it because I've seen it For four decades.
00:18:00.000So when people say, well, you're angry, why are you so emotional?
00:19:02.000Um there's that so if we're going to make the moral argument, I think it's immoral to have open borders, so does every other country on the face of it.
00:19:09.000Sounds like now you're on board with having strong closed borders.
00:21:09.000Yeah, just so just to clean up, you you know, um, I think you're making it as if we I have this trend of doing the numbers wrong.
00:21:16.000Uh if you ask the comments, browser by just okay, uh if you ask the common browser by perplexity, I'm not sure if you gentlemen have ever tried it, but it's an excellent browser.
00:21:36.000And uh the ICE has deported nearly 200,000 people first seven months of 2025, placing it on track to exceed 300,000 deportations by the end of the year, you just put those numbers together, 30 million, 300,000, you get the 100,000 number.
00:21:48.000The reason there's a little debate about this is some people are talking about the incremental cost.
00:21:52.000So that when you hear the 17 or the 30k, what they're talking about is the incremental cost of sending them over a plane, the legal issues, all that.
00:22:00.000But if you take a holistic number, just take the budget and divide it by the number at least.
00:22:07.000You can take the annual budget, and then there's gonna be plus plus plus on the top of that, all these settlements of lawsuits and you know, plane trips.
00:23:23.000Uh no, you can't just take the annual budget and go, and this is what it is, and we're going to estimate uh, you know, increasing costs and then throw lawsuits in there.
00:23:30.000There are much more notable numbers that we need to take into account or cause in effect, the peripheral effect of 96% of a decrease in crossings, which of course will affect the budget, and 1.6 million self-deportations.
00:23:42.000So you can't say the incremental costs based off of simply an annual budget that cannot be predicted and not take into account the savings from the biggest peripheral numbers over which this policy has had a cause and effect.
00:23:55.000That you it's not fair to do that one way and not the other.
00:24:11.000Umcreasing the number uh that we pay people to self-deport would be magical because you would just have them flowing over the border.
00:24:19.000And if you combined you the idea that you endorsed, which is increasing the number we pay them to leave, um, and your co-hosts came up with uh and and noted in the last episode or two episodes ago, if you combine that with my idea.
00:25:57.000No, let me let me explain to you where I don't agree.
00:25:59.000I do believe that uh we are a nation of borders and we need to treat our people here who definitely are struggling, have had some tough breaks with c with compassion and empathy.
00:26:06.000I certainly don't think that people have committed a crime to come here who would be tolerated in most nearly no other countries with this level, this level of magnitude when we're talking about 18 million people of the last three years.
00:26:18.000I think when we have a struggling American middle class, and Barack Amon just talked about the wealth gap.
00:26:23.000I talked about the wealth transfer and the increase in poverty that sometimes you see.
00:26:27.000That's the greater problem, which I think we would both agree as moderates, where the wealth gap is not as important as the poverty and the increase therein.
00:26:34.000Um, I don't think it's empathetic to allow people into this country who cannot be tracked as you enable drug cartels, MS-13 gang members, that you cannot deal with any other way outside of sealing up a border and creating a culture of deterrence, which at the same time will save the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:26:50.000And you're misrepresenting the policy or the idea that Gerald proposed.
00:26:54.000I believe that was kind of tongue-in-cheek with a very, very short turnaround time frame.
00:27:37.000You're going to pay a remittance tax from here on out, 50% for every dollar sent out of this country that doesn't benefit the American taxpayer or worker and proof of contributing to your community.
00:27:46.000If you do that immediately starting this second, maybe there's a way to work toward a path to citizenship.
00:27:52.000Should it come with those prerequisites or which ones are you proposing?
00:28:08.000So then you know the point-based system.
00:28:09.000Um and uh they have that also in um New Zealand, Australia, and actually the Nordics have in done this as well, which is where you say, hey, if you speak the language, you get two points.
00:28:21.000If you speak it fluently, if you have a college degree, if you're investing in the country, you just add up the points.
00:28:25.000People with the most points go to the front of the line.
00:29:00.000So the point system, just to be clear, in Norway, for example, in Korea, it doesn't apply to people who've entered illegally in those countries.
00:29:12.000You are so Christian uh that you are taking something that was just for people coming legally, and you're giving the opportunity to give it to the poor and the meek who came here illegally and who did something wrong.
00:29:22.000Christ forgave the people who put them on that cross.
00:29:25.000Christ forgave the people who were tax collectors who um were predatory with the poor.
00:29:32.000You, as a Christian, are being actually very kind to the poor with your proposal.
00:29:37.000Now, I might say you hit four of seven or you get five years to do it, but we're just splitting years here.
00:29:41.000Well, no, we're not splitting hairs, otherwise you're gone right away.
00:29:43.000In other words, if you don't pay your back taxes today, in other words, while you're sitting in the ice facility, back pay now or you're gone.
00:29:50.000So I'm not saying you even have time to get your finances to you.
00:29:53.000I'm I might I might take a uh a more um I might take a slower approach to it, but I I'm with you on that.
00:30:00.000And uh this is where I think the country could do more work.
00:30:03.000This is where, dare I say, I think, Steven, we did some good work today.
00:30:07.000Okay, which is um just taking a moment to consider the other person's position and maybe meeting them halfway and thinking as all Americans and taking all Americans' positions and just trying to find a way to agree on what we can agree on and make some forward progress, as opposed to what's happening in this country right now, which is the extremes, which win the primaries now have taken over the dialogue.
00:30:33.000What we did here today is we thought about some ideas that you don't hear in mainstream media.
00:30:39.000We don't hear these ideas in this granular discussion about point-based systems, about hey, what's the actual real number, and can we triangulate on it and get the problem?
00:30:48.000Well, no one's suggested a point-based system aside from you, and you pulled a bait and switch and attributed it to illegal immigration when it only applies to legal immigrants.
00:31:10.000You know that there have been a ton of false stories.
00:31:12.000You know the media has fomented violence.
00:31:13.000Well, of course, there'll be there'll be stories that are important.
00:31:16.000Listen, uh if you told me like should you trust the media, I would just pull up a chart that shows trusted media has plummeted our whole lifetime.
00:31:23.000So again, it's another straw man argument.
00:31:25.000I I've never argued that you should trust the media.
00:31:32.000So everything we've said today here, probably 90% of it has been said on Fox or by Rachel Maddow or by Tucker.
00:31:40.000You know, the everybody's talking about every point.
00:31:41.000But the thing that we made progress here, despite you not wanting to uh give us credit for it, and I'm gonna make you give us credit for it, is that we listened to each other deeply.
00:31:51.000We got beyond the talking points in mainstream media and said, hey, maybe there's some common ground here where we could work towards something.
00:31:57.000And if you and I both agree the border should be closed, that we shouldn't blow a bunch of money on this, and that Americans should come first.
00:32:05.000I I think we've got a pretty good path here to maybe coming up with some solutions that take both sides into account.
00:32:12.000And that's what I'm hoping we see more of.
00:32:40.000If you just add up the remittances from India, you just add up the illegal immigration and you add up the fraud, not waste, not necessarily misspending or inflation costs of government.
00:32:49.000You're at 1.2 to 1.5 trillion dollars.
00:32:52.000Hey, that could help a lot of Americans, you know.
00:33:49.000And the person who supported that, who by the way, followed the man who also supported that, and Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, she was a candidate.
00:33:58.000And I don't know how you say the most extremes win primaries when you just said that we have Donald Trump who won the primary, right, in 2015, 2016, where he was the most socially liberal Republican that we've seen in modern era.
00:34:42.000Now, that was unpopular with 60 or 70% of the country who want to see women make that own decision or have limitations and that's why he won the primary European.
00:34:52.000I think it's why he got a massive turnout.
00:35:42.000The trans issue was the hugest mistake the Democratic Party made because if you look at the DSM, uh, you know, up until the last one, it was gender dysphoria.
00:35:52.000It was a mental illness, it was a mental condition that was to be treated, you know, in that way.
00:35:57.000And then the Democrats did one of the stupidest decisions ever.
00:36:00.000Yeah, they decided that this would be a cost celebr, like gay rights.
00:36:06.000Uh, this is an incredibly small niche issue.
00:36:08.000And if you talk to any Democrat woman uh quietly and you surveyed them and said, Do you think you should give a double massectomy or castration hormones to a child?
00:36:23.000But the Democrats conflated what they were experiencing in New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles in these little pockets to think that applies to women everywhere.
00:36:33.000It does not apply to women everywhere, obviously.
00:36:35.000So this is amongst the stupidest things the Democrats did.
00:36:39.000And that's really how they handed the election to Trump.
00:36:42.000Uh I and I think the number one reason they lost was just picking Kamala without even having a primary.
00:38:10.000And you know, a set I think Nate Silver had it at 65 to 75 to 25 to 35 percent, depending on the month or the week before it, that's that means you have a very significant chance of winning.
00:38:21.000One in one in three is a significant chance of winning.
00:38:23.000So I think people just fundamentally don't understand probability in this country.
00:38:27.000Okay, so you said that Donald Trump was likely to to win.
00:38:37.000As someone who has been around, I know I'm uh pretty young, but been around a long time.
00:38:40.000It was at Fox News for four and a half years, left there with my hair on fire, did stuff with HLN and all these other networks.
00:38:46.000Uh, they were saying that Mitt Romney was the next George Washington.
00:38:49.000They were telling us who's most likely to win, what's going to win primaries, and they were wrong most steps of the way, just like the Democrat Party was wrong, where every single person made the mistake of L G B T Q A I P plus.
00:39:02.000And I do think we both would have to agree that Donald Trump has sort of turned over that cart in the sense that, hey, you know what?
00:39:37.000So uh and then you cited some recent example, which I'm sure, by the way, will be turned around in its head and we'll find out that it's another bullshit story, just like we did with a brego Garcia and these other people mentioned.
00:39:45.000Can I ask you, because you say they don't have these conversations.
00:39:48.000What that you have presented is in any way discernible from legacy media mainstream talking points.
00:39:56.000Oh, I I don't think the uh legacy media cares about anything other than ratings.
00:40:02.000So they will pick their topics and stories based on what gets them the most money from advertisers.
00:40:07.000But they hold the same stance in all these issues that ICE is violent while not discussing the actual violence, right?
00:40:11.000Exacerbating, fermenting the violence, this idea that Donald Trump is deeply unpopular because of immigration, not in spite of the fact that he's overwhelmingly popular.
00:41:00.000Uh but you know, when I it was interesting in New York, when Stop Ask and Frisk happened, um, the communities that went the most in favor were the poorest communities with the projects with black and brown people in them, poor people in them, because they were the most impacted by crime.
00:42:50.000You you just have to again, like our conversation here today, you don't it's not unreasonable to want to fix immigration.
00:42:59.000And if you reframe it and you put it into buckets, illegal immigration, compassionate immigration, and then recruiting the greatest talent in the world, which we didn't get into, but um I'd love to come on again and talk to you about H1B visas and all that, which is an hour-long conversation.
00:43:13.000If we broke it into those and we just agreed on some numbers, hey, we can have this many compassionate, like true asylum seekers, not like I got the test off of TikTok and I cut and paste the text into the form, but like you actually passed away.
00:43:30.000A legitimate refugee would be if they went back to their country, they would be murdered or killed for their beliefs, uh, religious, political, et cetera.
00:43:39.000And we have some vested interest in that country.
00:43:41.000So uh the classic example would be Russians when they were defecting to the United States, Olympians, et cetera.
00:43:47.000Remember Moscow and the Hudson with Robin Williams was based on their trend in the United States.
00:43:54.000Uh rest in peace, Robin Williams, the goat.
00:43:56.000Um, but you know, we would we would want to accept them because there's a benefit to the country, there's a strategic benefit.
00:44:02.000And the same thing with the people in Afghanistan who helped us uh take out the Taliban and find Osama bin Laden.
00:44:08.000If there was somebody in Pakistan who helped us figure out where Osama bin Laden's compound was being held, Cuban Americans would be an example, right?
00:44:17.000That's I think the most uh appropriate example because we're also a country that could be argued as in close proximity as opposed to other refugees uh or asylum seekers who should go to their nearest nation.
00:44:27.000And then in terms of recruiting talent, what we should use as a um, you know, a really interesting playbook is what happened uh during the Manhattan Project.
00:44:37.000Uh a lot of incredible Jewish scientists left Germany, they fled.
00:44:41.000And then we went and we looked for the German scientists who were the next smartest uh who were working there on rockets uh and engines, and we recruited them.
00:44:50.000And recruiting the most talented, uh most intelligent people from Pakistan, which has distributed nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea.
00:44:59.000Um you can you can jump down a whole rabbit.
00:45:01.000Well, the problem is this is another hour conversation.
00:45:36.000All right, food, but we already have that here.
00:45:38.000We can still have that with the folks who are here.
00:45:39.000If you want to get great engineers to make incredible products like comet by perplexity, uh use the promo code Steve Crowder to get six months freeze.
00:46:23.000They would have to be fleeing a nation where they would be politic uh politically persecuted or for their faith where they would be killed if they went back.
00:46:30.000What percentage of the 40 million people here illegally right now do you think would be made up of legitimate refugees, asylum seekers?
00:46:37.000We both would agree it's single digits, very, very low.
00:46:49.000It is absolutely an outlier, which is why it's a very important thing.
00:46:51.000And then why what's the difference between immigrants from these countries that are third world countries that are awful that have nothing that we want to import culturally?
00:46:59.000You're talking about the city of the city.
00:46:59.000And the people who founded the United States.
00:47:02.000Like you say Is there a difference, for example, between immigrants who come who have a shared culture, a shared language, a shared value system, come into the United States with no promise of anything in return versus people coming from a third world crap hole.
00:47:15.000I'll use that term, I don't think it's racist at all, to a giant welfare state in the United States.
00:47:52.000Um I I think the way to look at it is yes, um the people who came here to America, you know, that was really hard to get here.
00:48:02.000Um it was a real struggle to survive here.
00:48:04.000These were the rugged of the most rugged brave people in the world.
00:48:08.000And if you were to look at folks coming across the southern border, is it as tough of a triple as you described it uh and as Tom Holland described it?
00:48:31.000So what no, what I'll say is um it's a mixed bag.
00:48:35.000I think a number of them are coming here.
00:48:37.000If you were to look at uh Muslim countries specifically, um, some number of them do not um assimilate and assimilate is a dirty word right now, but I think it's a very important one.
00:48:47.000You pointed out, do you speak the language?
00:48:50.000And in Europe, uh there was a big problem of them not assimilating, and then you'll have second and gener second and third generation French uh citizens who are not accepted into the country where they were born, and then this creates you know uh really dark times for those countries.
00:49:08.000And so no, you don't you want to make it clear.
00:49:10.000If you want to come to this country, you you gotta understand what it means to be an American, you know, speak the language.
00:49:15.000I'm all for assimilation and the melting pot.
00:49:18.000So we're we're in strong agreement there.
00:49:20.000And that's why we should take the most rugged individuals, and that's actually why the point-based system exists.
00:49:24.000You can pair the point-based system with the needs of the country.
00:49:27.000If we don't have enough doctors, we don't have enough um because it's Seven million people looking for jobs, you understand, and we have more than those job openings.
00:49:35.000So even in the United States right now, the reason we have the lowest unemployment of our lifetimes is because a lot of great immigrants came here and had kids, or immigrants themselves came here and started amazing companies, including Elon, including Sergey Brynn from Google.
00:49:51.000You know, we have a long history in this country of those immigrants who really work hard and strive.
00:49:58.000Theoretically, you should have been amongst them, Steven.
00:50:21.000But what's the difference as far as culturally and values, right?
00:50:24.000Because you have Americans who let's be honest, someone from Ireland and someone from Italy and someone from England, assuming they speak the language, and back then immigrants largely did.
00:50:38.000I'm referring to people coming to this country where you know what, even if you look in neighborhoods in New York where you talk about this, people who are coming first, second, third generation immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and they're living across the street and they're speaking.
00:50:48.000It's not like they don't have some kind of a common ground or understanding as to what America is.
00:50:52.000And the most important aspect there is they did it at great risk, right?
00:50:56.000They risked everything, came with nickels in their pocket.
00:50:59.000People come here with a guaranteed check.
00:51:05.000We if we want to be compassionate, the American worker who can just be priced out by people who come from the third world and they're skimming agencies, right?
00:51:11.000Where they just place people and they take off H1B is a huge scam.
00:51:15.000Um how many new jobs were added, for example, under Joe Biden that were native-born American jobs.
00:51:22.000Uh wow, off the top of my head, and I would agree with you about a the bottom third to even up there's a 50% of H1B visas are pure uh grift and a just a way to get cheaper uh employees.
00:51:35.000Uh and the easiest way to solve that is to just charge 10, 20, 30k a year for those, uh, which is exactly what Trump did.
00:51:41.000So uh we're gonna be in strong agreement on that.
00:51:43.000I think we had um if you look at labor participation, another way to look at that.
00:51:47.000We've had about 61, 62 percent labor participation down from about 68 at the peak amongst people who want jobs.
00:51:54.000And um we had upwards of 12 million job openings under Biden, and it went from about six percent unemployment down to four percent.
00:52:02.000We we had to how many new jobs added were native-born jobs, meaning American citizens versus foreign-born workers who came in.
00:52:10.000I don't I I don't have that statistic.
00:52:12.000Negative, I believe it was about 100 something thousand and plus, if I'm not mistaken, I'm sure they can fact check me here.
00:52:17.000We have this for somewhere, I believe it was plus four million foreign jobs that were, by the way, on an average 30 percent less than the what they were paying a standard American.
00:52:26.000The exact inverse of what we saw under Donald Trump's first term.
00:52:34.000I would say the two numbers that really matter to look at um is the overall unemployment rate in relation to job openings in relation to labor participation.
00:52:44.000One of the things we're dealing with this in the country is that baby boomers have so much of the wealth that they're passing on to Gen Xers and millennials that a lot of folks are opting out of working, or they're working, you know, gig economy or part-time.
00:53:00.000It's very hard to get those affluent people, as we saw in Europe.
00:53:03.000You brought up France and Germany and a lot of these places, uh Spain.
00:53:07.000There's so much wealth, and they experienced this 20 years ago, you because they had a bit of a head start on us here.
00:53:14.000They're they're you know, 2,000 years old, you know, uh developed societies there.
00:53:18.000They have so much wealth that people just decide, you know, and I don't need to work or I don't need to work so hard, or two people in the household can work and two people can't.
00:53:25.000So that's what we're starting to expect to be able to do.
00:54:13.000Those numbers were tweaked in massage and Barack Obama, and that's why people are going, well, I'm not hearing not experiencing what I'm hearing.
00:54:18.000But it doesn't really apply anymore when all of the new jobs added.
00:54:22.000So you're looking at those two numbers.
00:54:24.000It doesn't take into account millions of jobs being added to people who are being imported at lower rates to replace jobs that Americans can and are willing to do, and a net job loss to native born Americans.
00:54:37.000We can't say that it's because all of them have gone to the gig economy and don't want to work.
00:54:42.000And if people don't understand those numbers, I think that's where you'll make predictions very similar to those political analysts in the past who predicted people like Mitt Romney who predicted Hillary Clinton winning, where you don't understand why Donald Trump is immensely popular on the immigration issue.
00:54:56.000Americans are losing jobs, they're being imported.
00:55:01.000Yeah, I mean, the the real issue around these jobs is also the ability to move from state to state geography matters uh in addition to skills matching and easier than moving from Calcutta.
00:55:14.000Well, in fact, um, if you have nothing in Calcutta and you can get a one-way ticket here, uh, as you know, you're gonna get uh a lot of services here for free, depending on which state you land in.
00:55:36.000And that's the and that's that those are the people who've been left behind.
00:55:39.000Those are the people who uh again support this country and are the driver of this country, the person who's being screwed right now, and this is the reason for Donald Trump.
00:55:49.000I mean, for the first time you saw, I believe it was the SCIU where they didn't endorse a candidate because their own union membership, it was gonna be you know, mutiny on the union because they were going, hold on a second, we don't want to elect the same people.
00:55:58.000You mentioned NAFTA TPP, of course, which they see is a deeply Clinton and kind of you know classically Democrat stance as well.
00:56:04.000And we could argue that both sides have supported this at our own peril.
00:56:07.000But right now, the working class Americans, the people footing the bill, the people paying taxes who are then being met with a bill of 150 to 450 billion dollars a year for people who come in, enjoy these services in some cases pay nothing because they come illegally, but even those who migrate to this country legally take a job at 60, 70 percent of the American salary, and we look and go, hey, unemployment's great, but they can't afford a house.
00:56:30.000They can't get a job for which they're qualified.
00:56:33.000These are the people who are sort of the forgotten, the uncounted man.
00:56:53.000What do you think about the minimum wage and raising the federal minimum wage?
00:56:57.000Do you think that should be a priority?
00:56:58.000Because that was one of the things I thought Trump might want to because he did a really good job with um no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, really speaking to the lost people you're talking about.
00:57:07.000What do you think about the minimum wage and raising it, you know, just to match inflation or maybe double inflation for the you know the lowest jobs?
00:57:14.000I think it's a red herring because I think we don't have enough time to discuss it, and it actually wouldn't help with those jobs.
00:57:18.000Because what we're discussing are jobs that would pay an American 110 to 160,000.
00:57:22.000Oh, you're not gonna be able to do that.
00:57:23.000But you can get an immigrant job do it for 75,000 living with six families while a placement agency skims them off the top.
00:57:28.000We're not talking about the lowest paid jobs.
00:57:30.000I was actually funny enough, this is a funny story on the mailing list back in uh I believe 2014-2015, it was fight for 15.
00:57:37.000And we all know that was a racket that was funded by NGOs because they would say we're gonna host some kind of a protest or a rally, but they never sent it out.
00:57:43.000They would only send pictures afterwards of them at a local McDonald's, and it was always the same people, and now it's fight for 25.
00:57:50.000So I think that's a number that doesn't actually apply to what we're discussing here because we've been told who's gonna pick your lettuce.
00:57:55.000Well, it turns out you look at, I believe it was in Nebraska, plenty of Americans will work at a meat packing plant.
00:57:59.000But we're also being told now, hey, who's gonna do your highly skilled engineering jobs?
00:58:04.000I thought Americans just didn't want to pick lettuce.
00:58:06.000It sounds to me like Americans are just not considered for a lot of jobs that they're qualified and willing to do.
00:58:12.000And if you look at the the numbers, the employment numbers under Biden, we see a proactive orchestration of bringing in cheap labor and pricing Americans.
00:58:43.000One point five million native jobs, and we lost one million foreign jobs.
00:58:47.000So that tells a different tale in the employment and job participation.
00:58:49.000Well, and this is why you know, to just go full circle here.
00:58:53.000This is why fining uh businesses that hire undocumented labor that creates pain for them.
00:58:59.000Um and then they go, oh, paying a living wage or paying a wage that gets an American who has a mortgage or two kids to come to work and not feel insulted and that it's a waste of time to even go because the gas and the child care doesn't even add up.
00:59:14.000You will now you're penalizing them for breaking the rules, and you're incenting them to, hey, raise the rate up.
00:59:20.000This is why I am really doing a deep dive into what a reasonable minimum wage would be.
00:59:27.000And I it it is a big longer discussion, but I do wonder if as a backstop, you know, just even modest, like one dollar a year for 10 years or something, just to have you keep up with inflation a bit would be interesting.
00:59:38.000Uh and then on top of that, obviously, as you're pointing out, the business owners are gonna do what is the most convenient for and what drives the most shareholder value.
00:59:48.000I know this because I'm an investor in these companies.
00:59:49.000And when I watched when uh New York City aggressively did their $15, $20 an hour thing uh was that most people matched it.
00:59:58.000But we had a number of companies we'd invested in.
01:00:00.000Um, and I had seen a number of pitches of automation for things like fast food.
01:00:05.000And I I did I passed on investing in these companies that were doing kiosks because I was like, yeah, that doesn't make any sense.
01:00:12.000Like maybe in 10 years people will, or the order on their mobile phone is probably better, but sure enough, all of those business owners and the uh people who own those kiosk companies, they called me back.
01:00:22.000Oh my god, our revenue went 10x this year.
01:00:52.000When I first came to the States, so I thought it was like, oh, a magical land of all these different waffles, assortments of like 31 flavors.
01:00:59.000They toss an ego on a griddle and go, good enough.
01:01:01.000But I will say this it doesn't really apply because we would both agree.
01:01:05.000The Democrat Party is the one who've largely championed minimum wage, fight for 15, now it's fight for 25, it always has to increase.
01:01:11.000But under Barack Obama, average salaries eight years only went up about a thousand dollars, first term of Trump, about four thousand dollars under Biden, went down four thousand dollars.
01:01:19.000There's a far greater effect on the average American wage uh that we see a direct impact that relates to immigration policy, and it's a far better precursor or metric to use than some minimum wage because most people aren't staying in those jobs, and those aren't the jobs that are affected by this immigration policy.
01:02:09.000There's a lot to look, I I think having you on another time we are, we're pretty much out of time today, but I think having you on, but I have two points.
01:02:16.000When you consider your minimum wage increases, the dollar a year, do me a favor and consider another number for the minimum wage altogether, which is zero dollars, because I think the math works out really well.
01:02:25.000But I also, and I'm I'm dead serious on that.
01:02:28.000I don't think there should be a minimum wage at all, but I understand there's issues with that.
01:02:33.000Aren't you incentivizing people to be violent in the future when they don't like what the government does?
01:02:36.000Because what it will do is create enough public pressure and worry about losing races and campaigns that they will just become violent so that they don't have to do whatever we're trying to get them to do.
01:02:46.000I mean, nobody said immigration enforcement was going to be easy.
01:04:29.000And I I think we're and what I mean by I don't even support the idea that violence is immoral, I think that's largely a leftist stocking point because you'll never you'll never hear me say uh political violence is never the answer because we wouldn't have a country.
01:04:42.000It's a platitude, it's dumb and doesn't pass the basic logic test.
01:04:45.000I think violence is amoral, just like money.
01:04:47.000I think I can violently rape someone or I can violently stop a rape.
01:04:51.000I think I can break the law by breaking into a country by entering illegally, and I think I can enforce the law.
01:04:57.000So I think force is used to violate a law.
01:05:00.000And in this case, force can be used to enforce the law.
01:05:02.000And for people, not that you are on the left, who say that everything is so nuanced, right?
01:05:08.000Seems like one of those areas where violence um is more nuanced than they give it credit for.
01:05:12.000I I don't want to make the blanket statement that violence is immoral.
01:05:14.000I don't think there's anything wrong with shooting pepper balls at the ground when people are trying to firebom an ICE facility, even though I also agree it's an act of the that's a that's a better way than doing than hitting people in the face.
01:05:37.000Um, but I hope maybe I can vent somebody in the audience to even consider other possibilities here that there could be other ways to do this.
01:06:21.000And um the toughest numbers to cheat in this industry, as you well know, are live viewership and live ticket sales, and we'll put them up with anybody, but we're number two hundred and fifty-two.
01:07:13.000Deportations in the cards in the European countries, getting deported is one of the hardest things to do.
01:07:18.000So if you look at the case, I mean, just they basically reserve the most rights for the immigrants, uh illegal immigrants and the least rights for the native in those countries.
01:07:30.000I mean, if you want to talk about backwards countries, they've really flipped the script over there, which is why they're losing any of the top entrepreneurs.
01:07:48.000Sweden's got a disproportionate number of uh unicorns like Spotify.
01:07:52.000But most of them just vault immediately.
01:07:54.000They get out of there as quick as possible because it just if you want to fire somebody in France, oh my lord, you have to take them to court.
01:08:01.000It takes two years in America, it's employment at will.
01:08:03.000So you can just shock these guys with their butt plugs and they complain.
01:09:03.000Um, let's grab a couple of chats, and then we got I know we've gone late.
01:09:06.000Just a couple of chats, and we got to go, I'll try and rapid fire them because I know probably a lot of people who have questions about the discussion.
01:09:11.000Uh I'm trying to see if I have any on the discussion, but uh I don't want to that's what this is.
01:09:18.000How many of you have in the discussion?
01:09:51.000I think it's a nice little bonus uh for America, but I don't think it's uh intentional power move.
01:09:56.000I think that Jason is sort of um he he's someone from a but doesn't realize that he still um has talking points from a bygone era of of those in legacy media and those who are kind of moderate conservatives.
01:10:06.000It just doesn't really apply today anymore as it relates to immigration as it relates to race relations right now in this country.
01:10:11.000People say, Oh, it's not race, it's culture.
01:10:14.000But now people are also acknowledging the realistic differences where race is at least a pretty good co-indicator of what kind of a culture people are gonna have.
01:10:21.000When you say, well, it's just uh employment and labor force participation, who sure, if you didn't know the numbers as far as an orchestration of bringing in cheap foreign labor by design, then say, well, all everyone's done it.
01:10:31.000Not if you contrast Trump and you contrast Biden.
01:10:34.000I think Donald Trump just sort of circumvents the so-called experts, and he's kind of still in that class where everyone was so surprised.
01:10:42.000And everyone was really surprised by Gen Z men.
01:10:44.000And everyone was really surprised by younger Hispanic uh men, because they sort of view it through this prism that just doesn't exist anymore.
01:11:03.000Well, and I think the one of the reasons that I think Jason was wrong in how he was looking at midterms is that typically the the ruling party does have a a bit of a hard time in midterms.
01:11:11.000Of course, it always turnout, typically.
01:11:30.000You want to give people a reason to show up, go out, do exactly what you told people you were gonna do, and do it in the face of withering criticism while you're doing the right thing.
01:11:40.000That will motivate people to get out to the polls in a non-presidential cycle more than anything else.
01:12:25.000Because I read these and I know what he was citing on air.
01:12:27.000And then switched it to the math of the ICE annual budget, and I believe sort of prorating the deportations that we have now, which isn't an entire annual budget, but then saying in the uh you know, increasing costs and throws lawsuits into this.
01:12:58.000And I I just think that uh I think that Donald Trump has a wide open field where where people who are even more moderate, and I think a very nice guy have a blind spot.
01:13:08.000And that's the American worker, the American taxpayer.
01:13:12.000Not everything is never, not everything is like, well, we could do this and we could do that.
01:13:15.000And I don't think he understood that I was saying basically this would still result in the same number of people being deported because they wouldn't be able to pay their back taxes immediately with interest.
01:13:23.000They don't speak the language, and they're not refugees.
01:13:25.000In other words, but it would be single digit he said less than one percent.
01:13:46.000After seeing him use many leftist legacy media talking points, you rightly pointed out that he's not he's not moderate.
01:13:52.000So what stance do you think a moderate would take?
01:13:55.000Aaron Powell I think a moderate stance right now is uh seal up the border and um deport as large of a percentage of illegal immigrants here as possible.
01:14:04.000I think that's really pretty I think anything else is leftist extremism.
01:14:10.000Now, if you want to talk about alligator Alcatraz and those optics, okay, sure.
01:14:13.000I don't think there's anything radical about saying, hey, you're here illegally, we can't track you.
01:14:18.000This isn't able to cartel uh human trafficking trade.
01:14:21.000You've got to go and go back through the process.
01:14:23.000You know, similar process to the countries that he cited, like Korea, like Japan, like these Nordic models.
01:14:29.000There's a point system for legal immigrants, and that's true, by the way, in Quebec, which is a socialist province, you don't get your assurance maladie unless you're attacked, unless you're you can prove that you are contributing.
01:14:54.000And listen, I'm sorry, I I had to bite my tongue several times.
01:14:57.000You want to throw the Jesus argument out of compassion?
01:14:59.000Like, how about the compassion for the people that are here?
01:15:01.000What about compassion that you have for the American people?
01:15:05.000And just go dive into that, because it just doesn't hold water.
01:15:07.000And I look I understand where he's trying to go, but there's a couple of places either he's a little ill-informed or he's being a little disingenuous.
01:15:14.000And I I overall thought it was a good conversation.
01:16:04.000My family's been here since before the Civil War, and this is one thing that uh that uh has bothered me for a long time is is we're all immigrants, we're all immigrants, and uh I know where they're getting where that talking point leads to going especially with this guy.
01:16:18.000He he seemed like he was agreeing with most of most things you're saying, and he's getting to a certain point.
01:16:22.000But uh you know, my family's been here for generations and generations.
01:16:26.000I'm I think it's sixth generation infantrymen.
01:16:30.000It's like how long before you're a Native American.
01:16:34.000Well, here's also the how long have how much have you done for this land?
01:16:38.000By that standard, you know who's not Native American?
01:17:48.000I don't think that people coming from India today who send their money back home and still identify as Indian and when asked can't list anything for you that they love about America more than their the crap hole they left.
01:18:01.000I don't think it's the same as people who came here, whether they're Italian, Irish, British, French saying I'm American.
01:18:08.000I know I'm promised nothing, but I'm going to stake my claim here.
01:18:15.000There's a huge difference between someone fleeing a country that they view as uh persecuting them.
01:18:23.000In most cases, that was actually the case.
01:18:24.000Fleeing a country of persecution with a promise of nothing in return in order to be a part of the great new experiment, the great new country that is.
01:18:36.000That is not the same as someone who goes, oh, the great new country that already exists.
01:18:46.000Because the difference is now you're taking from those people who built it.
01:18:51.000And they're not sending back anywhere.
01:18:53.000They're keeping their resources, not only financial resources, but they're keeping their emotional, their spiritual, their community resources, how they contribute.
01:19:35.000My opinion, unlike Michelle Obama, who was never proud of this country until her husband stepped foot in that office, think it's the greatest country on earth.
01:19:43.000I think we're better than the other countries that existed before us.