The Ben Shapiro Show


2 MUSK 2 FURIOUS: Trump vs. Musk, Redux


Summary

Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill Passes the Senate, but Now It's Back To The House. Plus a new poll shows a vast majority of Democrats are not proud of being American. What does that have to do with Zoran Mamdani? An awful lot, as it turns out. Plus, what are the economic problems we have to avoid in order to avoid a Zoran Mandanni-like socialistic backlash?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Alrighty, folks, a ton to get to on today's show.
00:00:02.000 President Trump's big, beautiful bill has passed the Senate, but now goes back to the House.
00:00:06.000 So what exactly happens next?
00:00:08.000 Plus, a new poll shows a vast majority of Democrats are not proud of being American.
00:00:12.000 What does that have to do with Zoran Mamdani?
00:00:14.000 An awful lot, as it turns out.
00:00:17.000 Plus, what are the economic problems we have to avoid in order to avoid a Zoran Mamdani-like socialistic backlash?
00:00:22.000 First, we're starting our 4th of July celebration early with something big.
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00:00:47.000 All righty, folks.
00:00:48.000 So President Trump has a big victory in his cap.
00:00:51.000 So we had announced earlier this week that the President of the United States was likely to get the Senate to vote for the big, beautiful bill, some version of that.
00:00:58.000 And they did, in fact, pass a preliminary vote earlier this week, but they have now passed an actual big, beautiful bill, one big, giant, beautiful bill.
00:01:06.000 We'll discuss the variegated beauties of this bill in just a moment.
00:01:10.000 But essentially what happened is that Republicans lost three votes on this bill.
00:01:16.000 Those votes would be Rand Paul, Tom Tillis, and Susan Collins.
00:01:20.000 Those are the three they dropped.
00:01:21.000 And then J.D. Vance came in and had to break the tie.
00:01:24.000 Here's what that sounded like.
00:01:26.000 The yays are 50.
00:01:27.000 The nays are 50.
00:01:29.000 The Senate being evenly divided, the Vice President votes in the affirmative.
00:01:33.000 The bill, as amended, is passed.
00:01:36.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the Senate's 5150 action puts Republicans on the verge of locking in Trump's top legislative priorities, extended tax cuts, new tax breaks, reductions in Medicaid spending, and more money for defense and border enforcement.
00:01:49.000 They are using their full but narrow control of Congress to pull money from safety net programs in the clean energy industry and redirect it to national security and taxpayers' wallets.
00:01:57.000 And we will get to the clean energy of this, the AI aspects of this bill, because there is a rift emerging in the Republican caucus between some of the tech bros and sort of the rest of the Trump coalition.
00:02:08.000 Elon Musk and President Trump are at it again.
00:02:11.000 Well, the Senate passed the measure with no votes to spare following a 215 to 214 nail biter in the House in May.
00:02:18.000 Senate Majority Leader John Thune described the vote as an extraordinary day for our country and highlighted the border security funding and spending cuts.
00:02:24.000 He said, we were very excited to be part of something that was going to make America stronger, safer, and more prosperous.
00:02:29.000 And it really starts with an agenda that President Trump laid out when he was running last year.
00:02:34.000 Rand Paul, of course, opposed the legislation's $5 trillion debt limit.
00:02:38.000 Tillison Collins objected to Medicaid funding changes that reduced coverage for some people in some states.
00:02:45.000 Senator Lisa Murkowski was the person who they were able to convince to join with the Republican majority in this particular case.
00:02:52.000 She was really on the fence.
00:02:53.000 She pushed for changes that would basically let Alaska off the hook in terms of some of the Medicaid cuts that were to follow.
00:03:00.000 And Republicans did make some last-minute changes to the bill that helped to sway Murkowski, which included a delay in nutrition assistance cuts for states, including Alaska, that have a higher payment error rate, a move that Democrats say would encourage waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:03:13.000 They also doubled to $50 billion a rural health fund designed to mitigate the effects of the bill's Medicaid cuts.
00:03:19.000 So again, every time you have a very narrowly passed major piece of legislation, at the very end, some piece of pork gets shoveled at one of the senators who's on the fence.
00:03:29.000 This goes all the way back to Obamacare, which was passed and rather in the dead of night with a bunch of giveaways to specific legislators in order to make sure that that happened.
00:03:37.000 Murkowski said, this is probably the most agonizing, difficult legislative 24-hour period I've encountered.
00:03:42.000 And I've been here quite a while.
00:03:43.000 And you all know I've got a few battle scars underneath.
00:03:45.000 I held my head up and made sure the people of Alaska are not forgotten in this.
00:03:50.000 Well, now the focus is shifting back to the House.
00:03:52.000 The Senate bill has already irritated a bunch of factions of Republicans in a chamber that they control 220 to 212.
00:03:58.000 Moderates are worried about some of those Medicaid cuts.
00:04:00.000 And meanwhile, fiscal conservatives like Chip Roy of Texas are very upset about the fact that the bill gets rid of some of the cuts that were already supposed to be in there, including cuts to these sort of green energy subsidies.
00:04:12.000 And again, this took forever.
00:04:13.000 Senators trudged through more than 26 hours of motions and amendments, starting mid-morning Monday, going all the way beyond Tuesday sunrise and just past noon.
00:04:22.000 Senate Republican leaders were altering the bill all the way up until the last minutes, and they finally, again, got Murkowski on board.
00:04:28.000 So what exactly is in the latest version of the so-called big, beautiful bill?
00:04:33.000 Well, the making permanent of the Trump tax cuts.
00:04:36.000 And again, so much of what happened with this bill is rooted in an unbelievably stupid idea, which is that if you're going to assess the additional debt created by the bill, we have to assume that the tax cuts were going to expire, so-called baseline budgeting.
00:04:50.000 The idea was that since the tax cuts were set to sunset at a certain point, that we would simply assume that the tax expenditures coming into the government, the tax revenue to the government, would automatically increase.
00:05:02.000 And so if you maintain the tax rates at the same rate, that actually was increasing the deficit, which again is sort of a weird accounting trick.
00:05:09.000 And that necessitated cuts in other areas in order to offset those supposed additions to the deficit.
00:05:16.000 The projected cost of the continuation of the tax cuts, some $4 trillion.
00:05:20.000 But again, that's a continuation.
00:05:22.000 It's not a new tax cut.
00:05:23.000 It's a continuation of current tax rates, preventing a reversal of the tax cuts.
00:05:28.000 The state and local tax deduction, that provision would allow people to deduct up to $40,000 per year for five years from their federal income taxes.
00:05:36.000 As part of the compromise with Senate Republicans, the cap would go back down to $10,000 per year after five years.
00:05:41.000 Now, in reality, again, is it likely to sunset like that?
00:05:45.000 Pretty unlikely.
00:05:46.000 The bill also includes no tax on tips, overtime, and car loans.
00:05:51.000 It includes making permanent the annual child tax credit at a level of $2,200.
00:05:56.000 House Republicans want to bump it to $2,500 and then scale it back to $2,000 after 2028.
00:06:02.000 And again, the child tax credit is essentially a giveaway to people who don't pay taxes in the first place.
00:06:10.000 Like the earned income tax credit.
00:06:12.000 Very often, you're giving a tax credit to people who don't pay taxes.
00:06:15.000 So it's just a check.
00:06:16.000 The bill would provide Customs and Border Patrol with $47 billion to build the ball and associated infrastructure like access roads, cameras, lights, and sensors.
00:06:24.000 It also includes $2 billion for Department of Homeland Security and about $30 billion for ICE.
00:06:30.000 The bill includes $25 billion for President Trump's Golden Dome Missile Defense System, another $30 billion for shipbuilding, $15 billion for nuclear deterrence.
00:06:38.000 So, where are the cuts coming from?
00:06:40.000 Well, Republicans are adding a work requirement of 80 hours per month for able-bodied adults under the age of 65.
00:06:46.000 There are exceptions for parents with children under the age of 14.
00:06:50.000 That's just reasonable.
00:06:51.000 Forget about having to create cuts in order to offset the supposed deficit increase from the continuation of the tax rates.
00:06:58.000 That should just be policy anyway.
00:07:00.000 Of course, there should be work requirements.
00:07:03.000 You should be required to go look for a job so you're not just living on the taxpayer dole.
00:07:07.000 The Senate goes further than the House did in restricting state-levied fees on healthcare providers that are primarily used to fund Medicaid, especially in underserved communities.
00:07:15.000 The federal government would not be on the hook to reimburse states, and that means states would have to presumably either lower their existing rates or come up with the money themselves.
00:07:23.000 That is slated to save some $930 billion.
00:07:27.000 There are other aspects of waste, fraud, and abuse that the Republicans are targeting in Medicaid that are supposed to save $170 billion.
00:07:34.000 There are going to be work requirements for people who rely on food stamps.
00:07:37.000 Again, these work requirements are fairly minimal.
00:07:39.000 You're talking about people having to work 80 hours per month with exceptions for people with children under the age of 10.
00:07:46.000 So these are very, very mild provisions.
00:07:49.000 It seems to me the bare minimum of what morality requires if you are receiving food stamps.
00:07:54.000 That should be supplemental.
00:07:56.000 Okay, supplemental nutrition assistance programs are supplemental.
00:08:00.000 They should not be the main source of your nutrition.
00:08:03.000 One of the more controversial cuts here has to do with the clean energy tax credits.
00:08:08.000 So the bill rolls back tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed into law, including for clean vehicles and electricity.
00:08:15.000 And that includes, according to NBC News, a last-minute total repeal of federal subsidies to wind and solar industries unless those projects were placed in service before the end of 2027.
00:08:25.000 An additional tax could be phased in depending on how much of those products are actually manufactured in China.
00:08:31.000 There's also a tax incentive for coal production.
00:08:33.000 So, of course, this means a lot of people who are on the sort of green energy side are very upset.
00:08:37.000 They're saying, why are you subsidizing coal, but you're not subsidizing wind and all the rest.
00:08:40.000 One of the reasons is because coal is still a more durable source of energy than wind at this point.
00:08:45.000 Because again, wind is seasonal.
00:08:47.000 It's very difficult to store.
00:08:48.000 The battery power is not particularly good at this point.
00:08:51.000 This has been one of the problems is that the flex power capacity of the grid is dependent on permanent sources of energy like coal or gas, not like wind or solar.
00:09:03.000 There's a bunch of funding for space programs, including $10 billion for Mars mission priorities.
00:09:09.000 There's the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
00:09:11.000 And of course, most controversially, when it comes to fiscal conservatives, the package includes a $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling, which is more than the $4 trillion in the House pass package.
00:09:21.000 And that's what Senator Rand Paul is opposing.
00:09:24.000 Now, President Trump, for his part, he is actually, if he's critical of the bill in any specific way, he says he doesn't like the cuts.
00:09:33.000 The cuts are the thing that's dangerous.
00:09:34.000 And again, this rings true in terms of the economic populism that President Trump pursues, which is a big spending version of conservatism, if it can be said to be conservative at all.
00:09:45.000 I mean, it's a very large spending political version of Republicanism.
00:09:52.000 Are there parts of the bill or amendments that you think cut too much?
00:09:55.000 We're going to have to see the final version.
00:09:57.000 I don't want to go too crazy with cuts.
00:09:59.000 I don't like cuts.
00:10:01.000 There are certain things that have been cut, which is good.
00:10:04.000 I think we're doing well.
00:10:05.000 We're going to have to see very complicated stuff.
00:10:08.000 Now, again, is this thing going to materialize before July 4th?
00:10:11.000 That was President Trump's initial call.
00:10:13.000 It is, of course, July 2nd.
00:10:14.000 That means that they essentially have a day and a half to put together a reconciliation bill.
00:10:17.000 President Trump has signaled his willingness to push this beyond July 4th, if needs be.
00:10:23.000 In all likelihood, this thing does get pushed probably beyond July 4th, just given the constraints here.
00:10:29.000 But it is true that some fiscal conservatives have shifted on this.
00:10:33.000 Most famously in the Senate, Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, he says, listen, in the end, what is this about?
00:10:38.000 In the end, it's what I always said it was.
00:10:40.000 It's about stopping the tax increases.
00:10:42.000 It's easy to be a Democrat, spend, mortgage your kids' future, never be held accountable by the media.
00:10:48.000 It's pretty hard what we're trying to do.
00:10:50.000 And so this may take a little bit more time.
00:10:53.000 Well, deficit spending is a bipartisan affliction.
00:10:55.000 You know that better than anyone.
00:10:56.000 Earlier this month, you were warning about this bill adding trillions to the national debt.
00:11:01.000 You told ABC News, quote, I'm worried about our kids and grandkids.
00:11:05.000 The fact that we're mortgaging their future, it's wrong.
00:11:07.000 It's immoral.
00:11:10.000 Has your position changed?
00:11:12.000 This bill, I mean, this legislation is still going to add to the deficit.
00:11:16.000 So Democrats, their only solution is increase taxes.
00:11:19.000 We don't want to do that.
00:11:20.000 That harms economic growth.
00:11:21.000 We won't get the revenue we ever look for.
00:11:23.000 All Democrats do is spend.
00:11:25.000 Okay, so again, in the end, what does this mean?
00:11:28.000 It means that Republicans are likely to vote for it because the tax cuts must be enshrined permanently into law.
00:11:34.000 But as I mentioned earlier on, there are some splits that are emerging inside the sort of coalition that President Trump has put together between tech bros and the populist economists that he has in his own corner.
00:11:45.000 Already coming up, Elon Musk, President Trump really going at it again.
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00:14:01.000 So you have a bunch of wings of the Republican Party.
00:14:03.000 You have the fiscal hawks, the people who want less debt, less deficits, lower spending, and lower taxes.
00:14:09.000 Then you have people, the economic populace, who would like lower taxes and big spending.
00:14:12.000 That'd be like Josh Howley of Missouri, for example.
00:14:15.000 And then you have people who are the tech guys, and what they're mostly concerned about is deregulation.
00:14:20.000 And yes, they would like some subsidies aimed at things like AI and green energy.
00:14:25.000 And you're seeing that all break out into the open with regard to Elon Musk.
00:14:29.000 So as Axios reports, critics say that President Trump's mega bill amounts to an abject surrender in the battle for the future of energy.
00:14:35.000 The consequences for U.S. jobs, electricity prices, and the AI arms race could reverberate for decades.
00:14:41.000 Elon Musk tweeted out, quote, a massive strategic error is being made right now to damage solar and battery that will leave America extremely vulnerable in the future.
00:14:49.000 Jason Bordoff, who leads the Columbia University Energy Think Tank, said the bill could hinder the United States in the AI race with China.
00:14:55.000 He said, quote, winning that race is going to require we increase electricity generation capacity in the U.S. really fast and by a lot.
00:15:02.000 That soaring demand is creating tailwinds for natural gas and nuclear, but even those great sources cannot ramp up fast enough to meet the urgent near-term needs of data centers and AI infrastructure.
00:15:11.000 And so he's saying basically you need to throw everything at energy, including at so-called renewable energy.
00:15:18.000 So this is a major battle that's broken out again inside the sort of tech-centric part of the Republican Party.
00:15:24.000 Beyond that, there was supposed to be an amendment to the Big Beautiful bill in the Senate that was going to protect the development of AI in the United States by creating a federal moratorium to bar state-level experimentation with regulation on AI.
00:15:37.000 So Florida couldn't have its own AI rules and California its own AI rules.
00:15:41.000 Basically, the idea was that there would be a federal ban on state-level legislation.
00:15:46.000 The federal government could still legislate and regulate with regard to AI, but you don't want AI companies having to navigate the thickets of 50 different state regulatory structures in order to develop because we are in a national competition with China on the development of AI.
00:16:02.000 Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate voted 99-1 to strip from the sprawling tax and immigration bill a provision that would have blocked states from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade.
00:16:12.000 And again, the reason for that is when it became apparent that this thing wasn't going to pass, a bunch of the people who sponsored the bill, including Senator Ted Cruz, for example, voted against it, knowing that it was basically DOA.
00:16:23.000 It left the Republican-led industry-backed push to roll back state AI laws on life support as voting continued on the broader bill, according to the Washington Post.
00:16:31.000 Republican leaders and tech trade groups have pitched the multi-year freeze on state regulations as necessary to pave the way for U.S. AI firms to innovate and out-compete their Chinese counterparts.
00:16:40.000 Last month, the House of Representatives passed a version of the tax and immigration bill that did include a 10-year ban on states passing or enforcing regulations on AI.
00:16:48.000 So Senator Cruz was pushing a behind-the-scenes effort to rework that provision to comply with procedural restrictions and gain the support of a small handful of Republican holdouts.
00:16:57.000 And it looked like it was going to happen.
00:17:01.000 The problem is that there were other opponents who said that it was unclear to them exactly what kinds of regulations would be barred.
00:17:08.000 And so Marcia Blackburn of Tennessee announced she no longer supported the compromise and would instead propose an amendment to remove that AI law moratorium altogether.
00:17:16.000 She said, while I appreciate Chairman Cruz's efforts to find acceptable language that allows states to protect their citizens from the abuses of AI, the current language is not acceptable to those who need protections the most.
00:17:26.000 Until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can't block states from making laws that protect their citizens.
00:17:35.000 The left was very, very happy about all of this.
00:17:39.000 Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, who is quite radical, she says the Senate came together tonight to say we can't just run over good state consumer protection laws.
00:17:47.000 And of course, all of this is definitely going to hold up the development of AI on a national level.
00:17:53.000 Again, all of this is leading to the massive clash that is now occurring between President Trump and Elon Musk.
00:17:58.000 This is round two, part due, hot shots, too Musk, too furious.
00:18:04.000 So what exactly happened here?
00:18:07.000 Well, essentially, Elon Musk decided that he was going to go to war with the bill again.
00:18:14.000 So he's threatening that he is going to primary senators and congress people vote for the bill.
00:18:19.000 He's also vowing to help Thomas Massey, the Republican congressperson who really gets on President Trump's nerves by voting against everything Trump wants.
00:18:27.000 He has vowed he's going to help him in a primary.
00:18:31.000 President Trump then hit back with a long social media post of his own, seeking to frame Musk's opposition as a bid to cling to his electric vehicle subsidies.
00:18:40.000 He said, quote, Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far.
00:18:45.000 And without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa.
00:18:48.000 No more rocket launches, satellites, or electric car production, and our country would save a fortune.
00:18:53.000 Perhaps he should have Doge.
00:18:54.000 Take a good hard look at this.
00:18:55.000 Big money to be saved.
00:18:58.000 So there he is going right at Elon's drug dealer, basically saying, listen, you started Doge, and why don't we examine the cost structure on the Tesla EVs?
00:19:06.000 Why don't we examine the cost structure on SpaceX and all the rest?
00:19:09.000 Again, all of this follows Elon Musk pledging that he would form a new party that he calls the America Party.
00:19:15.000 Quote, if this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day.
00:19:19.000 Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican Union Party so that people actually have a voice.
00:19:25.000 And again, he pledged as part of that that he was going to support Thomas Massey of Kentucky.
00:19:29.000 Massey, who of course has been on sort of the horseshoe theory right with regard to foreign policy, but also happens to be a Ron Paul, low spender, anti-regulation type.
00:19:42.000 Musk wrote, nearly the entire House and Senate GOP will lose their primary next year if it's the last thing I do on this earth.
00:19:49.000 And he went out of his way to call out two House Republicans who call themselves budget cutters, Andy Harris of Maryland and Chip Roy of Texas.
00:19:56.000 He's also squabbling with Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma.
00:20:01.000 So again, all this now breaking out into the open.
00:20:06.000 President Trump going after Elon saying, listen, buddy, we were friends.
00:20:14.000 We were on the same side of this.
00:20:16.000 But if you keep going after this bill and you're doing so because you want a subsidy, well, I mean, we could just remove all of those subsidies.
00:20:25.000 Here was President Trump saying all this verbally.
00:20:31.000 I don't know.
00:20:32.000 I think we'll have to take a look.
00:20:34.000 We might have to put Doge on Elon.
00:20:37.000 You know?
00:20:37.000 You know what Doge is?
00:20:39.000 Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon.
00:20:43.000 Wouldn't that be terrible?
00:20:45.000 He gets a lot of subsidies, Peter.
00:20:48.000 But Elon's very upset that the EV mandate is going to be terminated.
00:20:54.000 Hey, Elon then responded on Twitter.
00:20:56.000 So tempting to escalate this.
00:20:58.000 So, so tempting, but I will refrain for now.
00:21:02.000 Now, again, this is the result, I think, of a few different factors that are clashing.
00:21:06.000 I've said this before.
00:21:07.000 I think that on an ideological, sort of politically pure level, Elon complaining about the Big Beautiful bill is not wrong.
00:21:13.000 It spends way too much money.
00:21:14.000 But that's true for virtually every bill we pass at the federal governmental level.
00:21:18.000 That's just the reality.
00:21:20.000 I wish that the American people approved of Elon's spending plans.
00:21:24.000 I do.
00:21:24.000 I wish that we were restructuring our entitlements in a serious way.
00:21:27.000 I wish that we weren't going to sleepwalk our way right over that Thelma and Louise cliff, that fiscal cliff that is going to come sometime in the next few years.
00:21:34.000 I wish that we did all these things, but the American public is not prepared to do any of those things.
00:21:38.000 And that's where you enter the realm of the pragmatic, where President Trump simply is right.
00:21:43.000 So is this fight really about EV subsidies?
00:21:46.000 Is this fight truly about sort of political purism?
00:21:50.000 Or is it something more personal?
00:21:52.000 As I've suggested before, the fact that the Trump administration decided that they were going to get rid of Elon's hand-picked head for NASA, and apparently Sergio Gore is the guy behind that.
00:22:03.000 That's what ticked Elon off.
00:22:04.000 He hasn't let go of that.
00:22:06.000 He's still going after the bill because of that.
00:22:08.000 You combine that with Elon's, I'll say, idealistic view of how politics should work.
00:22:12.000 And it is not a shock that Elon is now attempting to wield his power in a sort of blunderbuss fashion.
00:22:17.000 It's also not a shock that President Trump is slapping back at Elon, saying, listen, I'm the president of the United States.
00:22:22.000 Thank you for your help.
00:22:23.000 Also, I'm the president.
00:22:24.000 I'm the one who has to do all this stuff.
00:22:25.000 I'm the one who has to cut the deals.
00:22:27.000 And I'm the one who has to live with it if we don't actually make permanent these tax cuts.
00:22:31.000 This was a point that Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, was making about Musk.
00:22:35.000 Here's what he had to say.
00:22:37.000 What's your reaction you guys famously tangled in the White House?
00:22:42.000 I admire Elon's leadership on rockets.
00:22:46.000 I will take care of the finances.
00:22:49.000 Again, I think that's an appropriate step for Bessant to take at this point.
00:22:52.000 He is, of course, the Treasury Secretary.
00:22:54.000 Meanwhile, there are sort of the hangers-on who are looking for a way back into power.
00:22:58.000 One of those has been Steve Bannon, who's been targeting Elon Musk for quite a long time because he sees Elon Musk and his sort of libertarian leanings with regards to economics as a threat to the big spending Republican Party, the statist Republican Party that Steve Bannon prefers.
00:23:12.000 So Bannon is using this as an opportunity to try to not only drive a wedge, but to get himself closer to Trump.
00:23:20.000 Elon Musk is out and he's, not that I told you this was going to happen, but he's out lighting up the president and lighting up MAGA and claiming that it's time for a third party and that this is, he calls it, I think, in all his maturity, the porky pig bill.
00:23:38.000 He's going on about the spending, hammering it, hammering it.
00:23:41.000 And this is what galls me about this.
00:23:43.000 This was the guy that told the president he was going to get $2 trillion of waste, fraud, and abuse cuts.
00:23:50.000 Then he backed it off to $1 trillion.
00:23:52.000 And this was on an annual basis.
00:23:54.000 This wasn't over 10 years.
00:23:55.000 This was $1 trillion because we asked him, I made sure the question was asked very specifically.
00:23:59.000 And he said it over and over again, a trillion dollars.
00:24:01.000 And at the end of the day, I don't know, folks.
00:24:05.000 I know some of you fanboys said we got $160 billion.
00:24:07.000 We haven't seen the $160 billion.
00:24:08.000 What we do is have a $9 billion decision.
00:24:10.000 And all of that is programmatic.
00:24:14.000 I haven't seen anything specifically fraud and abuse put forward from the Pentagon anywhere.
00:24:21.000 Okay, so again, this is a little bit ironic in and of itself because, of course, Steve Bannon was a big Tea Party advocate who wanted smaller government.
00:24:28.000 Now he's complaining that Musk is complaining that the bill is too big.
00:24:31.000 And many things can be true at once.
00:24:33.000 This bill is a lot of pork.
00:24:35.000 So is every single government funding bill of my lifetime.
00:24:38.000 There has yet to be a major government bill that is not a big spending government bill because the American people lie to, we lie to ourselves all the time.
00:24:46.000 We say we want lower spending.
00:24:48.000 And then when asked, what would you cut, we start scratching our heads and looking around like, this is the problem.
00:24:55.000 If you wish to build a cohesive movement for serious cuts to the government, that was never the MAGA movement.
00:25:00.000 It wasn't.
00:25:01.000 I mean, I may not like that about MAGA.
00:25:03.000 In fact, I've been speaking publicly about not loving that about MAGA since 2016.
00:25:07.000 President Trump was the one candidate declaring in 2015, 2016, he was not going to touch the entitlements.
00:25:12.000 And I criticized him for it.
00:25:13.000 I've been criticizing him for it for a decade because I would love to touch the entitlements.
00:25:18.000 I think the entitlements are a disaster area.
00:25:20.000 I think they're bankrupting the country.
00:25:21.000 I think they're wildly ineffective as they currently stand.
00:25:23.000 I think there are fixes that could be made to them.
00:25:25.000 I think many of them could be delegated back to the state or local level.
00:25:28.000 I don't think it's the proper function of the federal government to be involved in three quarters of this stuff.
00:25:32.000 But my opinion is not the MAGA opinion.
00:25:35.000 And my opinion is also not the going opinion in the United States of America.
00:25:38.000 It just isn't.
00:25:39.000 If you're going to be politically pragmatic about this, you have to recognize that what this bill effectively is about, more than anything else, is making sure the tax cuts don't go away, making sure defense is paid for, making sure immigration is paid for, and all the rest.
00:25:53.000 And so when it comes to this Musk-Trump fight, again, I just want to know what the end game here is.
00:26:00.000 What is it that Elon is really looking for here?
00:26:02.000 If he wants to build, again, a popular movement outside the government in favor of slashing and burning large swaths of the federal government, sign me up today.
00:26:11.000 But if what we're talking about is the idea that, say, Chip Roy is unsuitably big government, or if what we're talking about here is that the choices here are letting the tax cuts expire and taxes radically increase and you still don't get lower spending or this bill, I choose the bill.
00:26:28.000 And I think most Americans will choose the bill.
00:26:30.000 Now, that doesn't mean that the bill pulls particularly well.
00:26:33.000 It doesn't, because the bill's been criticized every which way.
00:26:36.000 But I guarantee you, I guarantee you that if Republicans don't get this done and the taxes do increase, that's going to be even more unpopular.
00:26:44.000 Alrighty, coming up, Zarin Mamdani, Democrats are embracing him.
00:26:47.000 Why?
00:26:47.000 Well, maybe because actually his anti-Americanism fits what they're looking for first.
00:26:52.000 Speaking of a place that doesn't hate the country, Grand Canyon University, private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, they believe we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
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00:27:47.000 Again, that's gcu.edu to check out Grand Canyon University.
00:27:52.000 Also, as we celebrate Independence Day this July, we are reminded of the freedoms our founders fought to protect, especially that fundamental right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:28:00.000 But here's something that should surprise you.
00:28:02.000 There are still Americans today whose most basic right, the right to life itself, is at risk.
00:28:06.000 And that's where pre-born comes in.
00:28:08.000 They're doing incredible work through their network of clinics, offering free ultrasounds to women facing unplanned pregnancies.
00:28:14.000 And here's what's amazing.
00:28:15.000 These ultrasounds don't just provide medical care.
00:28:17.000 They're actually saving lives.
00:28:18.000 When a mom sees her baby on that screen, here's the heartbeat.
00:28:21.000 Everything changes.
00:28:22.000 But pre-born isn't just about the baby.
00:28:24.000 They truly care for these women too.
00:28:25.000 They provide love, support, and resources during what can be an incredibly difficult time.
00:28:29.000 Look, if we really believe what the Constitution says, that all people are created equal with unalienable rights, that has to include the smallest and most vulnerable among us.
00:28:37.000 These babies deserve the same rights our founders declared, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:28:42.000 You can be part of this mission for just 28 bucks.
00:28:45.000 That's the cost of one life-saving ultrasound.
00:28:47.000 Or you can sponsor five ultrasounds for $140 to donate.
00:28:51.000 Just dial pound250 and say baby.
00:28:53.000 That's pound250, baby, or visit preborn.com slash ben.
00:28:57.000 That's preborn.com slash ben.
00:28:59.000 Okay, meanwhile, the Democratic Party continues to remain in a state of disarray.
00:29:05.000 The Democratic Party has decided over the course of the last 15 to 20 years in this country that if they do not win elections, they don't like the country anymore.
00:29:14.000 It's kind of amazing.
00:29:16.000 There is a poll from Gallup conducted June 2nd to 19th.
00:29:21.000 This is before the successful American attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities among American adults.
00:29:26.000 It found only 58% said they were proud to be American.
00:29:29.000 That is a new record low.
00:29:30.000 The poll noted, Democrats are mostly responsible for the drop in U.S. pride this year.
00:29:35.000 36% only say they are extremely or very proud, down from 62% a year ago.
00:29:42.000 So first of all, 62% is super low, super low.
00:29:45.000 And you're talking about a time when Democrats were running the government.
00:29:47.000 And Joe Biden was president a year ago.
00:29:50.000 And still, not even two-thirds of Democrats said that they were extremely or very proud of the country.
00:29:54.000 And when President Trump is president, that number drops to 36%, which suggests that actually the bulk of Democrats are not particularly proud of the country.
00:30:01.000 Just generally, they're not proud of the, they might be proud of their politicians, but they're not proud of the country.
00:30:06.000 See, if you asked me when Barack Obama was president of the United States, I thought he was a terrible president, an awful, historically bad president.
00:30:13.000 If you asked me if I was extremely or very proud to be American, of course, I would say yes.
00:30:18.000 I can't imagine a moment in my lifetime when I wouldn't have said that, actually, including during the Biden administration, when Joe Biden was doing terrible, terrible things.
00:30:26.000 Because the president of the United States is not the definer of Americanism.
00:30:31.000 He is the elected official at this point in time.
00:30:34.000 But for Democrats, if they don't get their way, meaning a left-leaning government that crams down a vision of America that is perversely anti-American on the rest of the population, then they just don't like the country.
00:30:46.000 Pride among independents fell from last year, but only by about seven points.
00:30:50.000 Republicans say they are slightly prouder this year than in previous years to be American.
00:30:55.000 Typically, Republicans' level of national pride registers around 90%, including 92% this year.
00:31:01.000 It was at 85% in 2024.
00:31:03.000 Again, most Republicans feel the way that I do, presumably like many of my listeners do.
00:31:07.000 We love the country no matter who the president is.
00:31:09.000 Not true for Democrats.
00:31:11.000 The only years in which fewer than nine in 10 Republicans were proud were 2016 and 2020 through 2024.
00:31:18.000 Nationwide, pride was at its highest in the years immediately following 9-11.
00:31:23.000 It declined significantly after the Iraq War and then again after the BLM movement.
00:31:27.000 But again, that was driven mostly by Democrats, as Joel Pollack points out over at Breitbart.
00:31:32.000 Which leads us back to Zoran Mamdani, who certainly is not proud to be an American, who brags about having an outside American perspective, meaning a third worlders perspective.
00:31:40.000 He brags about this stuff while eating rice with his hands in order to appeal to people who have a peculiar, I don't know, antipathy for forks, for cutlery.
00:31:50.000 The scavenger movement led by people like Zoran Mamdani is quite real.
00:31:54.000 It's quite real.
00:31:55.000 And it is rooted in a baseline hatred for what the country actually is.
00:31:59.000 It's why they call for communism.
00:32:01.000 It's why they call for BDS.
00:32:03.000 They would BDS America if they could.
00:32:04.000 They would boycott, divest, and sanction America for being a settler colonial estate if they had the capacity to do so.
00:32:10.000 They would float three feet above the ground so as not to occupy American land originally taken from the Native Americans according to their peculiar likes.
00:32:18.000 That's who they are.
00:32:19.000 The Zorin Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party is not proud to be American.
00:32:23.000 The Zorin Mamdani wing believes that America is a net bad for the world, that America has been a negative force in the world and continues to be a negative force in the world and will continue to be a negative force in the world until it is brought low.
00:32:36.000 And yet, Democrats continue to praise Zorin Mamdani.
00:32:39.000 Connecticut's Governor Ned Lamont was out there praising.
00:32:44.000 I think he is a big deal.
00:32:45.000 I think he's transformative.
00:32:48.000 I love what he's doing on universal pre-K for everybody.
00:32:52.000 Same thing that we're doing right here.
00:32:54.000 Talking about free bus service for folks.
00:32:56.000 We did that all during COVID as well.
00:32:59.000 But you're absolutely right.
00:33:00.000 Affordable housing is the biggest key to affordability in our state and I think across the country.
00:33:06.000 And again, these are the supposed moderates in the Democratic Party who are now cheering him.
00:33:11.000 Then you have the people who are not moderate at all, but who were mainstays of the legacy media.
00:33:14.000 Taylor Lorenz is still out there haunting the landscape.
00:33:17.000 Again, the Miss Havisham of politics, a ghost wearing a bridal dress that will never be used, Taylor Lorenz.
00:33:23.000 So now Taylor Lorenz is appearing on Piers Morgan's show.
00:33:26.000 Piers Morgan's show has essentially become a repository of Jerry Springer-esque politics, in which he invites the ambulatory psychotic to debate the sometimes sane.
00:33:36.000 And then that's his show, essentially.
00:33:39.000 Anyway, Taylor Lorenz goes in the ambulatory psychotic category.
00:33:42.000 And it's good TV.
00:33:43.000 I'll admit that.
00:33:44.000 I mean, everybody cheers Jerry, Jerry, when somebody gets hit with a chair or when we find out who the dad is.
00:33:48.000 But in any case, Taylor Lorenz is now out there defending the death to the IDF chant that was originally put out there by a band that no one had heard of until five minutes ago called Bob Villain over at the Glastonbury Music Festival in Great Britain.
00:34:02.000 Here she was defending that.
00:34:03.000 It's totally fine, according to Hayla.
00:34:05.000 Remember, the important thing here is that Taylor Lorenz was a mainstream media establishment journalist.
00:34:12.000 She was the online journalist for the Washington Post for a lot of time here.
00:34:16.000 And now she spent the last couple of years defending Louis G. Mangion murdering people and people shouting death to the IDF.
00:34:25.000 Now, what they should do next is stop the genocide.
00:34:28.000 Again, if people want the public and these artists to have more positive sentiment towards the Israeli military forces, then anyone wants positive sentiment.
00:34:37.000 I don't know why you twisted it around.
00:34:38.000 We're saying we don't want anyone to call for the death of anyone.
00:34:42.000 I mean, if you are advocating against genocide and you don't want people to be killed, how can you turn around and say at the same breath that you think chanting for death should be contextualized somehow?
00:34:53.000 Well, yeah, because again, if an army is committing genocide and slaughtering babies and creating the highest rate of child amputees in the world, and if that is what they have done for months and years now, and then the public is rightfully outraged about that.
00:35:07.000 Calling for their death, that's the issue.
00:35:09.000 It's not calling for the death of a military entity that is currently committing genocide.
00:35:15.000 Taylor, you can't keep saying that.
00:35:18.000 You don't even believe that when you're saying it.
00:35:20.000 If they say death to the British Army, no one's taking that as meaning the institution.
00:35:25.000 They're taking it as meaning British soldiers.
00:35:28.000 When people say death to America, they mean death to American imperialism that is subjugated.
00:35:33.000 They mean death to Americans.
00:35:34.000 That's a very generous question.
00:35:36.000 As the Supreme Leader of Iran, what they mean.
00:35:38.000 I don't think you even believe this as you're saying it, Taylor, do you?
00:35:41.000 Again, they didn't say death to Israelis.
00:35:44.000 They said death to the IDF again.
00:35:48.000 Genocide.
00:35:49.000 It's a compulsory service.
00:35:50.000 We have to join the army in Israel.
00:35:53.000 And you can choose to not join the army, of course.
00:35:56.000 Of course, and go to prison.
00:35:57.000 Okay, so again, this is who Taylor Lawrence is.
00:35:59.000 But again, the reason she's important is not because she in and of herself is important.
00:36:03.000 It's because she was a charter member of the mainstream until very, very recently.
00:36:08.000 And she will be mainstream again.
00:36:09.000 Because the anti-American left is quite real.
00:36:12.000 Now, sane Democrats, there's still a few of them, are out there saying, this is kind of nuts.
00:36:16.000 Stephen A. Smith, who shockingly has become one of these sane Democrats, he's out there saying, listen, if we follow Zoran Mamdani here, we are in serious trouble as Democrats.
00:36:26.000 Ladies and gentlemen, let me be very, very clear.
00:36:29.000 If the Democratic Party becomes the likes of Zoran Mamdani, who, by the way, I like, not trying to throw any shade on him or anything like that, but if the Democratic Party becomes him, you have no chance.
00:36:43.000 You have no chance.
00:36:44.000 On a national basis in terms of the presidency, in Senate seats, seats in the House, you have no chance.
00:36:51.000 You have no chance.
00:36:52.000 I want to be very, very clear about that.
00:36:55.000 You might have a Democratic socialist sprinkled here and there, but that ain't what America is.
00:37:00.000 America is about capitalism.
00:37:02.000 America is about dollars and cents.
00:37:05.000 America is about an economy, a flourishing economy.
00:37:08.000 Okay?
00:37:09.000 And you know what it's not about?
00:37:12.000 Free stuff.
00:37:15.000 Okay, again, this is a commonsensical Democratic position.
00:37:18.000 Although I will say, it is amazing how every Democrat has to have nothing against Zara Mamdani.
00:37:22.000 Why not?
00:37:22.000 Why don't you have something against Zara Mamdani?
00:37:24.000 The guy embraces actual government-run grocery stores as though that hasn't been tried in Cuba or in Venezuela, where citizens, as John Casimitas writes over at the Wall Street Journal, where citizens stood in line for hours to get a loaf of bread or a bag of rice if there was any food left at all.
00:37:40.000 Why do you have to say, why is there always this proviso?
00:37:42.000 I have nothing against, I have something against Armamdani.
00:37:45.000 I think that he is a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with both our immigration system and our educational system and our political system.
00:37:52.000 All of those things.
00:37:53.000 Our immigration system never should have made provision for his parents to come to this country because they evidenced no love for the country or its principles when they were let in.
00:38:01.000 His father is a teacher of settler colonialism studies or some such bull over at Columbia University.
00:38:06.000 And his mother makes left-wing agitprop in Hollywood.
00:38:09.000 We don't need more of those in this country.
00:38:12.000 We never did.
00:38:13.000 He comes to the country at the age of seven or eight and is deeply ungrateful to be in this country and believes everything about it ought to change.
00:38:19.000 And brags that he has a third worlder's perspective, which is incredible, having grown up in the first world for the vast majority of his life, the scion of two wealthy parents.
00:38:30.000 He is moved even further to the left by our garbage educational system.
00:38:35.000 And now he is going to be the mayor of New York in all likelihood.
00:38:38.000 Yeah, I have something against somebody who's had every privilege America can offer anyone handed to him on a silver platter and spits in the face of our country.
00:38:47.000 Yeah, I have something against him.
00:38:48.000 And Democrats should too.
00:38:50.000 Now, unfortunately, his opponent in the New York mayoral race is Eric Adams.
00:38:53.000 Eric Adams is saying true things.
00:38:55.000 The problem is Eric Adams is a 19% approval rating.
00:38:58.000 So here, for example, is Eric Adams slamming Momdani for having supported Hamas, which is true.
00:39:03.000 Clearly, he has.
00:39:05.000 And I think that Jewish voters are going to do an analysis to determine exactly where he stands on these important issues.
00:39:14.000 The largest Jewish population outside of Israel is in New York.
00:39:18.000 Okay, so again, not wrong.
00:39:20.000 He also points out that Mandani is a member of the elite.
00:39:23.000 He likes to portray himself as like this down and with it man of the people, but he is not in any way, shape, or form.
00:39:30.000 Listen, Mandani is an academic elitist.
00:39:34.000 Great things that he state on paper, free, free, free.
00:39:39.000 Those are great philosophical things.
00:39:41.000 But when it comes down to governing the city and balancing the budget and ensuring that you can create the environment that we have of more jobs in the city's history, you're seeing how we have made it safe on our subway system and above ground, what we're doing in education.
00:39:59.000 That's what it's going to come down to.
00:40:01.000 And this academic elitist, a person who didn't get a job until he was 29, he was, you know, basically financially supported by his parents.
00:40:12.000 This is about running the most important financial institution in our country, if not the globe, and that's New York.
00:40:20.000 Okay, so again, he's not wrong about all that, by the way.
00:40:23.000 He sort of grew up middle class, pretends to be a poverty-stricken victim of the American system routine from Democrats.
00:40:29.000 Extremely common.
00:40:30.000 AOC, of course, her past is now being brought up in this context because people are discovering anew that she went to Yorktown High School, which is a very middle-class section of New York in Westchester County, where she was known as Sandy.
00:40:45.000 She was known as Sandy at the time, Sandy Cortez.
00:40:48.000 And she was affectionately remembered as a top-notch student in a school district that's 35 miles north of the Bronx when she says that she grew up in the Bronx.
00:40:58.000 So again, not rare, not rare.
00:41:04.000 State Assemblyman Matt Slater of Yorktown noted Sunday, most of his constituents remember the progressive politician as Sandy Cortez from Yorktown Heights.
00:41:11.000 He said she's embarrassing herself for doing everything possible to avoid saying she grew up in the suburbs instead of the Bronx.
00:41:16.000 She said she visited extended family.
00:41:18.000 She said she commuted.
00:41:19.000 Now she's in between.
00:41:20.000 It's clearly desperate attempts to protect a lie that she's from the Bronx at all.
00:41:25.000 Again, there is a sort of bizarre pride in growing up impoverished, as though this grants you added credibility in America to the point where people actually have to fake it if you're a Democrat.
00:41:35.000 And meanwhile, the assumption, of course, is that if you're a Republican, it's because you grew up rich.
00:41:39.000 I get this crap all the damn time.
00:41:41.000 It's amazing.
00:41:42.000 Now, I did not grow up poor in America.
00:41:44.000 I grew up absolutely dead center middle class in America.
00:41:47.000 I grew up in a very small house in Burbank, California, which is a cute suburb of Los Angeles.
00:41:55.000 Our house was 1,100 square feet.
00:41:58.000 Two bedrooms, one for my parents, one for all four of us, the siblings, me and my three sisters, until I was 11 years old.
00:42:04.000 We had one bathroom for six people.
00:42:06.000 We weren't poor because that's called living in America.
00:42:09.000 Living in America means for the vast majority, vast, vast majority of people, you're not poor.
00:42:14.000 That does not confer some sort of added virtue to me because that's how I grew up.
00:42:20.000 My parents did the best they could.
00:42:22.000 They got richer as time went on.
00:42:23.000 They did better as time went on and good for them because that's the American dream.
00:42:27.000 But this notion that has been placed out there that people like Zoran Momdani saw the worst that American society has to offer, but Republicans are all silver spoon, born and bred, high society types.
00:42:40.000 It's such a lie.
00:42:41.000 It's such absolute trash.
00:42:42.000 President Trump, for his part, is ripping Zoran Mamdani.
00:42:45.000 He points out correctly that New Yorkers would be nuts to vote for him, but they probably will.
00:42:48.000 I'm so right, Bob Domi, having such a hard time condemning the phrase globalized into insidicata.
00:42:57.000 I think he's terrible.
00:42:58.000 He's a communist.
00:42:59.000 The last thing we need is a communist.
00:43:02.000 I said there will never be socialism in the United States.
00:43:05.000 Don't even, I think he's bad news.
00:43:08.000 And I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with him watching him because he has to come right to this building to get his money.
00:43:15.000 And don't worry, he's not going to run away with anything.
00:43:17.000 I think he's, frankly, I've heard he's a total nutjob.
00:43:21.000 I think the people of New York are crazy.
00:43:23.000 If they go this route, I think they're crazy.
00:43:25.000 We will have a communist in the, for the first time, really, a pure, true communist.
00:43:32.000 He wants to operate the grocery stores, the department stores.
00:43:36.000 What about the people that are there?
00:43:39.000 I think it's crazy.
00:43:42.000 Okay, he is not wrong.
00:43:43.000 He is not wrong.
00:43:44.000 But why am I worried about Zoran Mamdani and company?
00:43:47.000 And the answer here is because every civilization is just one generation from getting rid of its own freedom in the name of some sort of catastrophic attempted solution to a problem.
00:43:58.000 And that problem can come in the form of a bad economy.
00:44:01.000 Bad economies tend to generate radicalism.
00:44:03.000 They tend to generate an upsurge in stupidity.
00:44:06.000 They tend to generate people making insane moves in an attempt to avoid the consequences of past bad policy.
00:44:13.000 And so this is why I remain somewhat concerned about the American economy.
00:44:17.000 President Trump is stepping up pressure on Jerome Powell over at the Federal Reserve to cut the interest rates.
00:44:23.000 He actually wrote him a handwritten note saying that he was costing the country a fortune and demanding that he cut interest rates by a lot because his idea here is that the economy is on solid footing, that inflation is not, in fact, high, that the tariff regime is probably going to get solved.
00:44:38.000 So what are you doing here?
00:44:40.000 Well, Jerome Powell, to his credit, actually came out and acknowledged some of that.
00:44:43.000 He's at the European Central Bank Forum in Portugal.
00:44:46.000 He said, you know what, the U.S. economy actually is in pretty good position at this point.
00:44:50.000 I guess I would start, if I may, by saying that the U.S. economy is in a pretty good position.
00:44:55.000 Inflation has come down close to 2%.
00:44:58.000 We're at 2.3 headline, 2.7 core.
00:45:00.000 The unemployment rate is at 4.2%.
00:45:02.000 So we're healthy overall.
00:45:07.000 If you look, ignore the tariffs for a second, inflation is behaving pretty much exactly as we have expected and hoped that it would.
00:45:16.000 So he is right about that.
00:45:18.000 He also says that the rates will likely be reduced sometime later this year.
00:45:24.000 So that should provide the economy with some level of sanguinity here.
00:45:29.000 A solid majority Of FOMC participants do expect that it will become appropriate later this year to begin to reduce rates again.
00:45:40.000 And that will depend, though, as Christine just mentioned, on the incoming data.
00:45:44.000 We'll be monitoring particularly what does show up in terms of inflation or what does not show up, and also carefully watching the labor market.
00:45:53.000 We watch very carefully for signs of unexpected weakness.
00:45:58.000 We see a gradual cooling, but we don't really see that yet.
00:46:01.000 So those are the things we'll be watching.
00:46:02.000 But as I mentioned, a majority of us do feel that will be appropriate in the remaining four meetings of the year to begin to reduce rates again.
00:46:09.000 And now, with all that said, Jerome Powell says that he is going to withstand any pressure from Trump because that's the job of the Federal Reserve.
00:46:15.000 You don't work for the presidents of the United States.
00:46:17.000 Now, by the way, that's not horrible for Trump.
00:46:18.000 I'm just going to point out that if it appeared that Powell was lowering the interest rates at Trump's behest, that would actually not be particularly good for the economy.
00:46:25.000 It would then appear that President Trump is able to manipulate the currency.
00:46:29.000 But Powell saying, actually, I'm going to stand up to President Trump when I think it's necessary, but also I am likely to lower the interest rates.
00:46:36.000 That's probably the best available solution here.
00:46:39.000 I'm very focused on just doing my job.
00:46:41.000 I mean, the things that matter are using our tools to achieve the goals that Congress has given us, maximum employment, price stability, financial stability.
00:46:51.000 And that's what we focus on, 100%.
00:46:56.000 And then everyone cheers.
00:46:58.000 Yes, what a hero.
00:46:59.000 Okay, again, that's literally his job.
00:47:02.000 That's literally his job, not particularly heroic, but not bad for President Trump.
00:47:05.000 So what am I worried about?
00:47:06.000 Well, there are a few things I'm worried about.
00:47:08.000 One, the dollar is off to a pretty poor start this year.
00:47:11.000 According to the New York Times, the U.S. currency has weakened more than 10% over the past six months when compared with the basket of currencies from the country's major trading partners.
00:47:19.000 The last time the dollar weakened so much at the start of the year was 1973, which was right after the United States had basically delinked the United States dollar with the price of gold.
00:47:28.000 This time, of course, it is the aggressive tariff push and the fact that a lot of countries around the world who are starting to think maybe we shouldn't bank so much on the American economy.
00:47:38.000 So, of course, the American dollar has been weakening.
00:47:40.000 I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity, what are the most important historic examples of the U.S. dollar weakening?
00:47:46.000 How does the weak dollar threaten American economic strength?
00:47:49.000 And as I mentioned a moment ago, obviously 1973, the end of the tying of the American dollar to the price of gold led to high inflation, oil shocks, underperformance of U.S. equities relative to international markets.
00:48:03.000 Other examples include the early 2000s.
00:48:05.000 The dollar weakened significantly throughout the mid-2000s because capital was flowing into emerging markets and commodities surged.
00:48:11.000 The 2007, 2008 global financial crisis, the dollar weakened sharply.
00:48:16.000 What are the impacts of a weak dollar?
00:48:18.000 Well, investor confidence goes down because global trust in American assets makes it harder to attract foreign investment.
00:48:25.000 It makes imports more expensive, which increased costs for consumers and businesses.
00:48:30.000 It increased borrowing costs for the government because our dollar doesn't go as far.
00:48:34.000 It is now weaker.
00:48:35.000 There's more market volatility.
00:48:37.000 And of course, the global reserve status because if a bunch of banks don't use the dollar in their transactions anymore, there's less demand for the dollar.
00:48:45.000 And that means that there are fewer people who are seeking to purchase dollars or to gain dollars or to buy bonds or to allow us to borrow.
00:48:55.000 Initially, the dollar actually soared when Trump was reelected because a lot of investors in the stock market wanted to move into the dollar.
00:49:01.000 Currency players thought he was pro-growth, pro-business.
00:49:04.000 And then after the tariff announcement, things started to reverse themselves.
00:49:09.000 It's possible that could reverse itself, but it needs to reverse itself because if the dollar stops being used, for example, as the world's reserve currency, that is a serious problem for our capacity to raise debt in the future.
00:49:19.000 Beyond that, we could be looking at some historic labor market dislocations.
00:49:23.000 And here I don't mean permanent unemployment rates of 20, 30%, but as AI gets more sophisticated, as robots get more sophisticated, you are likely to see job dislocation.
00:49:34.000 Eventually, the market will settle itself out.
00:49:36.000 People will learn to cooperate with the technology, become more productive because of the technology, find newer jobs that don't exist right now, having to do with these technologies.
00:49:45.000 But whenever there's a major market move, there are serious labor dislocations, and that tends to lead to an upsurge in sort of revolutionary sentiment.
00:49:52.000 This happened, obviously, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and then it happened again in the 1920s and 30s.
00:49:58.000 You're likely to see something similar happen now if AI hits the market en masse and starts to take away serious numbers of jobs.
00:50:08.000 And by the way, it's not just going to be AI taking away white-collar jobs.
00:50:10.000 Everybody right now is thinking about ChatGPT killing lawyers, for example, and getting rid of accountants.
00:50:15.000 But robots are getting more and more sophisticated.
00:50:18.000 Article in the Wall Street Journal today pointing out the automation of Amazon.com facilities is approaching a new milestone.
00:50:24.000 There will soon be as many robots as humans.
00:50:27.000 The e-commerce giant has deployed more than 1 million robots in its workplaces.
00:50:31.000 That is the most it has ever had and near the count of human workers at the facilities.
00:50:35.000 Company warehouses buzz with metallic arms plucking items from shelves and wheeled droids that motor around the floors ferrying the goods for packaging.
00:50:42.000 In other corners, automated systems help sort the items, which other robots assist in packaging for shipments.
00:50:48.000 Some 75% of Amazon's global deliveries are assisted in some way by robotics.
00:50:53.000 I mean, imagine, how many Amazon drivers are there out there on the roads right now?
00:50:57.000 When the automated cars are ready, all those people are going to be finding different jobs, presumably.
00:51:03.000 Now, for some Amazon workers, this is great because you're not schlepping around giant boxes that wreck your back.
00:51:08.000 Instead, you're sitting in front of a computer screen making the robot do that work for you.
00:51:13.000 However, robots are, in fact, supplanting some of those employees.
00:51:17.000 The average number of employees Amazon had per facility last year, 670, was the lowest recorded in the past 16 years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
00:51:26.000 So pretending that this is going to have no impact on job markets, no job dislocation is wrong.
00:51:31.000 Now, that may come alongside brand new productivity numbers that make things better and cheaper, that make it possible for product to reach people in record time.
00:51:41.000 And all that may be great, but dislocations do have consequences.
00:51:45.000 And somebody's going to need to explain those consequences as they happen and make provision for those consequences at the communal level.
00:51:52.000 Because again, change comes with adjustment periods.
00:51:55.000 And those adjustment periods, if they're sudden enough, can really shake loose some nuts from The tree and those fall on everybody's head.
00:52:01.000 Zara Mamdani just being an example of that in New York City.
00:52:04.000 Meanwhile, President Trump yesterday headed on over to Alligator Alcatraz, which is a facility less than 50 miles west of the Trump Resort in Miami in the Florida Everglades.
00:52:20.000 Workers have transformed the so-called Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport from an 11,000-foot runway into a temporary tent city that President Trump toured on Tuesday.
00:52:28.000 It's going to house up to 5,000 migrants as they await deportation, officials are telling CNN.
00:52:33.000 Florida Governor DeSantis said, we had a request from the federal government to do it.
00:52:37.000 And so Alligator Alcatraz, it is.
00:52:39.000 That is the nickname coined by his attorney general for the Everglades facility.
00:52:42.000 Of course, again, we use alligators in a lot of our, we have like the alligator alley in Florida, which is a highway.
00:52:49.000 So again, alligators, they play a large role in our Florida identity.
00:52:53.000 DeSantis said, clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there's a lot of alligators you're going to have to contend with.
00:52:58.000 No one's going anywhere once you do that.
00:52:59.000 It's as safe and secure as you can be.
00:53:03.000 But of course, immigration rights activists are very upset about this.
00:53:06.000 One immigration advocate named Thomas Kennedy says this is all cruel and inhumane.
00:53:12.000 When we talk about people as if they were vermin, the location, the manner in which it was done, and the language, right, the dehumanizing language employed by the authorities here, there's nothing about this facility, about this detention camp that is not cruel and inhumane.
00:53:30.000 The fact that we're going to have 3,000 people detained in tents in the Everglades in the middle of the hot Florida summer during hurricane season, right?
00:53:41.000 I mean, this is a bad idea all around that needs to be opposed and stopped.
00:53:47.000 And so I'm just going to point out it's not cruel and inhumane at every level.
00:53:51.000 There's water, sewage, power, there's air conditioning, portable units that are going to be used to cool the structures on the site.
00:53:57.000 Again, the facility is both temporary and necessary because of the state's law enforcement agencies and jails being overcrowded thanks to the immigration crackdown.
00:54:08.000 President Trump had some words about this.
00:54:10.000 He said, listen, if they escape, then, you know, they'll have to run away from the alligators.
00:54:15.000 With the alligator outbreak, it's the idea that if someone limits me, they just get eaten by an alligator or a snake or something.
00:54:23.000 I guess that's the concept.
00:54:25.000 This is not a nice business.
00:54:27.000 I guess that's the concept.
00:54:28.000 If you, you know, snakes are fast, but alligators, but we're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, okay?
00:54:37.000 If they escape prison, how to run away.
00:54:40.000 Don't run in a straight line.
00:54:41.000 Run like this.
00:54:42.000 And you know what?
00:54:43.000 Your chances go up about 1%.
00:54:47.000 Not a good thing.
00:54:49.000 So while President Trump is doing that, his opponents are busily attempting to make it easier for people to escape detection if they are illegal immigrants.
00:54:57.000 That includes CNN.
00:54:58.000 CNN actually put out an entire article on Monday touting an iPhone app called ICE Block, which again is designed to help avoid the immigration crackdown being pursued by ICE.
00:55:11.000 It currently has more than 20,000 users, many of whom are in LA, where controversial large-scale deportation efforts have taken place.
00:55:18.000 The newest app is designed to let users alert people nearby to sightings of ICE agents in their areas.
00:55:22.000 An early warning system for users when ICE is operated nearby, according to its creators.
00:55:27.000 Users can add a pin on the map showing where they spotted agents along with optional notes, like what officers were wearing or what kind of car they were driving.
00:55:33.000 So it's a law-breaking app, essentially.
00:55:35.000 And that's now being touted by CNN.
00:55:39.000 This is a point that Tom Homan, the Borders Art, is making that CNN, Legacy Media, they're actively attempting to give people means to avoid law enforcement.
00:55:48.000 And I just can't believe we're in a place where, you know, a TV network like CNN is talking about this app and educating people on the existence of this app.
00:55:57.000 And I saw law enforcement officers, like I said earlier, they're concentrating on public safety threats and national security threats.
00:56:04.000 This is a dangerous job.
00:56:05.000 And this app is going to give the bad guy heads up that we're coming, which means more bad guys are going to escape arrest, which makes this country less safe, which is a public safety issue.
00:56:16.000 And on top of that, it's only a matter of time for a bad guy, which is like someone who threw a mile toff cocktail at officers in L.A., who the assault against ICE officers up over 500%.
00:56:27.000 It's a matter of time for someone uses that but ambushes ICE officers.
00:56:31.000 This is something we cannot tolerate.
00:56:33.000 We can't stand for.
00:56:34.000 So we're calling them out.
00:56:35.000 And I'm begging the Department of Justice look into this and hold people accountable.
00:56:40.000 Again, he's not wrong about this.
00:56:42.000 The fact legacy media continue to try to foster illegal immigration is pretty astonishing.
00:56:46.000 Now, meanwhile, in Hollywood news, there is a Pixar movie that was just released called Elio.
00:56:53.000 It has been an absolute box off his dud, like a complete gigantic failure.
00:56:58.000 After two weekends in theaters, the $150 million film about a lonely boy who becomes a galactic ambassador for Earth has currently grossed $42 million domestic and only $72 million globally.
00:57:10.000 Gigantic, gigantic fail.
00:57:12.000 So what exactly happened with Elio?
00:57:14.000 Why did this thing absolutely self-destruct the box office?
00:57:19.000 Fascinating piece over The Hollywood Reporter demonstrating how Go Woke Go broke.
00:57:24.000 According to The Hollywood Reporter, those who worked at Pixar while its latest film release, Elio, was in production were delighted by footage they saw roughly two years ago.
00:57:32.000 Among the moments cited as favorites by those at the animation studio at the time included a sequence in which the titular boy collected trash on the beach and turned it into homemade apparel that included a pink tank top.
00:57:43.000 The movie's team would refer to Elio showing this off to a hermit crab as his trash-in show.
00:57:48.000 But if you bought a ticket to Elio and don't remember seeing this, it's not that you chose the wrong time to refill your soda.
00:57:53.000 According to multiple insiders who spoke to the Hollywood Reporter, Elio was initially portrayed as a queer-coded character, reflecting original director Adrian Molina's identity as an openly gay filmmaker.
00:58:04.000 Other sources say Molina didn't intend the film to be a coming out story because the character is 11.
00:58:09.000 Either way, this characterization gradually faded away throughout the production process as Elio became more masculine following feedback from leadership.
00:58:16.000 Gone were not only direct examples of his passion for environmentalism and fashion, but also a scene in Elio's bedroom with pictures suggesting a male crush.
00:58:24.000 Hints at the trash fashion remain in the released film.
00:58:28.000 The boy wears a cape decorated with discarded cutlery and soda can tabs, although without any explanation for the unusual attire.
00:58:35.000 Elio's turbulent ride began well before its calamitous nosedive at the box office during the June 20th to 22nd corridor.
00:58:42.000 Indeed, the summer of 2023 became a fateful one for the animated film about a lonely boy beamed into outer space by an intergalactic organization after being misidentified as the leader of Earth.
00:58:53.000 So apparently, the writing was first on the wall when the film conducted an early test screening in Arizona.
00:59:00.000 Viewers said that they enjoyed the movie, but then they were asked how many of them would see it in the theater.
00:59:05.000 Zero hands went up.
00:59:07.000 Zero.
00:59:08.000 Apparently, Molina then screened the film for Pixar leadership, and they didn't like it.
00:59:13.000 And Molina was hurt by the conversation, and then he left, and then it was reworked.
00:59:18.000 And then it arrived and bombed.
00:59:20.000 Okay, so first of all, we should ask ourselves, why are we shocked by any of this?
00:59:23.000 We shouldn't be.
00:59:25.000 Remember, Disney is the same company that had top executives claiming that they were mainlining gay propaganda into children's programming.
00:59:33.000 I mean, it's kind of an astonishing thing, right?
00:59:35.000 I mean, this is a movie that is made for young kids by a gay director, and it was a queer-coded 11-year-old in the film.
00:59:43.000 Why in the world would a parent take their kid to see that?
00:59:45.000 Why?
00:59:46.000 And Disney knew that was going to be a mistake.
00:59:48.000 And so they changed it, but it was too late because it turns out that the artistic efforts that went into making this a queer-coded film could not simply be removed without apparently affecting the final product in some way, shape, or form.
01:00:01.000 But it demonstrates the lengths to which people in the entertainment industry will go to hijack the brains of your children, to screw with your children's values and morality.
01:00:11.000 When you take your kids to a Pixar movie, you are not expecting that Pixar movie to be an ode to coming out of the closet for small children.
01:00:19.000 That is not what you are expecting.
01:00:22.000 And yet Pixar decided to hand this off to somebody who wanted to make it that thing.
01:00:28.000 And now, of course, all the gay pride groups are very upset.
01:00:31.000 Former Pixar assistant editor Sarah Lagatich, who provided feedback during LEO production as a member of the company's internal LGBTQ plus minus divided by side group, Pix Pride, said, quote, I was deeply saddened and aggrieved by the changes that were made.
01:00:44.000 Who cares?
01:00:46.000 Who cares if you are deeply saddened and aggrieved by the changes that were made?
01:00:50.000 What makes you special that you get to be aggrieved by a story about a kid that should have nothing to do with sexuality?
01:00:57.000 And you're mad because you didn't get to stack your LGBTQ plus minus values into the movie?
01:01:02.000 The changes to Elio were clear to one former Pixar artist who worked on the film.
01:01:08.000 Quote, it was pretty clear throughout the production of the first version that studio leaders were constantly sanding down these moments in the film that alluded to Elio's sexuality of being queer.
01:01:18.000 Now, apparently, sources told the Hollywood reporter Molino was informed shortly thereafter that the new director who wrote and directed Pixar's 2020 short Burrow and was a storyboard artist on Turning Red and Elio would be elevated to director.
01:01:31.000 Molino was given the opportunity to direct Elio alongside the new director, but after numerous notes and changes, he decided to leave the project.
01:01:40.000 Suddenly, you remove this big key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing, says a former Pixar artist.
01:01:46.000 The Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian's best version of the original.
01:01:51.000 Another Pixar staffer said the character was so cute and so much fun, had so much personality, and he feels much more generic to me.
01:02:00.000 Now, again, there are people who worked on the film like America Ferreira, who left, apparently because she didn't like that Melina ended up essentially being fired.
01:02:11.000 But it's demonstrative how insane, insane these Hollywood companies are, that they were willing to, just on faith, give people script control and get deep into the production process on a movie for children that was about a queer-coded 11-year-old.
01:02:29.000 It definitely shows you where their heads are at.
01:02:32.000 And as the box office is proving, if you decide to do this sort of thing, you are going to fail.
01:02:37.000 People do not want to see that.
01:02:38.000 They don't.
01:02:39.000 They don't.
01:02:40.000 They're raising their kid in a particular way.
01:02:41.000 When I show my kids entertainment, the only stuff I'll show them now is old stuff, old movies, specifically because of this kind of stuff.
01:02:47.000 I'll show them content from Bentkey because we literally made a kid's programming decision.
01:02:51.000 But that's a different, that is an entirely different outlet that we make sure is clean for your kids.
01:02:58.000 You can't trust these folks.
01:02:59.000 You can't.
01:03:01.000 And meanwhile, July 4th is coming up every day this week.
01:03:03.000 We've been doing something to do with July 4th.
01:03:06.000 Today, I want to talk about one of the myths of July 4th, which is that America is primarily a pure democracy, that the chief value of America is, in fact, democracy.
01:03:15.000 Now, democracy is, of course, a value of America, a very key value in America, but the whole point of the Constitution of the United States is to set aside certain things that people do not get to vote on because they're too fundamental to be alienated through majority rule.
01:03:28.000 That is the goal of the amendments.
01:03:30.000 That's the goal of the amendment process in the Constitution of the United States.
01:03:33.000 Free speech is not to be touched.
01:03:36.000 Freedom of religion is not to be touched.
01:03:37.000 And even if 55% of you, 60% of you wish to just encroach upon these fundamental principles, the answer is no.
01:03:46.000 Majoritarianism is not the rule of the Constitution.
01:03:50.000 It's what James Madison was writing about in Federalist 51 when he suggested checks and balances were necessary because the people cannot be trusted as a mob.
01:03:58.000 No individual can be trusted with complete power and neither can a simple majority.
01:04:03.000 You have to have checks and balances whereby everybody basically has to be on the same page in order to make a gigantic change.
01:04:12.000 John Adams, many of the founders were deeply suspicious of this sort of Vox day, Vox Populi routine.
01:04:20.000 John Adams wrote in 1814, remember, democracy never lasts long.
01:04:23.000 It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.
01:04:26.000 There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
01:04:29.000 And you see this historically, obviously.
01:04:31.000 There are a wide variety of countries in the late 19th and early 20th century that ended up going fascist as a result of majoritarian rule and no constitutional safeguards against that sort of stuff.
01:04:43.000 Insufficient checks and balances.
01:04:46.000 And the founders obviously were drawing on the work of Montesquieu, who spoke in the spirit of the laws about the necessity for interest counteracting interest, balancing power against power.
01:04:56.000 This is why the Electoral College exists.
01:04:58.000 This is why senators originally were not elected directly by the people.
01:05:01.000 Originally, they were selected by the state legislatures of the various states because the idea was the more institutions who had their own interests represented at the federal governmental level fighting one another for power, the better the result was going to be, or more importantly, the less the government was going to be able to encroach on your fundamental liberties.
01:05:19.000 Now, we've completely redone how government is done in the United States.
01:05:22.000 A huge percentage of government is now done through the singular power of the executive branch, and that's a major problem.
01:05:27.000 It's been a major problem before Trump.
01:05:28.000 It'll be a major problem after Trump.
01:05:30.000 It did not start with President Trump by any stretch of the imagination.
01:05:33.000 The entire vast administrative bureaucracy established in the early 20th century, vastly grown under FDR, and then vastly grown again under LBJ.
01:05:41.000 All of that is a fundamental violation of what the founders wanted when they built the Constitution of the United States.
01:05:47.000 But the key point is this.
01:05:49.000 Yes, democracy is wonderful.
01:05:51.000 But you know what's even more wonderful?
01:05:53.000 Liberty, property rights, freedoms that are fundamental to you.
01:05:58.000 Those things are really, really important because as Ayn Rand once suggested, the most important minority is the individual.
01:06:07.000 You are an individual.
01:06:08.000 You're a party of one.
01:06:09.000 You're a minority of one, and your interests matter.
01:06:12.000 And if they can just be stepped on by a simple majority, then really you don't have any rights worth the paper that they are printed on.
01:06:18.000 Alrighty, coming up, we'll bring you the latest on Middle Eastern negotiations.
01:06:21.000 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is coming to the United States next week, and the Trump administration is making some major moves.
01:06:28.000 The show continues right now.
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