Trump strikes a deal with China, and it sends the markets soaring. Plus, Edan Alexander, the last remaining American hostage in Gaza, released by the Trump administration at the behest of the president. Plus, all about that Qatari jet, that $400 million Qatari plane that they want to give to President Trump and his presidential library.
00:00:48.000With the biggest news, the most impactful news, which is, of course, that the U.S. and China have now apparently agreed to slash tariffs on one another.
00:00:55.000This is a deal reached by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who's been looking for an off-ramp with regard to these extraordinarily high tariffs that he said just last week were unsustainable with regard to China.
00:01:06.000Now, there will still be tariffs on China.
00:01:07.000China will still have tariffs on American product.
00:01:09.000But we are starting to move toward what looks like a significantly more rational trade policy with the rest of the world.
00:01:16.000So yes, we have still significantly raised tariffs on the rest of the world.
00:01:19.000That 10% flat rate tariff still exists on the rest of the world.
00:01:23.000Now, the 125 to 145% tariffs that were placed on the Chinese, those have been lowered.
00:01:29.000According to the Wall Street Journal, after weekend talks in Geneva, President Trump's reciprocal tariff on China will fall to 10% from 125%.
00:01:37.000So essentially the same as the tariffs that we currently have on, say, England or any other country.
00:01:41.000A separate 20% tariff the president imposed over what he described as China's role So presumably that means really it's not a 10% tariff, it's a 30% tariff, which again, looks more rational.
00:01:54.000As I said from the beginning when it came to tariffing China, going after China as an actual geopolitical opponent is necessary.
00:02:01.000This is the thing that President Trump did in term one.
00:02:15.000So attempting to box China in with regard to trade, attempting to create a divide in the world such that third-party countries move toward the United States and away from China, that is a good thing.
00:02:27.000Reshoring critical industries away from China toward third parties or toward the United States is a very good thing.
00:02:32.000But if you're going to do this, you need to do it in rational fashion.
00:02:35.000That means gradually escalating tariffs on China such that manufacturers actually have time to move out of China before the door is slammed shut on them.
00:02:42.000You actually need To reshore critical supply chains like rare earth minerals in order to ensure that we aren't just deprived of the things that we need in the United States in order to compete with China.
00:02:53.000You need to cut better trade deals with everybody around China so that they don't orient toward China and away from us.
00:02:58.000And you need to build up the U.S. Navy.
00:03:01.000We just sort of ran into the room, threw a 145% tariff on the table, and ran out of the room while simultaneously slapping other countries with a rubber chicken.
00:03:08.000It turns out that was not exactly a great trade policy.
00:03:10.000The good news is, as I have said all along with President Trump, President Trump lives in the world of reality.
00:03:16.000If the headlines are bad, he responds.
00:03:18.000If the stock market doesn't seem to be doing what he wants it to do, he responds.
00:03:22.000So long as good information penetrates whatever echo chamber is around him, he will, in fact, respond to incentives.
00:03:29.000It's one of the things that made him a successful president in term one.
00:03:32.000It's the thing that will make him a successful president in term two.
00:03:35.000He might start off with a bad idea from, say, Peter Navarro.
00:03:37.000But if it turns out that that bad idea has real world ramifications that damage his presidency, then he moves away from...
00:04:03.000Whenever President Trump says that there's going to be a break in the tariff regime, the idea they're going to snap back in 90 days to 125, 145%.
00:04:11.000Again, the Treasury Secretary said last week that was unsustainable, so it's not going to be sustained.
00:04:16.000We're not going back to those tariff rates.
00:04:18.000Now again, this is starting to look much more like a rational trade policy.
00:04:22.000The markets, of course, spiked because everybody in the markets was looking for some sort of off-ramp here.
00:04:29.000They're trying to figure out exactly what President Trump is doing on trade.
00:04:31.000Now, I think the markets are spiking a little bit much.
00:04:34.000What I mean there is that the markets are a momentum-driven instrument.
00:04:37.000The markets are now trading higher than they were after Liberation Day.
00:04:41.000So, Liberation Day, you recall, April 2nd, that is when President Trump announced this giant tariff regime on the rest of the globe combined, and the markets dropped dramatically.
00:04:52.000Well, now, the markets are trading up around where they were before.
00:04:55.000That seems to me a weird calibration based on momentum, and the reason I say that is because if you were to just look at the trade policy before Liberation Day and the trade policy after Liberation Day, The idea that those trade policies are identical and therefore the markets should be identical, obviously that's not true.
00:05:11.000There are a bunch of 10% tariffs that now exist that didn't exist before.
00:05:14.000There are still heavy levies against Chinese goods that didn't exist that now exist.
00:05:20.000So the markets are going to recalibrate.
00:05:22.000It'll probably end up lower, if I had to guess, than it is right now.
00:05:26.000But, clearly, the markets are moving toward more sanguinity.
00:05:29.000And they should be, because President Trump has been pushing deregulation at the same time he's pushing this.
00:05:33.000He's been pushing forward that big, beautiful tax bill.
00:05:36.000And we'll get to the tax bill a little bit later on in the show, where the negotiations stand.
00:06:11.000It means the economy continues to kind of truck along.
00:06:15.000Right now, according to traders, there's a 57% chance the Federal Reserve holds rates steady through its next two meetings, which is up from 40% as of Friday.
00:06:24.000However, as the markets adjust, I think that you will see that people are going to start betting on the idea that the Federal Reserve theoretically could, in fact.
00:07:06.000President Trump is much more pragmatic.
00:07:07.000He's kind of Clintonian in the way that he is pragmatic in his politics as opposed to ideologically driven the way, say, Barack Obama or Joe Biden was.
00:07:16.000And I think one of the reasons President Trump is looking for an off-ramp here is because he's starting to see the incoming wall of the hurricane.
00:07:23.000As I said before, there was a hurricane headed for American shores, economically speaking.
00:07:26.000That hurricane came in the form of a giant cascade of empty ships that were arriving at American ports.
00:07:32.000And that was going to create serious supply chain problems.
00:08:50.000You may have gotten a deal to start, but now the spend is sky high and increasing every single year.
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00:09:59.000It means there's still going to be tariff barriers, which is why I think that the stock market's jump today is maybe a little overstated.
00:10:05.000And as reality sets in, it's going to settle about back where it was, maybe a little bit lower than it was before Liberation Day, so-called Liberation Day.
00:10:13.000Here's Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, saying 10% tariffs remain here.
00:10:18.000So we do expect a 10% baseline tariff to be in place for the foreseeable future.
00:10:24.000But don't buy the silly arguments that the US consumer pays.
00:10:29.000Businesses, their job is to try to sell to the American consumer.
00:10:34.000And domestically produced products are not gonna have However, the reason that the markets are in fact optimistic is because as James McIntosh writes over at the Wall Street Journal, the grown-ups are in the room.
00:10:47.000The reason for the giant bounce in the stock market is because Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is now in control of trade policy and presumably in control of regulatory policy and tax policy as well.
00:10:58.000So, What exactly is Besant still looking for?
00:11:01.000A deeper reform of the Chinese economy, turning it from a mercantilist exporter into a consumer and leading to more balanced trade.
00:11:07.000Now, again, that is going to be hard, but the reality is we are now avoiding the hurricane that was approaching, and I think the economy is responding to that in very good ways.
00:11:15.000So good for President Trump, good for Treasury Secretary Scott Besant.
00:11:18.000Meanwhile, in other news, Idan Alexander, who is the last remaining alive American hostage who'd been taken by Hamas on October 7th, is set to be released today.
00:11:28.000It was going to happen sometime between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
00:11:33.000The Red Cross, which has been utterly derelict in its treatment of the hostages, meaning it had no contact with any of the hostages for well over a year, is going to be facilitating all of this.
00:11:44.000Obviously, it's a deeply moving moment that Adon Alexander is coming out.
00:11:48.000He's a 21-year-old Israeli-American dual citizen, and he was kidnapped on October 7th.
00:11:53.000I, of course, know the Alexander family.
00:12:26.000Again, whenever you have a hostage deal, there's no such thing as a good hostage deal because you are dealing with hostage takers.
00:12:33.000However, the question is what concessions Hamas received on the other end.
00:12:36.000There are a lot of rumors about what exactly Hamas received on the other end of releasing Edan Alexander.
00:12:42.000Some rumors include the idea that perhaps the United States will now be more amenable to Hamas being a part of the future of governing the Gaza Strip.
00:13:55.000Clearly what Hamas is attempting to do is basically settle all outstanding business with the United States so as to then create separation between the United States and Israel in Iran negotiations.
00:14:05.000That is what is happening with the Houthis as well.
00:14:07.000It is not a coincidence that as the Houthis are basically forswearing attacks on American shipping and the United States is saying that the United States is no longer going to worry about the Houthis essentially, that Hamas is now trying to do the same by releasing the sole living American hostage in the Gaza Strip.
00:14:23.000Trying to basically say that the United States now has no part in that conflict.
00:14:28.000I mean, if the United States has no part in that conflict, then Israel should just go and do what they need to do.
00:14:32.000That seems to me a proper solution with regard to the Gaza Strip.
00:14:35.000Now, the ugliest part, and there is an ugly part to this, is that there are widespread rumors and now news reports that Edan Alexander is going to be flown to Qatar to meet with the Emir of Qatar.
00:15:29.000In fact, if the Trump administration seriously wanted all hostages out of Gaza, they could do so tomorrow simply by telling the Emir of Qatar that the airbase in Qatar is going away and that it'll move to the UAE, which the United States could do.
00:15:42.000That should have been the approach of the Biden administration on October 8th.
00:15:45.000They should have said all the hostages come out or the airbase goes away.
00:15:47.000That's how closely tied together Qatar and Hamas are.
00:15:52.000Leydan Alexander is now 21. Hamas captured him when he was 19 on October 7th, 2023, of course.
00:15:58.000Now, all of this has some wider ramifications with regard to negotiations in the Middle East.
00:16:03.000Again, Steve Whitcoff continues to say ridiculous things publicly.
00:16:07.000So Steve Whitcoff, again, I do not think is a good negotiator.
00:16:11.000I do not think that Steve Whitcoff has demonstrated his bona fides along any lines.
00:16:14.000So far, all of the hostage deals have essentially been kind of mediocre in the sense that maximum pressure has not been exerted on the bad guys.
00:16:25.000Yesterday, Whitcoff said, we want to bring the hostages home, but Israel is not willing to end the war.
00:16:29.000Israel is prolonging it despite the fact that we don't see where else we can go and that an agreement must be reached.
00:16:33.000There's currently an opportunity window we hope Israel and all the mediators will take advantage of.
00:16:37.000We're putting pressure on all the mediators and doing everything we can to bring the hostages home.
00:16:40.000It is not Israel's unwillingness to end the war.
00:16:43.000That is leading to hostages being taken.
00:16:45.000That's like blaming the police for the kidnappers not releasing the hostages.
00:16:50.000No, actually, that's up to the kidnappers.
00:17:24.000Anything that allows them the capacity to continue to develop nuclear materials, which can then be tied to their ballistic missile program, is insane.
00:17:31.000The United States should not be party to that.
00:17:35.000That Donald Trump labeled the worst deal in history.
00:17:38.000The United States should not be conceding points to the Iranian government.
00:17:42.000Again, Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arahi met for three hours in the Omani capital of Muscat in their fourth round of negotiations since April 12. After the meeting, the U.S. cast the latest talks mediated by Omani officials as positive and said the diplomacy would continue in the near future.
00:17:59.000Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said talks were difficult but useful in better understanding the U.S. position.
00:18:03.000Now, again, Iran has another goal in these talks.
00:18:06.000If they can't get a bad deal from the Trump administration, and again, I have faith that President Trump is not going to cut JCPOA part two.
00:18:12.000It would be a rejection of his own legacy.
00:18:14.000If Iran has another goal, it is delay.
00:18:17.000And a delay for Iran is as good as a deal.
00:18:37.000Right now, there is a window of opportunity for anyone who wishes to end the Iranian nuclear program.
00:18:42.000That window of opportunity exists because Israel eviscerated a few months back Iran's entire air defense program.
00:18:48.000So the skies over Iran are totally clear right now.
00:18:51.000Not only that, but Iran still has not developed retaliatory capacity.
00:18:56.000That would deter action by, say, Israel.
00:18:59.000If Iran is capable of standing the Israelis down by negotiating with the United States for prolonged periods of time, that is their win.
00:19:06.000Simply the negotiations being dragged out over a lengthy period of time is something the Iranians are going for pretty clearly.
00:19:13.000The two sides are still very far apart on the question of whether Iran gets to retain its nuclear enrichment program.
00:19:20.000Witkoff has sent mixed messages himself because, again, he has no expertise in any of these issues.
00:19:25.000He set out what he called clear U.S. red lines, that Iran can't have an enrichment program under a deal, nor should it have any centrifuges, which enrich uranium.
00:19:32.000And then Iran came back and said they would never accept any such terms.
00:19:37.000President Masoud Pajekian, who, again, is a stand-in for the mullahs, said Iran has never sought and will never seek nuclear weapons, but it will not back down from its peaceful nuclear rights.
00:19:45.000After Sunday's talk, Araki said Iran was open to adjusting the amount of enrichment it does and the purity of the material being produced for a limited period as a confidence-building measure.
00:19:53.000But he said there is no room for discussion about Iran's continued domestic enrichment.
00:19:58.000So what exactly is Iran giving away that makes Steve Witkoff and company optimistic in any way?
00:20:05.000Again, this is just so Iran can delay.
00:20:08.000And if President Trump doesn't want to bomb Iran, which again, he has set out as sort of binary, there's a third option here, by the way, which is that the United States maintains maximum pressure on Iran, and then Israel goes and attacks the Iranian nuclear facilities.
00:20:19.000I think that is actually the most likely outcome here if I'm just gaming out the possibilities for the next several months.
00:20:26.000With all of that said, all of this ties into broader Middle Eastern negotiations that are happening over everything from the Abraham Accords to the release of hostages to the future of the Gaza Strip to what's happening in Iran.
00:20:37.000Now, all of this crosses paths, obviously, with President Trump's visit to the Middle East this week.
00:20:41.000The biggest story in terms of the media coming out this week is a story reported by ABC News, among others.
00:20:48.000That the Trump administration is now preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar.
00:20:56.000It is a $400 million gift available for use by President Trump as new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time, according to the deal, the plane doesn't stay with the United States government.
00:21:08.000It then moves to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation.
00:21:12.000According to ABC News, the gift had been expected to be announced when President Trump was on his visit.
00:21:17.000To Qatar, a senior White House official said it's not going to happen in Qatar anymore, presumably thanks to social media blowback.
00:21:25.000President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social about the blowback saying, so the fact that the Defense Department is getting a gift free of charge with 747 aircraft to replace the 40-year-old Air Force One temporarily in a very public and transparent transaction so bothers the crooked Democrats.
00:21:39.000They insist we pay top dollar for the plane.
00:21:46.000Again, the arrangement itself is, shall we say, I believe the technical term, the legal term, is skeezy.
00:21:54.000Sources told ABC News that lawyers for the White House Counsel's Office and the Department of Justice drafted an analysis for the Defense Department, concluding it's legal for the DOD to accept the aircraft as a gift, and then later turn it over to the Trump Library, and that somehow does not violate laws against bribery or the Constitution's prohibition on emoluments.
00:22:13.000The Constitution literally says the U.S. government cannot accept official gifts from any king, prince, or foreign state.
00:22:18.000Apparently, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the top White House lawyer, David Warrington, concluded it would be legally permissible for the donation of the aircraft to be conditioned on transferring its ownership to Trump's presidential library before the end of his term.
00:22:32.000And apparently, Pam Bondi, who it should be mentioned at this point, was once an actual FARA registered agent acting on behalf of the government of Qatar, provided a legal memorandum addressed, to the White House Counsel's Office last week after Warrington asked her for advice on the legality of the Pentagon accepting such a donation.
00:22:49.000We'll get to more on that in a second.
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00:25:09.000Qatar is not allegedly giving President Trump a $400 million jet out of the goodness of their sweet little hearts, no matter what Special Envoy Steve Woodcoff says.
00:25:18.000They try to stuff money in pockets in totally bipartisan fashion.
00:25:38.000As long as you can help whitewash their image or smooth over the fact that they are, in fact, the world's largest proponents of terrorism on an international scale in terms of PR and in terms of putting money in pockets.
00:25:49.000Qatar likes to present a modern Western-friendly face while shoveling money to Islamic terrorists under the table.
00:25:55.000This is a regime that has, for literally decades, funneled billions of dollars into the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban.
00:26:02.000We're talking about systematic, ongoing financial support that has strengthened Hamas' grip on Gaza, provided them with the resources, and yes, enabled terror attacks that killed innocent civilians.
00:26:12.000Doha, which is the capital, their five-star hotels, are basically a retirement home for Hamas leaders.
00:26:18.000By the Treasury Department, by international watchdogs, by regional allies, of allowing financiers of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood to operate within its borders.
00:26:27.000This is a country that has repeatedly failed to crack down on terrorist financing, even after being pressured by the United States and its neighbors.
00:26:33.000In 2017, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, I don't know instances in which Qatar aggressively goes after networks of Hamas, Taliban, or al-Qaeda.
00:26:41.000Qatar has, of course, transferred almost $2 billion to Hamas over the years, which, again, is one of the reasons it's so sick to send Idhan Alexander to meet with the Emir of Qatar, if that's a thing that ends up happening.
00:26:52.000Here is the former Saudi foreign minister, again, not Westerner, Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, explaining the problems with Qatar.
00:27:09.000They have become a base for the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.
00:27:13.000and the Muslim Brotherhood, you have to keep in mind, is what begot us Takfir al-Hijrah, which begot us al-Qa'idah, which begot us al-Nusrah.
00:27:22.000The Qataris allow their senior religious clerics to go on television and justify suicide bombing.
00:29:24.000They're not doing that because they're so sweet and nice.
00:29:26.000Why exactly would they sign these giant checks unless they got something in return?
00:29:30.000Here is the Prime Minister of Qatar this week.
00:29:32.000Explaining to the Georgetown Doha campus, yes, Georgetown has a campus in Qatar, that the service of Qatar had to be their guiding light as part of a greater national project on behalf of Qatar.
00:29:43.000Today, he said in Arabic, I urge you to fear God in your conscience and let the service of the nation and its people be your guiding light and maintain your faith in yourselves.
00:29:56.000In a time where transformations are accelerating and crises are deepening, From the Gaza tragedy to regional tensions, Qatar reaffirms its commitment to mediation and diplomacy as a means to protect civilians.
00:30:12.000And credibility is built through continuous action.
00:31:10.000The Park Lane Hotel was in limbo for six years following the attempted seizure of the hotel by the DOJ thanks to corruption charges against one of the original owners, a guy named Lo Takejo.
00:31:19.000So, when Steve Whitcoff says that he really, really likes the Qataris, well, I mean, he does have some warm relations with the Qataris.
00:31:28.000I think in the case of the Qataris, they're criticized for not being well-motivated.
00:32:36.000If you want to watch me explain why crypto is fascinating and useful, check out my YouTube video on the subject.
00:32:42.000And I know a ton of people in the crypto industry who've been ecstatic about President Trump's deregulatory approach to the subject, which is awesome.
00:32:48.000But the bill was shot down last week because, at least in part, Democrats said they wouldn't vote for the thing because of President Trump's use of crypto himself.
00:32:56.000You all remember President Trump launching dollar sign Trump crypto three days before taking office as president.
00:33:01.000Trump himself announced the Trump crypto on X and Truth Social.
00:33:05.000He described it as a meme coin, meaning it had no inherent value.
00:33:08.000It was just there for the kind of bleeps and giggles.
00:33:10.000The price spiked to a trading value of nearly $13 billion, making it the 19th most valuable cryptocurrency on planet Earth.
00:33:17.000And then it proceeded to plummet, like really, really dive.
00:33:20.000The project allegedly netted people associated with it, meaning the Trump organizations associated with the Trump crypto, some $350 million.
00:33:29.00080% of the outstanding supply of that meme coin is still held by insiders, presumably members of the Trump organization.
00:33:37.000Overall, according to data shared with CNBC, there were 2 million wallets that bought that Trump meme coin.
00:33:46.00058 wallets made more than 10 million bucks.
00:33:48.000And then in April, That Trump meme coin announced that the top 220 holders of the meme coin would be invited to an intimate private dinner with President Trump at his golf club.
00:33:57.000The top 25 were invited to a VIP White House tour.
00:34:00.000According to Bloomberg News, 19 of the top 25 holders of that Trump meme coin that have registered on the website's leaderboard have bought the coins using foreign exchanges that claim to exclude U.S. customers, which means that foreigners are buying a lot of the meme coin and then getting meetings with President Trump on VIP White House tours and all the rest.
00:34:16.000This raises the question of influence peddling.
00:34:19.000If you basically buy a bunch of Trump meme coin and then funnel money to organizations associated with President Trump so that you can have dinner with Trump, that doesn't look great.
00:34:27.000Democratic senators, of course, immediately announced that they wanted an ethics probe.
00:34:31.000They sent a letter saying, quote, It might be overstated, but let's be clear, some people do seem to be investing in the Trump meme coin for the access.
00:34:54.000I mean, there was literally a CEO of a company called Freight Technologies that just bought $20 million worth of Trump meme coin, which I gotta say is not like the most solid investment.
00:35:04.000We believe the addition of the official Trump tokens are an excellent way to diversify our crypto treasury and also an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced, and free trade between Mexico and the United States.
00:36:16.000I think if we switch the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we'd all be freaking out on the right.
00:36:21.000Let's say if Qatar was giving Joe a $400 million jet for his use at his presidential library after his presidency, or if Hunter launched a crypto firm with the son of Antony Blinken.
00:36:29.000And then launched a series of crypto products in which mysterious strangers, including foreigners, were investing all while that crypto firm was being regulated by Joe's administration.
00:36:37.000We'd all have been pretty upset on the right.
00:36:39.000We might have said that it was worthy of some coverage.
00:36:41.000Now, as I say again, it could be all of these reports are all of them.
00:36:45.000Maybe it's all just a misreading of perfectly innocent business.
00:37:36.000Why in the world would President Trump be well served by this sort of vulnerability?
00:37:40.000Again, more importantly, why would those of us who voted for him, who gave to his campaign, who stumped for him, campaigned for him, be well served by this?
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00:39:05.000President Trump had announced last week that he had a huge announcement coming.
00:39:08.000And again, there was a lot that happened over the weekend.
00:39:10.000There was the China trade deal, and there was the Adan Alexander release, and then there was this whole story about the Qatari jet and all that.
00:39:23.000He put out a statement on Truth Social, says, For many years, the world has wondered why prescription drugs and pharmaceuticals in the United States of America were so much higher in price than they were in any other nation, sometimes being five to ten times more expensive than the same drug manufactured in the exact same laboratory or plant by the same company.
00:39:38.000It was always difficult to explain and very embarrassing because, in fact, there was no correct or right answer.
00:39:42.000The pharmaceutical drug companies would say for years it was research and development costs and that all of these costs were and would be for no reason whatsoever borne by the suckers of America alone.
00:39:50.000Campaign contributions can do wonders, but not with me and not with the Republican Party.
00:39:53.000We are going to do the right thing, something the Democrats have fought for many years.
00:39:56.000Therefore, I am pleased to announce that tomorrow morning in the White House at 9 a.m., I will be signing one of the most consequential executive orders in our country's history.
00:40:03.000Prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 30 to 80 percent.
00:40:07.000We will rise throughout the world in order to equalize and for the first time in many years bring fairness to America.
00:40:12.000I will be instituting a most favored nation's policy whereby the United States will pay the same price as the nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the world.
00:40:18.000Our country will finally be treated fairly.
00:40:20.000Our citizens' health care costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before.
00:40:23.000Additionally, on top of everything else, the United States will save trillions of dollars.
00:40:26.000Thank you for your attention to this matter.
00:40:35.000In the Big Beautiful Tax Bill that do not require cuts to Medicaid.
00:40:39.000And one of the big issues with the quote-unquote Big Beautiful Tax Bill is the question of where cuts are coming from that Republican Congress people want to make the tax cuts quote-unquote deficit neutral.
00:40:51.000And so some of the questions have been, are they coming from Medicaid?
00:40:53.000And so what he's saying is we're going to lower the price of Medicaid without cuts because we are going to allow Medicaid to basically tie the price that it pays to the pharmaceutical companies for pharmaceuticals.
00:41:02.000To the lowest possible price, like whatever price Sierra Leone is paying, or whatever.
00:41:07.000Make no mistake, this is a backdoor price control.
00:41:10.000It is not in any way a free market policy.
00:41:13.000What we actually should be doing, and this is something that President Trump should be doing with regards to his tariff policy, is forcing other countries to pay a higher price for the medications that are produced in the United States.
00:41:24.000The way that things currently work is that foreign countries negotiate on behalf of their nationalized healthcare systems with the pharma companies.
00:41:31.000And they basically say, we're not going to buy any of these drugs unless we're paying X number of dollars.
00:41:35.000And that X number of dollars is like 30-20% of what the actual price in a free market system would be.
00:41:42.000And so, American consumers essentially pay the other end of that.
00:41:46.000American consumers are overpaying because all these other countries are underpaying.
00:41:49.000And President Trump is totally right that that is absolutely unfair.
00:41:52.000But the thing to do is to get other countries to pay more.
00:41:55.000Other countries should be absorbing more of the cost.
00:41:57.000We could be using the tariff war that he has...
00:41:59.000Waged on pretty much every country in order to get them to more fairly allocate resources for drug purchase from the United States.
00:42:26.000There are billions, literally tens to hundreds of billions of dollars that get spent every year by pharmaceutical companies and other companies in order to develop things that never come to fruition.
00:42:37.000It's a very high-risk investment product, biotech and pharma.
00:42:44.000And that means it needs to be high reward on the other end because otherwise, why would you sink that much money into the development of these new pharmaceuticals, for example?
00:42:51.000If you destroy the profit margin, you just won't get R&D.
00:42:55.000That over 50% of all pharma patents are filed in the United States.
00:42:59.000We're the home of that stuff because they can generate profit in the United States in a way they cannot in the UK or in France, Germany or Canada.
00:43:07.000It also means that American consumers bear the brunt of these brand new drugs.
00:43:11.000Now, over time, as these patents expire, as generics come on the market, the markets move toward the generics.
00:43:20.000And so, for example, the idea that Americans wildly overpay for drugs, just generally speaking, Americans wildly overpay for brand new drugs that are cutting edge.
00:43:29.000But the truth is, the vast majority of medication that we actually consume is not cutting edge brand new R&D drugs.
00:43:34.000Here, for example, is a chart about what Americans pay for drugs.
00:43:39.000And what this chart shows is that 91% of drug purchases in the United States are not for brand name drugs.
00:43:47.000We pay 422% higher prices for brand name drugs.
00:43:52.000than do other members of the OECD, the other developed countries.
00:43:56.000However, when it comes to generic drugs, we pay 67% of what gets paid in the OECD.
00:44:04.000So when you actually weight the average, what you find is that the United States overall actually pays less for drugs than comparable countries do.
00:44:11.000We pay more for the cutting-edge drugs because those are being produced in the United States, and other countries are basically free-riding off the back of that.
00:44:18.000Generic drugs, because we have a free market system, generic drugs are really cheap here.
00:44:22.000Compared to generic drugs in, say, Canada or the UK, France or Germany.
00:44:26.000And so, because the vast majority of drugs we consume are generic drugs and not brand-name drugs, that means overall we actually pay less for drugs.
00:44:32.000So why is it that the United States pharma spending is out of control?
00:44:35.000The answer is we consume an awful lot of medicine in this country.
00:44:38.000We consume an enormous amount of medicine.
00:45:26.000Well, number one, it means many cutting-edge pharmaceuticals simply will just not be available through Medicaid because Medicaid can't pay for it.
00:45:33.000You see this, by the way, all the time in Medicaid.
00:45:34.000You see that many doctors, for example, don't take Medicaid because the reimbursement rates are too low.
00:45:40.000Specialists, very many of them will take cash only or private only because the Medicaid reimbursement rates are too low.
00:45:46.000So you can see that happening with pharma.
00:45:47.000That you need a cutting-edge drug, and Medicaid just won't provide it because the price is too low, and Big Pharma's like, no, you know what?
00:45:53.000We can't afford to give it to you at that price.
00:45:56.000Even if Medicaid does, in fact, provide for that drug, and they get that drug from Big Pharma, all that means is that the now higher prices to compensate for the lower prices for Medicaid get squeezed into the private sector.
00:46:09.000So it's not that the pharmaceutical companies are going to, quote-unquote, make less profit, that they're greedy pharmaceutical companies, and they're just...
00:46:15.000Stashing away cash in the back room and all this.
00:46:19.000That's not how big pharma works at all.
00:46:21.000What will actually happen is that people who have private insurance will pay more for their insurance premiums.
00:46:26.000And insurance companies will pay significantly more on the other end.
00:46:31.000So this attempt to quote-unquote lower prices in the aggregate, it's not going to lower prices.
00:46:36.000In the aggregate, it may lower prices on the available drugs for Medicaid, but it will increase prices for everybody in the private sector.
00:46:42.000And with regards to sort of the overall reduction of prices, there's no way to do that without also destroying the R&D.
00:46:49.000This is a point that the Wall Street Journal actually made last week.
00:46:53.000They pointed out that drugs accounted for less than 4% of Medicaid spending, $1.2 billion in 2023.
00:46:59.000The feds spent 10 times more on hospital payments.
00:47:01.000Even if Republicans required drug makers to give away medicines to Medicaid, savings would not actually amount to what Republicans need in terms of this tax bill.
00:47:19.000Patients would then suffer from less access to novel treatments as they do in countries with socialized health systems that impose price controls.
00:47:24.000Some drug makers already lose money on medicines they sell to Medicaid.
00:47:27.000They compensate by raising those prices in the commercial market.
00:47:31.000And that is likely to be what the future looks like.
00:47:35.000And the notion that free market economies, that they don't adjust and move with regard to regulation, it's not true.
00:47:43.000Pharmaceutical companies cannot just quote-unquote charge whatever they want because eventually the patents expire, number one.
00:47:49.000Number two, there's competition in the marketplace.
00:47:52.000And so other big pharma companies are trying to encroach on the territory of you discover a new drug and within five minutes somebody else is trying to discover a new pathway for the new drugs.
00:48:03.000Ozempic was really, really expensive and very, very quickly you're seeing people fill the marketplace for Ozempic with knockoffs, other semi-glutides.
00:48:11.000People who are attempting now to create oral versions of Ozempic so you don't actually have to take a shot.
00:48:17.000Like the market does an amazing job of taking what were luxury products and making them available to the common man.
00:48:25.000Things that you now consider to be absolutely baseline medical care, say chemotherapy if you have cancer, that stuff was considered a luxury item way back when.
00:48:35.000Because when you first develop this stuff, it's expensive.
00:49:20.000Didn't happen through government subsidization of cell phones.
00:49:22.000It happened through free market economics.
00:49:25.000If you want better drugs, if you want better treatment, if you want all that, all the people who rip on Big Pharma are perfectly happy to use products developed by Big Pharma the minute they get sick.
00:49:34.000R&D is an absolutely necessary component to lengthening the lifespans and bettering the health of people who really are sick.
00:49:42.000And any sort of executive action, first of all, I don't know where in the Constitution it just says that the president gets to randomly do the kinds of things that presidents of both parties are doing right now.
00:49:57.000You know, you would elect people to Congress and the Senate, and they would make specific policies that were directed at specific outcomes.
00:50:03.000And then you could vote on them and you could throw them out of office if you didn't like what they were doing.
00:50:08.000Now, apparently, the President of the United States has the power to unilaterally increase prices in the United States with gigantic tariff regimes at the drop of a hat, price control pharmaceuticals, declare national emergencies on everything available.
00:50:21.000And again, this didn't start with President Trump.
00:50:23.000I know there are people out there, oh, Trump is breaking the Constitution.
00:50:26.000As almost always, President Trump is rarely the murderer, he is often the coroner.
00:50:30.000The system was broken and Trump simply points to the system and says it's broken and then does the same thing Democrats were doing and everybody goes nuts.
00:50:38.000We should have been going nuts about this, you know, a hundred years ago with the rise of the administrative state under Woodrow Wilson.
00:50:43.000But now we're feeling the effects of all of that.
00:50:46.000When the President of the United States can with a signature put the R&D part of Big Pharma on the bankruptcy line, that is a problem.
00:50:55.000Forget whether you like the policy or not.
00:50:58.000The president should not have the unilateral power to do this.
00:51:00.000By the way, the same thing holds true with regard to things like the Federal Reserve.
00:51:03.000The fact that we all sit here waiting day after day for Jerome Powell, one guy, to tell us what the interest rates are going to be is psychotic.
00:51:12.000None of that is how a market ought to work.
00:51:14.000It is centralized government economics.
00:51:17.000And it does not bear, by the way, the same sort of fruit that people want it to bear.
00:51:21.000People think that that means everything is hunky-dory because the president can solve things with one signature.
00:51:28.000Checks and balances are actually quite a good thing.
00:51:30.000As a general rule, they are a very good thing.
00:51:33.000Alright, meanwhile, in other news, there are developments with regard to Ukraine and Russia.
00:51:38.000So, Vladimir Zelensky now says that he is willing to meet with Vladimir Putin.
00:51:43.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Ukrainian President Zelensky challenged Putin to meet him in Istanbul this week in Turkey after President Trump swung behind the Russian president's offer of talks before a ceasefire.
00:51:53.000So, Putin has not declared a ceasefire.
00:51:55.000Zelensky said, I'm willing to accept a 30-day ceasefire.
00:51:57.000He's said this for weeks and weeks and weeks at this point.
00:52:00.000Putin has never accepted like a five-minute ceasefire.
00:52:30.000I mean, the real question is going to be what comes out of the talks.
00:52:33.000So Zelensky said that he would be waiting for Putin in Turkey on Thursday, raising the stakes amid a flurry of diplomatic exchanges and brinkmanship over the weekend, where both sides sought to balance not making any significant concessions with placating President Trump, who's demanding an end to the three-year war.
00:52:46.000Now, Putin originally didn't respond to Zelensky's offer.
00:52:49.000Again, it goes beyond the scope of Putin's suggestion of reviving peace talks.
00:52:55.000Trump's support of the Russian president's proposal of switching his position initially upended European efforts to bring pressure to bear on Russia to halt the war.
00:53:05.000Trump then over the weekend, he said, Ukraine should agree to this immediately.
00:53:08.000This is after Putin said, let's just get together and talk face to face without any ceasefire.
00:53:12.000And Trump said on social media that Ukraine should agree to this immediately.
00:53:16.000At least they'll be able to determine whether or not a deal is possible.
00:53:19.000If it's not, European leaders in the U.S. will know where everything stands and can proceed accordingly.
00:54:03.000And it takes 18 months to two years for European weaponry to actually ship into Ukraine and adjust so that Ukraine can defend itself without American input.
00:54:12.000Here's one of the big problems people don't want to talk about.
00:55:48.000Meanwhile, Putin also would like for Ukraine to unilaterally disarm no military support, no membership in NATO, all of which are not going to be a starter on the conversation.
00:55:56.000Russia has been ramping up its offensives, according to Deep State, which is an independent Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group.
00:56:02.000They said Russia conducted more attacks during the recent three day ceasefire called by Putin in early May and in the same period the prior month.
00:56:10.000So, we'll see what shakes out in Turkey.
00:56:15.000Putin is speaking with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is the dictatorial Islamist leader of Turkey, who's very much aligned with Russia, about his proposed talks in Istanbul starting May 15th.
00:56:26.000President Erdogan said a comprehensive ceasefire would create the necessary environment for peace talks, but Russia just denied it.
00:56:32.000So once again, Russia appears to be stalling for time in all of this.
00:56:36.000Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said, you know, it's pretty clear here Russia's not making a lot of concessions.
00:56:41.000You know, there was a 30-day ceasefire called for.
00:56:44.000Mr. Putin decided to bomb Ukraine on Palm Sunday.
00:56:49.000He's not making any concessions at all, while Zelensky seems to be making all the concessions.
00:56:56.000So the bottom line is Putin has to agree to a 30-day ceasefire for any peace talks to go forward.
00:57:03.000And the land that he is asking for is, you know, even J.D. Vance talked about this and the president, you know, land that...
00:57:13.000That Russia has not even occupied in Ukraine.
00:57:31.000Meanwhile, it is amazing to watch as the media and the Democrats ramp up their attacks on John Fetterman.
00:57:36.000Fetterman, of course, is the very heterodox Democratic senator from Pennsylvania.
00:57:41.000He's been heterodox with regard to President Trump.
00:57:43.000He kind of grumpily rejects media attacks that he thinks are unfair against President Trump.
00:57:47.000He's, of course, been incredibly pro-Israel, shocking everybody who happens to be pro-Israel.
00:57:52.000Because, of course, Fetterman was aligned with the sort of far left wing of the Democratic Party when he was running against Mehmet Oz, who is now part of the Trump administration.
00:58:00.000Well, now Democrats are trying to claim he has mental problems.
00:58:03.000So the way this works is if you're Joe Biden and you clearly have mental problems and mental disabilities, but you're willing to provide a face.
00:58:38.000According to Axios, Senator Fetterman has unnerved aides with his performance in office, with both current and former staff telling Axios he seems uninterested in the day-to-day duties of a senator.
00:58:48.000First of all, welcome to the Senate, where half the Senate is uninterested in the day-to-day duties of a senator.
00:59:01.000Capitol Hill's private concerns over Fetterman exploded into public view over the past week.
00:59:05.000As longtime critics and former allies piled on with concerns about the senator.
00:59:09.000Adam Jentleson, his former chief of staff, said, quote, part of the tragedy here is this is a man who could be leading Democrats out of the wilderness.
00:59:15.000But I think he's struggling in a way that shouldn't be hidden from the public.
00:59:21.000Well, apparently, there was an outburst during a meeting with teachers union officials in Washington last week with one of the members of the teachers union crying.
00:59:45.000Before slamming his hands on a desk, according to a person briefed on what happened.
00:59:49.000The staffer was comforted by teachers who themselves were rattled by Fetterman's behavior.
00:59:54.000Fetterman, for his part, said, basically, there's a hit piece.
00:59:59.000Asked about the meeting with the Teachers Union representative, Fetterman said in a statement, they had a spirited conversation about our collective frustration with the Trump administration's cuts to our education system.
01:00:09.000So, again, the building momentum is reliant on the fact that he has moved to the right.
01:00:17.000So, there are people in the Democratic Party who are now suggesting that there's something deeply wrong with Fetterman.
01:00:23.000Again, if there was something wrong with Fetterman before, presumably there is something wrong with Fetterman now.
01:00:54.000Interesting to watch what Democrats now consider to be a health problem worth monitoring and what they consider to be not a health problem worth monitoring.
01:01:02.000The answer is completely dependent, apparently, on the politics of the person that they are concerned about.
01:01:08.000Meanwhile, controversy brewing over the possible arrest of Democratic members of Congress.
01:01:14.000So, apparently, according to the New York Post, two Democratic representatives from New Jersey were caught on video storming a Newark immigration detention site last week.
01:01:22.000One was seen elbowing her way past ICE agents in an alleged bizarre political stunt.
01:01:27.000North Jersey representatives Robert Menendez Jr. and LaMonica McIvor were among the protesters who turned up demanding the closure of the Delaney Hall Detention Center.
01:01:34.000It houses criminal illegal migrants with alleged MS-13 gang affiliation who are wanted for crimes ranging from rape to murder.
01:01:40.000Democrats simply picked the best friends.
01:01:42.000Here is some of the video provided Fox News by DHS.
01:01:45.000And it shows these two Congress people yelling at ICE agents and then assaulting them, essentially.
01:01:57.000You can see it's a scrum, and you can see some of the protesters moving around, and you can see members of Congress yelling at the ICE agents, trying to shove their way past the ICE agents.
01:02:11.000I don't know where they think they're going to.
01:02:13.000I'm not sure what they think they're attempting to achieve here.
01:02:21.000The DHS Assistant Secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, wrote in a statement, Members of Congress storming into a detention facility goes beyond a bizarre political stunt and puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and detainees at risk.
01:02:32.000Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities.
01:02:36.000Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour.
01:02:51.000And, Victor, I think that we should let viewers know there will likely be more arrests coming.
01:02:55.000We actually have body camera footage of some of these members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body slamming a female ICE officer.
01:03:07.000So we will be showing that to viewers very shortly.
01:03:10.000You see a video of members of Congress body slamming ICE officials?
01:04:01.000They really seem to have no clue about how to handle themselves.
01:04:05.000Whether it's traveling down to El Salvador to visit Kilmer Abrego Garcia, an accused wife-beater, or whether they are talking about showing up at detention facilities for...
01:04:44.000Years and years ago, when Kanye West was making inroads with the first Trump administration, I tweeted famously, live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye, because he's nuts.
01:04:54.000And Kanye's mental issues continue to contribute, I assume, to his bizarre fixation with the Jews.
01:05:03.000So he now has a new song titled Heil Hitler.
01:05:08.000So just in case you are still pretending that Kanye West doesn't hate Jews, I'm pretty sure he hates the Jews.
01:05:14.000I mean, two things can be true at once.
01:06:07.000Now, again, I've not called for Kanye West to be platformed from anything.
01:06:10.000I'm just pointing out that many of the people who are very enthusiastic about Kanye West making common cause with people on the right are utterly silent when it comes to his absolutely open shift into Nazism.
01:06:21.000Many of the people who call him friends and acquaintances and people, like, where are they?
01:06:26.000Do they have anything to say about this or no?
01:07:03.000Okay, but it's a hard R with Hitler and it's a no R with the N-word, is the way this works.
01:07:07.000If, by the way, you say the reverse, that means you're a racist and you're banned from polite society.
01:07:11.000If you say the N-word, that ends with an A, but you say Heil Hitler with the hard R, then that means that you're good, transgressive, and interesting to a wide variety of people, apparently, on both right and left.
01:07:22.000I'm glad that we've decided to do this as a society.
01:07:24.000And social media, of course, has exacerbated all of this because transgressive behavior gets clicks, it gets attention.
01:07:30.000That, of course, is why Andrew Tate, one of the most vile people in social media, decided that, you know, he's constantly piggybacking on the social media attention whoredom of others.
01:07:41.000So here he was, jumping in a fancy car in UAE, I believe this is, while playing the Kanye West song.
01:07:49.000Because all the best people are of a piece.
01:08:28.000We've seen people who were completely anonymous two years ago, who because of the bizarre algorithmic boosts provided by X and TikTok, have now become kind of internet famous.
01:08:37.000And then they make a breakthrough into actual famous podcasts, for example.
01:08:40.000And suddenly they're showing up and you're like, who is this person?
01:08:43.000And the answer is they got a lot of clicks.
01:08:45.000So clicks can translate into some sort of appeal.
01:08:49.000And we do live in a time where because the left was so censorious, because the left shut the Overton windows so unbelievably tight.
01:08:55.000That basically, if you didn't agree with Hillary Clinton, you were out there in the wilderness.
01:08:59.000Because of that, many people on the right, their response was, no Overton window at all, meaning all discourse must be treated as equally acceptable and valuable.
01:09:11.000Edward Heil Hitler is not of the same caliber of discussion as, say, should we raise or lower pharmaceutical prices based on government mandate?
01:09:22.000The answer is, there's not a lot of value.
01:09:24.000Again, it doesn't mean it should be banned.
01:09:25.000It doesn't mean it should be censored.
01:09:26.000It does mean that a rational, decent people would not be spending an awful lot of time with those sorts of folks promoting that sort of trash.
01:09:35.000But once it starts mainstreaming via social media, then all the bad ideas of the past get to come back.