The Trump administration moderates its rhetoric on Minneapolis while Democrats ramp up their own. Are Democrats looking to just fully undermine federal immigration law? Or are they putting pedal to the metal? We ll get into that first. The Daily Wire's new series, Rise of the Merlin, premieres Thursday.
00:00:10.000The Daily Wire took a story more than 1,500 years old and spent three years turning it into a seven-episode cinematic epic that Hollywood wouldn't make and that no other studio would risk funding.
00:00:19.000The result is the number one piece of content on DailyWire.com.
00:00:23.000Episodes one and two of the Pendragon cycle Rise of the Merlin are streaming right now with new episodes every Thursday.
00:00:29.000Yes, that means episode three premieres tomorrow.
00:00:43.000While the Trump administration seems to be conciliating its views with regard to ICE's use in Minneapolis, President Trump is making some pretty strong PR moves in order to regain political capital that has been lost in the aftermath of a couple of very controversial and disputed circumstances, shootings in Minneapolis by ICE and Border Patrol of American citizens who are out obstructing federal law enforcement.
00:01:07.000Democrats, by contrast, seem to be consolidating their position and not only that, going absolutely extreme, which seems to be the pattern.
00:01:15.000The minute that one political side believes that it has the upper hand, it proceeds to put the pedal to the metal and then alienate the American population.
00:01:22.000That seems to be what Democrats are intent on doing right now.
00:01:25.000So, President Trump recognizes that the polls right now don't look good for him with regard to ICE operations.
00:01:30.000Now, that's not true with regard to overall views on what ICE should be doing.
00:01:36.000Americans do support the mass deportation of particularly criminal illegal immigrants.
00:01:40.000And there's been no controversy whatsoever in the vast majority of jurisdictions across the United States wherein ICE has been working with local state authorities in order to go into jails and get people who are arrested for crimes and then deporting those people.
00:01:55.000It is only in places like Minneapolis where there has been resistance to this sort of activity that ICE is then forced to go in with boots on the ground into areas that are not, for example, jails.
00:02:06.000And presumably, in order to increase deportation numbers, there's been talk by, for example, Stephen Miller over at the White House about looking for broader swaths of illegal immigrants to deport.
00:02:16.000That means the percentage of illegal immigrants who have committed a separate criminal offense or who are alleged to have committed a separate criminal offense and are therefore in jail, being deported as a percentage of all illegal immigrants being deported, has dropped pretty precipitously from January until now.
00:02:33.000And that, on a PR level, is a problem.
00:02:35.000President Trump recognizes that's a problem.
00:02:37.000He also recognizes that it is a problem when the lead spokespeople on behalf of these policies seem to make terrible public relations blunders on a regular basis, which is why he effectively demoted Gregory Bovino, who is the Border Patrol officer who is essentially heading up operations in the Minneapolis area on behalf of Border Patrol.
00:02:58.000Bovino, of course, had suggested in the aftermath of the killing of Alex Predi that Predi was attempting to massacre law enforcement.
00:03:05.000The evidence is very scanty that that was true, and President Trump knows that.
00:03:08.000So yesterday, the president announced that they're going to de-escalate a little bit.
00:03:53.000Now, Trump was asked specifically about Alex Predty and the description of Predi as a domestic terrorist or an assassin.
00:03:59.000And here was President Trump's response.
00:04:03.000Certainly he shouldn't have been carrying a gun, but all of, hey, look, bottom line, everybody in this room, we view that as a very unfortunate incident.
00:04:11.000Everyone, unless you're a stupid person.
00:04:26.000And again, he's not criticizing people who are protesting with a gun.
00:04:29.000He is criticizing people who obstruct law enforcement while carrying weapons, which, of course, raises the risk of deadly violence in a pretty significant way.
00:04:37.000And as it turns out, Alex Predi has a history of physical confrontations with federal law enforcement, according to CNN.
00:04:45.000Federal immigration officers have been collecting personal information about protesters and agitators in Minneapolis, sources told CNN, and they had documented details about Predi before he was shot to death on Saturday.
00:04:56.000Apparently, sources told CNN about a week before his death, he suffered a broken rib when a group of federal officers tackled him while he was protesting their attempt to detain other individuals.
00:05:06.000And again, these protests are not spontaneous protests.
00:05:10.000Some of them are actual obstruction of federal law enforcement.
00:05:12.000If you're Renee Good and you take your car and you obstruct federal law enforcement vehicles from being able to move down the road, that is not a protest.
00:05:21.000If you're Alex Predty and you're getting in the way of ICE being able to do its job, that is not a protest.
00:05:26.000That is an obstruction of federal law, obviously.
00:05:29.000The Department of Homeland Security says that DHS law enforcement has no record of that incident.
00:05:34.000With that said, if it turns out that Predi is a person, was a person who is repeatedly getting into confrontations with law enforcement, that does change a little bit the sort of circumstances surrounding his death.
00:05:47.000Regardless, President Trump, again, understands he has an excellent weather vein for where the American people are.
00:05:55.000And that means that if somebody is not representing him well, he is very likely to put them aside.
00:06:00.000That's exactly what happened, as I say, with Gregory Bovino.
00:06:03.000Here he was yesterday, blaming Bovino and essentially suggesting that Bovino's characterization of events was not right.
00:06:24.000Now, he is out there still defending Christy Noam.
00:06:27.000Already coming up, the president may be out of love with Greg Bovino, but he's still defending Christy Noam over at the Department of Homeland Security.
00:06:35.000It turns out that actually it's really, really, really important to have life insurance, like really important, because listen, I'm all about my family.
00:06:42.000I spend pretty much all my spare moments and many of my not-spare moments with my family.
00:06:46.000And the most important thing to me is making sure that they are safe and secure.
00:06:49.000But God forbid something happens to me.
00:06:50.000I have to make sure that they're taken care of.
00:06:52.000Life insurance is the place to start with that, but it can feel overwhelming to know where to start with life insurance.
00:06:58.000And that's where our sponsor, Policy Genius, comes in.
00:07:00.000It's an online marketplace where you can compare quotes from top insurers side by side, completely free.
00:07:05.000No jumping around between websites, no endless phone calls.
00:07:08.000What really stands out is their team actually works for you.
00:07:10.000They're licensed agents who help you figure out what you actually need, not what some company wants to sell you.
00:07:14.000They walk you through coverage amounts, prices, all of it.
00:07:52.000Also, getting a wide variety of whole food ingredients into my diet that's a priority this year because I'm traveling, work schedule is busy.
00:07:59.000Our sponsor, Balance of Nature's whole health system, makes it simple.
00:08:02.000Their convenient blend of fruits and veggies and easy-to-take capsules is kosher.
00:08:06.000It ensures I'm getting essential nutrients every day without the hassle of prep work or meal planning.
00:08:10.000It's an effortless way to support my wellness goals while managing a busy on-the-go lifestyle.
00:08:14.000Balance of Nature's whole health system supplements are incredibly versatile.
00:08:18.000They're easy to work into your daily routine.
00:08:19.000The fiber and spice supplement blends smoothly into your favorite drinks, adding a warm aromatic depth from its spice blend.
00:08:25.000And if you prefer, you can even open up the fruits and veggies capsules and mix the powder directly into a smoothie or sprinkle it over your meals.
00:08:31.000What makes these supplements special is they're packed with 47 ingredients from 100% real whole fruits, veggies, spices, fibers, everything from psyllium husk and flaxseed to cinnamon, turmeric, mango, pineapple, wild blueberry, shiitake mushroom, spinach, kale, cayenne pepper, and a lot more.
00:08:44.000It's a simple way to give your body the nutrition it needs every single day.
00:08:48.000And I like to pop the Balance of Nature right into my protein smoothie, and that's keeping me healthy.
00:08:52.000This New Year's lock-in 50% off for one year when you subscribe to the whole health system supplements as a preferred customer.
00:09:42.000This term seems to be blowing it away.
00:09:45.000I mean, the only thing we have is a Minnesota situation, and that is, I believe, easily resolved.
00:09:51.000Now, when it comes to Christy Noam and the characterization of events, perhaps one of the reasons that the president is defending Noam where he wasn't defending Bovino is because Noam is saying that she got instruction, apparently, from Stephen Miller, a close advisor to the president.
00:10:05.000According to MediaIte, Noam is chalking up her actions in office to the direction of President Trump and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller.
00:10:13.000So immediately upon Predty's death, Miller had gone on Twitter and he had put out a statement: quote, an assassin tried to murder federal agents, and this is your response.
00:10:21.000That was in response to Chris Murphy suggesting that ICE has to leave Minneapolis.
00:10:26.000And of course, Miller is very close to the president.
00:10:29.000There's been a lot of talk about whether Miller and Noam are splitting, whether there's been some sort of problems between the two of them.
00:10:37.000But White House Press Secretary Caroline Lovitt called Miller one of the president's closest aides.
00:10:41.000Quote, Stephen Miller is one of President Trump's most trusted and longest-serving aides.
00:10:47.000Noam apparently said to somebody who then related to Axios, which means that she leaked it out.
00:10:51.000You would imagine that might be Corey Lewandowski: everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Stephen.
00:10:55.000So maybe the idea here is that the president is being told by Christy Noam that if I go under the bus, I'm taking you with me.
00:11:01.000That is quite possibly a sort of linkage that is forcing the president or his advisors to defend Noam where they weren't willing to defend Bavino.
00:11:10.000The bottom line, however, is that I have yet to see a headline emerging specifically regarding Christy Noam that has been a positive for the administration thus far.
00:11:19.000Now, President Trump, as part of his reorientation toward ICE operations in Minneapolis, he's been talking with Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who, again, has been a nefarious character in all of this.
00:11:28.000He has fomented the chaos in Minnesota.
00:11:31.000He has created incentive structures for that chaos.
00:11:33.000He has praised the people who are participating in that chaos.
00:11:36.000Nonetheless, the president reached out to Walls, and this is sort of the president's personal style, obviously.
00:11:41.000President Trump likes to reach out to people he perceives to be political enemies, maybe make friends with them, treat them with good grace.
00:11:48.000He obviously did this to Zormam Donny in New York.
00:11:50.000Now, apparently he's doing the Tim Walz.
00:11:52.000He explained a recent phone call that he had with Tim Walz to Will Kaine over on Fox News.
00:11:58.000It couldn't have been a nicer conversation.
00:12:00.000And in fact, I said to my people, I said, it's hard to believe that's the same guy I watch on television or I watch in a debate not doing so well or because we had a very reasonable conversation, very good conversation.
00:12:12.000If you believe the conversation, he'd like to get this thing over with.
00:12:17.000So, again, he seems to be optimistic about what he can get Tim Walz to do.
00:12:20.000Now, Tim Walz seems to have a different viewpoint.
00:12:22.000And this is where things can shift pretty easily for Democrats.
00:12:25.000So right now, Democrats believe that they have the upper hand.
00:12:28.000Democrats believe that they have gotten President Trump to cave on policy.
00:12:55.000That is the proper response when there is a disputed shooting.
00:12:59.000And he said the same thing about Alex Predty, who is not out front making absurdly overreaching statements about what happened in these cases where there was full-scale video available.
00:13:09.000So Tom Homan being there makes a big difference.
00:13:12.000Democrats, however, seem to believe that now there is a bit of political blood in the water and they can go all the way.
00:13:18.000So Tim Walz is using this as an opportunity.
00:13:20.000Again, remember, Tim Walz was so disgraced six weeks ago that he had to drop out of his gubernatorial race.
00:13:26.000He's running again for governor, a third term in Minnesota, and he had to drop it specifically because of all the fraud allegations swirling around his administration.
00:13:35.000Politically, there is no one happier than Tim Walz about what's going on in Minnesota, which is presumably why he is helping to foment all of the problems in Minnesota, talking about how ICE agents are Gestapo-like and how you need to go out there and cause good trouble and how nonviolent resistance, wink-wink, is the way.
00:13:53.000Tim Walz has been an instigator in this entire process.
00:13:55.000So has the Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry.
00:13:58.000Well, now Tim Walz believes that he's won some sort of cheap political victory here.
00:14:02.000He's using the opportunity to slam various members of the Trump administration, even after Trump reached out to him.
00:14:07.000Here he was yesterday slamming the vice president, JD Vance.
00:14:10.000I would beat the shit out of him now if I could, and I would call that out.
00:15:03.000Fanon and the rest of those guys will tell you that.
00:15:06.000Again, the idea that Democrats have backed the blue is insane.
00:15:09.000The fact that the idea that Tim Walz has backed the blue is crazy.
00:15:12.000One of the big problems you have in major blue city police departments is that the political leadership of the police departments have to work hand in glove with the state officials, people like Tim Walz.
00:15:21.000Or if you're in California, you have to work with the mayor if you're in Los Angeles or with the governor.
00:15:27.000And what that tends to mean is that the people who are actually on the ground holding the line have pretty significant disagreements with the people who are the heads of their departments, which is why you have seen in major police forces across the United States real trouble recruiting and retaining police officers.
00:15:42.000Tim Walz went out of his way to slam Christy Noam as well.
00:15:47.000It's very disheartening to me to see the president say Christy Noam's doing a great job.
00:15:51.000I'm not sure there's been anybody more incompetent or cruel that's ever served in a cabinet position than her, and this is on her.
00:15:58.000Okay, so again, this is going to be the shtick.
00:16:01.000Now, this is going to culminate an attempt to totally undermine law enforcement.
00:16:05.000So, Jacob Fry, now remember, the president reached out to Fry and had a conversation with him and then put out a statement on Truth Social about how well the conversation went.
00:16:13.000Well, Fry is now digging in, saying that he is not going to facilitate the performance of immigration law.
00:16:20.000Quote, today, Chief O'Hara and I met with Borders Homan and had a productive conversation.
00:16:24.000I reiterated that my main ask is for Operation Metro Surge to end as quickly as possible.
00:16:29.000Public safety works best when it's built on community trust, not tactics that create fear or division.
00:16:34.000I shared with Mr. Homan the serious negative impacts this operation has had on Minneapolis and surrounding communities, as well as the strain it has placed on our local police officers.
00:16:42.000I also made it clear that Minneapolis does not and will not enforce federal immigration laws and that we will remain focused on keeping our neighbors and streets safe.
00:16:49.000City leaders will continue to stay in conversation with Mr. Homan and his team.
00:16:52.000So in other words, he is not going to change one iota of what he has been doing.
00:16:56.000He is going to demand that the federal government stop performing federal immigration law.
00:17:00.000And when he says that he wants to keep people safe, but they're not going to perform federal immigration law, understand what that means.
00:17:05.000What he means when he says that is that if there are local law enforcement agencies, if Minneapolis PD picks up a person and that person goes to jail and they know that person is an illegal immigrant and that person makes bail, for example, that will never be reported to ICE.
00:17:27.000They mean that you will require a full-scale conviction and prison term for the person at the other end.
00:17:33.000Maybe State Department of Corrections hands that person over to ICE.
00:17:36.000But at first encounter, criminals will not be interfacing with ICE.
00:17:42.000That is what he means, which means the continual undermining of federal law, obviously.
00:17:48.000Meanwhile, Keith Ellison, the terrible attorney general of the state of Minnesota, he's out there suggesting that perhaps he is going to prosecute ICE officers.
00:17:58.000Our hope is that the order will continue to preserve, protect, prohibit altering, and gain access so that we can investigate this case ourselves.
00:18:08.000As you know in your audience, I want them to know that there is no legal bar to the state prosecuting anyone who commits a crime in our state, including a federal official.
00:18:19.000There are certain qualified immunities that apply, but we believe that they can be overcome.
00:18:27.000Meanwhile, Governor Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, who of course would like to run for president, it is now becoming, it's amazing how quickly the Democratic Party higher echelons are captured by the radicals in their base, believing they need them in order to win presidential primary.
00:18:40.000Shapiro wants to run for president of the United States.
00:18:44.000And he is out there saying ICE's mission needs to be terminated.
00:18:47.000Again, terminating ICE's mission without explaining how you're going to effectuate immigration law being enforced means nullification of federal law on behalf of local and state concerns, which has a very bad history in the United States.
00:19:01.000To me, it is very clear that the mission the president and Christy Noam and Stephen Miller and JD Vance and all of them sent these federal officials on is a mission to violate people's constitutional rights.
00:19:15.000And it is clear that the mission needs to be terminated immediately.
00:19:22.000And while police want to have tools in their hands to be able to do their good work in the community, the most important tool they need is to have trust with the community.
00:19:32.000And the other thing that this administration has done is violated that trust with the American people and law enforcement.
00:19:38.000And collectively, all of that makes us less safe.
00:19:46.000Okay, now again, this has become the going talking point for Democratic candidates and apparently for Democratic law enforcement officers around the country.
00:19:55.000Philadelphia's awful district attorney Larry Krasner, who's done just a terrible job of ensuring that the law is enforced in his city, he is vowing to utilize law enforcement resources to hunt down ICE agents.
00:20:07.000If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities.
00:20:37.000Well, as he says, that will take a massive number of targets off the board for ICE.
00:20:42.000They would only be able to go after illegal immigrants who have committed a new federal crime after entering the United States illegally.
00:20:48.000State and local crimes would not apply because the feds don't enforce state and local crimes.
00:20:54.000Remember, if ICE comes and arrests somebody, detains somebody based on a state level, they are not prosecuting that person.
00:21:02.000They're looking to deport that person.
00:21:04.000It's the state that is supposed to prosecute on the basis.
00:21:07.000So if you require a judicial warrant on the federal level, that judicial warrant presumably has to be for a separate crime.
00:21:14.000On the federal level, that would have to be a federal crime.
00:21:17.000For example, says Bill Malugan, if an illegal immigrant gets arrested in Minnesota for a DUI crash causing great bodily injury, a state crime, and then bonds out of jail, ICE would not be able to target him for arrest because there would be no judicial warrant.
00:22:16.000We had this conversation earlier this week.
00:22:18.000The administration is trying to claim that an administrative warrant plus probable cause means they can bust into a home.
00:22:23.000That is hotly contested in the courts of law.
00:22:26.000But for an arrest, you don't need a judicial warrant.
00:22:29.000An administrative warrant for illegal immigration is enough to effectuate a deportation based on an arrest.
00:22:37.000One ICE contact in a sanctuary city told Malugan, quote, if we need a judicial warrant for every arrest, we would have maybe 15 arrests in a year in his city.
00:22:46.000Apparently, this is what Democrats are pushing for.
00:22:49.000Meredith Lee Hill, congressional reporter for Politico, says the Democrats are coalescing around a number of DHS bill changes, including requiring judicial warrants for immigration arrests, mandating the federal agents identify themselves, requiring DHS to cooperate with state and local investigations, and limiting the mission creep of federal agencies.
00:23:09.000Also, end roving patrols and profiling and end arrest quotas.
00:23:14.000So basically, hamstring federal law, make sure that illegal immigration can never be stopped.
00:23:32.000The Trump administration has been doing that very successfully in virtually all jurisdictions outside of places like Minneapolis, places where you have Democratic officials and law enforcement attempting to gin up chaos.
00:23:47.000And Democrats, on the other hand, apparently would like for none of that to happen.
00:23:51.000Apparently, they're pushing for processes that make even the arrest of criminal, illegal immigrants, people arrested for state-level crimes, nearly impossible.
00:24:01.000Well, if that's their goal, then they're going to snatch political defeat from the jaws of victory.
00:24:05.000If they believe, like right now, they should simply claim victory on a political level.
00:24:09.000They should say, we got the Trump administration to moderate.
00:24:29.000Instead, again, the minute right now that either party senses momentum, they put pedal to the metal and then they proceed to overreach so dramatically that the American people are repulsed and react and disgust to that agenda.
00:24:43.000Now, listen, the Democratic politicians, I get it.
00:24:46.000Some of them are being driven by a media and celebrity culture that has decided that this is the new gigantic outrage of the day and everyone must speak out.
00:24:54.000This is our new civil rights movement.
00:24:56.000As we've discussed before, the Democratic base is constantly in search of an animating principle.
00:25:02.000And that animating principle is supposed to be a pale mockoff of the civil rights movement of the 60s.
00:25:06.000And so we've had that with regard to gay rights.
00:25:08.000And then we had that with regard to transgenderism.
00:25:10.000And now we're getting that with regard to illegal immigration.
00:25:14.000The jackbooted Dougs, they're enforcing laws that are discriminating against wide classes of people.
00:25:19.000They're always looking for their moment to do a Selma bridge.
00:25:24.000Well, the problem is that those moments are rare because thank God in America, that sort of stuff, that sort of policy has been rather otra for, you know, half a century, meaning that just in terms of generic public policy, every country has to enforce its border and every country has to make sure that illegal immigrants are deported.
00:25:48.000But Democrats, and particularly radical activist class Democrats, are looking always for their new moment to be involved in a civil rights movement.
00:25:58.000And what that means is that they push very hard.
00:26:00.000The minute that they see anything that even remotely resembles that thing, they go for it, whole scale.
00:26:05.000And this is how you end up with, for example, Scott Galloway suggesting that Democrats should conduct Nuremberg trials against law enforcement, federal law enforcement.
00:26:15.000The difference between being right and being effective, and we're angry, and I get it, protesting is powerful.
00:26:21.000Promising them that there will be an accountability.
00:26:24.000And I've said this, I think there should be something equivalent to the Nuremberg trials.
00:26:46.000Tara Swisher on the same podcast suggested that Stephen Miller has blood on his hands and should be put in jail.
00:26:52.000And I would last like to call out Stephen Miller, who is in the center of this.
00:26:57.000We always focus on Trump as we often focus on the top people.
00:27:01.000But Stephen Miller, like a man named Ben Detsen, he was the one who created the internment cancer Japanese Heinrich Himmler in the Nazi regime.
00:28:04.000We have until Friday, January 30th to block $10 billion from going through to ICE.
00:28:11.000This is her Instagram, and then she put up a phone number and all the rest of it because it's time to turn anger into action.
00:28:16.000Okay, meanwhile, Natalie Portman, again, I'm not sure why we should treat the musings of actors as particularly important, but they clearly do.
00:28:25.000Natalie Portman suggested that she's never been sadder to be an American.
00:28:28.000Now, last I checked, I'm not even sure that Natalie Portman chiefly resides in the United States.
00:28:36.000I could not be prouder to be American right now by the way the Americans are acting.
00:28:42.000And I could not be sadder to be American right now with the way the government is behaving.
00:28:47.000Now, again, the musings of actors mean very little, but they do mean a lot in sort of Democratic upper echelon circles.
00:28:54.000By the way, Natalie Portman does primarily reside in France, not in the United States.
00:28:58.000Olivia Wilde was doing the same routine.
00:29:00.000Here she was suggesting that ICE is a criminal organization.
00:29:05.000We can't go another day just sort of accepting this as our new norm.
00:29:19.000And so if we can do anything out here to support the movement to cast ICE out to delegitimize this unbelievably criminal organization, then that's what we should be doing.
00:29:35.000The celebrity class doesn't mean a lot, but when they speak with one voice, the people who tend to hear that are the people they go to cocktail parties with.
00:29:41.000And that would be the Democratic frontrunners.
00:29:43.000That'd be people like Wes Moore in Maryland or people like Josh Hapiro in Pennsylvania or people like Gavin Newsom in California.
00:29:49.000Ethan Hawk, who is currently nominated for best actor for a movie called Blue Moon, he says there's fear in the air.
00:30:41.000You're out there making movies every day.
00:30:45.000My favorite thing about modern America is where people who have all the rights and privileges of being a modern American suggest that they are living in deep fear when they clearly, clearly are not.
00:30:53.000He's speaking into a microphone on camera.
00:30:56.000You know what people in totalitarian regimes don't do?
00:30:58.000That thing, because they know what comes next and it ain't good.
00:31:01.000Democrats are, meanwhile, attempting to obstruct federal attempts to look into Minnesota state voter roles.
00:31:06.000Now, I've never understood the controversy over transparency when it comes to voter roles.
00:31:11.000Obviously, we all have a very strong interest in ensuring that people who are not registered to vote should not be on voter rolls, that we don't have duplications on voter roll, that we don't have people who are capable even of voting more than once.
00:31:23.000And so the pushback has never made any sense to me at all.
00:31:26.000According to the New York Times, after federal immigration agents shot and killed an American citizen in Minneapolis for the second time this month, Attorney General Pambondi sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz in Minnesota that outlined what she described as three simple steps to bring back law and order.
00:31:40.000The third step there was to allow the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to access voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota's voter registration practices comply with federal law.
00:31:49.000Minnesota's Secretary of State, Steve Simon, a Democrat swiftly rejected the demand, calling it an outrageous attempt to coerce Minnesota into giving the federal government private data on millions of U.S. citizens in violation of state and federal law.
00:32:01.000Now, I'm not sure why, presumably, that is violation of state and federal law.
00:32:33.000Many of them are suggesting that they are worried about the laws preventing the transfer of private information.
00:32:41.000By the way, I will note at this point that these same Democrats have no problem at all with the idea of a gigantic gun registry in which every gun that you buy goes on a gun registry, no matter if you buy it from a friend or buy it from a private seller or anything.
00:32:53.000They're perfectly happy to register everyone's private information federally in terms of your gun ownership in violation of the Second Amendment, in all likelihood.
00:33:00.000But when it comes to voting, this is where they're going to draw the line.
00:33:05.000So do states have a right to withhold the data?
00:33:08.000Totally unclear at this point, but they are very upset about it.
00:33:11.000Tim Walz, for his part, is saying that he's not going to comply.
00:33:16.000And one of the things we're always very proud of, we're either first or second in the country for voter turnout.
00:33:23.000And we have the safest, most secure, most well-attended elections in the country, and we like to talk about that.
00:33:30.000And what I can assure everyone in this country is we will break that record in November at this midterm.
00:33:37.000Again, he is suggesting that this is all going to turn into a big vote for Democrats, obviously.
00:33:41.000Ilhan Omar, for her part, representative from Minnesota, put out a statement, quote, ICE will leave Minnesota if you hand over your voter rolls, tells you everything you need to know.
00:33:49.000This was never about immigration or fraud.
00:33:51.000It was always about rigging elections.
00:34:13.000Ilhan Omar, however, has been in a fair bit of political trouble because, of course, there are a bunch of investigations facing Ilhan Omar.
00:34:21.000According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump suggested in a social media post on Monday that Omar profited from the state's massive welfare fraud scandal and said that the Justice Department is currently scrutinizing her.
00:34:31.000Representative James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has also suggested that he might subpoena Omar's husband after the pair disclosed a significant increase in financial assets.
00:34:43.000So Ilhan Omar, obviously, you know, listen, she's got a bunch of sketchy, sketchy circumstances surrounding her.
00:34:51.000Omar's most recent financial disclosure from May 2025 showed that she and her husband have assets between $6 and $30 million, which are up from one year earlier when they reported between $37,000 and $208,000.
00:35:10.000I mean, that's NBA star-level pay for Ilhan Omar and her husband.
00:35:16.000Omar's husband, the political consultant Tim Minott, is involved with a variety of businesses, including a venture capital management firm in Washington, D.C. and a winery in Santa Rosa, California.
00:35:25.000Well, unless that is the most successful winery in history, I'm having a hard time seeing this.
00:35:30.000It was the significant increase in the valuation of the capital management firm and winery that were the drivers of the couple's jump in assets.
00:35:38.000Jacqueline Rogers, an Omar spokeswoman, said, quote, she does not have millions in the bank.
00:35:42.000The value range listed for the assets reflects the full cost assessment of the businesses, in which her husband is one of several partners and does not reflect her husband's individual share.
00:35:51.000Obviously, Ilhan Omar has been involved, again, in a wide variety of suspicious circumstances regarding her district.
00:36:01.000The Washington Free Beacon, by the way, reports that the House Ethics Committee requires reporting only her husband's stake, not the full value of the LLCs.
00:36:13.000At the same time, apparently, there are more investigations coming.
00:36:17.000According to Fox News's Elizabeth McDonald, it would be reasonable for the media to ask what is going on with Ilhan Omar's husband's winery.
00:36:25.000Omar valued it at up to $5 million on her 2025 financial disclosures.
00:36:30.000All we can find is that ESTECRU LLC was registered as an LLC in Santa Rosa, California.
00:36:38.000It had promoted wine products, but there's little evidence of a functioning winery today.
00:36:41.000The business's website for purchasing wine doesn't work.
00:36:44.000The listed phone number is disconnected.
00:36:45.000Its social media has been inactive since early 2023.
00:36:49.000The winery has also been tied to at least one investor lawsuit against her husband, his partner, and the winery, alleging misrepresentation of the business as a legitimate company, and that was reportedly settled.
00:37:00.000One investor named Naeem Mode alleged they persuaded him to invest 300 grand in the winery based on promises and money would be tripled within 18 months with 10% monthly interest if it wasn't paid back on time.
00:37:11.000Apparently, the $300,000 investment was returned about a month late.
00:37:15.000None of the promised profits were delivered.
00:37:17.000His complaint sought at least $780,000 in damages.
00:37:25.000So something is going on pretty clearly.
00:37:28.000Now, obviously, Ilhan Omar is one of the more controversial political figures in the country, and for good reason, given her statements in support of a wide variety of enemies of the United States, up to and including an attempt before she was in Congress to write a letter, a sympathetic letter to a person on behalf of a person who tries to join ISIS.
00:37:48.000Well, yesterday, there is a terrible circumstance at a town hall in Minneapolis where a man apparently got up.
00:37:56.000This person appears to be a right-winger who obviously is, shall we say, less than hinged.
00:38:04.000And he got up and he sprayed a substance at her.
00:38:06.000Now, this stuff is really, really dangerous.
00:38:08.000Again, it doesn't matter whether it's right or whether it's left.
00:38:10.000Physical altercations with people on the basis of politics is not an American thing.
00:38:17.000And frankly, we're quite lucky as a country that this person was spraying a substance and not bullets.
00:38:24.000The fact that we have politicians who are in close proximity with the population on a widespread level means that there is the opportunity in many open circumstances like this to do physical violence.
00:39:41.000This is why we have voting in this country.
00:39:43.000This is why we have checks and balances in this country.
00:39:45.000This is why we have a free press in this country.
00:39:50.000And we've had too many circumstances over the course of the past 15 years in which what was sprayed was not, in fact, a substance, a chemical substance or something, but was bullets, whether it is the congressional baseball shooting, which again has a kind of memory hold, or whether it is the murder of Charlie Kirk.
00:40:10.000Okay, meanwhile, the president of the United States is signaling the possibility of action in Iran, given the fact that Iran appears to have mowed down some tens of thousands of protesters.
00:40:20.000There are kind of widely varying estimates as to how many people the Iranian regime killed over the course of a couple of days amidst those gigantic protests across the country.
00:40:28.000The low-end estimates put it in the thousands.
00:40:31.000The high-end estimates are putting it well over 30,000.
00:40:34.000There is footage of gigantic rooms of body bags.
00:40:38.000There are reports that are coming out that are really ugly.
00:40:40.000Obviously, full information is not available because Iran is a dictatorship and because they've shut down the internet for the past several weeks and plan on shutting it down for the next couple of months minimum.
00:40:51.000Well, President Trump put up a post on Truth Social yesterday warning Iran that they were playing with fire.
00:40:57.000Quote, a massive armada is heading to Iran.
00:40:59.000It is moving quickly with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose.
00:41:02.000It is a larger fleet headed by the great aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln than that since Venezuela.
00:41:06.000Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission with speed and violence if necessary.
00:41:11.000Hopefully, Iran will quickly come to the table and negotiate a fair and equitable deal.
00:41:27.000Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.
00:41:30.000Now, there are some people out there who are suggesting this is quote unquote wag the dog, that the president is having domestic troubles and therefore he is attempting to launch a war action against Iran.
00:41:52.000That happened before the shootings in Minneapolis.
00:41:55.000No, this is not a wag the dog scenario.
00:41:57.000This is the president paying off the promise that he made to the Iranian people if he decides to act in any coherent and cohesive way here.
00:42:06.000Now, as for the call for negotiations, frankly, I think that that is going to be unsuccessful.
00:42:11.000The Iranians have demonstrated time and again, they have no intention of giving up their nuclear program, which is the thing that they need to do.
00:42:18.000And by the way, even giving up their nuclear program wouldn't solve the problem of you just mowed down tens of thousands of your own citizens.
00:42:23.000Those people aren't going to become alive again after the president promised them that help was on the way.
00:42:29.000So it seems that action in Iran could quite possibly be imminent.
00:42:34.000Again, you're going to hear the usual caterwauling from the usual Suspect about how America is about to be drawn into an Iraq-like war.
00:42:43.000Truthfully, it is an amazing thing to watch critics on the isolationist right keep characterizing Donald J. Trump as George W. Bush circa 2003.
00:42:55.000You were wrong about the first Iran strike last year.
00:42:58.000You were wrong about the killing of Qassem Solemani, the Iranian terror master.
00:43:02.000You're wrong about the taking of Nicolas Maduro.
00:43:05.000In fact, I'm hard-pressed to see where you have been right about President Trump's foreign policy a single time.
00:43:10.000So, yeah, I'm going to take it with a bit of a grain of salt when you guys suggest that if the president chooses to deploy air power in order to do serious harm to the top levels of the regime, this is somehow going to descend the United States into hundreds of thousands of American troops standing around in Tehran.
00:43:27.000Obviously, Iran is attempting to reconstitute some sort of regional power.
00:43:33.000President Trump on Truth Social warned Iraq against the reinstallation of their former prime minister, who was effectively an Iranian cat's baw.
00:43:44.000Obviously, Iraq is a very fractured country.
00:43:47.000The Iraqi population is majority Shia, just like Iran.
00:43:50.000It's about 60 to 65% of the population.
00:43:56.000That was one of the problems with the deposing of Saddam Hussein and the non-replacement of that regime by some sort of functioning government in the short term is the Shia uprising.
00:44:08.000Well, the president put out a statement the other day.
00:44:10.000I'm hearing that the great country of Iraq might make a very bad choice by reinstalling Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister.
00:44:15.000Last time Maliki was in power, the country descended into poverty and total chaos.
00:44:19.000That should not be allowed to happen again because of his insane policies and ideologies.
00:44:22.000If elected, the United States of America will no longer help Iraq.
00:44:25.000And if we are not there to help, Iraq has zero chance of success, prosperity, or freedom, make Iraq great again.
00:44:31.000And again, that seems to be, you know, a well-calibrated shot across the bow with regard to Iraq.
00:44:36.000Not that we are going to take military action in Iraq, but that if Iraq is reliant on American resources or defense, them allying with Iran is a bad idea.
00:44:44.000Now, all of this is part of a Middle East-wide recalibration that has happened in the aftermath of the 12-day war and the utter destruction of Iran's terror arms across the Middle East.
00:44:55.000Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi regime seem to be completely realigning away, actually, from the Abraham Accords, away from UAE, away from many of the interests of the United States, and toward a new sort of Sunni triangle that would essentially be Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
00:45:13.000In other words, the reason that Saudi was approaching Israel about the Abraham Accords a couple of years ago is because they were afraid of Iran.
00:45:19.000Then Israel proceeded to wreck Iran and make clear that it was a paper tiger.
00:45:23.000And now, apparently, what the Saudis are most afraid of, what they are most afraid of, is actual regime change in Iran, which is astonishing.
00:45:29.000What they would prefer is a failed state in Iran led by a weakened malocracy that is incapable of threatening Saudi Arabia, but also is not a threat to become a functioning country.
00:45:40.000That seems to be what the Saudis want.
00:45:41.000What they are deeply afraid of is a secularist, pro-American, pro-Israel regime in Iran, or at least Israel-friendly regime in Iran that would recalibrate the math in the Middle East and make Saudi a secondary power because Iran, of course, has massive oil and natural gas resources.
00:45:56.000Iran has a young population, a fairly secularized population.
00:46:02.000And if it had a different leadership, a real chance at being a regional heavyweight.
00:46:08.000So Saudi didn't like that Iran was a threat to it on the military level.
00:46:11.000And so they liked it when the United States and Israel struck at Iran.
00:46:15.000But now that Iran has been laid flat, what they would really prefer is for Iran to remain there rather than being able to recover as a functioning solidified state.
00:46:24.000And so Saudi instead seems to be making time with the Turks.
00:46:28.000The Turkish government, by the way, again, one of the major blunders, I believe, of the Trump administration and Tom Barak, the U.S. ambassadors to Turkey, is the attempt to treat Turkey as an erstwhile ally of the United States.
00:46:40.000There is no evidence that the Islamist government of Rasiptayb Erdogan, who, again, has supported Hamas terrorists in thoroughgoing fashion, that they have the best interests of the West at heart.
00:46:51.000The fact is that Turkey never should have been brought alongside NATO.
00:46:53.000The only reason it was is a counterweight to Russia.
00:46:56.000And it is for that reason, with regard to Saudi Arabia, that yesterday, Mohammed bin Salman actually told Iran he will not allow the use of Saudi airspace for any strike against Iran.
00:47:05.000Well, I mean, let's be real about this.
00:47:18.000But, and he's trying to counter signal.
00:47:21.000He's trying to signal at his young and very, very unemployed population that he is not taking sides with the United States against the malocracy.
00:47:30.000That is what is happening with regard to Saudi Arabia.
00:47:33.000It's kind of tragic because Saudi, I thought, had a shot at modernization, but the more they draw into the orbit of Turkey, the more they alienate the West, the more they try to stop the burgeoning peace that could be happening in the Middle East, the worse things are going to get for the Saudi regime in the short term and in the midterm.
00:47:51.000Meanwhile, on the economic front, the big news of the day is that Amazon is prepared to lay off around 16,000 corporate employees.
00:47:59.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the first round of cuts in October led to around 14,000 white-collar employees receiving ping slips.
00:48:05.000At the time, people familiar with Amazon's plans said the company was targeting around 30,000 job cuts.
00:48:10.000That's 10% of the corporate workforce.
00:48:13.000One of the reasons for this is the effectiveness of AI.
00:48:17.000On Tuesday, Amazon said it was shutting down its fresh and go grocery stores after deciding to expand its focus on whole foods and same-day deliveries of fresh food from warehouses.
00:48:27.000So everybody who's working for the fresh and go businesses will be laid off.
00:48:32.000There was sort of a recalibration of how the company was working during the pandemic when there was rapid expansion and everybody was ordering to their house.
00:48:38.000And now, obviously, the market has changed again.
00:48:42.000But AI obviously means that a lot of employees become expendable.
00:48:45.000And this is one of the temporary hiccups that is going to emerge from AI.
00:48:50.000AI will make the economy significantly more productive.
00:48:53.000Productivity is going to go up radically, but you're going to require fewer employees to do the same work.
00:48:59.000And it's going to take a little while for the job market to adjust to all of that, which presumably is one reason why there is a piece today in the Wall Street Journal by David Malpass.
00:49:09.000Malpass is the, he was the Undersecretary of the Treasury under President Trump and president of the World Bank.
00:49:16.000And Malpass points out that the Federal Reserve should really have one mandate and one mandate only.
00:49:22.000So the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate to keep unemployment low and to keep inflation low.
00:49:26.000I've been arguing for literally years that this is stupid.
00:49:29.000Those two mandates are very often in conflict with one another.
00:49:33.000Because sometimes in order to keep the inflation low, you actually have to worry less about job creation.
00:49:42.000You have to worry more about monetary policy.
00:49:45.000Malpass says in his Davos speech last week, President Trump asked why the interest rate is so much higher on U.S. Treasury debt than on bonds of weaker countries.
00:50:00.000One reason for the high long-term rates is the still high short-term interest rate.
00:50:04.000The Federal Reserve sets the short-term rate, but its models use backward-looking inflation data and treat growth as inflationary, leaving rates too high.
00:50:10.000But cutting short-term rates without reforming the Fed's economic models risks higher long-term rates and a sell-off in the dollar.
00:50:16.000After the Fed cut rates by half a percentage point in September 2024, long-term yields went up by 0.5 points, not down.
00:50:24.000Markets were agassed at the political timing of the rate cut.
00:50:28.000Sweeping reforms in the Fed's economic models to defend the dollar offer a straightforward path to lower interest rates across the yield curve, short-term and long-term.
00:50:36.000The Fed's models ignore the effects of dollar weakness on inflation and interest rates and treat faster growth as a cause of inflation, says Malpass.
00:50:43.000Already, many at the Fed argue U.S. growth is too fast and unemployment too low for the Fed to cut rates.
00:50:48.000In Davos, the president trashed this illogic.
00:50:51.000If a country is doing well, why is it bad news for financial markets?
00:50:54.000And why does the Fed set its rate higher, not lower?
00:50:57.000Sound money and a stable dollar are at the core of the supply-side model of booming economic growth.
00:51:03.000While the Fed wants to focus attention on its independence, the problem is the Fed's anti-growth models undercut the dollar and keep interest rates and bond yields high.
00:51:12.000So, essentially, the basic idea here should be monetary stability, not worries about job markets heating up or cooling down.
00:51:24.000So, he makes the case that the Fed's monetary policy, backward-looking inflation targeting, non-accelerating rate of unemployment limits to growth, they take direct aim at supply-side policies to boost energy production, cut tax rates, and improve regulation.
00:51:38.000The models set a ceiling on the growth rate and a floor on the unemployment rate.
00:51:43.000This is exactly right because those two things are not always connected.
00:51:48.000The idea that economic growth is inherently connected to job growth, that's true, kind of, over the long term, but they are not necessarily connected in the short term.
00:51:57.000So, defending the dollar is a good thing, it is a necessary thing.
00:52:02.000So, he says U.S. bond yields and mortgage rates could be substantially lower if U.S. policy defended the dollar and strengthened market confidence and trust.
00:52:10.000The path is easily available to Mr. Trump by stating his administration wants the dollar to be stable, not weak.
00:52:15.000That would cause more global investment in dollar-denominated assets, including stable coins, an economic home run.
00:52:21.000It would also reverse the Biden administration's weakness, a political home run, and it would allow markets to help the Fed decide to lower the short-term rate.
00:52:27.000That's right, because what the Fed is worried about right now is dollar instability.
00:52:31.000The dollar is worth less on the open market, and they don't want to inflate the dollar.
00:52:36.000So, again, that seems to be the right answer on all of this.
00:52:40.000We'll see whether the Trump administration follows suit.
00:52:43.000Well, today we also have a couple of Maha updates for you: the Make America Healthy again updates for you brought to you by our friends over at Balance of Nature.
00:52:54.000One is that apparently the Trump administration has decided not to increase Medicare reimbursement rates to the insurers.
00:53:02.000It'll be interesting to see how this plays in terms of coverage for older people who are reliant on Medicare.
00:53:08.000One of the biggest problems, obviously, is that when you subsidize Medicare and you keep increasing the reimbursement rates, that costs the taxpayers.
00:53:14.000On the other hand, when you don't increase those rates, then the insurers are unable to absorb the costs because it turns out that people who are older require a lot of medication and a lot of care.
00:53:24.000And so, you may see some menu options drop off of Medicare because of the lower reimbursement rates.
00:53:30.000This is presumably also why you saw shares drop for United Health Group and also Humana and CPS Health.
00:53:36.000Apparently, $96 billion in market capitalization was wiped out on Tuesday.
00:53:41.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the proposal dealt a blow to insurance companies that have been pushing to turn around a business that's central to their finances and hopes for growth.
00:53:48.000Medicare Advantage, that is the private insurer version of the federal program for oldered and disabled Americans, generated an estimated $500 billion in revenue for the industry as a whole last year.
00:53:59.000Such revenue was a long key driver of growth and profits until the fact that the Medicare reimbursement rates went down.
00:54:07.000So the industry is likely to go to a playbook where they pull back some offerings, trim extra benefits like cash cards used for health expenses and offer plan designs with more cost controls.
00:54:21.000So, again, fascinating to see how the administration is trying to bend the cost curve.
00:54:26.000One of the realities of a government-run system, which is what Medicare effectively is, is that you can choose between a few things.
00:54:33.000You can choose between quality, you can choose between universality, you can choose between cost.
00:54:37.000You can't have all three of those things.
00:54:39.000You can have low cost, universality, and quality.
00:54:59.000And it seems that Medicare is moving in that direction.
00:55:03.000The notion that insurance companies, by the way, are simply ripping off the federal government with regard to Medicare, that is generally untrue.
00:55:11.000The profit margins for these insurance companies is not all of that high.
00:55:14.000Well, in other maha news, apparently, Barry Weiss over at CBS News is planning to bring on board Andrew Huberman, who has a huge health podcast, which is really listenable.
00:55:25.000This, of course, is driving some people absolutely up a wall.
00:55:29.000Weiss apparently is going to announce a host of new contributors to the network.
00:55:34.000That includes Andrew Huberman, who currently has 7.3 million subscribers on YouTube.
00:55:39.000He pushes high protein consumption, among other things, and elevated cortisol levels in the mornings.
00:55:44.000He obviously has this entire schedule where you get up in the morning, you go out and you spend 15 minutes in the sun, and all the rest.
00:55:50.000Naturally, there are some people who are upset with Huberman because anytime you popularize science, you are very frequently going to make a mistake or you're going to simplify beyond the actual studies.
00:56:01.000However, what Barry is attempting to do by bringing on board people who actually have some level of talent and followership is smart.
00:56:12.000It is smart, what she is attempting to do.
00:56:14.000And I know a lot of people are angry that Barry is even there, and that is clearly evident from the coverage.
00:56:19.000How dare she upend all of the amazing systems at CBS News?
00:56:24.000Well, I mean, you could hardly have done worse at CBS News, and Barry seems to be shaking things up in some pretty interesting ways.
00:56:29.000This New Year's, by the way, lock in 50% off for one year when you subscribe to the whole health system supplements as a preferred customer at Balance of Nature.