A government shutdown is averted thanks to a deal between the Republicans and the White House, but Democrats are still trying to force a government shutdown. What will they get out of it? Will it be bad for the economy, and will it be good for them?
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00:00:36.000Okay, so, you thought Democrats couldn't possibly get any dumber.
00:00:39.000And yet somehow they have managed to achieve this signal feat.
00:00:43.000The reason I say this is because right now, President Trump is having some trouble when it comes to the economy, obviously.
00:00:49.000The Dow Jones Industrial Average is off significantly since he took office.
00:00:53.000There's a lot of concern about the possibility of recession in the near future in the United States, despite some pretty strong economic fundamentals.
00:01:00.000And in the polling data, President Trump is actually moving the wrong way on the economy.
00:01:05.000According to a brand new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, the question is, how have Donald Trump's policies affected U.S. economic conditions?
00:01:29.000Well, if things start to get worse, That 21% is going to cave into the 51%.
00:01:33.000You're going to end up with three quarters of Americans who are going to blame President Trump if the economy goes south in all likelihood.
00:01:39.000Only 44% of Americans currently approve of how President Trump is handling the economy, inflation.
00:01:46.000In terms of helping the middle class, 43% approve.
00:01:48.000Only 39% approve of President Trump's tariffs.
00:01:52.000And in terms of helping the middle class, only 43% approve.
00:01:57.000Okay, so these are bad numbers for President Trump in this polling.
00:02:00.000That if the economy picks up or continues to truck along, that President Trump can't heal all of that.
00:02:05.000It just means that because of all the volatility that's been injected into the economy, because of all the talk about tariffs, which, again, I don't really see the purpose of, I want President Trump to succeed in effectuating his agenda.
00:02:16.000And if that agenda gets thwarted by an economic downturn, that would be a very large-scale mistake.
00:02:24.000Well, that's an opening for Democrats, a clear and obvious opening for Democrats.
00:02:39.000The reason I say this is because Republicans were able to, through the leadership of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and no thanks to Thomas Massey, pass a continuing resolution that will fund the government until about September.
00:02:49.000That gives the Republicans plenty of time to negotiate a budget deal amongst themselves, come up with the one big beautiful bill that they need to pass, and get that done without the government.
00:03:43.000If Republicans had followed down on the job and been unable to pass a continuing resolution, you could have blamed Republicans for the shutdown.
00:03:49.000This was the Democratic plan in the House.
00:03:50.000It's the reason why, for example, Hakeem Jeffries instructed Democrats...
00:03:53.000Not to vote in favor of the so-called Clean CR, the Clean Continuing Resolution, which is just a maintenance of funding at current levels all the way through September.
00:04:01.000So Democrats, except for one, did not participate in the CR. But now the Democrats seem to want to actively kill the CR and push America into a government shutdown that they clearly will own.
00:04:13.000That's the part that makes no sense politically speaking.
00:04:15.000According to the Wall Street Journal...
00:04:17.000Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threw a wrench into a Republican plan to avert a government shutdown this weekend, saying there was not enough Democratic support to advance the measure funding federal agencies through September 30th.
00:04:27.000Now, you're saying to yourself, hold up, don't Republicans actually have a majority in the Senate?
00:04:32.000But in order to overcome a filibuster, in order to invoke a cloture, you need 60 votes.
00:04:37.000Now, Democrats could simply not filibuster.
00:04:39.000They could just say, fine, listen, you want to vote for the CR, vote for the CR. Instead, Democrats are now actively considering Which, again, makes no sense.
00:04:50.000Most Americans are just saying, leave us alone.
00:05:07.000Because a government shutdown is going to throw all sorts of scares into the market.
00:05:12.000Schumer said that Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to move the resolution.
00:05:16.000He indicated that his party was prepared to block it, and then he blamed Republicans, saying they chose a partisan path.
00:05:21.000Well, I mean, it seems kind of partisan to use your 47 votes in the United States Senate to hold up 53 votes in the United States Senate simply because, what, your base is mad at you for not standing up to President Trump's agenda enough?
00:05:36.000So Schumer's alternative, believe it or not, is, in fact, a clean CR but for a month.
00:05:41.000So instead of this clean continuing resolution that funds the government through September, instead he's proposing a 30-day clean continuing resolution and then we can redo all of this in a month.
00:05:49.000He, of course, is hoping the Republican coalition will fall apart in the meantime and that the economy will fall apart in the meantime during that month.
00:05:57.000If they got what they wanted, there'd be a month of continuing resolution.
00:06:00.000He's hoping the stock market crashes in that interim month and then he won't be blamed no matter what happens.
00:06:06.000But what he's doing right now makes no political sense.
00:06:17.000As an analyst of politics, I don't understand any of the logic here.
00:06:20.000The first rule of politics is do not get in the way of your opponent making a mistake.
00:06:26.000Do not interrupt your enemy when your enemy is making a mistake.
00:06:30.000If the idea from the Democrats is the Republicans own every aspect of the economy, you then have to let the Republicans own the economy if you inject yourself into that process.
00:06:39.000In order to shut down the government, you now own what comes next.
00:06:42.000By the way, Republicans know this, which is why House Speaker Mike Johnson says the ball is in Schumer's court.
00:06:47.000On Fox News, he said that the New York Democrat court has a big decision to make.
00:06:51.000Is he going to cast a vote to keep the government open, or is he going to be blamed for shutting it down?
00:06:55.000Republicans cast Schumer's remarks, according to the Wall Street Journal, as risky posturing.
00:06:59.000A Senate GOP aide said there was only one legislative vehicle available to the Senate that will keep the government open beyond Friday night, the House passed bill, and Democrats know that.
00:07:08.000Schumer's comments came apparently after Senate Democrats huddled for nearly two hours Wednesday behind closed doors.
00:07:13.000Apparently, many Democrats emerged grim-faced and laconic.
00:07:18.000Some, including Senators Mark Warner and Mark Kelly, both senators from somewhat purple states, Warner's from Virginia, Kelly, of course, is from Arizona, said they wanted to vote on a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government open for 30 days.
00:07:31.000Kelly said such a move would enable Congress to work on passing this year's appropriations bills on a bipartisan basis, right?
00:07:36.000They're hoping that, again, only funding the CR for a short term would force the Republicans to basically negotiate with Democrats.
00:07:44.000But that is not what's going to happen here.
00:07:47.000The GOP is fully willing to allow Democrats to own a government shutdown because Schumer is going to have to own it.
00:07:51.000If you invoke a filibuster in order to own a government shutdown, you are a moron.
00:07:55.000And what Chuck Schumer is doing here is really stupid and really quite bad.
00:08:00.000Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado said, quote, if we shut the government down in a funny way, you're giving the president even more power.
00:08:05.000So whether he keeps this part of government open, closes that part, how that money gets spent, he has absolute control, you know, like a king, which is true.
00:08:11.000During a government shutdown, the executive branch then gets to decide who is an essential worker.
00:08:16.000So they're playing right into Trump's hands.
00:08:18.000It's an almost best case scenario for President Trump.
00:08:20.000Let's say that Chuck Schumer does the filibuster and the government shutdown occurs because Chuck Schumer did the filibuster.
00:08:26.000Well, now President Trump has the unique capacity to determine Who exactly is an essential worker under federal law?
00:08:33.000At which point, let Elon Musk in there with a chainsaw, man.
00:08:37.000Senator John Fetterman, apparently the last non-moron in the Democratic caucus, said he would back the GOP bill.
00:08:43.000He said, I refuse to burn the village down to claim to save it.
00:08:46.000He said, imagine what was happening if you shut the government down.
00:09:10.000And there's no one there to replace it.
00:09:11.000And so now it's a battle between the Wokies, led by AOC and Jasmine Crockett, some of the progressives, led by Bernie Sanders and maybe Pramila Jayapal, who cross paths with the Wokies all the time.
00:09:24.000These pseudo-moderates, and I say pseudo-moderates because you have Gavin Newsom out wandering the landscape having on Michael Savage in an attempt to pretend that he is in fact some sort of moderate himself.
00:09:33.000One of the pseudo-moderates is Pete Buttigieg.
00:09:56.000He overperformed, but he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. And then he was elevated to Secretary of Transportation, where he presided over parts falling off of Boeing planes and trains derailing in East Palestine, Ohio.
00:10:10.000He was elevated to that position, not because he knew anything about transportation, but because in his own words, he liked trains.
00:10:21.000Who was so useless that he left on paternity leave.
00:10:24.000Remember, paternity leave is usually because you are attempting to help your physically recovering wife.
00:10:30.000As recognized, Pete Buttigieg is married to a man, which means that his non-physically ailing husband he stayed home with for two months and no one even noticed because he was so useless.
00:10:42.000Now he wants to run not for Senate, but for president.
00:10:45.000Now you say to yourself, wait a second, how did he run for Senate?
00:10:50.000But you forget, he moved with husband Chasen Buttigieg to Michigan in 2022, and he has spent approximately 22 seconds in Michigan.
00:10:59.000Therefore, he was considering a Michigan Senate run.
00:11:01.000Well, he announced today that he's not going to be running for Senate in Michigan, which, I mean, hell, I'm not running for Senate from New York.
00:11:09.000I have the same connections to New York that Pete Buttigieg has to Michigan.
00:11:13.000So he's not going to run for Michigan's open Senate seat.
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00:13:33.000David Axelrod said, quote, Pete was an A-list recruit who would have been a formidable candidate for the Senate had he chosen to run, but had he won in 26, would almost certainly have taken him out of the conversation for 28. This certainly keeps that option open.
00:13:49.000Pete Buttigieg, that's the one you choose?
00:13:52.000Or maybe, or maybe, Politico is pushing Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago, who did such a spectacular job that Chicago is now one of the most sought-after places to live in America.
00:14:03.000That'd also be the guy who was chief of staff to Barack Obama, famous for leaving dead fish.
00:14:20.000Traipsing across the political landscape seeking to gain support for a presidential run.
00:14:25.000According to Politico, named the political podcast, Emmanuel has likely been on it or will be shortly.
00:14:30.000He immediately snagged a CNN contract in a regular Washington Post column.
00:14:33.000No small accomplishment for a formal official at a moment of retrenchment for news organizations.
00:14:38.000He's also hitting the lecture circuit.
00:14:39.000Just as striking is to talk to anybody in high-level democratic politics who knows Emmanuel and hear how matter-of-fact they are about the inevitability of his candidacy.
00:14:48.000Apparently, he's already road testing the first outlines of a stump speech, or at least an issue, that he can make his own.
00:14:54.000He said, I'm done with the discussion of locker rooms.
00:14:56.000I'm done with the discussion of bathrooms.
00:14:57.000We better start having a conversation about the classroom.
00:15:01.000He said, we can lead a discussion and force a topic onto the agenda of this country that's worthy of having a debate about.
00:17:18.000And I watched in real time as the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped as he talked.
00:17:23.000When he talks about tariffs and he discusses trade barriers, the markets start to freak out because, at the very least, it means more volatility.
00:17:33.000I'm not saying this because I wish to criticize President Trump.
00:17:36.000I'm saying this because I wish President Trump to succeed.
00:17:39.000If you look at the chart of President Trump's first term, what you see is the Dow Jones Industrial Average on a straight Arithmetic increase line up.
00:17:48.000And so far, in his term, the line has been down.
00:17:53.000And that is not exactly what you're looking for.
00:17:56.000Well, President Trump is upping the ante by now saying that he wants to increase tariffs on the EU. Now again, if the goal of all of this is to get the EU to lower its own tariffs against the United States, I'm for it.
00:18:07.000If the goal is to leverage some other deliverable from other countries, I'm for it.
00:18:11.000If the goal is to protect national security, I'm for it.
00:18:14.000If this is just because tariffs are fun and games, or because President Trump has been talked into the idea that trade wars are both good and easy to win, that is not good economic policy.
00:18:27.000It should be good news for the Trump administration.
00:18:29.000According to the Wall Street Journal, inflation actually cooled last month.
00:18:33.000Consumer prices were up 2.8% in February from a year earlier.
00:18:37.000Now, again, remember, that is still an increase in inflation.
00:18:39.000You're looking generally for a 2% year-on-year increase?
00:18:42.000It is a decrease in the rate of inflation, but it is actually an increase in the actual inflation of the cost.
00:18:51.000There was a January gain of 3%, so it's moving in sort of the right direction.
00:18:56.000Prices excluding food and energy rose 3.1%.
00:18:59.000That was the lowest year-over-year reading since 2021, and it was lower than 3.2% expected by economists.
00:19:06.000But all of the sort of uncertainty that is being injected into the process by President Trump, He's not helping matters.
00:19:13.000And tax cuts, deregulation, consistent policy, these are the things that make for a strong, healthy, and growing economy.
00:19:22.000And yet this morning, President Trump threatened a 200% tariff on alcohol from the EU. He said the EU, this is on Truth Social, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the world, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% tariff on whiskey.
00:19:36.000That, of course, was retaliatory tariff put in place by the Europeans after the United States put tariffs on other European products.
00:19:42.000If this tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200 percent tariff on all wines, champagnes and alcoholic products coming out of France and other EU represented countries.
00:19:50.000This will be great for the wine and champagne businesses in the United States.
00:19:54.000I mean, it's not great for the wine and champagne consumers in the United States.
00:19:58.000But he is correct that when you institute taxes on American competitors, it tends to be good for the businesses in those particular areas.
00:20:05.000Here's President Trump ripping on the EU yesterday.
00:20:07.000The EU was set up in order to take advantage of the United States.
00:20:26.000We had leaders that didn't have a clue.
00:20:28.000Or let's say they weren't business people, but they didn't have a clue what was happening.
00:20:31.000And all of a sudden, Ireland has our pharmaceutical companies and this beautiful island of five million people.
00:20:42.000It's got the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry.
00:20:49.000Okay, well, I mean, one of the reasons that Ireland has been drawing American businesses is because they lowered the corporate tax rate, which is something we should do in the United States.
00:20:57.000Ireland never signed on to the idiotic Joe Biden worldwide global corporate tax rate that he was proposing of 15%.
00:21:04.000Ireland just went right under it at like 10% and drove a bunch of businesses to reshore.
00:21:07.000That's something the United States could do.
00:21:09.000If we are the best place in the world to do business, businesses will come here.
00:21:12.000That is why the United States historically has been such an unbelievable powerhouse in terms of foreign investment, in terms of economic growth.
00:21:19.000It's why the dollar is the world's reserve currency and all the rest.
00:21:23.000President Trump, when he said that the EU was set up to take advantage of the United States, that's not true.
00:21:28.000The European economic community was actually mostly set up in opposition to the communist bloc in Eastern Europe.
00:21:34.000It was meant to create a robust trading and free trade infrastructure inside Western Europe to combat the influence of communists from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
00:21:44.000And the real question in all of this is, what is President Trump intending to do?
00:21:49.000If President Trump wants to explain what the goal is and how long it's going to take and how we get there, that would be a welcome development for everyone who invests.
00:22:57.000But the tariff policy is, in fact, a wrench in the plans of the Trump administration.
00:23:03.000Caroline Lovett, whose job it is to defend the president's policies, obviously, from the White House podium, she says that President Trump is going to continue to use tariffs.
00:23:10.000The president is effectively utilizing tariffs, not just as a negotiating tactic, but actually implementing them, as we saw with the 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, to bolster those industries here in the United States, to advance our national security interests, to create good-paying jobs here at home.
00:23:30.000And you've actually seen the steel and aluminum industries applaud those tariffs as being good for their manufacturing, for their revenue, and for their workers, most importantly.
00:23:40.000And so the president will continue to effectively utilize tariffs while, again, driving down the cost of living in this country.
00:23:48.000So, again, the kind of notion that we actually need to protect as a sort of matter of national security, the domestic American steel industry, there are problems with that basic idea.
00:23:59.000So I thought this would be an excellent time to ask our sponsors over at Perplexity, quote, what percentage of total U.S. steel production goes to U.S. military consumption?
00:24:30.000The percentage of total U.S. steel production that goes to U.S. military consumption is relatively small.
00:24:35.000The American Iron and Steel Institute reported that in 2020, military applications represented approximately 3% of annual domestic steel production.
00:24:43.000However, some sources suggest that the actual figure may be even lower, with the Pentagon historically purchasing significantly less than 1% of the U.S. steel industry's output.
00:24:52.000So, yeah, in other words, the idea that you need massive steel tariffs to protect...
00:24:57.000The American steel industries that our military has access to the materials it needs, that doesn't line up with the factual reality here.
00:25:04.000The predictable effect of all of this is that the EU is going to unleash new tariffs.
00:25:08.000Canada is unleashing new tariffs as well.
00:25:10.000According to the Washington Post, both the EU and Canada hit back Wednesday at President Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs with levies of their own on billions of dollars worth of U.S. products, including bourbon and motorcycles, while warning of further retaliation as well.
00:25:23.000Apparently, the European Commission, which is the executive branch of the EU, According to the Washington Post, it will reimpose tariffs dating to Trump's first term on April 1st.
00:25:32.000European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, we deeply regret this measure.
00:25:36.000Jobs are at stake, price is up, nobody needs that.
00:25:39.000And by the way, if you're trying to face down Chinese predation and Chinese growth, actually pushing away countries that are then going to turn to China for more of their product and to Chinese markets, that's not the way to do this on sort of a national security basis.
00:25:51.000Folks, none of this is a great way to face down Chinese growth.
00:25:55.000The fact is that China is a geopolitical enemy of the United States.
00:25:58.000They do everything from cheating on trade to stealing our IP to maybe threatening your identity.
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00:28:10.000That's cars with a K. Meanwhile, Canada is turning toward the left, not toward the right.
00:28:15.000And if you want parties who are more right wing elected in allied countries, then perhaps what you ought to do is not provide fodder to the opponents of those allies in those countries.
00:28:27.000If Pierre Pelleve becomes not the prime minister of Canada because of President Trump's tariffs, that is not going to be a good thing.
00:28:35.000Meanwhile, the Canadians are injecting their own brand of uncertainty into the markets because they're saying to everybody else, listen, if President Trump is coming after us, who the hell won't he come after?
00:28:44.000We have like a free trade agreement that we signed with President Trump that he negotiated in his first term and he's still coming after us.
00:28:49.000According to Politico, Foreign Minister Melanie Jolie plans to welcome her G7 counterparts to Quebec with a warning, quote, if the U.S. can do this to us, their closest friend, then nobody is safe.
00:29:00.000Jolie told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday she plans to raise the issue with European and British members, advising them Canada is the canary in the coal mine.
00:29:08.000Speaking to reporters from Ireland on Wednesday, Secretary of State Rubio said that there will be a lot to talk about at the G7 meeting.
00:29:14.000Quote, it is not a meeting about how we're going to take over Canada.
00:29:17.000But again, the more that the Trump administration makes that joke, because we're not taking over Canada, the more the Trump administration makes that joke, the more the Canadians, particularly on the left, respond as though he is serious.
00:29:29.000Here is the Canadian Minister of Finance, Dominique LeBlanc, who says precisely that.
00:29:35.000These partnerships go back decades, but Canada is an independent, sovereign, proud country.
00:29:41.000And frankly, Canadians find it insulting that somebody as important in global affairs as the president of the United States of America sort of belittles Canada by saying, oh, you know, you're not an independent, sovereign country.
00:30:48.000He is minus 12 percentage points on the issue that Americans say is the most important.
00:30:56.000Now, as I say, there are too many important things that President Trump has to do in the next two years to get caught up.
00:31:05.000And the reality is that unless you have a robust tariff regime for a very long period of time that is specifically designed to increase prices on American consumers, you are not going to get a vast number of manufacturing jobs back into the United States.
00:31:24.000And even if you do, companies are going to start trying to drive down prices through automation.
00:32:10.000If every president's agenda is tied to kind of the low point of the agenda, this is true for every president, whatever is the worst thing in the agenda tends to define the entire agenda.
00:32:20.000Then what you want to do is avoid the boo-boo.
00:32:25.000Cuts to the DOE are undoubtedly an excellent thing.
00:32:28.000Not only that, other good things are happening, too.
00:32:31.000Yesterday, according to Breitbart, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced she would move to clear the hundreds of backlog cases to clean air, saying the Biden administration focused on ideological pursuits rather than the agency's core mission.
00:32:42.000The agency said it would commit to working with states and tribes to resolve hundreds of backlog state implementation plans and tribal implementation plans the Biden-Harris administration could not or would not resolve.
00:32:53.000The EPA administrator wrote, quote, with more than 140 million Americans living in non-attainment areas around the country, cooperative federalism and clearing out the state implementation plan backlog will make significant strides to improving the air we breathe.
00:33:05.000Now again, one of the goals here is to also free up industry.
00:33:10.000The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to review and approve all of the so-called SIPs that meet the requirements of the law.
00:33:17.000But many states have raised concerns about being punished for emissions outside the control of their state.
00:33:21.000An air quality monitor is not being placed in the most logistical areas.
00:33:24.000The EPA says that it's going to make sure that air quality is protected, but also they're going to generate more economic growth by getting rid of stupid regulations and stupid regulatory overreach.
00:33:37.000Zeldin said the EPA is going to aggressively pursue an agenda powering the great American comeback.
00:33:42.000That is our agenda we wanted to announce with you.
00:33:46.000EPA wants to help power the great American comeback.
00:33:48.000This is the kind of stuff that needs to be focused on.
00:33:54.000If you go back to that CNN poll, what you will see is that when it comes to handling the federal budget, President Trump's highest approval ratings are in that particular area.
00:34:01.000He's got immigration of 51% handling the federal budget at something like 48%.
00:34:32.000Meanwhile, President Trump can sit over here and just reap the benefits of having a very, very famous person be the focus of the ire of his opposition while the good effects are actually accruing to his administration.
00:34:45.000Meanwhile, the media don't know how to handle it.
00:34:47.000Dana Bash on CNN had maybe the funniest line yesterday.
00:34:49.000She was talking about big balls again.
00:34:52.000This would be one of the young Elon Musk staffers who's going through the federal government.
00:34:57.000And she started talking about apparently how Elon Musk likes when she says balls on TV. I don't even know what's happening now.
00:35:03.000I think at the risk of Elon Musk tweeting about me, because apparently he likes when I say the word balls on TV, I will say that balls and strikes when you're talking about Steve Bannon.
00:35:14.000When he calls balls and strikes, he calls strikes balls and balls strikes.
00:35:21.000Great things happening over at CNN. And the complaints by people like Rashida Tlaib about how Elon Musk is being funded by the government, they just don't ring true.
00:35:30.000So Rashida Tlaib was out there screaming yesterday about how billionaires are being funded and Medicaid is being cut.
00:35:56.000These are the best the Democrats have to offer.
00:35:58.000Again, credit to John Fetterman for being the only sane person in the building.
00:36:01.000He was on MSNBC, and MSNBC was suggesting once again that the Republicans were in league with the oligarchs, and Fetterman's like, come on, man, really?
00:36:11.000And I would just, I would ask Democrats, like, start talking like a regular person.
00:36:15.000Most people are not sure what an oligarch is, you know?
00:36:19.000It's like, okay, is an oligarch, is it like a rich, is it a rich, a rich dude or woman?
00:36:24.000Okay, well, but there's also another, a little secret too.
00:36:28.000Democrats, you know, we like billionaires if they're giving to our...
00:36:33.000To our causes or to our party as well, too.
00:37:30.000I'm confused as to why this is even an issue.
00:37:33.000Again, we're not talking about American citizens who are participating in speech we don't like.
00:37:37.000We are talking about people who are here as guests of the United States or trying to earn their way into citizenship.
00:37:43.000This notion that they magically ought to be treated exactly the same as natural-born American citizens or people who have already earned their citizenship is, like, if that's the case, then why do we even have immigration standards at all?
00:38:02.000Marco Rubio had the best response to this yesterday.
00:38:05.000Secretary of State Rubio has invoked his power as the Secretary of State to say that this guy is a foreign policy threat.
00:38:10.000He's a member of a group that actively called for armed uprising against Western civilization.
00:38:14.000Here is Secretary of State Rubio yesterday.
00:38:17.000When you come to the United States as a visitor, which is what a visa is, which is how this individual entered this country, as a visitor's visa.
00:38:29.000If you tell us, when you apply, hi, I'm trying to get into the United States on a student visa, I am a big supporter of Hamas, a murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that...
00:38:39.000Teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that returns more bodies than live hostages.
00:38:46.000If you tell us that you are in favor of a group like this, and if you tell us when you apply for your visa, and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, anti-Semitic activities.
00:38:58.000I intend to shut down your universities.
00:39:00.000If you told us all these things when you applied for a visa, we would deny your visa.
00:39:10.000And if you end up having a green card, not citizenship, but a green card as a result of that visa while you're here and those activities, we're going to kick you out.
00:39:19.000This seems inarguable, and yet Democrats are somehow finding a way to argue with all of this.
00:39:23.000The lawyer from Mahmoud Khalil read a letter from Mahmoud Khalil's wife yesterday suggesting he had been kidnapped.
00:39:31.000Oh, the irony of a man who cheers for actual kidnappings by a terrorist group claiming he has been kidnapped because the legal process is now kicking him out of the country for being a supporter of that terror group.
00:39:42.000My husband was kidnapped from our home and it's shameful that the United States government continues to hold him because he stood for the rights and lives of his people.
00:39:56.000I demand his immediate release and return to our family.
00:40:01.000His disappearance has devastated our lives.
00:40:05.000Every day without him is filled with uncertainty.
00:40:09.000Not just for me, but for our entire family and community.
00:40:14.000I'm sorry, the family of Idan Alexander, the American citizen being held in Gaza by Hamas, would like to have a word.
00:40:20.000I've yet to see the Democrats tweeting out, free Idan Alexander, an actual American citizen being held by an actual honest-to-God terror group, kidnapped, into Gaza.
00:40:30.000This lawyer for the wife reading a letter in which she claims that he was kidnapped.
00:40:34.000Nope, that's called the legal process taking place.
00:40:38.000Right now, Khalil is being held in Louisiana pending deportation.
00:40:42.000The U.S. District Court judge, a guy named Jesse Furman, who is heavily associated, shall we say, with family members of the left, his family members work for the Obama administration, set a schedule on Wednesday for the lawyers to present written arguments later this week.
00:40:54.000He said his order to keep Khalil in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana was due not to the merits of any arguments, but to provide time to address the important issues his case raises.
00:41:04.000It's unclear where the case is going to be held.
00:41:07.000It is not totally clear whether that is true or not.
00:41:09.000We'll assume that he does for the sake of argument.
00:41:12.000Again, the real question in all this is how this guy got in the country in the first place.
00:41:17.000Who is actually analyzing the student visas?
00:41:20.000Who decided that America desperately needs someone who worked for the UNRWA? In the United States to study at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, where apparently his only job was to agitate on behalf of Hamas.
00:41:35.000Meanwhile, Democrats embracing him full scale.
00:41:37.000A person who may in fact become the next mayor of New York, this person apparently is running second in polls to Andrew Cuomo right now, a person named Zoran Kwame Mamdani, went to an event yesterday at which Borders are Tom Homan was.
00:41:51.000And he started trying to yell at Tom Homan.
00:41:53.000So first of all, I do like the hold me back element of this.
00:43:02.000Caroline Levitt at the White House said, we hope that the Russians will accept this.
00:43:06.000The president's team continues to be in correspondence with the Russians.
00:43:11.000In fact, our national security advisor, Mike Waltz, had a call with his Russian counterpart today in pursuit of ending this war and striking a peace deal with Russia and with Ukraine.
00:43:23.000We had great progress on that front yesterday with the secretary of state and our national security advisor having those peace talks in Saudi Arabia.
00:43:31.000the Ukrainians have finally agreed to a ceasefire and have agreed to this long-term peace plan.
00:43:37.000And we expect, we hope, and we urge the Russians to do the same.
00:43:41.000And our team is currently working on getting this done.
00:43:43.000Secretary of State Marco Rubio is saying the same intelligence sharing has continued with the Ukrainians' It should.
00:43:50.000Because one of the things that's happening right now is that the Russians are pushing very aggressively back against Ukrainian gains in Kursk, which is a Russian area.
00:43:57.000The reason the Ukrainians are trying to hold that is for purposes of negotiation.
00:44:01.000They want to say, you withdraw from here and we'll withdraw from there.
00:44:03.000The Russians are taking this time to really up the ante.
00:44:06.000Here's Secretary of State Rubio saying, listen, the Ukrainians are at the table.
00:44:12.000The United States has done a good thing for the world in bringing this process forward, and now we all eagerly await the Russian response and urge them strongly to consider ending all hostilities so people will stop dying, so bullets will stop flying, and so a process can begin to find a permanent peace.
00:44:34.000Okay, so the question now is whether Russia is going to take the United States up on this offer.
00:44:39.000It appears the answer for now is not even remotely.
00:44:42.000According to the Financial Times, quote, Russia does not want a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine and is pushing for a long-term peace settlement that will take into account its interests and concerns, according to a senior aide to Vladimir Putin.
00:44:55.000Foreign policy advisor in Russia told state television on Thursday the 30-day ceasefire proposed after talks between the U.S. and Ukraine this week, quote, was nothing other than a temporary breather for Ukrainian troops.
00:45:04.000Nobody needs steps that imitate peaceful actions in this situation, said Ushakov, adding Moscow hopes the U.S. knows our position and wants to believe they will take it into account as we work together going forward.
00:45:14.000That is Putin taking an extremely hard line prior to the arrival of Steve Witkoff, the president's envoy, who's arriving today in Moscow.
00:45:23.000The demands that are being made right now are crazy from the Russians.
00:45:29.000According to a document written in February by an influential Moscow-based think tank closed to the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, which is sort of the modern KGB, lays out Russia's maximalist demands for any end to the conflict in Ukraine.
00:45:42.000It dismisses any preliminary plans for a peace deal within 100 days as impossible to realize.
00:45:46.000And says a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis cannot happen before 2026. That's them attempting to get Trump to pressure Ukraine.
00:46:09.000Through the creation of a buffer zone in Ukraine's northeast on the border with Russian regions such as Bryansk and Belgorod, as well as a demilitarized zone in southern Ukraine near Crimea.
00:46:19.000That latter would affect the Odessa region.
00:46:21.000So in other words, they actually want more territory than they have actually won on the battlefield.
00:46:24.000In addition, the document discusses the need for the complete dismantling of the current Ukrainian government.
00:47:30.000So a lot going on this week at the White House.
00:47:32.000You were able to ask a question this week.
00:47:38.000Yes, so at the briefing a couple days ago, Caroline Levitt called on me.
00:47:42.000I was able to ask about Zelensky's letter to President Trump, which we learned about last week in President Trump's joint address to the nation.
00:47:50.000And he shared that Zelensky had sent him a letter.
00:47:52.000He didn't really share what else Zelensky had said.
00:48:08.000And Caroline didn't really expand on the contents of the letter, but she did share with us that that very day, Secretary Rubio was in Saudi Arabia meeting with Ukrainian officials.
00:48:18.000She told us that the talks were going really well.
00:48:21.000And shortly after that press briefing ended, we learned that Ukraine and the United States were in a great position and had agreed to a ceasefire and more.
00:48:31.000We're hoping for more developments there.
00:48:34.000And we know President Trump will be meeting with members of the We're looking forward to what comes next in that area.
00:48:44.000You know, President Trump has been very emphatic about his desire for peace between Russia and Ukraine, and that's what this whole White House has been gearing up towards for the last several weeks.
00:48:55.000So, Mary Margaret, obviously a lot of eyes on Russia and Ukraine.
00:48:58.000Russia today apparently suggested that they were not going to sign on to any temporary ceasefire, that instead they were going to seek some sort of permanent settlement.
00:49:04.000Of course, the terms of that permanent settlement are extraordinarily onerous on Ukraine.
00:49:07.000Very unlikely Ukraine accepts that, so we'll have to see how all of that plays out.
00:49:11.000Meanwhile, the presidents of the United States hosted the president of Ireland in the Oval yesterday, and they got into a number of topics ranging from trade to his love for Conor McGregor.
00:49:23.000Well, that was a really interesting visit.
00:49:25.000Actually, to backtrack a little bit, I was able to start the whole day at the Vice President's residence up in northwest D.C. because that's where the Irish Premier Michael Martin started his day as well, at a breakfast at the Vice President's residence.
00:49:39.000And Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his wife were in attendance, RFK Jr., a number of other high-profile Irish Catholic, Irish public figures in the Trump administration and in Washington, D.C. And I was able to post some pictures from outside.
00:49:55.000I think it's really interesting to see what the Vance's life looks like up there in the house where Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff used to live.
00:50:01.000Really interesting turn of events there.
00:50:03.000They've got a little playhouse outside the residence, as well as a swing for the Vance kids who had gone off to school in their very highly secured vehicles before we got there.
00:50:13.000So all of that was really interesting.
00:50:15.000And then, of course, Vance hosted Michael Martin at his residence.
00:50:18.000They talked about the importance of the Irish-American relationship.
00:50:22.000Which is also what President Trump and Michael Martin talked about in the Oval Office yesterday.
00:50:26.000One kind of cute moment, I guess you would say, was at the breakfast, Vance joked that he was wearing St. Patrick's Day socks with shamrocks on them.
00:50:34.000And he said to Martin, you're going to have to defend me if President Trump doesn't like them because he's a very conservative dresser.
00:50:40.000Well, sure enough, later in the day in the Oval Office, President Trump kind of teased Vice President Vance about his socks, which, you know, had these massive green shamrocks on them, and said he loved them.
00:50:51.000Also, another one that was notable, Brian Glenn, another White House reporter, asked Michael Martin about Rosie O'Donnell, saying that she wants to move to Ireland.
00:51:01.000And asked why anyone would want Rosie O'Donnell in their country, which is a little bit of a surprise question.
00:51:06.000I think a lot of us wouldn't have expected that one.
00:51:08.000You can see in the video, Vice President Vance kind of doubling over, covering his face and laughing.
00:51:14.000And Trump had some funny quips in there as well.
00:51:18.000Michael Martin talked about how important the relationship between Ireland and the United States is.
00:51:24.000He also talked about the role that President Trump is playing in peace between Russia and Ukraine and really emphasized his interest in furthering that peace as well.
00:51:34.000Mary Margaret, really appreciate your time.
00:51:36.000And she, again, is the person on the ground at the White House keeping an eye on things every single day.