The DOJ has now arrested Don Lemon. The left says it s because he was journalism. The DOJ says no, it s Because he was actually organizing a violation of the law. We ll bring you all the latest plus, the latest from Minneapolis, and the President selects a new Fed chair. Plus, we ll go into his economic theories.
00:00:48.000Well, not because someone actually punches Knowles, although I would love that.
00:00:50.000It's because he is literally in a bar on Broadway in Nashville with a live, partially intoxicated audience debating whomever dares to grab the mic.
00:00:58.000All of that is streaming right now on Daily Wire Plus.
00:01:01.000If you're not a member yet, go to dailywireplus.com and join right now.
00:01:05.000Also, the debates happen here on the show, and now the takeaways can land in your inbox.
00:01:09.000Every week, we put together a newsletter that distills a full week of analysis into one place.
00:01:14.000Consider it an end-of-the-week memo straight from my desk.
00:01:16.000It's a comprehensive look at the stories dominating the news, what matters, why it matters, what's at stake, delivered straight to you every Friday.
00:01:22.000To sign up for the Ben Shapiro Show newsletter, be sure to follow me on the Daily Wire Plus app or at dailywire.com.
00:01:29.000Well, Don Lemon has been arrested, the former CNN talking head/slash host who went out on his own and formed his own podcast and who then either trailed or was involved with a protest that pretty clearly violated the FACE Act, which was designed to guarantee access to abortion clinics for people who didn't want to go through protests and also designed to protect churches in their actual attempts to perform their services.
00:01:58.000Well, it turns out that he has now been arrested by federal agents.
00:02:02.000The federal government had been targeting Lemon ever since he went at very least hand in glove with these protesters to a church in order to disrupt services.
00:02:12.000According to the New York Times, the former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested late Thursday night on charges he violated federal law during a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
00:02:20.000Now, that case had been rejected last week by a magistrate judge.
00:02:24.000Lemon claims that he was simply reporting as a journalist when he entered the city's church January 18th to observe a demonstration against immigration crackdowns in the area.
00:02:32.000The protesters then got up and disrupted the service where an ICE official serves as a pastor chanting ICE out.
00:02:39.000The Trump administration tried to charge eight people over the episode, including Lemon.
00:02:45.000The magistrate judge approved charges against three of the eight people and rejected the evidence against Lemon and the others as insufficient.
00:02:51.000So the DOJ petitioned a federal appellate court to force the judge to issue the additional warrants.
00:02:57.000Abby Lowell is the lawyer for Don Lemon, sort of a lawyer to the political stars.
00:03:03.000He put out a statement, quote, Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles where he was covering the Grammy Awards.
00:03:08.000Don has been a journalist for 30 years.
00:03:10.000His constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done.
00:03:15.000And Lowell said this unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from many crises facing this administration will not stand.
00:03:23.000Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.
00:03:26.000Now, again, the claim that's being made by the Trump administration is that when these people invaded a church and disrupted services and started shouting at the pastor in violation of the FACE Act, that Lemon wasn't just a person who followed them in there with a microphone or even a journalist who knew beforehand that he was complicit in the organization of the event, that he was involved in a conspiracy to disrupt services here for political purposes.
00:03:51.000And those are the charges apparently that are being pursued here, conspiring to deprive rights and interfering with someone's religious freedom in a house of worship.
00:03:59.000Now, again, Lemon claims that he quote unquote didn't even know they were going to this church until we followed them there.
00:04:06.000Kind of clear that that much at least is not true.
00:04:10.000Here is a clip from the day of Lemon was pretty clearly in cahoots with the protesters.
00:04:16.000Speaking to an organization there that's gearing up for resistance and protest.
00:04:21.000I've been surprised, pleasantly surprised to see the community coming together.
00:04:27.000Diverse community, if you see this when we first pulled up, we're like, wait a minute, which operation are we at?
00:04:33.000And as it turns out, because we're like, well, this is kind of MAGA-coded, right?
00:04:37.000Saw the American flag or whatever, but these are resistance protesters.
00:04:41.000They're planning an operation that we're going to follow them on.
00:04:43.000I can't tell you exactly what they're doing, but it's called Operation Pull-Up.
00:04:48.000And it's Nekema Armstrong, and she has been doing this since George Floyd, Dante Wright, and others, where they surprise people, catch them off guard, and hold them to account.
00:05:55.000And then we disrupt business as usual.
00:05:58.000So that's what we're about to go do right now.
00:06:00.000We've had a lot of success with the times we have done Operation Pull Up.
00:06:05.000So again, they're sort of in a random parking lot, and then they proceed to go to the church and disrupt the services.
00:06:12.000Now, Lemon said once the protest started in the church, we did an active journalism, which was report on it and talk to the people involved, including the pastor, members of the church and members of the organization.
00:06:23.000Now, that seems to be not particularly true, that it was only once the thing started that he decided to join on and that he was really not joined with them.
00:06:34.000And pretty clearly, they're blurring the lines.
00:06:36.000Now, to be fair to Lemon and just speaking legally, there is a fine line between a journalist doing a ride-along, even with people who are committing criminal acts, which, by the way, is legal.
00:06:48.000Journalists do this on a fairly regular basis, and journalists being involved in the planning and commission of the crime.
00:06:55.000It's being accused that Lemon was involved in the planned and commission of this crime and that he was an integral part of that, presumably, because they wouldn't have done it if they didn't have Lemon there covering it.
00:07:07.000That they required him as part of the plan.
00:07:09.000That is going to be the case that is made by the federal government.
00:07:11.000Now, naturally, people are claiming that this is a crackdown on the First Amendment.
00:07:15.000They're suggesting that this is an attempt by the Trump administration to quote unquote silence people.
00:07:26.000We'll have to see what evidence they have, particularly in terms of prior planning from Lemon and the people who are involved in this.
00:07:33.000Was he involved in recommending sites that they should go to?
00:07:35.000Was he involved in organizing transportation?
00:07:37.000Was he involved in determining how they should protest?
00:07:41.000Those are going to be the questions that come up in court.
00:07:44.000But it's pretty clear that Lemon was involved in some capacity.
00:07:49.000I'm not going to prejudge this thing legally, but for people to claim that there is no shot at all, that the federal government has no case at all, that basically they're just arresting him for being a journalist on the scene.
00:08:01.000So I'm not going to proclaim guilt or innocence.
00:08:04.000The alleged crime, again, would be conspiracy that he actually conspired, and we'll have to see the evidence of that.
00:08:08.000But the attempt to treat this as this is a violation of the First Amendment, it's an attempt to destroy journalistic capability and all the rest.
00:08:18.000I do not think that that is accurate either.
00:08:21.000Again, the way the rest of the press is covering this is as a journalistic crackdown.
00:08:25.000You may have noticed the journalists have been covering what's going on in Minnesota a lot, and none of them have been arrested.
00:08:30.000The only person who's been arrested at this point is Lemon.
00:08:33.000And presumably, that's because the federal government is going to have to present evidence that he was involved in a conspiracy to violate the FACE Act.
00:08:41.000Well, joining me on the line is Mary Margaret Olihan.
00:08:43.000She, of course, is our Daily Wire White House correspondent.
00:08:52.000So let's talk about what's going on with ICE and Minnesota.
00:08:55.000Obviously, the big news of the day is the arrest of Don Lemon by the Department of Justice.
00:09:01.000What is the sentiment around the White House around the current situation with regard to ICE in Minnesota?
00:09:05.000And also, what have you heard regarding the Lemon arrest?
00:09:09.000Well, actually, Ben, I was at the screening of Melania at the Kennedy Center last night, and I bumped into Harmine Dylan, who told me she had recently been in California for some meetings.
00:09:19.000And at the time, I thought maybe she had just been there, you know, to enjoy the California weather when it's so freezing here in Washington, D.C.
00:09:26.000But turns out her meetings probably had something to do with this arrest.
00:09:31.000Don Lemon is now facing charges from the DOJ as the DOJ had warned that he would.
00:09:37.000And, you know, this has been predicted by the DOJ that it's been coming.
00:09:40.000I believe Harmit has hinted about this online.
00:09:43.000She's the assistant civil rights, or she's the assistant attorney for the civil rights division at the DOJ.
00:10:12.000And this attack occurred because the pastor had alleged ICE associations.
00:10:17.000But Ben, as we know, he was leading a service worshiping God with these other churchgoers.
00:10:23.000And at the end of the day, these protesters went into this church and disrupted this worship of God.
00:10:30.000And the DOJ has deemed that this incident constituted an attack.
00:10:36.000And something that I found really interesting, Ben, and I know you do as well.
00:10:40.000Our colleague Luke Roziak had reported earlier this week that the top staffer for Hennepin County's Soros-backed prosecutor was among those protesters that stormed into that church.
00:10:51.000So James Lundy, one of those protesters, works as an intergovernmental affairs coordinator for Hennepin County.
00:10:58.000And he's married to St. Paul City Council member Anika Bowie.
00:11:02.000And he's running for a seat in the state legislature as a Democrat.
00:11:06.000This is all as the Department of Justice was pursuing federal charges against the protesters.
00:11:11.000And he was the very staffer that would interface with the federal government.
00:11:15.000Now, Lundy was arrested with Don Lemon early this morning, according to Pam Bonnie.
00:11:20.000He was arrested with three other people in connection with this coordinated attack on the city's church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
00:11:27.000And it just shows you the level of intertwinement between these protesters, between these activists, and a lot of these local city officials in Minneapolis.
00:11:38.000Mary Margaret, on a broader level, obviously what's going on in Minnesota has eaten up an enormous amount of the administration's time and effort.
00:11:45.000And there has been some pretty obvious conflict inside the administration in terms of the viewpoints expressed publicly with regard to the killing of Alex Predi, for example, the deployment of Tom Homan to Minneapolis.
00:11:56.000What's the mood inside the White House?
00:11:58.000What are you hearing in terms of potential conflicts between, say, Stephen Miller, Christy Noam, Tom Homan?
00:12:04.000Because the approaches seem to be pretty different.
00:12:05.000And obviously, the demotion of Greg Bovino, the movement of him away from Minneapolis, says something about the administration's shift in approach.
00:12:14.000I mean, Tom Holman's presence in Minneapolis is kind of a repudiation of Christy Noam and Bovino, Christy Noam-Lewandowski team.
00:12:22.000We know they were here at the White House earlier this week meeting with the president, Christy Noam and Corey Lewandowski for a private meeting for, I believe, two hours after it was announced that Tom Holman was heading to Minneapolis.
00:12:35.000He gave this presser yesterday morning where he just kind of calmly delivered his thoughts on the process to the whole country, perhaps the whole world.
00:12:45.000And he calmly told everyone that things were not going to proceed as they had been.
00:12:50.000We've been hearing from Jenny Terr, who's our fantastic immigration reporter, that there's going to be some changes and already have been some changes to who DHS is apprehending, who their targets are.
00:13:02.000She's been doing a lot of great reporting on that.
00:13:04.000And I know she's got some great DHS sources that are sharing that information with her.
00:13:08.000But as of right now, you know, we saw right away from the White House top figures condemning Alex Predty as a domestic terrorist.
00:13:16.000I think we've seen a little bit more caution and restraint in recent days as we wait for the results of this investigation into what exactly happened there.
00:13:24.000But the release of that footage, the clip from a BBC-affiliated outlet did show us a side of Alex Predty that many people, you know, many people across the board, but especially on the left, had wanted to say didn't exist.
00:13:38.000You know, he was portrayed to us as a very kind, loving soul, ICU nurse who would never have harmed anyone.
00:13:46.000But that footage did, in fact, show that he was kicking the taillights out of ICE officers' vehicles, begging them to assault him.
00:13:52.000And keep in mind, you know, I'm in Washington, D.C. I've been on numerous news shows this week where I've had everyone telling me that this was a kind and good man and that, you know, the Trump White House was unfairly demonizing him.
00:14:07.000Well, you know, the video does not necessarily change the other videos we saw involving the death of Alex Preddy, but it does show us, as we know, that this was not the man that he was painted to be.
00:14:20.000And we don't know if there were other incidents involving him in the same way.
00:14:22.000So I think the Trump White House views that video as a partial vindication for their rhetoric on this, which they've gotten a lot of criticism for.
00:14:29.000And President Trump himself actually put out a statement this morning talking about Alex Predi and has some very harsh words for him and talked about the video and how it showed that a lot of people have been lying about Alex Predty and going so far as MSNBC did to kind of face-tune him and make him a more handsome man, more appealing to the crowds online who have been glorifying him as a saint.
00:14:53.000So this is a tumultuous, ever-moving news cycle.
00:14:57.000And I have to believe we're going to see more footage coming out soon.
00:15:00.000Tom Holman's presence in Minneapolis, I think, has had a slightly calming effect for now, but it remains to be seen what will come next and whether Christy Noam will ultimately be replaced here.
00:15:12.000We're hearing some names floated and that would be quite the shakeup here in Washington.
00:15:20.000Mary Margaret, you had the opportunity to ask spokespeople for Gavin Newsom about his recent press office comment.
00:15:27.000He has this sort of checkered history with the press office.
00:15:30.000Obviously, I asked him on his own podcast about the fact that his press office had suggested that ICE was engaged in state-sponsored terrorism, the killing of Renee Good.
00:15:37.000And then his press office put out a statement via their ex account, which is always quite lit, suggesting that Greg Bovino was a member of the SS, that he was a member of the Gestapo.
00:15:49.000And you had the opportunity to ask the Newsom team about that.
00:15:52.000Their response seemed to be, shall we say, less conciliatory than Newsom's response directly to me when I asked him about similar matters.
00:16:02.000And you have to wonder if Newsom is perhaps more interested in being a charmer in person than his staff is in echoing what he exactly means.
00:16:10.000Look, I watched that clip of you and Newsom, where he really conceded that his rhetoric on ICE was putting, was not a, not a good idea at the bare minimum.
00:16:20.000And then when I reached out to his spokesman earlier this week, as I was writing a story on all of these Democrats comparing ICE to Nazis, to Gestapo, to the SS, I said to his spokesman, do you stand by this portrayal of Greg Bovino as Gestapo?
00:16:35.000And his spokesman replied with a very sassily worded message saying, yes, we do stand by it.
00:16:58.000Newsom's staff is portraying this in a very aggressive light.
00:17:02.000And no matter what Newsom is saying to you on his podcast or portraying himself as a moderate on this issue or any other, it appears that his staff is not actually interested in that image.
00:17:12.000And he might be trying to play it both ways.
00:17:16.000Well, Mary Margaret Olihan doing a fantastic job as always from the White House.
00:17:20.000She's our Daily Wire White House correspondent.
00:17:22.000Mary Margaret, really appreciate the time.
00:18:25.000You'll get 50% off your very first month of coverage.
00:18:28.000Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro to make that switch on over to Pure Talk.
00:18:33.000Also, from MGM Studios Amazon comes Melania.
00:18:37.000Every protocol, every precaution, every move, coordinated.
00:18:40.000It's the new film that takes you inside the 20 days leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration through the eyes of First Lady Melania Trump herself.
00:18:49.000The briefings, the planning, the private conversations witness what it takes to secure her return to one of the world's most powerful roles.
00:18:56.000Melania is only in theaters on January 30th.
00:18:59.000It's a really amazing inside look you're not going to see anywhere else.
00:19:02.000Go check it out in theaters this weekend, Melania.
00:19:05.000Now, all of this just highlights the continued conflict in Minnesota.
00:19:10.000Democrats are trying to claim victory in Minnesota that they've gotten the Trump administration to back off from immigration enforcement.
00:19:15.000The Trump administration, meanwhile, is saying, listen, we just are trying to work with you guys in order to effectuate the enforcement of immigration law.
00:19:22.000President Trump last night was asked at a premiere for Melania, which is the documentary about his wife, the first lady.
00:19:30.000He was asked about whether there was a drawdown that was going to happen in Minneapolis, and President Trump said no.
00:19:36.000We're going to be pulling back immigration enforcement agents out of Minnesota.
00:19:40.000We're trying to keep our country safe.
00:19:41.000We'll do whatever we can to keep our country safe.
00:20:51.000I wish that Homan had been in charge of this operation from the beginning.
00:20:54.000I think the Trump administration would be in much better PR shape, were that the case.
00:20:58.000Democrats, for their part, continue to push the pedal to the metal, believing that they have the upper hand here.
00:21:02.000Jacob Fry, the mayor of Minneapolis, he's out there proclaiming that America has rejected the quote-unquote law of the jungle.
00:21:08.000Well, actually, disobeying federal law, violating federal law, obstructing the enforcement of federal law, and instead allowing those who violate the law to take control of the city, that's the law of the jungle, not the federal government doing its job.
00:21:24.000Time and again, America has rejected the law of the jungle.
00:21:30.000Time and again, America has rejected this notion that might makes right.
00:21:37.000That notion and that belief that we are of something greater than simply force has allowed our country to rise in international influence and allowed great cities to be laboratories of democracy.
00:21:51.000We must reject the notion that might makes right again and again.
00:22:20.000My city is down here in Florida where we enforce the laws and actually work with the federal government in order to ensure that criminal illegal immigrants are deported.
00:22:27.000So actually, I'm not worried that my city is next.
00:22:32.000This is not a time to bend our heads into despair or how to fear that he may be next because if we do not speak up, if we do not step down, it will be your city that is the next.
00:22:47.000And this whole narrative, I think the Democrats, as I've said before, are winning this battle, but they are going to lose the war because it turns out that in the short term, Americans like not having ugly pictures on their TV.
00:22:58.000And in the long term, they do need workable policy that solves their problems.
00:23:03.000Tim Walz, supposed voice of moderation, is not moderating at all either.
00:23:07.000He did an interview with the Atlantic in which he claimed that we are nearing the point of a civil war in the country.
00:23:29.000The guy was in serious political trouble, so bad that he had to withdraw from his third-term gubernatorial run in Minnesota.
00:23:36.000And now he's trying to make his way as leader of the resistance.
00:23:42.000He was asked specifically by a columnist for the Atlantic, Isaac Stanley Becker, if he thought that America was barreling toward an internal armed struggle.
00:23:52.000And he said, quote, I don't want to alarm people.
00:23:55.000But he said some of his constituents think he should call in the National Guard and arrest ICE.
00:23:59.000Okay, first of all, they don't have the power to do that.
00:24:03.000The fact that Walls continues to up the ante here, despite the fact that Homan is pretty clearly just looking for some sort of off-ramp and the continued enforcement of federal law, demonstrates how politicized this has become for Walls and for Fry.
00:24:17.000He put out a statement yesterday: quote, Minnesota is grieving, but we're resolved.
00:24:20.000The support we've received from across the country has energized us and given us hope.
00:24:23.000It's time for the federal government to draw down their forces and let us get back to allowing freedom, opportunity, and security for everyone.
00:24:30.000But again, this is the government that has administered billions of dollars in fraud.
00:24:36.000This is the government that has prevented the implementation of federal immigration law.
00:24:43.000Democrats in the state seem to want the chaos.
00:25:36.000You're saying you don't actually expect any changes in terms of who is going to be prioritized?
00:25:41.000I don't know in terms of what the priorities seem to be criminals before, but I think it'll be a very tailored and focused approach.
00:25:48.000So when Homan is actually emphasizing the prioritization of criminal aliens and public safety threats, he's not actually emphasizing anything new.
00:26:05.000I mean, I'm trying to answer the question.
00:26:06.000Because it sounds like you're just saying no.
00:26:09.000I mean, the truth is that Homan is not emphasizing anything new.
00:26:13.000It is just that the people who were before him in the PR line did a poor job of explaining what the administration was doing.
00:26:19.000Meanwhile, in terms of enforcing the law, the Department of Justice has charged Ilhan Omar's alleged attacker on Thursday, as should happen.
00:26:29.000The person charged was a 55-year-old charged with, quote, forcibly assaulting, opposing, impeding, intimidating an officer and employee of the United States while she was performing her congressional duties at a Tuesday night town hall in Minneapolis.
00:26:41.000This is when she was sprayed with what apparently was apple cider vinegar.
00:26:47.000That is what the DOJ should, in fact, be doing.
00:26:50.000Ilhana Omar is out there promoting herself on the back of this, as per our usual arrangement.
00:26:55.000She still has no answers, by the way, as to why her husband's winery is suddenly worth tens of millions of dollars.
00:27:02.000And so I know that there's always been an attempt to smear my character, to smear the character of the community that I ethnically belong to.
00:27:12.000There's always this sort of sad reference to the fact that I'm a refugee.
00:27:17.000It seems like these people seem to have a problem with the fact that I am living the American dream.
00:27:28.000The problem is that the American dream is not coming here, possibly under fraudulent immigration circumstances, and then proceeding to run for Congress on the basis of really disliking the country and all of its allies and maybe participating in some shady financial practice.
00:28:07.000Mikey Sherrill announces that she is going to seek surveillance for ICE agents in New Jersey.
00:28:13.000We are not going to allow any ICE raids to be staged from state properties.
00:28:18.000And we are also going to be standing up a portal so people can upload all their cell phone videos and alert people.
00:28:25.000Like, if you see an ICE agent in the street, get your phone out.
00:28:33.000I mean, this is the routine they're running now.
00:28:36.000ICE is the enemy, ICE are Nazis, and all of the rest.
00:28:40.000Speaking of which, the number of Democrats who have called ICE Gestapo at this point is incredibly high.
00:28:48.000That now includes Governor Gavin Newsom.
00:28:51.000The governor's press office wrote on January 25th on ex Gestapo Greg, referring to Greg Bovino, says filming ICE agents with your cell phone is assault and justifies them shooting you in cold blood.
00:29:02.000Now, I'm just going to point out here that I literally asked the governor not to use this kind of language with regard to ICE.
00:29:09.000He had called the shooting of Renee Good state-sponsored terrorism via his press office, and then he had backed off of that, saying that that was a mistake.
00:29:16.000He was asked by the Daily Wire if he stood by his Gestapo Greg remarks, and Newsom's spokesperson, Izzy Garden, responded, quote, absolutely.
00:29:24.000Gestapo Greg is an SS soldier cosplay.
00:29:29.000This is such a political mistake for Democrats.
00:30:07.000Well, you know, the problem that we've seen before when people said abolish the police or defund police.
00:30:13.000I don't think people, most people mention, I don't think most people who said it believe that there should be no policing function in cities, but the implication was that there could be.
00:30:23.000So I don't think Democrats want to get into that again.
00:30:27.000I do think they want fundamental root and branch reform.
00:30:30.000And if it means getting rid of the name ICE, which has become a very bad brand, that's one thing.
00:30:36.000If it means that we're just going to abandon immigration enforcement, I don't think Democrats or Republicans would support that in large numbers.
00:30:53.000Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who wants to campaign as a moderate, presumably when he runs for president in 2028, he says that he is hoping that all levels of the government cooperate.
00:31:03.000Do you support state and local authorities cooperating with ICE on their job?
00:31:09.000We're not a sanctuary state in Pennsylvania.
00:31:12.000Philadelphia is a sanctuary city, but we're not a sanctuary state.
00:31:15.000And I do believe in law enforcement collaboration at all levels, local, state, and federal.
00:31:21.000But I also believe that all of your partners need to be working together on a mission that is constitutional, working together on a mission that reduces crime, that brings law and order to a community, and that protects people's constitutional rights.
00:31:38.000Again, this is going to be the proper Democratic position, but that is not what they're going to say in the moment.
00:32:38.000And empathy, when misdirected towards specific groups at the expense of other groups, is a real problem, as psychologist Paul Bloom has written about extensively.
00:32:46.000But according to Hillary Clinton, it's all about the lack of empathy.
00:32:48.000Again, what she's doing here politically is she's pushing on what is a sore spot for the Trump administration, because the Trump administration sort of makes a virtue out of bravado.
00:32:57.000And so she's trying to push back against that by being the kinder, softer party.
00:33:04.000She says, the crisis reveals a deeper moral rot at the heart of Trump's MAGA movement.
00:33:08.000Whatever you think about immigration policy, how can a person of conscience justify the lack of compassion and empathy for the victims in Minnesota and for the families torn apart or hiding in fear, for the children separated from their parents or afraid to go to school?
00:33:19.000That compassion is weak and cruelty is strong has become an article of MAGA faith.
00:33:24.000Trump and his allies believe the more inhumane the treatment, the more likely it is to spread fear.
00:33:27.000And that's the goal of surging heavily armed federal forces into blue states.
00:33:31.000Other recent presidents, and then she names Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton, managed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants without turning American cities into battlegrounds or making a show of keeping children in cages.
00:33:41.000Okay, this is just, it's just horsepucky.
00:33:45.000Barack Obama is the children in cages guy.
00:33:49.000And the vaunted empathy of Barack Obama led to riots in the streets.
00:33:54.000The vaunted empathy of Joe Biden led to some of the worst policy failures in the history of the United States.
00:34:00.000But I guess when Democrats don't have political victory, they have to go for empathy instead.
00:34:06.000Well, on the political level, it appears that President Trump and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, have now reached a deal to stave off a government shutdown.
00:34:14.000According to Fox News, Senate Democrats and the White House reached a deal to fund the government.
00:34:18.000Lawmakers aren't out of the woods on averting a partial shutdown.
00:34:20.000So apparently, Schumer and Trump labored over a deal from late night Wednesday until Thursday evening after the top Senate Democrat unleashed several funding demands and the White House accused Schumer of blocking a meeting with rank-and-file Democrats.
00:34:33.000Trump said in a post-on-truth social, the only thing that can slow our country down is another long and damaging government shutdown.
00:34:40.000Schumer said the separation of the five bipartisan bills the Democrats asked for, plus the two-week DHS continuing resolution has been agreed to.
00:34:46.000So they've staved off a government shutdown for a couple of weeks here.
00:34:51.000And a full government shutdown will not happen.
00:34:52.000Now, the question is going to be what happens with DHS.
00:34:55.000President Trump said, I'm working hard with Congress to ensure that we are able to fully fund the government without delay.
00:35:00.000Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come together to get the vast majority of the government funded until September, while at the same time providing an extension to DHS.
00:35:10.000The deal brokered would have the DHS funding bill stripped from the six-bill package.
00:35:15.000Schumer and Democrats have been adamant that if the bill were sidelined, they would vote for the remaining five.
00:35:20.000So there will be a short-term funding extension for DHS.
00:35:24.000That came after there was a test vote that happened yesterday on the funding package where Senate Democrats and seven other Republicans basically killed that funding bill.
00:35:36.000So that is the current status of negotiations.
00:35:40.000Democrats, for what it's worth, are trying to cripple DHS without defunding DHS.
00:35:46.000As the Daily Wire's Virginia Kruda and Jenny Tayer report, they're attempting a backdoor amnesty by changing the law.
00:35:54.000One issue that apparently has Democrats coalescing is a requirement we've talked about on the show that federal agents acquire judicial warrants rather than administrative warrants for immigration arrests.
00:36:04.000And they're really pushing hard on this.
00:36:06.000One source told the Daily Wire there would be no more immigration arrests.
00:36:09.000It's the functional equivalent of getting a warrant before issuing a speeding ticket.
00:36:12.000It's the entire reason why administrative arrests exist in the first place.
00:36:15.000If every single illegal alien who is charged with entry without inspection was treated like a criminal arrest, they would have, among other things, right to counsel provided by the United States.
00:36:26.000So the goal, presumably, for Democrats would be to kill immigration enforcement.
00:36:30.000Republicans are not going to go for any of that.
00:36:34.000So Democrats are going to continue to try to campaign on this.
00:36:37.000I think Homan is bringing down the temperature.
00:36:39.000President Trump is trying to bring down the temperature.
00:36:41.000And it seems to me that Democrats are now engaged in a massive overstep, which I assume is one reason they're focusing in like a laser beam on the Don Lemon arrest, trying to claim that Trump is shutting down the First Amendment for going after Lemon.
00:36:53.000And we'll see the evidence provided by the DOJ in pursuit of a conviction of Don Lemon in terms of violation of the FACE Act.
00:37:00.000In other big news, the president has now selected a new Fed chair.
00:37:11.000According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump said on Friday that he would nominate Warsh to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.
00:37:17.000He put out a statement saying, I've known Kevin for a long period of time and have no doubt he will go down as one of the great Fed chairmen, maybe the best.
00:37:22.000On top of everything else, he has central casting and he will never let you down.
00:37:26.000You got to love the fact that President Trump kind of picks his cabinet officials based on how they look on TV.
00:37:31.000Warsh is quite good on TV, by the way.
00:37:33.000And his economic philosophy is really interesting.
00:37:38.000He had served on the Fed's board of governors from 2006 to 2011.
00:37:43.000He would succeed, obviously, Jerome Powell in mid-May.
00:37:47.000It is Trump, by the way, who decided that it would be Powell and not Warsh originally.
00:37:51.000He will have to be confirmed by the Senate.
00:37:54.000Senator Tom Tillis, who sits on the banking committee, wrote on social media that Warsh is a qualified nominee with a deep understanding of monetary policy.
00:38:02.000But he also wants the DOJ probe of the Federal Reserve and particularly of Jerome Powell to go away before there is any sort of confirmation, because the idea is that that is a pressure tactic on whoever is the Fed chair to lower the interest rates.
00:38:22.000He has spent much of the time since cataloging how he thought the institution was going astray.
00:38:28.000The Wall Street Journal says that the transition could mark the most significant changing of the guard at the Fed since 1979, when Paul Volcker took over and dramatically reoriented the institution's approach to inflation.
00:38:39.000Every chair since Greenspan replaced Volcker has emphasized continuity with his or her predecessor.
00:38:44.000Warsh wants a clear rupture, a wholesale rethinking of the Fed's asset holdings policy framework, role in the economy, and relationship with the executive branch.
00:38:56.000Well, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is very much in favor of the Warsh pick.
00:39:02.000As they point out, Warsh has been arguably the leading voice in public life for reforming the Fed.
00:39:06.000He left the board of governors in 2011 after Chairman Ben Bernanke made vast bond buying a permanent part of Fed policy rather than an emergency resort.
00:39:14.000Warsh at the time said that the Fed in its quantitative easing, that is where the Federal Reserve essentially buys bonds from banks to inject liquidity into the economy.
00:39:22.000So we have this weird rigma role in the American government where the Treasury Department issues bonds.
00:39:27.000The bonds are sold via this special VIP group of banks.
00:39:32.000A huge chunk of those bonds are then sold to the Federal Reserve, which holds the bonds and puts a bunch of assets, like money, on the balance sheet of the banks.
00:39:42.000And then the banks lend that money out.
00:39:44.000That is one of the ways that you end up with more money in the economy because the Federal Reserve basically creates a number on paper.
00:39:49.000It passes that number along to the banks.
00:39:52.000That's how you inject liquidity via quantitative easing.
00:39:56.000Warsh is an inflation hawk, but he has a plan to both lower the interest rates and keep inflation low.
00:40:04.000He says that the Federal Reserve has taken on far too broad a role in economic policy, which, of course, is exactly right.
00:40:09.000He wrote in April 2025, in my view, forays Farafield, for all seasons and all reasons, have led to systemic errors in macroeconomic policy.
00:40:17.000The Fed has acted more as a general purpose agency of government than as a narrow central bank.
00:40:22.000He says they've wandered into fiscal policy with their bond buying, basically buying up a bunch of assets in order to bolster federal spending.
00:40:32.000And that's not even including the climate change and financial regulations pushed by the Biden administration.
00:40:39.000So what exactly is Kevin Warsh's plan?
00:40:41.000Well, first, you sort of have to understand how the Federal Reserve generally injects liquidity into the economy or removes it.
00:40:48.000There are a lot of vehicles for doing so.
00:40:49.000The two main ones in the past several decades have been one, something called open markets operations.
00:40:54.000This is where the Federal Reserve buys those bonds from the banks, as we mentioned.
00:40:58.000They, of course, are getting them from the Treasury Department.
00:41:00.000This injects money into the bank accounts of the banks, and then the banks lend that money out, right?
00:41:05.000So that means more liquidity, more availability for loans in the economy.
00:41:09.000And then there is something called the federal funds rate, which is the interest rate offered by the Federal Reserve for banks to keep their money there.
00:41:15.000So if you keep your money in a Federal Reserve bank and you're a bank that has its reserves there, the Federal Reserve offers a particular interest rate.
00:41:21.000When that interest rate is low, that encourages banks not to put their money with the Federal Reserve, but instead to lend it out for the prospective gain.
00:41:28.000If a bank, just like you, if you can keep your money in the bank at 2% or invest it at 7%, you're going to invest it at 7%.
00:41:36.000So in the past, we have participated in massive open market operations, right?
00:41:41.000That's what we're talking about with Ben Bernanke.
00:41:43.000That's what we're talking about with Alan Greenspan.
00:41:45.000And that's really what we've been talking about for the past several years, consistent bond buying by the Federal Reserve, injecting liquidity into the economy that way.
00:41:55.000That's what quantitative easing was kind of broad scale.
00:41:58.000And also, we had a low federal funds rate, which, again, encouraged banks to inject more liquidity into the economy.
00:42:05.000Kevin Warsh believes this is a screwed up way of doing things that encouraged inflation under Joe Biden because you were injecting liquidity both via buying bonds and also by keeping the FFR low, but also stagnation as we move forward because of the inflation, we're now having to increase the federal funds rate, right?
00:42:23.000We say we're increasing the interest rate in order to quash inflation.
00:42:26.000We're making it so that banks would rather keep their money at the Federal Reserve than actually send it out for investment.
00:42:34.000So he thinks that essentially we gummed up the works, that the banks sold bonds to the Fed, which made money for the banks.
00:42:41.000And then the banks, instead of spending that money or putting that money out into the world, parked their money at the Fed to earn the 5% interest rate.
00:42:49.000And so the investment economy, he thinks, is stuck.
00:42:52.000So his goal is to have the Federal Reserve sell off a gigantic portion of its bonds.
00:42:58.000This would remove reserves from the banks and also mean the Federal Reserve is no longer subsidizing the least effective parts of the economy, the government-driven parts of the economy.
00:43:07.000Also, simultaneously lower those interest rates, which is what President Trump wants.
00:43:11.000And this would then encourage banks to invest in Main Street and business rather than just parking their money at the Federal Reserve.
00:43:18.000This would simultaneously reduce the risk of a major bond-lead implosion when all of those bonds come due and the Federal Reserve has to pay it off and inflate the currency in order to do that.
00:43:26.000And it would stimulate economic growth.
00:43:28.000And so his assumption is normally when you end up selling a bunch of bonds back into the market, that means that the bond rates for future bonds have to rise.
00:43:38.000Because if you can buy a bond really cheap right now, when the market is flooded, then in order to get people to buy new bonds, you have to have a higher facial interest rate.
00:43:47.000What he's hoping is that that won't happen because instead, people will invest in bonds based on the fact that they know that the American economy is growing.
00:43:56.000So driving more money into the AI investment arena via lower FFR and also getting rid of the bonds at the Federal Reserve level, he's hoping this will ungum the works, essentially.
00:44:08.000And you'll get an honest level of inflation in the economy that is very low and also high growth rates.
00:44:15.000And all of that is predicated on significant long-term growth for the United States.
00:44:21.000This is what he was writing back in November of 2025 or a piece for the Wall Street Journal.
00:44:26.000What he said was, America's real comparative advantage is its workers of all stripes everywhere from factory floors to drilling rigs, corporate cubicles to garage startups who devise new ways of doing business.
00:44:38.000The result is a revitalized nation of doers, risk takers, and entrepreneur Mark Andreessen's simple framing, builders.
00:44:44.000He says Wall Street and Silicon Valley are booming, and U.S. workers are finally getting a step up in their real take-home pay.
00:44:50.000Even so, the benefits of the American juggernaut are yet to be fully realized.
00:44:57.000Well, first, the Fed should discard its forecast of stagflation in the next couple of years, as if subpar growth and inflation 40% above target is the best that can be done.
00:45:06.000AI, he says, is going to bring prices down.
00:45:51.000Inflation is not when banks lend out money.
00:45:53.000Inflation is really more when the Federal Reserve is injecting liquidity into the economy that didn't exist before.
00:46:00.000Third, he says the Fed should take responsibility for regulatory failures, including a deposit run on banks in late 2022 and early 2023.
00:46:08.000He says the Fed's rules and regulations have systematically disadvantaged small and medium-sized banks, and that has slowed the flow of credit to the real economy.
00:46:16.000And fourth, we should stop trying to hold ourselves to the regulatory standards of Europe.
00:46:22.000All of this seems basically right to me, but the key is this.
00:46:25.000It's a big bet, a really big bet on the growth of AI.
00:46:30.000That's really the thing that he's counting on.
00:46:33.000Now, there are risks to the strategy because there are costs and benefits to every strategy.
00:46:37.000If, because the bonds are being resold to the banks, the reserves of the banks runs low, then theoretically, if there is any sort of squeeze on the banks, then banks would have to increase their own interest rates to the public and mortgage rates and credit card rates and all of it would go up.
00:46:51.000Or it's possible that a decrease in the FFR, the interest rates, could cause the economy to heat up a lot and people will start taking out money to speculate wildly.
00:47:01.000And then you get some sort of inflationary result.
00:47:03.000His point is that that's not real inflation.
00:47:05.000Real inflation is when the government is full-scale creating money on a computer and it just goes out into the world, which really only happens via open market operations.
00:47:15.000Or it's possible that the interest rates on bonds could spike as the market is flooded with bonds that are now being injected back into the economy.
00:47:22.000And if those interest rates have to spike, then our debt becomes significantly more burdensome and the bond market softens and it's harder for us to actually spend on the governmental level.
00:47:40.000It is definitely not a risk-free strategy, but there's no such thing as a risk-free strategy.
00:47:44.000The biggest thing that he is doing is he is saying that the Federal Reserve should no longer be the chief policymaker when it comes to the economy.
00:47:52.000Instead, the Federal Reserve should basically be there as a backstop, and that's kind of it, which is the original concept of the Federal Reserve.
00:48:02.000It was instituted to prevent runs on banks.
00:48:04.000And he's saying they should basically go back to that, set a low overnight rate, keep that feds rate low.
00:49:04.000Bottom line is that under that scenario, if this had been the map in 2024, Trump would have won 11 more electoral college votes.
00:49:12.000So the map is moving pretty strongly against Democrats in terms of the demographics because so many places are picking up population in red areas.
00:49:19.000There has been a significant blue-to-red move.
00:49:26.000The population changes that are occurring are really significant.
00:49:32.000Nine states have gained more than 60,000 residents from July 2024 to July 2025, according to the American Redistricting Project.
00:49:40.000Those states are Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Washington, Arizona, Tennessee, and Virginia.
00:49:47.000Of those nine states, seven are pretty solidly red.
00:49:52.000Five states have lost population in that same period: West Virginia, New Mexico, Vermont, Hawaii, and California.
00:49:57.000The only one of those that's red is West Virginia.
00:50:01.000And the population losses would be greater for a lot of those blue states if you don't include foreign in-migration.
00:50:08.000This is a major problem for Democrats.
00:50:10.000And so Democrats basically have to hope that either Republicans go over their skis here and pursue policies that are wildly unpopular, or they have to moderate.
00:50:30.000Meanwhile, it does suggest it creates at least the motive for the possibility of problems in the voter roles.
00:50:36.000Promilla Jayapal, leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, she's out there railing against voter IDs still.
00:50:44.000All the ways in which voters are intimidated, including, as you mentioned, new ID requirements that Republicans are trying to get into many places.
00:50:52.000And so we're both in the courts, but we also want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to not scare people off from voting.
00:51:05.000Again, is that about scaring people off from voting, or is that about allowing people who should not vote to vote?
00:51:10.000Voter ID should be a basic prerequisite for voting.
00:51:12.000This should not be particularly controversial.
00:51:16.000John Thun, the Senate Majority Leader, is pushing for the SAVE Act to be updated to require ID at the polling places.
00:51:23.000My understanding is that they are still modifying the bill.
00:51:27.000It includes right now a requirement that you be a citizen to register to vote, but it doesn't include a requirement that to vote you be a resident.
00:51:35.000So, in other words, if you're going to have what we call voter ID or photo ID when somebody goes into the ballot box to vote, that's not currently covered in the bill.
00:51:44.000And I think the new bill that comes out hopefully will deal with that.
00:51:49.000Now, earlier this week, the FBI did search the main election office in Fulty County, Georgia, looking for records related to the 2020 race.
00:51:56.000According to the Wall Street Journal, a U.S. official familiar with the warrant said it authorized agents to look for physical ballots, voter rolls from that year, ballot images created by scanning ballots and tabulator tapes from every voting machine in the county.
00:52:07.000And the warrant was signed by a magistrate judge.
00:52:09.000Apparently, the goal was to look into possible violations of federal law.
00:52:12.000Tulsi Gabbard flew down to Georgia and was part of the effort.
00:52:17.000Now, obviously, some of this is designed.
00:52:21.000There is a thing that goes on in the Trump administration where various cabinet officials try to stay in President Trump's good graces by sort of humoring his ideas.
00:52:29.000But we'll follow the evidence wherever it leads, as of course we should.
00:52:33.000If it turns out that the DNI and the FBI end up uncovering serious evidence of fraud sufficient to change election results, obviously that should all be prosecuted.
00:52:45.000We all want honest elections, or at the very least, we should.
00:52:49.000Alrighty, coming up, we'll jump into the latest on Iran.
00:52:52.000Will there be some action there this weekend?
00:52:54.000The show continues for our members right now.
00:52:55.000Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
00:52:57.000If you're not a member, become a member.
00:52:58.000Use Coach Shapiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
00:53:01.000Click that link in the description and join us.
00:53:05.000What was it like, Marlon, to be alone with God?
00:53:14.000Is that who you think I was alone with?