Zoran Mamdani is the new mayor-elect of New York City, and he is taking off the mask. How should Republicans fight back? What are the dangers for Republicans? Plus, President Trump s tariffs on the board at the Supreme Court. What happens over there?
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00:00:51.000Well, folks, Zorn Mamdani campaigned as a smarmy, smiling, empathetic gentleman who only cared about affordability and just wanted to help you.
00:01:01.000And he got a bunch of fun videos around bodegas and eating rice with his hands and speaking in various languages.
00:01:08.000And now here comes the hammer because Zorn Mamdani has made very clear that he wants to actually do all the things he said he was going to do.
00:01:16.000And so New Yorkers are about to find out the ticket that they just bought and they're about to take the ride.
00:01:21.000According to the New York Times, a newly empowered Zorn Mamdani on Wednesday vowed to use his convincing victory in the New York City's mayor race as a mandate to push an ambitious progressive agenda past potential obstacles from billionaire antagonists to albany bureaucracy.
00:01:34.000In a shift from the mollifying tone he had used for months, Mr. Mamdani made clear that while he would govern for all New Yorkers, he was determined to deliver for those who had been agitating for structural change.
00:01:43.000One of my least favorite phrases in all of politics, I'm here to govern for everyone.
00:01:46.000Okay, that's what the government does.
00:01:48.000The government literally makes legislation that affects everyone, but clearly you are not.
00:01:53.000You are here to govern for the people and on behalf of the people who elected you, namely far, far left progressives and third worldists.
00:02:02.000I mean, that is what Zorhan Mamdani is here to do.
00:02:06.000He's here to govern on behalf of socialism and pro-jihadism and chew bubblegum.
00:02:14.000He said in a phone interview, quote, I'm also looking to be clear about the mandate that we won over the course of this election.
00:02:18.000It is a mandate to deliver on the agenda that he ran on.
00:02:22.000He had said that he was going to try to find creative ways to pay for his signature policies without radically increasing taxes.
00:02:28.000And then he immediately reversed himself.
00:02:31.000And then he started talking about taxing the rich.
00:02:34.000Quote, my supporters and our movement are hungry for a politics of consistency, a politics that actually focuses on the needs of working people.
00:02:40.000I think our tax system is an example of the many ways in which working people have been betrayed.
00:02:44.000Now, as we talked about on the program yesterday, actually, the amount of tax revenue derived from the top of the top of the top of the income tax bracket in New York City is far out of proportion to their percentage of the population.
00:03:24.000The reason he won over 1 million votes is not because he is so much more popular than all the other candidates of the last 30 years, 40 years, who have not won that number of votes.
00:03:35.000The reason he won over 1 million votes is because there was a competitive candidate coming up behind him who was also a Democrat.
00:03:40.000And so in order to defeat Andrew Cuomo, he had to win more than 850,000 votes.
00:03:47.000You know, the good news is that Democrats, again, they're going to have to own this stuff.
00:03:51.000Now, there are no economics behind what he's attempting to do.
00:03:54.000In order for him to actually pay for all of this, he needs the governor of New York to go along with massive tax increases.
00:04:02.000As the Wall Street Journal points out, in order for him to get his proposals paid for, he would need to raise the highest state corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5%.
00:04:15.000Okay, that is a massive increase, a huge increase in the state corporate tax rate.
00:04:21.000And it applies to businesses that have a physical presence in New York.
00:04:24.000and to businesses that derive a certain amount of sales from the state.
00:04:28.000Now, if you think the businesses won't relocate over that sort of stuff, they absolutely will.
00:04:34.000And that requires approval from state lawmakers and Kathy Hochul.
00:04:38.000And so if they acquiesce, it could drag down the Democratic Party.
00:04:42.000Kathy Hochl very narrowly beat Lee Zeldin in the last New York gubernatorial election.
00:04:46.000There's certainly no guarantee that she would defeat Elise Stefanik, who's already running dead even with her in the New York gubernatorial race.
00:04:54.000He also wants a millionaire's tax, a two percentage point rate hike or 51% increase on the personal income tax paid by New York City's highest earners or more or those making more than a million dollars a year.
00:05:05.000The tax rate in New York City alone on the highest income New Yorkers would move from 3.88% to 5.88%.
00:05:11.000And that's on top of the state tax, on top of the federal tax.
00:05:15.000And if you're a rich person, guess what?
00:05:49.000We'll get into all of that momentarily first.
00:05:51.000Are you aware of House Bill, Section 702, that extends the right of government agencies to legally monitor American citizens and some of their internet activity without requiring a warrant?
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00:08:37.000The amount of money that he wants to spend is astonishing.
00:08:41.000He wants universal childcare in New York City that would cover children from six weeks old through five years old.
00:08:49.000Meanwhile, he also wants to spend $7 billion a year on new rent stabilized units, $70 billion in municipal debt for a decade, and he wants to freeze the rent.
00:09:01.000Okay, now, freezing the rent, I'm just telling you, will result in no new units being built in the city.
00:09:10.000No one, no developer is going to build new units in the city if the rent is frozen.
00:09:14.000There's no way to do it because why would you?
00:09:17.000Meanwhile, he wants to spend almost a billion dollars a year on fast and free buses, which, by the way, will just become homeless shelters.
00:09:25.000Because if it is free to ride the bus, then there is no way to kick you off the bus if you have overstayed your fare.
00:10:49.000He literally posed next to an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who has talked up the value of jihad during this campaign.
00:10:58.000He literally went on national television and said he had no opinion on whether Hamas, a terrorist group, should disarm.
00:11:04.000Spoiler Spoiler alert, if you're anti-jihad, typically you think all terrorist groups should disarm.
00:11:14.000But he had no opinions whatsoever because he actually is not in favor of Hamas, disarming.
00:11:19.000So he is perfectly radical on all these issues, economic to foreign policy related.
00:11:24.000But he's also surrounded by people who are extraordinarily radical.
00:11:27.000So Linda Sarsour, a mentor and friend to Mamdani, is going to be very close to him.
00:11:35.000She, of course, said back in 2019 when she was part of the women's march that Jewish marchers could not take part because, quote, one cannot be a feminist and a Zionist at the same time, which is kind of an astonishing thing, considering that I'm not sure how one could be a radical Islamist and a feminist at the same time.
00:11:52.000Radical Islam does not seem to treat women particularly well or equally.
00:11:58.000The Council on American Islamic Relations and CARE Action are going to be in his ear.
00:12:04.000That group has long-standing and deep ties to terrorist organizations, according to Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton.
00:12:10.000They too were unindicted co-conspirators in a 2007 terrorist funding case linking CARE to Hamas.
00:12:17.000Political action committees connected to CARE donated more than $140,000 to Zorhan Mamdani's PAC.
00:12:25.000They helped mobilize the Muslim vote in New York City, which, of course, got out in big numbers for Zorhan Mamdani.
00:12:30.000Democratic Socialist of America, of which he is a charter member, is backing him, of course.
00:12:36.000The United Federation of Teachers, which destroys public education, is backing him.
00:12:41.000Those are the people who are surrounding him.
00:12:45.000And then they're the people who are part of his transition team.
00:12:49.000His transition team, just as shockingly radical as you would imagine.
00:12:56.000Apparently, he has named a five-woman transition team, stocked with former officials from City Hall, but also he has included Lena Khan, the former FTC chair, a person who is radically, radically anti-business.
00:13:10.000Melanie Hartzog, a former deputy mayor for health and human services under Bill de Blasio.
00:13:17.000Alana Leopold, another Bill de Blasio holdover.
00:13:20.000Grace Benilla, the head of the United Way of New York City and an alumna of Bloomberg, who might be the only sane person.
00:13:26.000And Maria Torres Springer, the deputy mayor to the current mayor, Eric Adams.
00:13:31.000He says he's going to keep Jessica Tish on as the head of the NYPD.
00:13:38.000Sometime in the next six months, she'll quit.
00:13:41.000And by the way, she still doesn't have a former job offer, a formal job offer, according to the New York Post.
00:13:48.000The Democratic candidate told Tish they would speak about his plan to keep her as commissioner.
00:13:54.000But, you know, we'll have to see how all of that plays out.
00:13:58.000Now, meanwhile, it is worth noting: Olivia Reingold has an excellent piece over at the Free Press talking about the plan that the DSA has for cities beyond New York.
00:14:07.000And those are very, very shockingly radical plans.
00:14:12.000According to the Free Press, they have now reviewed thousands of pages of internal Democratic Socialists of America documents, which show that the organization's leaders view Mamdani as a tool in their agenda to abolish prisons and borders and ultimately end what they call the barbaric order of capitalism.
00:14:28.000It's a political body dedicated to the doctrine of democratic socialism, which is a variety of socialism that simply specifies how it would like revolution to occur peacefully through subversion of democracy.
00:14:39.000Now, again, one of the fun things about the left is that they're constantly screwing around with the definitions of terms.
00:14:46.000Socialism, typically speaking, is the government control of the market-based order, nationalization of resources, getting rid of the pricing system, all the rest.
00:14:56.000Now, you can have touches of socialism in a capitalist economy.
00:15:06.000Fully socialist countries would become countries like Cuba, North Korea.
00:15:10.000China is sort of an economically fascist system that has maintained aspects of nationalization, but then allowed certain aspects of the private market to operate so they can actually have a workable pricing system.
00:15:24.000When people say democratic socialism, sometimes they mean Norway, and sometimes they mean like the DSA, which is to say, like communism achieved through democratic means.
00:15:35.000The DSA held its annual convention in August with the theme Rebirth and Beyond, reflecting on a decade of DSA's growth and preparing for a decade of party building.
00:15:42.000There, according to Olivia Ryingold at the Free Press, delegates voted to adopt a resolution titled Principles for Party Building, which stated that the purpose of the DSA is to, quote, unite workers to win the battle for democracy and bring about socialism, not to seek a governing coalition with a perceived lesser evil under the current undemocratic political system.
00:16:00.000A socialist party in the United States must be part of a global political movement of the working class.
00:16:05.000So, I mean, these are just communists.
00:16:59.000She is mainly driven, again, by the same concerns that drove Zorhan Mamdani, this sort of radical third worldism that is deeply connected, of course, to anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment.
00:17:09.000Her bid is a long shot in that Democratic primary, but she is running.
00:17:12.000Graham Plattner is very likely to win the Senate nomination in Maine in 2026.
00:17:18.000He, too, is a radical in the mold of Zorhan Mamdani.
00:17:23.000He's taking some hits because he had a giant Nazi tattoo on his chest, which he then denied was a Nazi tattoo and then covered it up with an even uglier tattoo, actually.
00:17:31.000But he is, of course, a Democratic socialist.
00:17:44.000She, like Mamdani, is very socially media savvy.
00:17:47.000She was indicted by a federal grand jury recently for allegedly blocking vehicles outside an ICE facility.
00:17:53.000Apparently, she and other protesters surrounded a federal officer's vehicle, banged on its hood and windows, etched pig on the side, and impeded movement.
00:18:02.000Although she's not formally DSA, her platform basically mirrors DSA.
00:18:08.000There's Shama Sawant, who I actually have met before because she was running for mayor at one point in Seattle.
00:18:14.000Now she's running for Washington's 9th congressional district in 2026.
00:18:18.000She's running as an independent socialist.
00:18:22.000I mean, she's openly a socialist, openly a Marxist.
00:18:26.000Abdul El-Syed running for U.S. Senate in Michigan in 2026.
00:18:31.000He, again, is very much in the mold of Zarin Mamdani.
00:18:35.000Omar Fatah, who ran for Minneapolis mayor, he came in second place in the first round of votes.
00:18:43.000And since no candidate originally received a majority, there will now be a second round of votes.
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00:21:59.000Yesterday, he said he needed money from two separate sources.
00:22:01.000First, working people needed to donate money to his transition team because, you know, sure, you're poor, but he needs your money.
00:22:08.000And second, he needs money from the rich people to pay for all of his plans to, you know, destroy the rich people.
00:22:15.000You know, there were a few months ago where I told supporters across the city to stop donating.
00:22:21.000And today, I am asking them to start once again.
00:22:24.000And I am asking them to do so because of the fact that a transition that can meet the moment of preparing for January 1st is one that will require staff.
00:22:36.000And those are things that we will have to provide.
00:22:39.000And I'm excited for the fact that it will be funded by the very people who brought us to this point, the working people who have been left behind by the politics of the city.
00:22:49.000I'm sure they are very, very happy to fund Zor and Mamzani.
00:22:52.000I mean, obviously, they're concerned with affordability.
00:22:55.000And when you are concerned with affordability, then you want to give money to people's transition teams.
00:22:59.000Just in my personal view, like there were times, you know, early on in my marriage when my wife and I, we were basically down to like our last couple thousand dollars in savings.
00:23:07.000We were starting to trying to have to figure out, you know, taking out second credit cards and moving some credit around, all that.
00:23:13.000And I remember at that time, I was very much interested in giving money to the transition team for a political candidate of my choice.
00:23:39.000And I think you have to raise taxes on the top 1% of New Yorkers, New Yorkers who make more than $1 million a year.
00:23:44.000And you do that by raising taxes by them 2%.
00:23:47.000And then you also increase the corporate tax of New York State to match that of New Jersey.
00:23:50.000So that takes us from about 7.25 to about 11.5%, which is what we see in New Jersey.
00:23:56.000These things together raise about $9 billion, which more than pays for our economic agenda and also starts to trump-proof ourselves.
00:24:01.000But are you worried that can drive a lot of job creators out of New York?
00:24:05.000So what I've heard from a number of business leaders is that the affordability crisis is also affecting their ability to attract and retain talent.
00:24:12.000The city's inability to provide childcare means that businesses often have to provide stipends for that child care.
00:24:18.000Right now, the absence of universal child care means that a family will pay around $22,500 a year, which is more money than many of them would spend if they sent that same kid to college 18 years later.
00:24:31.000I mean, you got to be kidding me, but this is what they're.
00:24:34.000OK, so here's the question for Democrats.
00:24:58.000However, on a national level, is this if you want to play, like, listen, as a Republican, if you wish to embrace Mamdaniism as your future, scary for the country.
00:25:06.000I don't think it's good for the country.
00:25:07.000I think we need two robust parties, neither of which is socialist or communist.
00:25:12.000But if you want to do this on an electoral level, then as somebody who wants Republicans to continue to win, I very much urge you to play this game because play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
00:25:22.000AOC, who's being widely touted as a presidential candidate in the next election, 2028, and again, I think she has some real strength in that area.
00:25:31.000She says that the entire party must surrender to Zorhan Mamdani.
00:26:06.000So, yeah, you're denying the future if you deny socialism.
00:26:09.000Well, actually, it seems to me you're more denying the past if you advocate socialism because the history of socialism is literally tens of millions of bodies stacked.
00:26:28.000Complete useless artist type from when he was younger, like so useless he was kicked off a commune, but somehow has managed to turn that into a leadership position in American politics because it's a great country and anyone here can succeed.
00:26:40.000Here's Bernie Sanders saying his ideas aren't radical.
00:26:43.000It's not radical at all to say that we should arrest the prime minister of Israel when he calls.
00:26:46.000It's not the radical thing to say that we should take all the rich people and we should catapult them into the ocean and steal them.
00:26:53.000What's radical is to say that not everybody deserves health care of their choice from the finest doctors, paid for by no one by magic tree money.
00:27:03.000These are just mainstream good ideas for our markets.
00:27:07.000What is a radical idea, if I may say so, is Trump giving a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1% and throwing 15 million people off the health care they have.
00:27:37.000It is not radical to say that we should have the best child care system in the world if we believe in our kids and if we believe in the future of this country.
00:27:47.000It's not radical to say that we should have efficient and fast and free bus service.
00:28:05.000Meanwhile, Mehdi Hassan, who, you know, fresh off of his latest spate on Al Jazeera, here he was saying socialism isn't a vile word anymore.
00:28:14.000Well, I mean, I think that that's because Americans don't actually have a lot of experience directly with socialism.
00:28:19.000But, you know, for whom socialism is a vile word, people who have live under socialism.
00:28:25.000But now socialists is not a dirty word anymore, saying socialism is not a dirty word anymore.
00:28:30.000Well, that's why they jump to communists, right?
00:28:42.000Don't get on your Ezra Klein nonsense.
00:28:44.000Don't let Ezra Klein analyze what happened here.
00:28:50.000Don't let Ezra Klein, who's just calling for abundance in actual useful regulation and maybe some use of capitalism, the greatest tool for the development of wealth in all of human history.
00:29:03.000Let Jamal Bowman, an unsuccessful congressional candidate who pulled the fire alarm in order to stop a congressional vote, be your spirit guide.
00:29:11.000Or maybe Hassan Piker, the scion of an incredibly wealthy family, a Nepo baby of Nepo babies, who lives in a $3 million mansion, shocks his dog on air, and preaches socialism at the same time.
00:29:22.000Those guys should have, maybe, maybe Mehdi Hassan, who is a propagandist on behalf of the Qatari government while working at Al Jazeera and then moved here and made millions of dollars ripping on the United States.
00:29:33.000Those people should be your spirit guides.
00:29:34.000I mean, listen, if Democrats want to do this, then go for it.
00:29:37.000Democrats seem a little bit divided on this issue.
00:29:39.000So Chuck Schumer, who didn't say for whom he voted, he said, we're moving forward now.
00:30:40.000I didn't even know they could move this well.
00:30:43.000Do you think that he is a leader in the Democratic Party?
00:30:49.000I think what we're seeing is it's less about what people call themselves and more about what they're focused on.
00:30:57.000The winner there in the New York mayor's race was unquestionably more focused on people's struggles, on the inability to afford housing, on the inability to pay the bills at the end of the week and at the end of the month.
00:31:13.000And I think people are less focused right now on even the policy proposals.
00:31:18.000But what they want is someone committed to trying to address it.
00:31:22.000And I think you see that across all the races.
00:31:25.000And that should be a wake-up call, not just to Democrats, but to everybody.
00:31:31.000People are concerned the American dream is slipping away.
00:31:34.000And that's a huge threat to the country.
00:31:36.000We have to believe that if we work hard and we play by the rules, we can get ahead.
00:31:42.000We'll talk in a minute about the message that Republicans should take away from the elections that happened a couple of nights ago.
00:31:48.000But Democrats seem to be very divided on what the future of their party looks like.
00:31:52.000Representative Debbie Dingell over in Michigan, she says, you know, everyone keeps focusing on Mom Downey.
00:31:56.000You might want to focus on like Abigail Spanberger, who won by 11 points in a purple state, and Mickey Sherrill, who also won a pretty wide victory over Jack Chitterelli in New Jersey.
00:32:07.000Do you have concerns about Momdami and the labels that this affords Republicans being used as a weapon against Democrats?
00:32:17.000Okay, Republicans tried to make Nancy Pelosi the enemy in Europe's past.
00:32:22.000I'm going to focus on the election of Abigail Spanberger, who is clearly a moderate, as is Mikey Sherrill.
00:32:30.000Both women that had strong military and national intelligence background.
00:32:36.000What I think the message from last night is people are worried.
00:32:45.000They're worried about their housing costs.
00:32:47.000They're worried about their utility bills.
00:32:49.000And they're worried about the health care.
00:32:51.000The Republicans can try to avoid that that's what Americans are feeling, but I am the person that back in 216 said, we're in trouble as Democrats because we weren't hearing what working men and women were talking about.
00:33:07.000Okay, well, I mean, again, it'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out.
00:33:11.000Hakeem Jeffries is doing the same exact thing.
00:33:13.000What's fascinating about Hakeem Jeffries is doing here is he's tacitly admitting that Democrats have downplayed one of the key agenda elements that they were trying to push for the last 10 years.
00:33:22.000The trans issue absolutely destroyed the Democrats.
00:33:24.000And now Democrats have basically put that in the rearview mirror.
00:33:27.000Mom Donnie mentioned it a little bit in New York, but New York, again, a very leftist jurisdiction.
00:33:33.000When it comes to New Jersey or when it comes to Virginia, the Democratic candidates basically tried to run away from the trans issue by not even answering the question.
00:33:42.000So long as that was not an elevated issue on everybody's mind, and so long as Democrats weren't militantly saying you must acknowledge that a boy is a girl, they've been able to sort of elide the question.
00:33:52.000And Republicans should get used to the idea this is what Democrats will do, that they may lie about their positions on trans issues, but they are certainly going to downplay those positions in order to focus on other issues.
00:34:04.000So that baton is not going to be nearly as potent in the future because Democrats have learned to avoid the baton.
00:34:10.000Here is Hakeem Jeffries basically admitting as much.
00:34:14.000Abigail Spamberger focused on the issues that matter.
00:34:29.000And they spent tens of millions of dollars criticizing Abigail Spamberger for Deeply inappropriate text messages that were sent by the attorney general candidate.
00:34:49.000But not a dime in actually talking about what they would do for the people of Virginia because Republicans have nothing but a failed track record and a bankruptcy of ideas.
00:35:03.000But that playbook failed spectacularly.
00:35:09.000I mean, well, the reason it failed is not because Abigail Spamberger was right on the issue.
00:35:14.000It's because Abigail Spamberger ducked the issue.
00:35:16.000So Democrats are going to duck those issues in the future.
00:35:18.000Okay, coming up, the government shutdown continues.
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00:36:20.000Also, let's be blunt, gold just hit $4,000 an ounce for the first time ever.
00:37:27.000So what should Republicans take away from Zarmandani's victory?
00:37:32.000But also from victories for Democrats, not just in Virginia and New Jersey, but in local races all around the country.
00:37:37.000They won a couple of local races in sort of school boards and a couple of state legislative seats in places ranging from Georgia to Texas to Mississippi.
00:37:51.000The first takeaway, obviously, is that in off-year elections, the out-of-party power.
00:37:56.000The first lesson is that in off-year elections, as we all know, the party that is out of power tends to do very well.
00:38:02.000Because there's always a backlash against the governing party because all problems are now attributable to them.
00:38:08.000And there's no question that the government shutdown plays a part in this poll show that more Americans are blaming Republicans than Democrats for the government shutdown.
00:38:14.000They sort of blame both, but it's affecting the incumbent party more than it is affecting the party that is out of power because people don't understand really how the filibuster works.
00:38:23.000And we'll get to that in a little while.
00:38:25.000But the other lesson for Republicans, truly, the other big lesson for Republicans is that when you are in power, it is not enough to just campaign against the Democrats.
00:38:36.000You're going to have to actually figure out either solutions to problems via the government, or you're going to have to say the solution is not the government in the first place.
00:38:46.000So I think that that lesson that Republicans need some sort of positive message going forward, like a defense of the things that they're doing, or at least an explanation of why government involvement isn't going to solve the problem, they need that because otherwise it just sounds like you're beating up on the guy who's not even in power in the first place.
00:39:03.000All righty, folks, it's time for some fast facts.
00:39:09.000So President Trump has now responded to the election of Zarin Mamdani.
00:39:12.000He gave a speech yesterday in which he ripped on Mamdani and he said, we're going to stop the country from going communist.
00:39:17.000Now, again, I don't think Americans like communism.
00:39:20.000I think that the reason that they say they like socialism is really because they don't know what socialism is because the definition has been futzed.
00:39:27.000And second, because when people think of America, they think of capitalism.
00:40:10.000But is it going to be enough to stop a blue wave that is going to just kind of hold the DSA a little bit at bay, but also hug them with the other arm?
00:40:18.000Here is President Trump ripping Mamdani's victory speech, which was incredibly militant and wildly communistic.
00:40:24.000I thought it was a very angry speech, certainly angry toward me.
00:40:28.000And I think he should be very nice to me.
00:40:29.000You know, I'm the one that sort of has to approve a lot of things coming to him.
00:41:33.000I don't know who's going to be more responsible for the bump in Miami real estate, Maduro or Mamdani.
00:41:42.000Okay, now, again, all of this is going to be potent, and all of that's true.
00:41:46.000The problem for Republicans is they are the party in power.
00:41:48.000When you are the party in power, things change.
00:41:50.000People tend to attribute the problems in the world to you.
00:41:53.000And so if they go to the grocery store and it's very expensive, and make no mistake, it is very expensive at the grocery store.
00:42:00.000A week of groceries is going to cost you a lot more than it did two years ago.
00:42:05.000It's stabilized somewhat over the course of the last year, but that doesn't mean the prices went down.
00:42:08.000It just means the prices remain very high.
00:42:11.000And wage gains have not really eaten into that yet.
00:42:14.000I mean, the prices of everything feel very expensive to people right now.
00:42:16.000And people are not wrong to feel that.
00:42:19.000And when President Trump says things are becoming more affordable, people don't believe that they are becoming more affordable because they aren't really more affordable.
00:42:27.000They might be more affordable compared to where it would have been if Biden were president, but we are no longer in that world.
00:42:31.000And you can't keep living in that world as the sitting president of the United States.
00:42:35.000Here's President Trump talking about prices.
00:43:20.000But as Republicans, you have to talk about it because if you don't talk about it, you know, I saw that they kept talking about affordability.
00:43:27.000Well, Biden was a disaster with affordability.
00:43:29.000He had the highest inflation rate in the history of our country.
00:43:33.000It's no good if we do a great job and you don't talk about it.
00:43:37.000Okay, now he's not wrong about any of that, but there has never yet been a politician who tells people that their feelings about the economy are wrong, who ends up doing well in a midterm.
00:43:48.000I remember when Barack Obama did, he said, well, people, they just don't understand.
00:43:51.000They just don't understand what I'm saying.
00:44:01.000And so if people just don't feel good about the cost of groceries, you can't make them feel good by telling them things are great.
00:44:07.000It just doesn't work that way, unfortunately, because sometimes people are wrong in how they, but it doesn't work that way.
00:44:14.000And it also happens to be true that people are just paying a lot more in groceries than they did even a couple of years ago.
00:44:19.000And when you go to the grocery store, very often, you don't think about what you paid last year for groceries.
00:44:25.000You think, what did I pay five years ago for groceries?
00:44:28.000And the answer is a lot less, a lot less.
00:44:30.000And of course, a lot of that is Joe Biden.
00:44:33.000And over the course of the last year, again, inflation has really moderated.
00:44:37.000It's down in the 2.7 to 3% range, which is still too high on an annualized basis, but it's a lot lower than it was under Biden when for one year it spiked up into double digits.
00:44:47.000With that said, do people feel good about the price of groceries?
00:44:51.000They do not feel great about the price of groceries.
00:44:55.000In fact, I asked our sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity, how much does a week of groceries cost for an average American family compared to two years ago and one year ago?
00:45:04.000So according to Comet, for an average American family, the weekly grocery cost in 2025 is around $250 to $270 a week, which is slightly higher than the past two years due to continued food price inflation.
00:45:16.000In 2023 and 2024, families were also spending close to $270 per week.
00:45:23.000However, if you ask Comet, what was the average price of groceries for the same families in 2021, the grocery cost for a family of four ranged from about $146 to $289.
00:45:35.000So if you take the low end of that estimate, you are talking about a 50% increase in the course of the last four years.
00:46:04.000Now, it seems to me that there are a few things the government can do about that.
00:46:09.000Number one, the Federal Reserve's main mandate always should have been not to get to 2% annual inflation, but to get to 0% annual inflation.
00:46:20.000That should always have been the Federal Reserve's mission.
00:46:22.000It is ridiculous that the Federal Reserve always had a dual mission of keeping unemployment low and also keeping inflation low.
00:46:28.000It is not the job of the Federal Reserve to keep unemployment low.
00:46:33.000That means that they get to mess around with the money in order to manipulate the markets every single day.
00:46:44.000But beyond that, when people begin to have expectations of their government that are inaccurate, that the government can solve all your problems, you end up with actually bad policy.
00:46:53.000And this brings us to the tariff fight.
00:46:56.000President Trump wants to say that the tariffs that he has imposed are making life more affordable for Americans.
00:47:02.000He said that he continues to say that that tariff fight is making the American economy stronger.
00:47:10.000I think at best you can say that the tariffs haven't wildly damaged America's economy yet.
00:47:15.000And that is due to an enormous amount of investment capital that is being deployed, particularly at the top end of the stock market.
00:47:22.000That is because there's probably some embedded price eating that was going on as the tariffs were being negotiated and continue to roil the markets.
00:47:29.000But the idea that we are rich because of the tariffs or the economy is doing better because of the tariffs, I see zero evidence that that is in fact the case.
00:47:37.000But in a country where everyone demands that the government do something, right?
00:47:42.000The Mamdani candidacy in New York is a do-something candidacy.
00:47:47.000People don't even have an idea what he's going to do, but he says he's going to do something.
00:47:50.000And so the idea is throw a bunch against the wall and see what sticks.
00:47:54.000If in this country, the solution to every ill is give me more power on both sides, give me more power and I will fix, things ain't going to get fixed because it turns out that healthy, thriving, growing economies require the government to go hands off.
00:48:08.000Now, President Trump totally understands this with regard particularly to regulation and taxation.
00:48:12.000But when it comes to macroeconomic issues, things like subsidies or tariffs, when it comes to, quote unquote, protecting certain sectors, he goes the wrong way on this.
00:48:22.000Now, I will say that there is something happening right now that counterintuitively could be very, very beneficial to the president.
00:48:29.000So yesterday at the Supreme Court, there was a hearing over whether President Trump has the emergency power to simply set global tariffs on every country, up to including the Penguins in the Solomon Islands.
00:48:41.000Does he actually have the ability to do that by claiming a national emergency?
00:48:45.000And the hearing at the Supreme Court did not go particularly well.
00:48:48.000As the Wall Street Journal says, President Trump's global tariffs ran headlong into a skeptical Supreme Court on Wednesday, with justices across the spectrum expressing doubt that a 1970s emergency powers law could be read to provide the president unilateral authority to remake the international economy and collect billions of dollars in import taxes without explicit congressional approval.
00:49:07.000Even if the court strikes down the tariffs Trump initiated, the justices gave little indication how they might unwind the policy.
00:49:28.000And the answer is that it would be a very, very messy process, for sure.
00:49:32.000But Solicitor General John Sauer, on behalf of the administration, took heat from all sides as he pressed the administration's argument that the president's power to regulate foreign financial transactions when he declares an emergency includes the authority to impose tariffs.
00:49:45.000Now, again, the idea originally was that the president can regulate movement between territories that affect like terror groups, for example.
00:49:55.000It wasn't that the president just gets to completely remake the economy by saying national emergency, not enough soybeans getting exported.
00:50:06.000They're congressionally allocated powers under the Constitution.
00:50:11.000To demonstrate the scope of Trump's claim in what I thought was the most important moment, Justice Neil Gorsuch said, quote, could the president impose a 50% tariff on gas-powered cars and auto parts to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat from abroad of climate change?
00:50:29.000Now, I ask you again, as conservatives, is this a thing you want to do?
00:50:33.000Is this a thing you want to, do you want the president of the United States, who very easily could be a Democrat inside the next four years, do you want President AOC having the ability on the basis of a national emergency to cancel all gas-powered cars imported into the United States, for example?
00:51:22.000But if you, ironically, if you want the economy to actually take off like a rocket, if you want the stock market to increase by 10%, have the Supreme Court strike down the tariffs.
00:51:33.000The stock market has been, I know so many investors, all of whom have been like, you know, I'm going to invest.
00:51:39.000I'll probably put it at the top end of the stock market where the returns are good, the Magnificent 7.
00:51:43.000The AI companies aren't subject to tariffs really so much because, of course, they're high-tech and a lot of what they do is cloud-based.
00:51:51.000But if you want the rest of the stock market to actually grow, what would be great is a solid free trade regime and then let the president go and negotiate further free trade agreements with our allies, places like Japan and South Korea and the Philippines, and then box in China and then go after China.
00:52:10.000I mean, that's how this should have been done in the first place.
00:52:14.000So with outside expectations comes outside's responsibility.
00:52:19.000And so if Republicans hope to survive the midterms next year, they're going to either have to come up with solutions that please the American people or they're going to have to explain why governmental solutions are not available and power ought to be delegated back to the American people.
00:52:32.000Okay, meanwhile, this government shutdown continues.
00:52:34.000We are now in day 37 of this government shutdown.
00:52:38.000No one understands why we're doing this.
00:52:54.000The only way Democrats can do that is by invoking the legislative filibuster.
00:52:57.000They say you need 60 votes in order to be able to get this clean CR passed.
00:53:03.000Democrats continue to maintain this is the case, even as SNAP benefits go away for a huge number of people.
00:53:09.000Even though flights are now going to be delayed at 40 airports, they're reducing 10% of their flights in order to deal with all of this.
00:53:16.000Democrats seem to show no qualms about what it is that they are doing at this point.
00:53:23.000Apparently, according to Axios, Senate Democrats are taking a moment after Tuesday nights resounding off your wins before making any firm moves to reopen the government.
00:53:32.000Victory is emboldening the party's hardliners.
00:53:35.000Now, again, not all Democrats are similarly placed.
00:53:37.000If you are a Democrat in a purple state and you have to go home and explain to your constituents why you continue to vote for the shutdown, that's a very different thing than if you're a blue senator in a blue state where you get to go home and have all the people cheer for you because you stood up to Trump.
00:53:52.000Senator Chris Murphy, who of course is from Connecticut, which means that he's a blue senator from blue state, he said, quote, I think it would be very strange if on the heels of the American people having rewarded Democrats for standing up and fighting, we surrendered without getting anything for the people we've been fighting for.
00:54:07.000House Democrats are warning of hell to pay if their Senate counterparts compromise too quickly.
00:54:11.000But if you are a senator from, you know, Maine, which is a purplish state like Angus King, or if you are a senator from Pennsylvania, as Senator John Fetterman is, you might have some different thoughts on that.
00:54:22.000And Democrats should really consider whether the interests of their parties are well aligned if, in fact, they lose a bunch of seats in these purple states that they need to win.
00:54:32.000Ironically, actually, in the purplish district, the resistance is very happy about the government shutdown.
00:54:39.000The real question is, in the purple districts that are flippable for Republicans or purple states that are flippable for Republicans in the Senate, is this shutdown going to benefit or harm Democrats?
00:54:50.000And I think in moderate areas, it ain't great for Democrats, which is, of course, the entire impasse.
00:54:55.000The Democratic Party itself is split on this issue.
00:54:57.000Hakeem Jeffries continues to maintain that the GOP needs to make some sort of concessions in order for a clean CR to pass.
00:55:04.000But unfortunately, Republicans have continued to take a my way or the highway approach.
00:55:09.000That's what they did in their one big ugly bill.
00:55:11.000Largest cut to Medicaid in American history, ripped food out of the mouths of children, seniors, and veterans with $186 billion cut to snap.
00:55:22.000And all of this was done so they could reward their billionaire donors with massive tax breaks.
00:55:27.000The American people are rejecting that level of extremism.
00:55:31.000And it's certainly our hope that Republicans will see the need to change course, sit down with us as Democrats, and we can find our way out of this, unfortunately, very painful shutdown that the American people have been experiencing.
00:55:46.000Now, President Trump, as a piece of leverage, it's unclear whether he means this sincerely or whether he's trying to use this as a piece of leverage.
00:55:52.000He is saying Democrats are showing zero interest in reopening.
00:56:19.000But then he says, actually, let's nuke the filibuster.
00:56:23.000So the filibuster is what Democrats are using in order to stop the clean CR.
00:56:26.000It requires 60 votes in order to get past the filibuster.
00:56:30.000Democrats are not lending the Republicans seven votes in order to get past the filibuster.
00:56:34.000And so President Trump is calling for a thing that many Democrats have called for in the past and some Republicans, the nuking of the filibuster, the use of the so-called nuclear option, whereby you go to the Senate parliamentarian, you ask if the filibuster can basically be overruled.
00:56:48.000And then with 51 votes, you pass a resolution in order to change the filibuster rules.
00:57:00.000Because the Senate was supposed to be originally a deliberative body, which is where the deals got made.
00:57:06.000And one of the obstacles to precipitous action was the filibuster.
00:57:11.000It made people actually get together and talk with one another.
00:57:14.000And you couldn't get anything done unless you had a broad consensus because 60 is, of course, a lot higher than 51.
00:57:19.000I promise you, if the filibuster goes away, if by either side, if the filibuster goes away, within 10 years, Democrats will have added at least two states to the Union, both Democrat.
00:57:30.000Democrats will have rewritten the electoral rules in the United States.
00:57:33.000They already tried to do this in the last congressional session, and the filibuster stopped them.
00:57:37.000Democrats will do all the magical things that they have been pledging to do.
00:57:42.000Fundamentally, the form of government of the United States will shift.
00:57:45.000The filibuster is sort of the last vestige of a system that requires some level of popular approval for a policy beyond bare majoritarianism.
00:57:56.000So I'm very, very anti-killing the filibuster.
00:57:58.000Here's what the president had to say, on the other hand.
00:58:27.000But knowing that they're going to pass it as soon as they get any semblance of control, they'll pass it first thing.
00:58:33.000Then it's like we have to do it first.
00:58:36.000Now, again, this point that he's making here is not a bad point.
00:58:39.000Trust has been lost to the extent that Republicans do believe that Democrats are going to nuke the filibuster at the first available opportunity.
00:58:45.000And so the proposal that I have made is on my proposal.
00:58:48.000My friend Jeremy Boring originally made this proposal, and I think it's right.
00:58:51.000Republicans should say, we want a constitutional amendment to enshrine the filibuster, the Senate legislative filibuster.
00:58:58.000We want a constitutional amendment to do that.
00:58:59.000That requires widespread approval in the Senate to make that a permanent feature of the political landscape.
00:59:05.000And if we don't get it, then we're nuking the filibuster because we're not just going to wait around to find out whether your goodwill ends and you decide to nuke the filibuster and destroy the necessary checks and balances that have been on the wane so long in American politics.
00:59:21.000That I think would be a good policy to propose.
00:59:23.000But the president's proposal that the Republicans nuke the filibuster, I'm going to assume this is a piece of leverage that the president here is doing this because he's saying to Democrats, listen, if you really want to play hardball, we'll play super, duper hardball and we'll just run you right over.
00:59:35.000So you may as well get on board because we'll kill the filibuster and we'll pass the CR.
00:59:41.000It's unlikely to actually become reality.
00:59:43.000There's just not enough senators who are going to destroy the filibuster right now because, you know, basically you'd need 51 senators or 50 plus the vice president to vote to break a tie in order to kill the filibuster.
00:59:53.000I would assume that there are still 5, 10, 15 Republican senators who are not on board with killing the legislative filibuster in the Senate, probably much, much higher than that.
01:00:03.000Okay, meanwhile, there's been a lot of talk recently about people who are quote unquote splitting the right.
01:00:08.000One of those people, very clearly, because she's not attempting to hide it, is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
01:00:12.000Marjorie Taylor Greene has spent the last several weeks apparently planning for her own presidential run, which, you know, all luck to her.
01:00:19.000Frankly, I think that would be clarifying.
01:00:21.000I think that it would be wonderful if Marjorie Taylor Greene ran for president of the United States and won 7% of the vote.
01:00:26.000I think that would be great because Marjorie Taylor Greene's ideas are not popular ideas with the American people.
01:00:32.000And it would be fun to watch her try, frankly.
01:00:36.000She says that she believes she is real MAGA and that other Republicans have strayed.
01:00:39.000I mean, to be fair, she also thinks that President Trump is not real MAGA, and she's basically said just as much.
01:00:46.000She's yelling at Republicans all the time.
01:00:47.000She's going on the view to hang out with people who despise President Trump, despise Republicans, and despise conservatism.
01:00:54.000And she's being treated with kid gloves.
01:01:38.000She's so much smarter because she agrees with Joy Behar.
01:01:40.000That's why Joy Behar thinks you're smart is if you agree with Joy Behar, because Joy Behar is the kind of person who legitimately, if intellectual firepower or electrical wattage could not toast a piece of bread on both sides lightly.
01:01:54.000Her saying that she's very smart, Joy Behar saying that you're a smart person is a good indication you are not a very, very smart person.
01:01:59.000So, you know, there are, in fact, people who spend all day long firing inside the tens and then presume to proclaim that if you notice that, then somehow that's splitting the party.
01:02:08.000It's sort of a fascinating phenomenon.
01:02:10.000Speaking of which, she continued her grievance tour against the Republican Party, of course.
01:02:14.000She appeared on NewsNation last night where she talks about how she yelled at the Speaker of the House.
01:02:19.000Like if you were to be able to talk to Mike Johnson right now, you would tell him what?
01:02:22.000Tell him the same thing I told him last week and I yelled at him on the phone on our GOP conference call.