Did the former FBI director threaten President Trump s life? Plus, the Supreme Court is deciding on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions, and we interview the probable next president of Romania. But first, I was going to do an all-new ad read for my brand new show, Ben After Dark, premiering tonight on Daily Wire Plus, exclusively for our members. But instead, our unoriginal and profoundly lazy team decided to just recycle what I said on Monday.
00:00:00.000Folks, we've got a ton to get to today.
00:00:02.000Did the former FBI director threaten President Trump's life?
00:00:05.000Plus, the Supreme Court is deciding on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions, and President Trump is finally leaving the Middle East.
00:00:12.000And we interview the probable next president of Romania.
00:00:15.000But first, I was going to do an all-new ad read for my brand new show, Ben After Dark, premiering tonight on DW +, exclusively for our members.
00:00:22.000But instead, our unoriginal and profoundly lazy team decided to just recycle what I said on Monday.
00:02:39.000James Comey was the former FBI director.
00:02:42.000He was the FBI director who presented the so-called Steele dossier to President Trump.
00:02:46.000And then that Steele dossier just happened to leak into public view.
00:02:49.000That was the one that suggested that President Trump wasn't just a Russian cat's paw, that he was actually having affairs with prostitutes in Moscow and all this sort of crazy stuff.
00:02:59.000And then magically, it just emerged in the press very soon afterward.
00:03:02.000The news being that Comey had presented it to President Trump.
00:03:05.000James Comey, of course, was also the FBI director who let Hillary Clinton off the hook for mishandling of classified documents, a precedent that would then be used for, as it turns out, pretty much every subsequent president who...
00:03:16.000It now appears everyone is allowed to just mishandle classified documents because James Comey deliberately misread a statute to let Hillary Clinton off the hook.
00:03:23.000But then, right before the election, also announced that there was more of an investigation into Hillary Clinton mishandling classified information, leading Democrats to believe that he threw the election to Donald Trump.
00:03:33.000So, needless to say, he was a very, very bad FBI director.
00:03:45.000He is basically the world's worst Instagram influencer.
00:03:49.000And so, just as an example, here is a tweet from James Comey a couple of years ago.
00:03:56.000It is a picture of James Comey, who is a uniquely tall individual, by the way, he's like 6 '9", standing among the redwoods of California with the caption, so many questions.
00:04:21.000And it's just him standing in the middle of a road.
00:04:23.000So James Comey is a person who likes to stand in random places and take contemplative pictures of the things around him or himself and just kind of put it out there.
00:04:32.000James Comey also is some sort of novelist.
00:04:34.000I don't know whether any of his novels have actually been successful at any point in the past, but he has a new book right now called FDR Drive.
00:04:43.000That is all about, presumably, some sort of far-right extremist talk show host who's creating threats against the federal government that are turning into people assassinating folks in the federal government.
00:04:56.000And it takes an intrepid investigative prosecutor to go after this particular right-wing talk show host.
00:06:07.000Well, that could mean a couple of things.
00:06:09.000Originally, to 86, someone meant to like throw them out of a bar or restaurant or to cancel a password.
00:06:18.000It's sort of like Deep Six, but 86 someone.
00:06:23.000So this could also be interpreted as kill the president.
00:06:26.000That is one way to interpret this shell formation.
00:06:28.000It's as 8647, not get rid of the president, like kill him.
00:06:33.000And this is how Secret Service has taken it.
00:06:36.000They said, um, you are not allowed to threaten the president in public media.
00:06:41.000That is a violation of 18 U.S. Code 871 threats against the president and successors to the presidency.
00:06:48.000Well, James Comey, you know, he put that out there and pretty soon the entire White House came down on his head.
00:06:55.000So Taylor Butowich over at the White House, chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, while President Trump is currently on an international trip to the Middle East, the former FBI director puts out what clearly can be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States, a message etched in the sand is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously.
00:07:14.000Donald Trump Jr. signed in to say, just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered.
00:07:21.000Kristi Noem came out and ripped into James Comey as well, the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
00:07:28.000Pretty much the entire cabinet got in.
00:07:30.000Kristi Noem said, disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of President Trump.
00:07:35.000DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.
00:07:39.000Stephen Miller, of course a top advisor to President Trump, he put out a statement, reading, as the former FBI Director and key leader of the deep state, Comey's call for assassination, while the president is abroad no less, is a chilling escalation of the war against our democracy by a faction committed to its destruction.
00:07:57.000Didn't want to get lost in the shuffle, so he put out a statement saying, We are aware of the recent social media post by former FBI Director James Comey directed at President Trump.
00:08:04.000We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran.
00:08:07.000Primary jurisdiction is with the Secret Service on these matters, and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support.
00:08:14.000Then President Trump came out, and he himself commented on James Comey's bizarre post, to say the least.
00:09:21.000And if he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency.
00:09:27.000But I'm going to let them make that decision.
00:09:31.000Now President Trump, when he says he's a dirty cop, what he means there is that James Comey was presiding over the FBI when the Hillary Clinton Fusion GPS scam document that initiated the entire Russiagate investigation was basically laundered.
00:09:45.000By the Hillary Clinton campaign via the intelligence apparatus to the FBI.
00:09:50.000He means all of Russiagate can basically be laid at the feet of James Comey.
00:09:54.000Comey put out an apology message saying, I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message.
00:10:01.000I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.
00:10:04.000It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind.
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00:12:27.000Trump was nearly assassinated twice last year, like two times.
00:12:31.000So we should take very seriously threats of violence against the president of the United States.
00:12:36.000I mean, he nearly had his head blown off on national TV.
00:12:38.000And then he was nearly assassinated again by a person who was sitting outside of his golf course in Florida and was waiting for him to get to a particular hole so he could kill him.
00:12:49.000And then, of course, we know that the Iranians were also attempting to assassinate President Trump.
00:12:54.000So it's not as though there is a shortage of threats.
00:13:14.000So this takes you to the edge of the stupidity versus malice conversation.
00:13:19.000As I've said very frequently on this show.
00:13:23.000I generally like to attribute people's motivations when they do something wrong to stupidity rather than malice, unless I have like very solid counter evidence.
00:13:53.000He thought that 86-47 meant something like, ah, get rid of Trump, as opposed to kill President Trump.
00:13:59.000On the other hand, could he be malicious?
00:14:01.000Could he hate President Trump enough that he would openly call for that?
00:14:03.000Now, if it were really malicious and not stupidity, you have to assume at least a stupid malice, okay?
00:14:10.000You have to assume at least a level of stupidity where the former FBI director does not know enough about the law to understand that if you openly threaten the President of the United States on social media, Secret Service is going to come knocking at your door.
00:14:20.000So, I mean, That would be like the truest level of stupidity and malice would be that he wants to kill Trump, but he's stupid enough to post it online knowing that he's probably going to go to jail for it.
00:14:32.000That's like the top level of both stupidity and malice.
00:14:36.000If you're at the top level of malice, then presumably he wouldn't just post something about it.
00:14:39.000If you're at the top level of stupidity, then he would post something about it and then walk it back, which may be what this is.
00:14:47.000The bottom line is this, with regard to James Comey.
00:14:50.000Is the Justice Department going to take this very far?
00:14:52.000No, we'll have to see how far they take it.
00:14:55.000It is certainly true that many of the people who are currently going after James Comey are people who also feel specifically targeted by folks like James Comey.
00:15:02.000That includes the current FBI Director, Kash Patel.
00:15:05.000So it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out.
00:15:07.000Joining us on the line to discuss is Executive Editor of The Daily Wire and host of The Morning Wire, now available on video everywhere that you can get Morning Wire.
00:15:17.000John Bickley, so let's talk about this bizarre story.
00:15:21.000So, you know, is there anything that I'm missing here?
00:16:14.000The feeling by a lot of people on the left, particularly these people that have been in major public offices, that they feel like they can say anything.
00:16:20.000I think the Trump administration is checking him here.
00:16:23.000Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, really playing the left's game against them about heightened rhetoric.
00:17:35.000I think there's been a need for stability economically here.
00:17:39.000And the announcement of a lot of these deals, particularly the almost $2 trillion in deals from his Middle East tour, is huge news for the U.S. These are real deals.
00:18:20.000When you're talking about Syria and you're talking about Iran, of course, extremely complicated in terms of the ramifications of these kinds of deals.
00:19:57.000This case is interesting for a couple of reasons.
00:19:59.000One is President Trump issued an executive order saying that birthright citizenship no longer applies in the United States.
00:20:05.000And this raises a couple of questions for the Supreme Court because district courts put an injunction on the EO, nationwide injunctions.
00:20:11.000There are two separate issues in this case.
00:20:13.000One issue is what is the authority of local courts to provide nationwide injunctions?
00:20:18.000And this has become an incredibly hot issue because Every time President Trump does anything, ranging from using the Alien Enemies Act to this sort of EO, some local court will then issue a nationwide injunction.
00:20:29.000As I've discussed before on the program, there's not a lot of precedent historically for the idea that a local district court can simply enjoin an entire national policy.
00:20:38.000Typically, what you would do is have an injunction in the area over which the judge presides, not over the policy nationwide.
00:20:43.000Otherwise, you could just forum shop, find some district court judge somewhere who doesn't like the president, and nationwide enjoin any.
00:20:50.000This is a point that was made by Clarence Thomas back in 2018 in a concurrence in a case called Trump vs.
00:21:00.000And Clarence Thomas wrote, at that time, As he points out, the basic idea of injunction is supposed to be for the case in front of you, not for all similar cases all the way across the nation.
00:21:30.000He says the judiciary's limited role was reflected in the court's decisions about who could sue to vindicate certain rights.
00:22:50.000Justice Barrett, she asked the Solicitor General for the United States about this yesterday, whether or not the administration will actually obey court decisions.
00:23:00.000Did I understand you correctly to tell Justice Kagan that the government wanted to reserve its right to maybe not follow a Second Circuit precedent, say, in New York, because you might disagree with the opinion?
00:23:13.000Our general practice is to respect those precedents, but there are circumstances when it is not a categorical practice.
00:23:21.000This administration's practice or the longstanding practice of the federal government?
00:23:25.000And I'm not talking about in the Fourth Circuit, are you going to respect a Second Circuit?
00:23:29.000I'm talking about within the Second Circuit.
00:23:31.000And can you say, is that this administration's practice or a longstanding one?
00:23:35.000As I understand it, longstanding policy of the Department of Justice.
00:23:41.000It'll be interesting to see how the Supreme Court comes down on this.
00:23:43.000I would imagine that they are going to limit the power of nationwide injunction for district courts, which in and of itself would be a win for the Trump administration.
00:23:49.000Because otherwise, you're just going to, as I say, have forum shopping for some district judge somewhere to knock down entire national policy, and that is not why the court system was built this way.
00:23:58.000Now, onto the broader underlying issue here of birthright citizenship.
00:24:02.000So, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says, with regard to citizenship, All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
00:24:28.000So originally, this was obviously meant to be directed at the children of freed slaves.
00:24:35.000Because the idea was that while slaves were not, in fact, They were considered legally, they should have been obviously, but they were not considered legally citizens of the United States.
00:25:17.000Are there people who are born in the United States but not subject to the jurisdiction thereof?
00:25:22.000And the Supreme Court has ruled on this in a variety of ways, many times, mostly indirectly.
00:25:28.000That is why this case has now reached the Supreme Court.
00:25:32.000The court, first in 1873, in a case called the Slaughterhouse Cases, said the phrase subject to this jurisdiction was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign states born within the United States.
00:25:47.000Okay, so that seems pretty unequivocal.
00:25:49.000In 1873, which again, the 14th Amendment was ratified in the year 1868.
00:26:00.000Five years after ratification, the Supreme Court said in the slaughterhouse cases that subject to the jurisdiction was meant to exclude, let's say that you're an ambassador.
00:26:13.000Is the baby a citizen of the United States?
00:26:14.000Subject to the jurisdiction thereof says no, because your kid is actually a British citizen and subject to the jurisdiction of British law.
00:26:21.000Okay, so now apply that to our modern context.
00:26:24.000Let's say that you're a Mexican national.
00:26:49.000Wong Kim Ark in 1898, the Supreme Court held that a child born in the United States of parents of Chinese descent, who at the time of his birth were subject to the Emperor of China, But had a permanent domicile in residence in the United States and are there carrying on business and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the emperor of China.
00:27:11.000So that seems to contradict what was being said in the slaughterhouse cases.
00:27:15.000So in Wong Kim Ark, the court said, well, that's just dicta.
00:27:17.000Okay, so when you read a Supreme Court decision, there is sort of the precedent and then there's dicta.
00:27:22.000The actual governing law is the ruling.
00:27:26.000And then courts can sometimes distinguish between that and stuff that the court kind of says on the way to get to the decision, which they will call dicta, sort of side points that are not binding in law.
00:27:36.000There's also a case in 1884 called Elk v.
00:27:38.000Wilkins, in which the Supreme Court ruled that children of Native Americans who were born in the United States were not citizens by birthright unless they were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
00:27:47.000Native Americans who were living on reservations or were subject to the jurisdiction of their tribe were not automatically citizens of the United States if born within the boundaries of the United States.
00:27:57.000First, the first time I put my Tekovas boots on, it was like they were already broken in, which makes perfect sense because every single pair goes through over 200 meticulous steps of handcrafting.
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00:28:16.000You can wear them from sunup to sundown.
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00:28:21.000You know, when I go out to dinner with my wife, Tecovas are like a great pick for me.
00:30:09.000There, the court found that illegal immigrant kids were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and therefore could be given free education.
00:30:19.000In other words, this actually is kind of an open constitutional question.
00:30:23.000Now, the practice in the United States has been birthright citizenship for well over a century at this point.
00:30:30.000Not only that, in 1940, there was a piece of legislation from Congress that basically enshrined the idea of birthright citizenship.
00:30:38.000However, it is a fascinating legal argument and would obviously make a very big difference in terms of how migration is done to the United States.
00:30:46.000Because one of the ways that illegal immigration has become so prevalent In the United States, if somebody comes, they overstay their visa, for example, they drop a baby.
00:30:54.000And so because the baby is an American citizen, the idea would be that the parents should be given preference in terms of becoming American citizens.
00:31:03.000They can easily see there's a world where the Supreme Court would rule that, for example, Wong Kim Ark, which is the governing precedent here, which was holding, again, that a child born in the United States to Chinese parents Who are subject to the emperor of China, but had permanent domicile and residence, that those babies are birthright citizens.
00:31:23.000So you could say, if you have a permanent green card, for example, not a temporary visa, not you're here illegally, if you have a green card and you drop a baby, the baby's a citizen.
00:31:31.000You can see the court saying that, based on Wong Kim Ark, that would not be in conflict with Wong Kim Ark.
00:31:38.000However, is that the way that the court is likely to go?
00:31:43.000The Solicitor General of the United States, Made the claim on behalf of the Trump administration that I've made here, which is that the citizenship clause was originally designed for the children of former slaves, which of course it was.
00:31:55.000Your Honor, I'd say three things in response to that.
00:31:57.000First of all, our primary contention is that the citizenship clause related to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens who weren't even present as a discrete class at that time.
00:32:06.000Okay, so I think that just on a legal basis, that seems correct to me.
00:32:12.000As far as the birthright citizenship clause and how it'll be interpreted by the Supreme Court, again, I think the Supreme Court is going to be reluctant to step into this fight, so probably they will rule against the EO on that basis.
00:32:24.000Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked, okay, let's say that you actually were able to get rid of birthright citizenship.
00:32:29.000How exactly would you even effectuate that at a hospital, for example, to determine whether a kid is a citizen or not?
00:33:04.000Such as they could require a showing of, you know, documentation, showing legal presence in the country.
00:33:09.000For a temporary visitor, for example, they could see whether they're on a B-1 visa, which would exclude kind of the birthright citizenship in that country.
00:33:55.000Justice Alito, by the way, had the best line with regard to the nationwide injunctions.
00:33:58.000He said, the practical problem is there are 680 district court judges and all Article 3 judges are vulnerable to an occupational disease, which is the disease of thinking I am right and I can do whatever I want.
00:34:11.000Meanwhile, the tax bill that is percolating through the Republican system.
00:34:17.000Unclear at this point whether it's actually going to materialize in time or whether it is not.
00:34:22.000A lot of issues have to be hashed out here.
00:34:24.000As I said yesterday, there's going to have to be some political magic here done by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson as well as the Senate Majority Leader John Thune to get this thing together.
00:34:33.000You have several different wings of the party who are arguing for different things.
00:34:36.000You have the so-called moderates in the party who are arguing for higher caps on SALT deductions as well as arguing for zero cuts effectively to Medicaid.
00:34:45.000Zero restructuring, zero work requirements on Medicaid, and all of the rest.
00:34:49.000That'd be like Josh Howley in the Senate, as well as people like Mike Lawler in the House.
00:34:54.000Again, these are people from purple states or purple district.
00:34:56.000Then you have people who are very strong on the idea that we need to make cuts, because the reality is that we are facing a fiscal disaster in the United States over the course of coming years.
00:35:04.000That if we continue to blow out our deficit to the tune of $2 trillion a year, eventually, it's all fun and games.
00:35:10.000And if you jump from the sixth story, the first five stories are fine.
00:35:15.000And that's sort of the idea with the American economy, that at a certain point here, you can see, for example, right now, the 30-year bond yields in the United States are disastrously high.
00:35:27.000Because people are scared that they are not going to be able to get their money paid back to them outside of inflated currency by the United States government over time.
00:35:36.000There will come a point here where the United States is paying trillions of dollars a year just in interest on our national debt.
00:35:42.000Like trillions of dollars, like a significant percentage.
00:35:44.000Of our GDP will go to paying for the interest on our national debt if we don't get our spending under control.
00:35:50.000So you have Republicans who are pointing this out and saying we at the very least need to be bending the cost curve.
00:35:54.000This is the case that Senator Ron Johnson is making.
00:35:56.000He's saying, you know, what we really should be doing in this bill is just going back to 2019 spending levels.
00:36:00.000Why exactly are we doing wildly inflated spending from after the COVID period?
00:36:55.000It's something that is not conservative.
00:36:57.000And no conservative should support raising the debt ceiling $5 trillion.
00:37:01.000So that alone is enough for me not to support the bill.
00:37:04.000Even though I support large segments of the bill, my fear is that really true cutting is not going to happen.
00:37:13.000Now, again, squaring this circle is going to be very difficult because you do have representatives like Mike Lalo who are in trouble in some of these purple districts.
00:37:20.000And remember, the House Republican majority is razor thin right now.
00:37:25.000As Politico reports, the boiling internal GOP debate that's holding up President Trump's self-declared big, beautiful bill isn't over the deductibility of state and local taxes.
00:37:33.000It's about the class and geographic divide splintering today's Republican Party, and it's really about two midterm elections.
00:37:38.000Trump's first in 2018, when a series of Republicans from affluent districts retire or lost.
00:37:42.000And his second, next year's election, when many of the lawmakers elected from upscale suburbia ever since are facing difficult re-elections.
00:37:49.000And that's why SALT deductions have become such a big issue.
00:37:53.000So most Trump-era congressional Republicans are fine with lower caps on SALT deductions because they're from red states or red areas within blue states, but there are some who are not.
00:38:04.000And so Mike Lawler has said they have a very myopic view of New York and California.
00:38:09.000He says, you know, you're going to lose our seats and then you're not going to have a majority anymore.
00:38:14.000Meanwhile, the hardliners are saying, listen, this doesn't cut spending in any material way.
00:38:19.000And what you're doing here is basically leading us a little bit slower toward the cliff.
00:38:24.000All of this led to a bit of a breakdown yesterday when a planned Friday vote in the House Budget Committee to advance that GOP megabill was placed in peril with three hardliners pledging to oppose the party line legislation.
00:38:38.000Representative Ralph Norman, who sits on the Budget Committee, told reporters he would vote against the package of tax cuts and extensions, border security investments, energy policy, and more.
00:38:46.000He was joined by Chip Roy of Texas and Josh Pasheen of Oklahoma.
00:38:50.000And Jody Arrington, the House Budget Chair, he said, we'll see as far as when the vote would actually be moved forward.
00:38:58.000So again, this is very fraught, at the very least.
00:39:02.000According to Politico, House Republican leaders are having to salvage their party-line megabill a lot sooner.
00:39:08.000A surprise holdout by those conservative members of the House Budget Committee is forcing Speaker Johnson to entertain significant changes to the GOP sweeping domestic policy bill, endangering his ambitious Memorial Day timeline for a House package.
00:39:20.000The hard right objections surrounding missing fiscal scores for the legislation and ongoing concerns about the depth of Medicaid cuts Republicans are prepared to make.
00:39:28.000One option under serious discussion as a concession to those fiscal conservatives is moving up the onset of work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries.
00:39:51.000But again, you have several wings of the Republican Party that are all clashing with one another at this point.
00:39:58.000If it does not move forward with alacrity, however, you will see an economic downturn, a serious economic downturn, because the markets have already priced in.
00:40:08.000Beyond that, many of the most controversial provisions of the so-called big, beautiful bill push a bunch of the sort of pain off into the future.
00:40:17.000So, for example, according to Politico, for all four years of President Trump's presidency and only those years, Americans would enjoy benefits like no taxes on tips or overtime.
00:40:26.000Then, it won't be until 2029, when congressional GOP incumbents have already run for re-election and Trump is gone, that voters feel the sting.
00:40:34.000From the pay-fors, that includes much of the Medicaid cuts estimated to strip healthcare coverage from more than 10 million people.
00:40:39.000Now, again, it's not stripping healthcare coverage from 10 million people.
00:40:51.000That is saying you need to do the bare minimum.
00:40:53.000You're talking about 80 hours a month, by the way.
00:40:55.000I want to see Democrats make the argument you don't need to work 80 hours a month if you are otherwise fit and healthy in order to receive Medicaid benefits.
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00:43:40.000He says that recession is still very much on the table and pretending otherwise is quite silly.
00:43:45.000He's the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, of course.
00:43:48.000Look, I'm going to defer to economists who give it about a 50% chance.
00:43:52.000I think all these things are probably inflationary a little bit more and slowing down the economy.
00:43:58.000If there's a recession, I don't know how big it'll be or how long it'll last.
00:44:01.000Hopefully we'll avoid it, but I wouldn't take it off the table at this point.
00:44:05.000So, meanwhile, President Trump came home today.
00:44:09.000From the Middle East after a very successful round of negotiations and business dealings with Saudi, UAE, and Qatar.
00:44:16.000So first he went to Saudi Arabia where he cleared some $600 billion in deals.
00:44:19.000Then he went to Qatar where he cleared some $1.2 trillion in deals.
00:44:22.000Then he went to UAE where he cleared like $1.4 trillion in deals.
00:44:25.000So a lot of money supposed to come into the United States thanks to all of this.
00:44:31.000There's still some sort of open questions here as to what happens on the big outstanding issues in the Middle East that are not financial and commerce related.
00:44:40.000So, Saudi has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.
00:44:44.000Israel, of course, has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.
00:44:47.000UAE has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.
00:44:50.000Qatar, they're basically a cutout for Iran, so they're perfectly fine with an Iranian nuclear program, actually, which is one of the reasons that it's a little disquieting when President Trump praises Qatar for trying to broker an Iran deal.
00:45:01.000I mean, yes, because Qatar plays both sides.
00:45:04.000Again, treating all of these countries as though they are identical is very silly.
00:45:20.000Here's President Trump paying homage to Qatar trying to broker the Iran deal.
00:45:25.000Iran is very lucky to have the Emir because he's actually fighting for them.
00:45:32.000He doesn't want us to do a vicious blow to Iran.
00:45:40.000He says, you can make a deal, you can make a deal.
00:45:42.000He's really fighting, and I really mean this.
00:45:44.000I think that Iran should say a big thank you to the Emir, because the Emir is fighting very much that we don't.
00:45:53.000I mean, at this point, you might want to ask yourself, if the Emir is fighting very hard for Iran, why are we taking a $400 million jet from him?
00:46:35.000Meanwhile, President Trump yesterday made some more comments with regard to Iran, in which, again, it's unclear which way the administration is going to go.
00:46:43.000He issues warnings with regard to Iran, but the devil is in the detail with Iran always.
00:46:47.000There was a rumor yesterday that the Trump administration was proposing basically a three-year moratorium on all nuclear development with Iran, and then after that, the JCPOA.
00:46:55.000The answer to that is no, because if you leave it to the next person in office, who could theoretically be a Democrat, that just means Iran goes nuclear.
00:47:02.000That is basically just JCPOA, the Obama deal that Donald Trump called the worst deal in history, part two.
00:47:08.000And by the way, it is worth noting right now that Republicans have already united to fight a JCPOA, part two.
00:47:16.000There's a letter that was put out Wednesday, signed by every single GOP senator except for Rand Paul, naturally, and 177 House Republicans.
00:47:24.000The GOP members asked President Trump to explicitly reinforce the warnings that he and his officials in his administration have issued.
00:47:31.000That the regime must permanently give up any capacity for enrichment.
00:47:35.000That, of course, is the right perspective.
00:47:38.000Now, the thing that's being pitched to the Iranians or from the Iranians is something short of that.
00:47:43.000Iran has already said it won't do that.
00:47:44.000Here's President Trump talking about this yesterday.
00:47:48.000Iran wants to trade with us, okay, if you can believe that.
00:48:20.000Well, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon.
00:48:22.000And eventually they'll have a nuclear weapon.
00:48:24.000And then the discussion becomes a much different one.
00:48:29.000Okay, so again, I think President Trump does live in the world of reality.
00:48:32.000And so I do not think that he is going to make those sorts of concessions to the Iranians.
00:48:37.000I don't think he's going to be taken in by them.
00:48:38.000Now, again, the Iranians are very good at this game, like extremely good at this game.
00:48:42.000The phrase in the Middle East that's constantly used about Iran is that they never win a war or lose a peace, which seems to be about right.
00:48:48.000And the manipulations that Qatar is trying on behalf of Iran are quite dangerous, but I think President Trump understands that.
00:48:54.000And meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky, Heating President Trump's desire for him to go to Turkey to negotiate with Vladimir Putin without any sort of preliminary ceasefire.
00:49:04.000Zelensky was basically abandoned in Turkey then by Vladimir Putin.
00:49:07.000So Vladimir Putin did not, in fact, show up.
00:49:09.000Zelensky yesterday did show up in Ankara.
00:50:43.000The desire by Putin to get to the end of this is significantly lower than the desire by Zelensky and Ukraine to get to the end of this.
00:50:49.000And I think Putin knows that at this point.
00:50:52.000And meanwhile, speaking of problems in Eastern Europe and situations in Eastern Europe.
00:50:57.000So the country of Romania has an election coming up.
00:51:00.000Romania, you'll recall, did actually have an election.
00:51:03.000That election was invalidated last year, supposedly because of Russian interference in the election.
00:51:11.000So there is a Romanian government investigation alleging that the election in December of 2024 had been tilted toward a candidate named Kalin Georgescu, who is not particularly well known, but then he ended up winning.
00:51:25.000And the Romanian government decided to simply invalidate the election based on allegations of Russian interference.
00:51:32.000There's a problem, however, for that particular argument, which is that the current frontrunner, a man named George Simeon, He is probably going to win in the first round of the vote in Romania.
00:51:44.000So Georgescu was basically ruled out of order that they said he can't run.
00:51:48.000So he's been replaced by George Simeon.
00:52:35.000people who don't follow Romanian politics closely, they're not even sure what happened.
00:52:40.000There was an election, the election was kind of thrown out, and now you're the Basically, our establishment, our deep state, didn't like the guy who won the elections.
00:52:57.000So they had to make a decision and the decision was to annul the elections and to say there was some foreign interference with the electoral process.
00:53:08.000They didn't present any proof, no shred of evidence that this actually happened, because it didn't.
00:53:18.000He took 22% of the votes in the first round and he was ready to win.
00:53:25.000To have a landslide victory in the second round.
00:53:29.000And when they saw that the smearing campaign against him, the mainstream media attacks are not working, that the people are not afraid, they said, okay, through the Constitutional Court in Romania, which is like a political instrument, it's made of politicians, not of real judges.
00:53:52.000They decided to annul the elections on the 6th of December.
00:53:57.000So we are facing an ongoing coup d 'etat.
00:54:01.000They said that we will have repeated elections.
00:54:04.000Mr. Georgescu had his dossier ready for the new elections.
00:54:10.000And at the end of March, they said, Mr. Georgescu cannot run.
00:54:53.000If we have fair and free elections, I should be the next Romanian president.
00:54:59.000So, obviously, because of all the accusations of Russian interference and all the rest, that's sort of top of the heap in terms of questions people are asking about Romania and your candidacy.
00:55:07.000What do you think the relationship between Romania, the EU, the United States, Russia, Ukraine.
00:55:13.000What should the position of Romania be in the ongoing war in Ukraine, especially considering the fact that obviously Romania borders Ukraine?
00:55:21.000Well, we have three strategic pillars at the basis of our security strategy.
00:55:29.000One is the membership of NATO, second membership of the European Union, and third, the strategic partnership with the US.
00:55:39.000You cannot have one without the other.
00:55:42.000We struggled a lot to exit the communist zone and to be part of the free world.
00:56:23.000As it is clear that this war must stop, we must have a ceasefire, a truce, and the peace negotiations that already started, like you saw in Istanbul earlier, must conclude.
00:56:40.000The only thing we can hope and pray is that President Trump will make new security guarantees from the Russians because they are a danger and not only for us, for all the region, for Romania, for Poland, for the Baltic states.
00:56:59.000So, aside from national security issues, there's been enormous amounts of pressure put on you and your party with regard to, say, traditional Judeo-Christian values, traditional biblical values.
00:57:10.000A lot of the same insults have been hurled that say Viktor Orban in Hungary have been hurled at you, hurled at your party.
00:57:17.000What's your perspective on the sorts of values that should be promulgated in Romania and why do you think there's been so much resistance to that?
00:57:24.000Well, if you are a Christian Orthodox, you are pro-Russian.
00:57:29.000If you love your country, you are a fascist.
00:57:34.000If you say even that Putin is a criminal and you respect Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, for example, they say, yeah, but Donald Trump is pro-Russian and he's a Russian spy.
00:57:50.000They would say anything in order to fight who we are, to fight our values.
00:58:00.000I was never involved in politics and I started from zero, a political party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, who stand on four pillars: Christian faith, love for our nation, natural family and freedom.
00:58:19.000So we are smeared, we are attacked by the mainstream media.
00:58:25.000They don't like really that we say that only a relationship between a man and a woman can give birth to a child.
00:58:35.000That we say it's not normal to mutilate small children and to have gender operation on small children.
00:58:44.000We say the Green Deal causes a lot of poverty in Europe and in the free world, while India, China and other countries are polluting and we are not having the result and we are not saving the planet, etc.
01:02:10.000And our enemies are beginning to be...
01:02:15.000Disrespected and ignored by the population who is not manipulated anymore by the mainstream media and have X accounts, Facebook accounts, YouTube or TikTok accounts.
01:02:29.000The social media really helped to transform our society into a real democracy.
01:02:38.000Now, I don't even need to campaign anymore because the Romanians are doing their videos, are campaigning for us.
01:02:47.000So, Mr. Simeon, let's say that you become the elected leader of Romania.
01:02:52.000What do your first few actions look like?
01:02:54.000What do your first few months look like?
01:03:10.000The Romanian revolution happened 35 years ago against the communists.
01:03:16.000Over 1,000 people died then for freedom and for democracy.
01:03:22.000And now it seems to be our duty to fight for democracy and freedom for the return to the constitutional order.
01:03:31.000Hoping that we will this time have validated elections.
01:03:37.000I will, of course, concentrate also on the economy, on reducing red tape, bureaucracy, and getting the private sector in power, because they are the people who generate prosperity.
01:03:54.000And this is my main focus, to work with foreign investors, to help our local businesses to manage to make Romania.
01:04:06.000Which is a great, great country to generate prosperity for its citizens.
01:05:06.000He pretty openly is saying he wants to run for president.
01:05:09.000And so now he has presented a five-pillar plan on the border and immigration.
01:05:15.000And let's just say that this plan that he is presenting is at odds with some of the things that he has said in the past, and some of it's just bad.
01:05:22.000So here is Ruben Gallego explaining that our border and immigration systems are broken.
01:05:29.000Our border and immigration systems are broken.
01:05:31.000For decades, Congress has tried to take action, but at the end of the day, politics got in the way.
01:05:37.000We've seen the same chaos over and over.
01:05:39.000It's time to push forward and enact a plan that works.
01:05:44.000So where were you for several years there, man, dude?
01:05:50.000Arizona is one of the state's hardest hit by the border crisis.
01:05:53.000Went down to the border in Arizona and watched as...
01:05:57.000The entire border was unoccupied by anything remotely like Border Patrol, as Mexican drug cartel drones were flying above the American side of the border.
01:06:10.000Not only was he nowhere to be seen, by the way, if you go all the way back to 2017, Ruben Gallego was getting very angry when he was a representative at that point for Phoenix.
01:06:21.000He was getting very angry at the Trump administration for enforcing the law.
01:06:26.000And the DHS was ordering more aggressive enforcement of detainment and deportation laws for undocumented immigrants, according to azpbs.org.
01:06:36.000He said, the new guidelines tell us one thing.
01:06:38.000The Trump administration is willing to go after just about any member of the immigrant community.
01:06:43.000Last week, ICE arrested a DACA recipient and continues to hold them in custody without showing sufficient cause for his detention.
01:06:49.000Now the administration releases guidelines that lay the groundwork for mass deportation and tries to sell it to the American people as business as usual.
01:07:10.000Our border isn't a political talking point to me.
01:07:13.000In cities like Yuma, Nogales and Douglas, Americans and Mexicans raise their kids, start businesses, and cross-border trade fuels our economy.
01:07:21.000But for these communities to thrive, we must have a secure border.
01:07:25.000As a Marine combat veteran, I'm serious about keeping this country safe and doing it without sacrificing our values.
01:07:32.000He is so serious about keeping our country safe.
01:07:35.000He's so serious that back in July of 2018, House Republicans passed a resolution in support of officers and staffers with ICE.
01:08:11.000Then he says that he wants to reform the asylum system.
01:08:13.000Now, when he says he wants to reform the asylum system, what he means is he wants to make it much easier than it currently is under the Trump administration to grant asylum.
01:08:22.000Wants to grant a broader pathway to citizenship for people.
01:08:24.000So what he really wants is a more open border, more regularized.
01:08:29.000And so there are sort of two issues when it comes to the southern border.
01:08:31.000One is people who are crossing the border between ports of entry illegally.
01:08:35.000The other is people who are showing up at ports of entry and wanting to enter the country, being given a sort of preliminary asylum ruling, being let into the interior and never showing up again.
01:08:45.000There is very little in what Ruben Gallego is saying that stops number two.
01:08:49.000In fact, it actually accelerates number two by basically saying we should have quick, fast asylum hearings and basically let people into the country.
01:08:56.000Also, pathway to citizenship for pretty much everybody who's here already.
01:09:08.000We need to secure the southern border, reform our asylum system, expand legal pathways to citizenship, protect DREAMers, and tackle the reasons why people leave their homes in the first place.
01:09:19.000Anyone who tells you that we can't do it all is selling America short.
01:09:35.000So if you actually look at his 21-page plan for his new immigration system, remember this is important because he wants to run for president as a Democrat.
01:09:42.000And Democrats are going to pretend to be quasi-border hawks before opening the border wide again.
01:09:46.000So he says we need to make it easier for people to come to the United States legally, according to azluminaria.org.
01:09:53.000The plan calls for increasing the annual allotment of some visas and green cards and of removing or significantly increasing arbitrary per-country caps.
01:10:01.000He calls for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants brought to the United States as children.
01:10:05.000That's like at least three and a half million people.
01:10:08.000He also wants a pathway to citizenship for spouses of U.S. citizens who are in the country illegally.
01:10:16.000That would have covered like 600,000 more people.
01:10:18.000She's talking about 4 million people immediately given amnesty under Gallego's plan.
01:10:23.000Also, he wants to hire more asylum officers and give them the power to decide those cases.
01:10:29.000So he wants to cut back on asylum access during border surges, but by adding more asylum judges, do you really believe that he's not going to loosen the standards on asylum from what Trump is doing right now?
01:10:43.000Diego argues the United States needs to figure out why migrants are leaving their home countries in the first place and then address those problems.
01:10:49.000Okay, that may very well be true, but that is actually the responsibility of their home countries, not the responsibility of the United States, per se.
01:10:57.000Again, the game that Democrats are going to play now is they're going to pretend to be border hawks because they recognize that across the globe, open borders is not a popular position.
01:11:48.000But he is now going around talking about how Trump is treasonous.
01:11:54.000In my home, the America I love, the America I've written about.
01:12:00.000That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.
01:12:15.000Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.
01:14:29.000There's no such thing as a non-binary person.
01:14:31.000There are intersex people, but there's no such thing as a person who is non-binary.
01:14:35.000It's a made-up nonsense term for trash, for stupid, for people who have some sort of deep desire for attention that they cannot earn any other way, apparently.
01:14:44.000Lorde said, quote, I'm a woman except for the days when I'm a man.
01:15:17.000I feel like that's not a biological imperative then.
01:15:20.000If I'm going to be given this line that all of this is just part of, it's all baked into the cake.
01:15:25.000Born this way, baby, in the words of Lady Gaga.
01:15:27.000If that's the take, then you don't get to claim that you randomly changed your mind about your gender when you were trying on a pair of men's jeans in 2023.
01:15:39.000She says she tried on a pair of men's jeans and sent the photo to her collaborator, Jim E. Stack.
01:15:44.000I say Jim E because the name is spelled Jim hyphen capital E, not Jimmy.
01:15:51.000Jim E, like wall E. Apparently, he's some sort of Disney robot.
01:15:55.000He responded, I want to see the U that's in this picture represented in the music.
01:16:00.000Then, while writing one of the songs that appeared on an album called Man of the Year, she said she tried to visualize how her gender felt in that moment, dressed in men's jeans with duct tape on her chest, similar to her Met Gala look this year.
01:16:33.000We learned there are a lot of mentally ill people in the performing arts is one of the things that we learned.
01:16:37.000Now, speaking of people in the performing arts, we have some updates on Halle Berry.
01:16:41.000I know you haven't heard that name for a while, but apparently, Cannes Film Festival Has now issued a new dress code forbidding voluminous outfits and nudity from the red carpet and theaters.
01:16:53.000By the way, I have the same exact rules at our dinner table.
01:16:56.000No voluminous outfits and also no nudity at the dinner table.
01:17:00.000And mostly it works except for the two-year-old.
01:17:03.000The fact that you have to make these rules for, you know, grown-ass adults is pretty impressive.
01:17:10.000Apparently, according to an article that is available at MSNBC, Given the cultural reorientation toward conservatism across the Western world, especially in America, this new dress code reeks of control.
01:17:31.000Apparently, it was at least in part a reaction to Bianca Sensori's viral moment on the Grammys red carpet in February where she and her Nazi husband showed up and then she just took off all her clothes.
01:17:47.000And apparently, this had something to do with Halle Berry because Halle Berry has worn stuff, I guess, that is either voluminous or contains nudity.
01:17:57.000Before I even get to this, do you remember what Halle Berry was in last?
01:18:00.000I remember I saw her, I feel like, in one of the John Wick movies.
01:18:03.000So, you know what, I'm going to ask our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity.
01:18:49.000We have good Halle, bad Halle and Con.
01:18:51.000So she said something that is true, which is that James Bond should never be a woman.
01:18:55.000Again, I love the fact that we have to say the perfectly obvious now because apparently it's very controversial to say the perfectly obvious.
01:19:04.000I don't know if 007 really should be a woman.
01:19:07.000I mean, you know, in 2025, it's nice to say, oh, she should be a woman, but...
01:19:13.000I don't really know if I think that's the right thing to do.
01:19:17.000And no, I doubt there'll be a jinx spinoff.
01:19:19.000There was a time that that could have happened, probably should have happened.
01:19:22.000I would have loved for that to happen.
01:21:12.000Because it turns out that men and women do not approach sex the same way.
01:21:16.000So if James Bond, one of his major appeals, is that, well, then it doesn't work the same way if he's a chick.
01:21:23.000The same thing, by the way, also happens to be true in, I know that it's a now famous Hollywood idiocy, that women can beat up very large men.
01:21:38.000And actually, when you watch these sort of stunt scenes, the preparation for the scenes where Ana de Armas is beating up these giant men, you can tell how ridiculous it is.
01:21:48.000They add all sorts of sound effects and they move the camera in different ways.
01:21:51.000They add velocity to her movements in order to make it look as though she can really beat the hell out of it.