In this episode, we review the 2019 Grammys, the release of a compromise border bill, and Lenny Kravitz wearing a giant cross on his chest. Also, Taylor Swift wears a sheer bodysuit that does not even attempt to cover her nipples, and a woman named Doja Cat named her cat after pot and a cat because she is not a cat, which I don t understand because she's not even a human, let alone a cat named after pot, and she's wearing it in a way that makes me think, "What the hell is this?" We also talk about the fact that Billie Eilish looks like she might be a pothead, and why we should all be grateful that she chose to wear a shirt that doesn't cover her entire chest. And, yes, we also discuss why Lenny is wearing a leather shirt that looks like it belongs in a Mad Max movie. And we talk about why we need to redistribute all of Lenny's sleeve material, just for the sake of social justice, because it's not covering anything below the breastbone. And we discuss why Billie's hair needs to be dyed green. We'll see you next week, when we'll be talking about the new season of The Handmaid's Tale, and we'll talk about that, too. . Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Art by Skandalous, and produced by Pond5, and edited by Kaitlyn Ward, and theScore, and The Nod, and our good vibes, and thanks to our good friend Nicky. , and our sponsor, , and , of course, of course! of course. of the best podcast in the world! of all things that makes you want to be there. and can't get enough of it. Thank you so much of it? we love you, thank you for listening, we really appreciate it, thank you, so much, so please leave us a review, we appreciate you, we'll get more of your support, and support us, you're amazing, we're grateful, we can't wait for it, more of that, and more of it, so we can have more of you, y'all. we'll see ya. - Thank you, bye, bye.
00:00:10.000And I'm going to start with the Grammys mainly because, frankly, Tom McDonnell and I If we had performed fact at the Grammys, it would have been at least 10 times better because that was a terrible show.
00:00:21.000Can I just point out at this point that Trevor Noah is truly an awful host?
00:00:25.000Trevor Noah is legitimately the most boring host in the history of the Grammys because he has basically decided that his job at the Grammys is to simply flatter the celebrities around him as opposed to, you know, doing the Ricky Gervais where you go in and you insult all of the celebrities, which is Way more entertaining for everybody else.
00:00:39.000Trevor Noah goes in and he tells a bunch of jokes about how Taylor Swift helps the local economy.
00:00:51.000Also, Stevie Wonder can no longer sing.
00:00:52.000And I say this as a longtime Stevie Wonder fan.
00:00:55.000But the only reason to point all of this out is because culture is upstream of politics.
00:00:59.000And as much as we're going to talk about the Senate border bill in just a moment, the reality is that there are maybe 7 to 10 million people in the United States aren't even going to have any idea that a border bill is even on the table or being contemplated.
00:01:10.000Whereas there will be hundreds of millions of people who will listen to all the garbage music that emerges from the Grammys and the messaging put out from the Grammys.
00:01:17.000It doesn't mean that everybody listens to what all these dolts in Hollywood have to say about politics.
00:01:23.000It does mean that they do have some impact.
00:01:26.000So, we begin with a brief review of the Grammys.
00:01:30.000The fashion at the Grammys, these people are not like you.
00:01:33.000They're not connected to lives that you lead.
00:01:35.000They do not follow your moral strictures.
00:01:37.000They're not interested in promoting the morality that you wish to teach your children.
00:01:41.000And yet, if you leave them with access to your kids via YouTube or via iTunes or anything else, it will in fact have an impact on your kids.
00:01:53.000This human is called Doja Cat, which I don't understand because she is not a cat.
00:02:00.000Apparently, I have been informed by reliable sources that she literally named herself after pot and a cat.
00:02:07.000Not kidding you, because she didn't come out of her mom and her mom was like, behold, I shall name her Doja Cat.
00:02:11.000She obviously is not only a class act in every way, she also is just wearing a sheer bodysuit that does not even attempt to cover her nipples.
00:02:22.000Because this is where we are right now.
00:02:25.000Now, I assume she can afford the entire dress.
00:02:29.000If not, then we should, you know, see if we can start a fund to actually buy the extra two inches of cloth that it would take to cover her entire nipple.
00:03:57.000Now her hair, now that she's declared herself queer, her hair is red.
00:04:00.000I don't know what the correlation is right there.
00:04:04.000Wearing some of the most deliberately ugly clothes you will ever see.
00:04:06.000Okay, so these are the people who have decided to beautify America with their art.
00:04:10.000We'll get to more on this in one second.
00:04:12.000We are experiencing a lot of global instability as we plunge into primary season.
00:04:16.000So, how are you protecting your family in the midst of all this chaos?
00:04:19.000The fact is, there is one asset that has withstood famine, war, political and economic upheaval, dating all the way back to biblical times, and that would be gold.
00:04:26.000It's not too late to diversify an old IRA or 401k into gold.
00:05:12.000And then, of course, the Grammys brings forward its version of morality, and its version of morality is all, heal the world, make it a better place, except that there's no actual healing of the world.
00:05:22.000It's mostly just absolute cowardice and foolishness.
00:05:27.000So, Annie Lennox, she was supposed to pay tribute to people who had passed away during the last year.
00:05:35.000And they did a bit in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza.
00:05:40.000So I need to hear Annie Lennox on a ceasefire in Gaza.
00:05:44.000Well, by the way, 140 hostages or so are still being held by Hamas.
00:05:49.000This is what I need to hear from our cultural betters here.
00:05:51.000She's an artist for ceasefire peace and raises her fist.
00:06:05.000I mean, first of all, this is the In Memoriam segment, lady.
00:06:18.000We're all gonna listen to Annie Lennox now.
00:06:21.000And then of course you had the same sort of idiocy coming out of the Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
00:06:26.000He did an entire shtick where he proclaimed that the Nova Music Festival Massacre, in which Hamas slaughtered hundreds of people at a music festival in southern Israel, They did it because they were Jews, okay?
00:06:39.000But instead, because the music industry is all about watering morality down to the point where it makes no sense, effectively he makes the case that people were slaughtered because they were at a music festival as opposed to because they were Jews.
00:06:52.000Which is weird, since this didn't happen in like the middle of, say, Montana.
00:06:57.000It happened in the Jewish state, In antisemitic fashion, that's what it was about.
00:07:02.000For all of the white supremacist, alt-right conspiracists who think that Hollywood is quote-unquote run by the Jews, I'll just point out here that Hollywood can't even say that attacks on Jews are attacks on Jews.
00:07:13.000They instead have to make it about attacks on music lovers.
00:07:17.000Every one of us, no matter where we're from, is united by the shared experience of music.
00:07:23.000It brings us together like nothing else can.
00:07:26.000And that's why music must always be our safe space.
00:07:31.000When that's violated, it strikes at the very core of who we are.
00:07:37.000We felt that at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.
00:07:41.000We felt that at the Manchester Arena in England.
00:07:45.000We felt that at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas.
00:07:50.000And on October 7th, we felt that again when we heard the tragic news from the Supernova Music Festival for Love that over 360 music fans lost their lives and another 40 were kidnapped.
00:08:05.000That day and all the tragic days that have followed have been awful for the world to bear as we mourn the loss of all innocent lives.
00:08:16.000We live in a world- I just said the moral equivalence.
00:08:20.000I mean, again, the lack of moral clarity is just insane right here.
00:08:23.000So first of all, I should point out that three of the attacks that he talked about, three of the four attacks are Islamic terror attacks.
00:08:29.000In Manchester, concert explosion was an Islamic terror suicide bombing in May of 2017.
00:08:34.000The Bataclan terror attack was in fact an Islamic terror attack.
00:08:37.000And of course, what just happened in Southern Israel is a terror attack.
00:08:41.000And what happened in Southern Israel is a specifically anti-Semitic terror attack.
00:08:45.000And then this idea is like there's the whole world, and then linking that with what happened in Las Vegas, where we still don't have a motive, by the way, and the weirdest mass shooting in the history of the United States, is super strange, and every day we mourn the life of an, or you could, you know, take a moral stand against the people who murdered music-goers who happened to be Jewish, because they were Jewish, in Southern Israel, but we can't even do that.
00:09:05.000Again, no moral clarity whatsoever from the recording artist's shocker.
00:09:11.000So, one of the most obnoxious things about the artists at the Grammys, So, we begin with Miley Cyrus.
00:09:21.000So, Miley Cyrus has an awful song called Flowers.
00:09:23.000She had two songs last year that were both big hits.
00:09:26.000One was called Flowers, and this was all about how independent ladies don't need no man.
00:09:31.000And then the other song that Miley Cyrus had last year was one called Used To Be Young, which is actually a more interesting song because it's all about how basically she blew her youth.
00:09:42.000So of course the one that makes her more famous and the one they give an award to is Flowers, which is a really, really garbage song.
00:09:47.000My favorite part of this is where she assumes everyone in the concert hall knows her lyrics because she's just so famous.
00:12:35.000Second, I don't care whether she's dating Travis Kelce, and I hope that for the sake of the country, they get married and have babies so that all these 31-year-old feminists with seven cats can decide that marriage is actually good for them.
00:12:45.000And we can have the Taylor Swift baby boom.
00:12:48.000I also don't believe that she's some sort of deep state psy-op.
00:12:52.000If she's a deep state psy-op, they need to pick somebody who can act.
00:12:55.000Because Taylor Swi- In the most awkward moment last night, she wins Album of the Year, and she gets up and then promotes her next album, and she so- she so clearly does not care about being there.
00:13:05.000She so clearly does not even want to be there.
00:13:08.000Whenever they cut to her and she's like dancing in the audience, she's dancing like I would dance in the audience, which is to say awkwardly and with a sense of rage about having to be in this place at this time.
00:13:17.000She gets up on stage and she basically is like, okay, I'm here to pick up another trophy.
00:13:21.000I have 12 of these already or 13 of these, whatever, man.
00:13:24.000And I just put this one in the garage with all the rest of them.
00:14:48.000Quote, and so I enter into evidence my tarnished coat of arms, my muses acquired like bruises, my talismans and charms, the tick tick tick of love bombs, my veins of pitch black ink.
00:15:16.000And again, I hope she gets married to Travis Kelsey and has babies and grows the F up.
00:15:20.000Because I can't stand anymore of reading the lyrics of her albums that read like a 17-year-old girl made another album about how tortured she is and how sad she is but really inside she's deeply happy but she's really sad.
00:16:05.000That same NBC poll has him losing to Donald Trump by five points, 47 to 42, and it has Republicans ahead on the generic ballot by four points.
00:16:29.000And so what they believe, correctly, is that the Biden administration has made an overt decision that they wish the border to remain open.
00:16:36.000And so when he protests and he says that he doesn't actually have the ability to shut the border, no one believes him.
00:16:41.000Especially when you have Alejandro Mayorkas, The head of the Department of Homeland Security, who is currently theoretically going to be impeached by the House, suggesting that we actually need more migrants in the United States.
00:16:51.000He actually said this during an interview with the New York Times, quote,
00:16:54.000wouldn't it be more orderly? Wouldn't it be responsible governance to be able to deliver
00:16:57.000a lawful pathway to fill what we have, which is a labor need and cut the exploitative smugglers
00:17:01.000out and give the individuals a path to arrive lawfully, safely in an orderly way to perform
00:17:05.000labor that we need. They can send remittances home. They can return home when their work is done.
00:17:08.000Isn't that an element of a workable immigration system?
00:17:11.000And when asked, quote, what I'm hearing you say is you'd like to expand legal pathways in order
00:17:16.000to relieve some of the pressure on the southern border where people come in illegally.
00:17:18.000And he said, yes, and to fulfill one of the goals of our immigration system.
00:17:22.000So, yeah, that'd be yes to more migration, according to Alejandro Mayorkas.
00:17:26.000And so he doesn't really care whether it's legal or illegal.
00:17:28.000It ends up being basically the same thing.
00:17:33.000This is why, presumably, Joe Biden continues to keep the border open.
00:17:37.000Now, the game that Democrats are playing is they're trying to get Republicans to take ownership of the open border.
00:17:41.000The way they get Republicans to take ownership of the open border is to craft a quote-unquote bipartisan immigration bill so that when things continue to suck, they can then say Republicans helped craft the bill.
00:18:21.000The language is tougher, from President Biden all the way on down.
00:18:25.000Is that more about polling and politics, or do you believe it's actually language about policy?
00:18:30.000I think it's a lot of the politics that have gone on the last several years.
00:18:33.000People see the situation at the border and they're responding to the Republican narrative around what's happening at the border.
00:18:38.000Listen, there is a global migration challenge between global climate change, between failed governments in our hemisphere.
00:18:46.000There's a challenge that we have to address at the root cause and also how it's appearing at our border.
00:18:51.000But when you look at what Republicans What Republicans talk about, when you talk about a mass invasion, like you hear Texas Republicans talking about, when you talk about things like replacement theory, these are things that have gained hold in our electorate because that's what Republicans are talking about.
00:19:06.000Because they think it's, if they can come up with a conspiracy theory that's dangerous enough, that Americans will trust them.
00:19:12.000So when you see the rise in support for mass deportations, it's in response to a dangerous Republican narrative.
00:19:19.000Oh, it's the dangerous Republican narrative that's the problem.
00:19:21.000Okay, not the gigantic wave of illegal immigration.
00:19:24.000By the way, everyone knows who it is that's facilitating the illegal immigration.
00:19:28.000We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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00:20:42.000Perhaps the funniest media moment of the last 72 hours was CNN was talking to experts on immigration, and they were talking about the fact that some of the illegal immigrants who beat up cops last week actually would go and commit crimes in New York, and then they would go spend the money in Florida, and then they would come back to New York.
00:21:02.000And so the question was asked by CNN anchors, why are they coming back to New York?
00:21:05.000Why don't they just stay down in Florida?
00:21:07.000And the illegal immigration expert, John Miller, who's the chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst for CNN, he says the reason they come back to New York is because they won't be deported if they're in New York.
00:21:16.000And the CNN anchors are like, oh, oh, that's awkward.
00:21:20.000These individuals, I went over their rap sheets yesterday, multiple charges, grand larceny, robbery, attempted robbery, grand larceny, grand larceny.
00:21:29.000This particular crew operated on mopeds and scooters, they were doing organized retail theft, they were doing snatches on the street, iPhones, iPads, clothing, so on and so forth.
00:21:40.000One of them that they are still seeking has ten charges on one day because he's part of a pattern that's been going on and I'm looking at the dates that their arrest started, which is probably close to when they got here.
00:21:51.000They've only been here a couple of months.
00:21:53.000So what the detectives are telling me is they have crews here that operate in New York, do all their stealing, then go to Florida to spend the money, and then come back.
00:22:02.000And I'm like, well, why don't they just stay and steal in Florida?
00:22:04.000And they said, because there you go to jail.
00:22:16.000Well, Hakeem Jeffries is, of course, attempting to get Republicans to take ownership of this.
00:22:20.000The House Minority Leader, he wants the Republicans to take this up in the House because he realizes he'll get probably half of Republicans and all Democrats to vote in favor of this.
00:22:29.000And so Jeffries was asked, why don't you just disaggregate what's in this bill?
00:22:31.000So this giant border bill is not actually a border bill.
00:22:34.000It contains about $60 billion in aid to Ukraine.
00:22:37.000It contains $14 billion in aid to Israel.
00:22:39.000It contains, as we will see, $3 billion in aid to Gaza, which presumably will go directly into terrorist pockets, because that's how it works when you send aid to places that are governed by terrorists.
00:22:49.000And it gives money for the border, like $20 billion for various border priorities, including, by the way, a bunch of money to quote-unquote non-profit groups to facilitate illegal immigration services.
00:23:01.000Now, we were down at the border, and let me just tell you, these non-profit groups are literally facilitating illegal immigration down at the border.
00:23:06.000They have signs at the border saying, like, go this way to avoid border patrol.
00:23:12.000They basically are creating sanctuary pathways into the United States.
00:23:16.000In any case, here is Hakeem Jeffries trying to make the claim that we need to pass all this as a package.
00:23:20.000The reason he wants that, of course, is because the goal here is to get Republicans to sign off on a bad border bill so that they can't run on it in the 2024 election.
00:23:28.000Here he was saying we need a comprehensive bill.
00:23:31.000You saw the Speaker yesterday say that he's going to bring a stand-alone Israel bill to the floor of the House.
00:23:47.000to decide the way forward as it relates to America's national security priorities.
00:23:51.000Clearly, we've got to support Israel's ability to defend itself against Hamas and to defeat Hamas.
00:23:59.000We also need to make sure that we're doing everything possible to bring the hostages home, including American citizens, and to be able to surge humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians who are in harm's way in Gaza through no fault of their own.
00:24:13.000Beyond that, we also have to address the national security priorities of the American people in other parts of the world.
00:24:19.000First and foremost, certainly to support Ukraine's effort to push back against Russian aggression.
00:24:24.000Also to support our allies in the Indo-Pacific, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea.
00:24:30.000The legislation being put forth by House Republicans does none of that.
00:24:35.000The responsible approach is a comprehensive one to address America's national security priorities.
00:24:50.000And in fact, that is something that Republicans are currently pursuing.
00:24:52.000So Republicans, very early on in this process, tried to pass a $14 billion aid to Israel bill.
00:24:58.000They did so by having IRS tax offsets.
00:25:01.000The goal was to cut in one place in order to spend in another.
00:25:04.000And that was a responsible bill, but Democrats rejected it.
00:25:06.000And they did so on the basis that they didn't like the offsetting stuff.
00:25:09.000So now the Republicans are like, OK, we'll call your bluff.
00:25:11.000We will put forward a bill in the House that just passes the aid to Israel.
00:25:15.000Reject that at your own peril, which seems to me smart politics, because, you know, again, if Democrats are going to claim that they actually support Israel in the face of genocidal terrorism, then presumably they should be able to do that without any preconditions.
00:25:45.000A lot of it is about Crackdowns on drug cartels that are trafficking fentanyl and all the rest.
00:25:51.000But the key border provisions do not, in fact, end catch and release.
00:25:55.000There's nothing in there that, for example, requires detention of everybody until they can be fully adjudicated in a court.
00:26:02.000And there is no building of giant facilities that would allow for the mass detention of people.
00:26:07.000Plus, it also leaves in place the so-called Flores Settlement, which suggests that children cannot actively be detained with parents, which means the children get released into the country, and then in order to reconnect the parents, you actually end up releasing the parents into the country as well.
00:26:24.000The bill may be slightly better than the way that Joe Biden is currently practicing, but it certainly does not mandate anything from Joe Biden that he isn't already able to do under current law.
00:26:37.000So let's go through it right now because, again, most of the people who are going to be commenting on the bill have not actually read the bill.
00:26:42.000I spent this morning reading the bill.
00:26:43.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
00:26:44.000First, if you're like most Americans, you're kind of struggling to make ends meet.
00:26:48.000Everything is a lot more expensive than it used to be.
00:26:50.000By the time you pay the bills, fill up your car, go grocery shopping, there might not be that much left.
00:26:54.000You're laying out your credit card more than you'd like.
00:26:56.000And last I checked, Your average credit card interest rate for Americans, it's now 24%, which is insane.
00:27:02.000So if you get behind on that credit card debt, you got a problem.
00:27:04.000Well, if you own a home, I want you to call my friends at American Financing right now.
00:27:08.000Interest rates have finally dropped into the fives.
00:27:10.000That's the lowest they've been for a long time.
00:27:12.000Call American Financing and talk about their refinance options.
00:27:15.000They save their customers an average of $854 a month by tapping into their home equity and wiping out high-interest credit card debt.
00:28:03.000That would be a $2.3 billion giveaway to many of the non-profit organizations that I was talking about.
00:28:08.000And by the way, down at the border, some of these non-profit organizations are actively facilitating illegal immigration, not just people who cross the border and then they want to disappear into the interior.
00:28:17.000And so these non-profits literally just bring them food, bring them water, shuttle them into the interior of the country.
00:28:23.000And there have been pretty serious allegations that some of these non-profits are outright engaged in illegal activities, like helping to break down the border wall when border patrol isn't actually present.
00:28:33.000There is about $3 billion for USAID in Gaza.
00:28:36.000So as I said, it's not just aid for Israel, it's also aid for Gaza.
00:28:40.000There's a provision in there that requires USAID to give a report to Congress about how much of that aid is being redirected and stolen by Hamas or other terrorist groups.
00:28:47.000There's nothing there that mandates a cutoff in funds if a certain percentage of those funds end up being handled by terrorists.
00:28:53.000It has $3.4 billion in hiring and associated costs for U.S.
00:28:56.000citizenship and immigration services, including $112 million for non-personnel operations, including transcription services, so presumably for all the judicial hearings, and $500 million for facilities, and $49 million for training-related expenses.
00:29:12.000What exactly would those training-related expenses be?
00:29:14.000Well, for Border Patrol, they would have to be trained to include de-escalation strategies and methods, Identifying, screening, and responding to vulnerable populations.
00:29:21.000The impact of border security operations on natural resources.
00:29:24.000So we're going to get some environmentalist lectures to the Border Patrol.
00:29:28.000And they have to be lectured on quote relevant cultural, societal, racial, and religious training.
00:29:32.000So we have diversity training for the Border Patrol officers.
00:30:38.000Aliens referred for proceedings under this section shall be released from physical custody, not may be released, shall be released from physical custody and processed in accordance with the procedures described in the section.
00:30:49.000An adult alien, including a head of household who has been referred for a proceeding under this section, shall be supervised under the Alternatives to Detention Program of U.S.
00:30:56.000Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately upon release from physical custody and continuing for the duration of such proceeding.
00:31:03.000It could be that we put an ankle bracelet on you.
00:31:05.000It could be that we just release you into the interior and we're like, come back at a certain date.
00:31:09.000The secretary shall ensure to the greatest extent practicable that the referral of a family unit for proceedings under this section includes all members of such family who are traveling together.
00:31:19.000So if one person claims asylum, you're going to treat them all as if they've been claimed asylum, and then you're going to release them into the interior.
00:31:28.000Again, none of this applies to unaccompanied minors.
00:31:30.000If an alien receives a positive protection determination, they're immediately issued employment authorization.
00:31:36.000So if they're adjudicated that they have refugee status, immediate, like before they leave the building, they get a card that effectively says they can work in the United States.
00:31:46.000And of course, Reno versus Flores, which says that there can't be any family separations, that remains in place as well.
00:31:51.000Now, section 3202 of the bill actually loosens The definition of what it means to claim asylum.
00:31:57.000There's been some talk about the strengthening the definition of what it means to claim asylum.
00:32:01.000We'll talk about that provision in one second.
00:32:03.000But the baseline claim of asylum actually gets loosened here by definition.
00:32:06.000Section 3202 says, you have to declare a credible fear, right?
00:32:10.000The original definition that gets changed, it used to say that there had to be a significant possibility That the alien could establish eligibility for asylum.
00:32:20.000Okay, that was changed to a reasonable possibility.
00:32:23.000So now in order to claim asylum, you just have to show a reasonable possibility that you could establish eligibility for asylum.
00:32:28.000So this bill actually loosens the definition of a credible fear.
00:32:33.000It actually makes it easier to claim asylum, not harder.
00:32:37.000Now, the alien does have to show, to receive actual asylum, that there are no reasonable grounds for concluding the alien could relocate to another location in the alien's country of nationality, or, in the case of an alien having no nationality, another location in the alien's country of last habitual residence.
00:32:52.000That means that if you travel up from Honduras to the United States, you have to show, number one, if you want actual legal asylum, you have to show that you couldn't have just relocated inside Honduras, and two, that you couldn't have relocated in Mexico as you were passing through Mexico.
00:33:06.000That would be the definition of asylum.
00:33:09.000Because, of course, the vast majority of people who are claiming asylum are not doing so legally.
00:33:14.000Even the definition of asylum is somewhat irrelevant if people are simply coming, claiming that they have a reasonable possibility of establishing asylum, and then released into the interior.
00:33:25.000And all of this, of course, depends on the actual implementation.
00:33:28.000Because if you have a bunch of Border Patrol officials who have been instructed by the administration to be really loose about how they apply these rules, it doesn't matter what the law says.
00:33:36.000And then those people will never show up again.
00:33:39.000So, people who are saying this is a strict border bill are focusing in on the redefinition of reasonable grounds Right, so that if you actually claim asylum and then you show up for your secondary date, or you show up and you say, I have a credible fear of returning to my home country, that you have to make a reasonable showing, not a, again, a significant possibility, a reasonable possibility that you can't relocate in your country of origin, or that you can't stay in Mexico.
00:34:04.000You know, all you would have to say, presumably, is, I can't stay in my country of origin because I have a credible fear that in my country of origin, anywhere I go, they'll track me down and kill me.
00:34:12.000How exactly are you going to adjudicate that?
00:34:14.000Is the asylum officer going to say, I don't believe you?
00:34:17.000And if you say, okay, well, you could theoretically stay in Mexico, and they say, no, no, no, the drug cartel is going to follow me to Mexico.
00:34:32.000No one crosses the border until they have been effectively adjudicated as a true refugee.
00:34:38.000You stay in Mexico until you get your court date.
00:34:40.000That's what Donald Trump had in place, and Joe Biden abrogated it.
00:34:43.000Two, if you show up on the border, and we're not going to remain in Mexico, we have vast detention facilities, and you stay in the detention facilities until you are admitted or ejected.
00:34:52.000But so long as we are not doing either of those first two, the definition of asylum becomes almost irrelevant.
00:34:58.000We're gonna get to the quote-unquote emergency provisions of the bill that people are hanging their hats on to claim this is strong on the border in one second.
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00:35:38.000The other element of this border bill, this so-called border security bill, that is supposed to make conservatives feel more comfortable, is what's called Border Emergency Authority.
00:35:49.000And you're hearing a lot about this particular system in the media today.
00:35:52.000So, I'm going to actually read you the sections from the bill that are relevant, so you know exactly what's going on.
00:35:55.000First, the Secretary, this is of Homeland Security, may activate the Border Emergency Authority if, during a period of seven consecutive days, there's an average of 4,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.
00:36:07.000Okay, so just to get that straight, you're talking about a seven-day period in which you average 4,000 border encounters a day.
00:36:13.000That, by the way, is actually an undercount because, as we'll discuss in one second, the way that you actually do the border count does not apply to children from non-contiguous countries, i.e., Mexico or Canada.
00:36:24.000So, that border count does not include kids who are arriving from Honduras or El Salvador, for example.
00:36:30.000It does not apply to aliens not from Mexico or Canada, and it doesn't count gataways.
00:36:34.000So people who simply rush across the border and we don't actually arrest them at the border, the border patrol doesn't actually encounter them, that doesn't count.
00:36:40.000So if you have a thousand people, two thousand people, who are entering between ports of entry, and they are just escaping into the interior, and we know they're there because we have cameras all along the border.
00:36:48.000I've been down to the southern border, as you can see over at Daily Wire, we did a whole documentary on this.
00:36:53.000Those people don't count toward the count.
00:36:55.000So, this is a wild undercount, but if you're at 4,000 a day, right, which, again, is going to amount to, over the course of a year, 1.46 million people entering the country.
00:37:08.000If you're at 4,000 a day, then the Secretary is allowed to activate this Border Emergency Authority.
00:37:14.000The Secretary must activate the Border Emergency Authority if, during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, there's an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered every day.
00:37:24.000That would be 1.825 million people per year.
00:37:28.000So that is the cutoff point where the Secretary must activate emergency authority.
00:37:32.000What does that mean, that emergency authority?
00:37:34.000Well, right now, if you arrive at, say, the San Miguel Gate, which is where I was in that video down in Arizona, that is not a port of entry.
00:37:40.000If you arrive at the port of entry, Border Patrol will still pick you up and there's like a detention center a mile away.
00:37:44.000You're processed within 72 hours you're in the country.
00:37:46.000The Border Emergency Authority would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security, if there are 4,000, and mandate that the Secretary of Homeland Security, if there are 5,000, tell everybody you can't be processed here.
00:37:59.000You have to be processed at a local point of entry.
00:38:01.000You have to go to a port of entry in order to be processed.
00:38:05.000Now, it's unclear whether if you show up at the border, Border Patrol simply drives you there.
00:38:10.000Maybe that now you're on American soil?
00:38:12.000Are you pushed back across the border?
00:38:13.000They just drop you back across the other side of the gate?
00:38:15.000Or do they now put you in a bus, and instead of them busing you like a mile away, they simply bus you to the local port of entry?
00:38:22.000When it comes to the port of entry, during any activation of the Border Emergency Authority, the Secretary shall maintain the capacity to process and continue processing a minimum of 1,400 inadmissible aliens each calendar day.
00:38:34.000So he can't shut down the ports of entry.
00:38:36.000He has to actually continue, at a minimum, to allow 1,400 people a day into the country via these ports of entry.
00:38:47.000I'm failing to see how it does, if so.
00:38:50.000And then, as it turns out, they poke a bunch of holes in this supposed emergency authority.
00:38:55.000So, for example, the Secretary shall not activate the Border Emergency Authority during the first calendar year for more than 270 calendar days, during the second calendar year for more than 225 calendar days, during the third calendar year for more than 180 calendar days.
00:39:09.000So even if they're getting 15,000 people a day, In year two, you can only activate it for 225 days.
00:39:17.000During year three, for 180 calendar days.
00:39:20.000So half the year, it simply doesn't apply.
00:39:22.000There's no way to actually maintain this.
00:39:25.000It's not like an open-ended border authority to shut it down if you have 5,000 a day.
00:39:29.000Even today, that only applies for 270 calendar days.
00:39:32.000So why precisely... Let's say that you're the drug cartels.
00:40:21.000They have literal drug cartel drones that are flying over the American side of the border and monitoring every specific border patrol agent.
00:40:29.000According to this bill, the Secretary shall suspend activation of the Border Emergency Authority not later than 14 calendar days after the date on which there is, during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, an average of less than 75% of the encounter level used for activation.
00:40:45.000So, in other words, the Border Emergency Authority has to be then revoked within 14 days of the number going down to 1,250 border encounters per day.
00:40:59.000What's more, there's another hole that's poked in this, which is, if the President finds it is in the national interest to temporarily suspend the Border Emergency Authority, the President may direct the Secretary to suspend the use of the Border Emergency Authority on an emergency basis.
00:41:12.000So Joe Biden, let's say that Mayorkas is mandated, there are 5,000 a day for 7 days, he's mandated to kick in the Emergency Authority.
00:41:22.000Biden can say, nah, don't want you to do it.
00:41:25.000Now, the Secretary shall suspend the Border Emergency Authority for not more than 45 calendar days within a calendar year, notwithstanding any limitations on the use of authority.
00:41:34.000So, that means that the Secretary can then overrule the President after 45 days.
00:41:37.000So when you talk about 270 days, what you really mean is if the President uses his authority, you're already down to 225 days.
00:41:44.000In year two, you are already down to 180 days.
00:41:47.000And in year three, you're already down to 135 days that Border Emergency Authority could even be used even if they wanted to.
00:41:55.000Oh, by the way, all border cases, all cases under this bill can now no longer be resolved by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is a much more conservative circuit court.
00:42:03.000Instead, it kicks all of them over to the D.C.
00:42:23.000The thing that it mandates is not an end to catch and release.
00:42:26.000The thing that it mandates is not, in fact, a lower... I mean, it basically makes the new supposed cap $1.8 million, and it really is not $1.8 million.
00:43:08.000And does it create any long-standing serious changes to the system?
00:43:11.000The only long-standing serious change to the system that would be a positive, and it would, would be the changes to the actual standard for asylum.
00:43:19.000That would actually be a good change to the system.
00:43:22.000But is that worth buying into Joe Biden simply applying the law as he sees fit here anyway?
00:43:28.000Again, political ownership of the issue versus a change to law.
00:43:32.000Joe Biden is bucking the law as it currently stands.
00:43:34.000He has an affirmative obligation as President of the United States to enforce border law.
00:44:02.000The reason that Joe Biden is pushing so far to the left on things like immigration is because he truly believes the only way he's going to win is to get out the left-wing base.
00:44:57.000But Donald Trump is, by the way, up right now.
00:44:59.000I mean, the polls are what the polls are.
00:45:02.000And again, Donald Trump's sort of like weird, distractible nature is one of the reasons that I think people at this point are like, OK, I like the distracted guy rather than the guy who's laser focused on doing dumb crap.
00:45:12.000I mean, Donald Trump spent the weekend Actively telling people that he looks like Elvis Presley.
00:45:21.000He went on his Truth Social page and he put out an actual image of himself in which he is mashed up with Elvis.
00:45:32.000And he says, some people have been telling me I look like Elvis.
00:45:36.000And most Americans are like, okay fine, I'd still rather have that than what we have currently.
00:45:40.000MSNBC did a very uncomfortable interview with a black voter, where the black voter was like, uh, the economy is good under Trump, and I don't like the economy right now, so, uh, no.
00:45:48.000You're hearing that, too, that there are some people in your orbit who are either voting for Donald Trump or considering it?
00:45:54.000A lot of my friends are, obviously, my age, so we're a little younger.
00:45:57.000We've only voted once, you know, for a president, and Trump is kinda all we know, and they're kinda, Trump and Biden, they're like, well, We were broke with Biden.
00:46:12.000And that's kind of the only thing that I'm hearing over and over again, over and over again, is that with Trump, we had money.
00:46:20.000By the way, many of the issues that have been raised against Donald Trump, including the classified documents stuff, the problem is that Joe Biden has done the same sort of stuff.
00:46:28.000According to Axios, President Biden's team is now concerned that special counsel Robert Herr's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents will hurt his re-elect campaign.
00:46:36.000Biden aides don't expect criminal charges, but they believe that Herr's report will include embarrassing details, possibly with photos, on how Biden stored documents.
00:46:43.000Because, again, classified documents were in his garage and also in a private office that he used.
00:46:49.000So if the entire rip on Donald Trump is that he was very careless with classified documents because he put boxes on the stage at Mar-a-Lago, well, I mean, that's awkward for Joe Biden.
00:47:00.000According to Axios, Anthony Coley, a former senior advisor to Merrick Garland, caught the Biden's team attention recently when he wrote that Biden and those in his orbit had no one to blame but themselves for Garland appointing a special counsel.
00:47:11.000Coley said Biden's team was not initially transparent about the documents and put Garland in a no-win situation.
00:47:38.000A piece that received enormous blowback over the weekend, but happens to be true, is by a person named Stephen Stilinski over at the Wall Street Journal talking about Dearborn, Michigan.
00:47:46.000So the Biden team has now been deploying its resources to Dearborn, Michigan to try to win over Arab-American voters in Dearborn.
00:47:54.000Dearborn, of course, is part of the congressional district of Rashida Tlaib, which tells you where they are politically.
00:47:58.000A lot of people who are very pro-terror in that particular region of Michigan.
00:48:03.000And this piece is titled, Welcome to Dearborn, America's Jihad Capital.
00:48:07.000And this, of course, receives all... How could you say...
00:48:10.000Here's what the piece says, quote, thousands march in support of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
00:48:14.000Protesters, many with keffiyehs covering their faces, shout intifada, intifada.
00:48:17.000From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free and America is a terrorist state.
00:48:21.000Local imams give fiery anti-Semitic sermons.
00:48:23.000It's the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan.
00:48:26.000Almost immediately after October 7th, long before Israel began its ground offensive in Gaza, people were celebrating the horrific events of that day in pro-Hamas rallies and marches throughout Dearborn.
00:48:36.000Local enthusiasm for Jihad against Israel and the West extends beyond celebration of Hamas.
00:48:40.000The Islamic Center of America, a leading Dearborn mosque, held a memorial service December 30th for a Hezbollah operative killed in an Israeli airstrike.
00:48:47.000The Hadi Institute, which runs an Islamic matessori school and bills itself as a youth community center, held a commemoration of the martyrs on January 5th, honoring Qasem Soleimani.
00:48:57.000And Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, leader of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.
00:49:01.000Both were terrorists when they were killed in a U.S.
00:49:12.000A 2001 Michigan State Police assessment submitted to the Justice Department after 9-11 called Dearborn a major financial support center and a recruiting area and potential support base for international terror groups.
00:49:24.000So who exactly is Joe Biden pandering to?
00:49:26.000The answer is a lot of the people in Dearborn, Michigan, because he believes that if he doesn't get their votes, he's going to lose Michigan and therefore lose the election.
00:49:35.000And all he needs is cover from the media, which he is getting.
00:49:38.000The entire New York Times now dedicated to the proposition that the crisis in the Middle East was not caused by Hamas actively attacking and murdering some 1,200 Jews.
00:49:49.000That the Christ in the Middle East is Israel fighting back against Hamas.
00:49:52.000And so literally every day they're just plastering on the front pages the suffering of the poor people of Gaza.
00:49:58.000All of which, by the way, could be ended right now.
00:50:01.000All Hamas has to do is walk out of the tunnels with their hands up and with the hostages in tow, release the hostages, go into exile, and all of the violence stops tomorrow.
00:50:22.000Which is why the New York Times is putting out pieces about suffering in Gaza with all sorts of the pictures and the hospitals and all the rest of this sort of stuff.
00:50:30.000Again, the people responsible for this are Hamas.
00:50:47.000Because there wasn't a mass bombardment of military areas of Gaza.
00:50:51.000Because Gaza, despite the fact that they were in fact Hamas was firing rockets into Israel, had not slaughtered 1,200 Jews.
00:50:58.000Meanwhile, Nicholas Kristof doing his usual routine.
00:51:00.000What can we possibly say to the children of Gaza?
00:51:02.000That's literally the title of a piece from the excribable Nick Kristof over at the New York Times.
00:51:07.000What can we possibly say to the children of Gaza?
00:51:11.000I mean, the thing that you can say to the children of Gaza is maybe your parents should not have supported a terror group, and maybe your parents right now should expel that terror group from their leadership.
00:52:00.000So the Democratic Party is caught between a rock and a hard place, because on the one hand, there are still some Democrats who realize that, hey, Hamas should be defeated.
00:52:07.000On the other hand, they are wedded to this peculiar idea that unless Israel is forced into concessions to terrorists, the Middle Eastern conflict becomes more broad and inevitable, which, of course, is a lie.
00:52:39.000But that's exactly what the Biden administration is doing.
00:52:41.000So on the one hand, you have Hakeem Jeffries correctly saying that the United States should not put conditions on allies defending themselves.
00:52:49.000Several members, progressive members of your caucus have said that they want some conditions now on aid to Israel, including your fellow New York Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
00:52:59.000Well, Israel has a right to defend itself and also, of course, a responsibility to conduct its war in a manner consistent with the international rules of conflict.
00:53:08.000We shouldn't put conditions on the ability of any of our allies to defend themselves, particularly against a brutal, terrorist regime like Hamas.
00:53:19.000He is right about that, but at the same time, you have Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, saying, we need a two-state solution.
00:53:24.000And they keep saying this over and over, as though you can just wish-cast states into existence, which is totally crazy.
00:53:47.000Do you see any prospect at all, he seems to have been ruling it out, Prime Minister Netanyahu, of some kind of a long-term deal that leads to a Palestinian state?
00:53:59.000position on this is very straightforward.
00:54:01.000The only long-term answer to peace in the region, to Israel's security in the region, is a two-state solution with Israel's security guaranteed.
00:54:10.000A Palestinian state that also has security guarantees for Israel.
00:54:14.000That's what we're going to keep working for.
00:54:16.000We were doing that before October 7th.
00:54:18.000I think since October 7th, the need to work on that has only increased, and we would like to deliver an outcome over time.
00:54:57.000Their plan in the Middle East is to futz around nonsensically because they do not understand the Middle East in any real way, shape, or form.
00:55:02.000And what that amounts to is randomly lashing out at empty buildings and occasionally hitting a camel in the ass, yelling at the Israelis that they probably should kill fewer Hamas members, or that urban war is really bad and war is bad.
00:55:40.000They're engaging in routine attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.
00:55:43.000There are near daily strikes between Israel and Hezbollah, and much of this is rooted in the war between Israel and Hamas.
00:55:51.000My colleague, Peter Bergen, smartly pointed out that this conflict involves ten countries, at least, four major terrorist groups.
00:55:59.000So, isn't this already a regional conflict?
00:56:05.000Well, Dana, what I would say is that these are distinct but related challenges.
00:56:10.000For example, what's happening in the Red Sea is obviously, to a certain extent, triggered by what's happening in Gaza, but it's not the same thing.
00:56:18.000The Houthis aren't just hitting ships related to Israel, they're hitting a lot of different ships from a lot of different countries.
00:56:25.000And so we are trying to deal with the challenge to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.
00:56:31.000It's always fun when they pretend that it's a distinct challenge when the same exact group is sponsoring all of this, namely the government of Iran.
00:56:38.000But again, refusal to acknowledge reality ends in more conflict and ends in more war and it ends in more death.
00:56:43.000Okay, in just a second, we are going to get to Tucker Carlson.
00:56:46.000He is going to Russia to interview Vladimir Putin.