00:00:00.000So, yesterday was the greatest American holiday.
00:00:04.000Well, according to the Democratic Party, Tax Day!
00:00:07.000Yes, you might think of Tax Day as something annoying and awful.
00:00:10.000That day when you slip a check in the mail that represents a gigantic chunk of your yearly earnings so that the federal government can then spend all of that money on a bunch of useless horse crap.
00:00:19.000But that's where you're wrong, you see.
00:00:21.000According to Democrats, Tax Day is a magnificent delight, a day of festivities for all.
00:00:26.000We got to look forward to it every year because taxes are incredible.
00:00:30.000As Joe Biden used to say, they're a sign of patriotism, of social solidarity.
00:00:35.000And mostly, really, of sticking it to the people who actually earn money in the United States.
00:00:40.000And then there's something even better for Democrats.
00:00:42.000Spending all of that magical money on awful nonsense.
00:01:05.000Well, the purpose of taxes, according to Democrats, is not, in fact, a more prosperous society or the obliteration of poverty.
00:01:17.000The purpose of taxes is super simple to punish success.
00:01:21.000This is why they're always denying that's what they're doing, because it's what they're doing.
00:01:24.000The more successful you are, the more you ought to be punished.
00:01:27.000One of the seminal political debates that I've ever covered was a 2008 Democratic debate involving then Senator Barack Obama, who had become president.
00:01:38.000And he was asked a question that in any normal world would be disqualifying for the presidency.
00:01:42.000The question was Would you increase the capital gains tax rate even if it resulted in less tax revenue?
00:01:49.000Because the idea is that if you increase taxes in a particular area, like capital gains, people just invest less.
00:01:56.000And so the amount of money that comes out to the government can go down.
00:01:58.000And he was asked Would you increase the capital gains tax rate anyway, even if it generated less revenue for the government to spend?
00:03:21.000The real key is that you are punishing and reveling in punishing the rich people.
00:03:25.000That's what it's about, which is why the Democratic Party on tax day put out a tweet saying, Tax the rich.
00:03:31.000Remember, not help the poor, tax the rich.
00:03:34.000That's all they care about is taxing the rich.
00:03:36.000And the way you know that it's working is because you are making the rich poorer.
00:03:40.000This is why Zorhan Mamdani, the communist mayor of New York, Was sitting on a stage yesterday with a gigantic backdrop reading Tax the Rich, talking about how well all of this is working.
00:03:53.000And so, for all of the discussion of the imagined exodus that would take place, were we to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers by the appropriate amount, I say imagined because before I was a mayor, I was a state legislator, and I was part of an effort to increase taxes on millionaires at that time.
00:04:11.000And what we find now is that we have more millionaires today than we did at that time, even after having passed that tax.
00:04:17.000Well, I mean, the reason you have more millionaires in the city is because of economic growth, not due to New York City, but millionaires and billionaires are fleeing the state, which is why.
00:04:26.000Kathy Hochul has largely opposed many of Zar Mamdani's proposals.
00:04:31.000Well, Zar Mamdani on tax day decided it was time to announce the new Pierre Terre tax.
00:04:37.000The Pierre Terre tax is a tax on any home that is a second home for somebody, a home that they don't live in most of the year, that is worth more than $5 million.
00:04:47.000And again, the sick glee with which he announces taxes has nothing to do with helping people, it has everything to do with punishing people.
00:05:00.000If he had a guillotine nearby and he had the capacity to use it, he most certainly would.
00:05:05.000So he cuts this ad, which should creep the living hell out of you if you have half a brain, talking about how excited he is to tax people on tax day.
00:05:14.000Remember, most people think of tax day as a miserable day because, hey, you're giving a bunch of money that you earned to a bunch of people who did not earn that money so they can spend it on random crap.
00:05:22.000But according to Tsar Mamdani, it's the best day because he, as a useless person for his entire adult life, got elected mayor of New York and now he finally gets to do the thing he wants to do, which is Bring the richies low.
00:05:34.000Not the ones he's friends with, not like Alex Soros.
00:05:55.000I'm thrilled to announce we've secured a pied-a-terre tax, the first in New York's history.
00:06:00.000This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million, whose owners do not live full-time in the city.
00:06:06.000Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million.
00:06:12.000This pied-a-terre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich, those who store their wealth in New York City real estate, but who don't actually live here.
00:06:19.000But even so, they're able to reap the huge financial rewards of owning property in, dare I say, the greatest city in the world.
00:06:25.000And most of the time, these units are sitting empty, since again, They don't actually live here.
00:06:29.000This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working New Yorkers.
00:07:03.000Some are like the people in succession, and many are not.
00:07:05.000And I know an awful lot of people who are not rich.
00:07:08.000And some of them are terrible, and some of them are wonderful.
00:07:10.000The idea that virtue inherently correlates with level of wealth is nuts, but it is what undergirds the level of hatred that Democrats have for people who earn.
00:07:20.000Of course, all that's really silly, because it turns out that people who are rich today were not rich yesterday.
00:07:24.000You know, thank God I have a lot of money in my bank account.
00:07:28.000I once did not have nearly any money in my bank account.
00:07:31.000And that's the beautiful thing about America.
00:07:32.000You can do both of those things in one lifetime.
00:07:36.000But according to Democrats, that's the bad thing.
00:07:38.000It would be better if nobody had that money in their bank account.
00:07:42.000Again, notice the emotivism here, right?
00:07:45.000The idea that it's all just about emotion, it's not about policy in any way.
00:07:50.000What is unfair about Ken Griffin shelling out a lot of money to people who built an apartment who will then use that money to develop more properties in New York City?
00:08:02.000Where is the terrible thing that Ken Griffin did there?
00:08:04.000He's terrible just because he doesn't spend time in the city?
00:08:08.000If that apartment were not bought, would that somehow amount to more housing in the city of New York?
00:08:14.000Or would it undercut the housing market in the city of New York and lead to less development of more units?
00:08:20.000By the way, that $500 million amounts to 9% of the total budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year.
00:08:27.000And again, that's a high estimate because the reality is that a lot of these people are going to sell those apartments, get out.
00:08:33.000A lot of deals are going to be killed.
00:08:35.000I know people in the real estate industry, and a lot of people in the real estate industry are backing out of contracts in New York City specifically because of this sort of stuff.
00:08:43.000And remember, earlier this year, Mamdani tried to threaten the New York governor by presenting a binary choice to fix the city's emergency by saying, one, he could tax the rich, which would either require her approval.
00:08:55.000Or B, implement a steep 10% property tax hike on everybody and then dip into the city reserves.
00:09:08.000First, did you know the average employer sorts through about 250 resumes for a single job opening?
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00:10:32.000Let's say that this is where their main residence and their second residence were down here in Palm Beach, which is true for a lot of New Yorkers, the snowbirds who come down here every winter.
00:10:40.000Are you still okay with them buying that gigantic $238 million apartment or what?
00:10:48.000I mean, honestly, if they're not actually living in the apartment, they're taking advantage of city services less often.
00:10:53.000So actually you are gaining more in tax revenue from them.
00:10:58.000Nonetheless, she says numerous media reports have revealed that many of Manhattan's largest new high rise developments are owned by foreign investors who spend little time in the apartments they have purchased.
00:11:08.000The New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey conducted every three years found that in 2023, there are about 59,000 units that were held for seasonal recreation or occasional use, down from about 75,000 in 2017.
00:11:53.000In this case, we'll presumably have fewer absentee property owners bidding up property values for $5 million homes.
00:11:59.000That, of course, will dampen valuations, which in turn will dampen property and transfer tax revenues because you pay property taxes and transfer taxes based on the value of the purchase.
00:12:09.000Notably, says Ryhan, while building more housing will tend to lower valuations of individual units, it would tend to increase overall property tax revenues.
00:12:18.000The next step, of course, and you know this is coming, will be to lower the threshold from $5 million to $1 million and so on, and then.
00:12:24.000The final step will be to broaden this out so that a new tax just applies to anyone who owns in New York.
00:12:30.000It's not going to stop with second homes.
00:12:32.000Because, again, the case will be made that actually second homes take less advantage of city services than first homes.
00:12:40.000Now, one of the funny things about the way that New York does its work is that they are constantly attempting to incentivize cheap building.
00:12:46.000And what they instead end up doing is creating incentive structures for people to just do strange things to avoid taxes.
00:12:54.000So, for example, A 2024 city government program, according to the Wall Street Journal, offered a tax exemption to developers of most apartment buildings that have fewer than 100 units and include some affordable housing.
00:13:06.000The idea theoretically was to get people to build larger buildings up to 100 units and then include some affordable housing.
00:13:15.000Developers seized on the loophole and they secured the tax benefit for projects with more than 100 units.
00:13:20.000They would assemble complexes with hundreds of apartments sliced up into 99 unit pieces while seeking city approval.
00:13:29.000As the Wall Street Journal points out, real estate owners sew these buildings together with a joint facade, interlocking floor plates, hallways, and shared amenities, so tenants in one building can access the co working space, gym, or child play area in another.
00:13:39.000So you would have people who would build a 500 unit apartment complex, and then they would basically artificially divide that in order to take advantage of the tax benefits.
00:13:48.000It turns out that tax policy is an incentive.
00:13:51.000When you raise taxes on things, you get less of that thing.
00:13:54.000And again, none of this, none of this is about paying for these magical services that Mamdani wants.
00:14:09.000And again, this is a universal idea among top tier Democrats these days, or near universal.
00:14:15.000I have to say, one of the most despicable people in American politics, Tom Steyer, who manned up the governor of California thanks to Eric Swalwell's inability to keep his penis out of other people.
00:14:34.000Legitimately, billions of his own dollars on a random variety of left wing radical causes.
00:14:39.000Well, now he's trying to spend his way into the governor's house in California to succeed Gavin Newsom, who himself is running for president.
00:14:45.000And he says billionaires like him need to pay more.
00:14:53.000It's time for billionaires like me and big corporations to buy into the future of California and be willing to pay more.
00:15:01.000A lot of people in California are acting as if we have a zero sum game and they're defending their wealth and they're trying to make sure that they minimize their taxes.
00:15:11.000I can't believe they would try to minimize their taxes, those rich people.
00:15:29.000And again, he's lying because the fact is that the vast majority of federal income tax revenue comes from the people who earn the most.
00:15:36.000This notion that somehow our tax rates are unfairly beneficial toward the rich is nonsense.
00:15:42.000America has one of the most progressive tax systems on earth.
00:15:45.000On earth, here, for example, is a chart from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
00:15:52.000And it shows the adjusTedros income, that's the AGI.
00:15:58.000The bracket versus the percentage of federal personal income tax paid.
00:16:02.000If you're in the top 50%, meaning you made more than $50,000, you paid 97% of all taxes.
00:16:08.000If you are in the bottom 50% of earners in American society or below $50,000, you paid 2.96% of the taxes.
00:16:16.000According to USA Facts, most of the government's federal income tax revenue comes from the nation's top income earners.
00:16:22.000In 2023, the top 5% of earners, people with incomes $272,000 and above, collectively paid over $1.27 trillion in income taxes, or about 60% of the national total.
00:16:33.000If you include the top 10%, everyone who made at least $187,000 and above, that figure rises to $1.5 trillion, 70% of the national total.
00:16:44.000So again, the people at the top are in fact paying the most, and that's not just how Democrats want it, that's how they need it.
00:16:51.000And then they claim that the rich don't pay their fair share.
00:16:55.000The best way to know if they're paying their fair share is when they're not rich anymore.
00:16:58.000According to data from the Tax Foundation, nearly one third, one third of all income tax filers.
00:17:04.000All of whom are in the bottom 50% paid no income tax at all.
00:17:09.000And then, if you actually compare what people get out from the government to what they put into the government, it turns out that the people who are in the top 1% get nothing out and pay everything in.
00:17:22.000So, again, according to the United States Congressional Budget Office, if you are in the top 1% of earners and you pay a dollar in taxes, you get back four cents of services.
00:17:33.000If you are in the lowest quintile, meaning you're not paying pretty much anything in, You're getting $68 in services for every $1 you pay in in federal transfers.
00:17:45.000If you're in the second lowest quintile, for every buck you pay in, you get $6.29 out.
00:17:52.000But the bottom line is that if you are in the top 20% of earners, anywhere in that top 20%, you are paying in significantly more than you are getting out from the federal government.
00:18:03.000The notion that the rich don't pay their fair share is just crap.
00:19:21.000This went from a thriving and powerful place once envied by all to a Commonwealth run by a person who has no concept of low taxes and economic strength.
00:19:29.000People that voted for Spanberger are saying to themselves, Why did I do that?
00:19:34.000He said, We have a similar situation in New York and most of all in California, where rich, job producing people and companies are being forced to flee at levels never seen before.
00:19:41.000The tax base in California is literally disappearing.
00:19:44.000And they do want to put a wealth tax on there.
00:19:46.000That wealth tax is scaring the bejesus out of everyone, everyone in California who has any level of wealth.
00:19:52.000Truly, the wealth tax is terrifying anyone with any real level of wealth in a company, for example.
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00:21:50.000Also, right now, all over the United States, women are facing unexpected pregnancies and they're being bombarded with pressure and fear before they ever have a chance to pause or to hear the truth about life and hope.
00:22:00.000And that's why I stand with our sponsor, Preborn.
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00:23:18.000They are increasing things like the child tax deduction.
00:23:22.000So again, people are paying less in taxes thanks to the president of the United States.
00:23:27.000Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, pointed this out on tax day yesterday.
00:23:32.000More than 45% of the filers of the returns that we have seen have had at least one of the four president's signature policies no tax and tips, no tax and overtime, the deductions for our great seniors, and the deductibility of interest on auto loans for American made cars.
00:23:53.000And I will tell you that the biggest one of those that Americans have taken is no tax and overtime.
00:24:02.000If you want to work longer hours, you get to keep more of your money.
00:24:05.000Okay, so again, he is right about that.
00:24:08.000And this is one area where Republicans have a significant advantage.
00:24:11.000And then there's another area where we actually spend those tax dollars.
00:24:14.000Where we actually spend those tax dollars.
00:24:17.000So when it comes to spending our tax dollars, is California doing an amazing job?
00:24:22.000Well, as it turns out, the answer is no.
00:24:24.000Chris Ruffo and Jonathan Cho over at City Journal, which is a project of Manhattan Institute, they have a piece out today titled California Paying Illegal Immigrant Sex Changes.
00:24:45.000Quote Last month, they write, we received a report from a whistleblower who claimed that illegal aliens were staying in San Francisco's homeless shelters.
00:24:53.000Following up on the tip, we visited numerous publicly funded shelters in San Francisco and spoke to employees and residents about their policies, sometimes through a translator.
00:25:01.000We discovered not only that the shelters were housing illegal immigrants, but also they were apparently housing a population of male to female transgender illegal aliens.
00:25:08.000Who had hoped to obtain gender affirming care.
00:25:10.000And to our shock, state and local governments apparently are providing it.0.66
00:25:23.000If you're a Democrat and you supposedly believe that tax revenue is necessary to better people's lives, shouldn't you be the most angry at waste, fraud, and abuse?
00:27:51.000I've made it clear ICE must be abolished.
00:27:54.000ICE is acting like a criminal organization carrying out indiscriminate racial profiling and using violence, intimidation, terrorism, and the murder of Americans to extend Trump's rule by fear.
00:28:02.000It's not enough for Democrats to simply engage in rhetoric and stand against ICE or Trump.
00:28:07.000California must build a system that fights fire with fire.
00:28:43.000Five things to take on ICE quote the same way we took on the mob.
00:28:48.000One, criminally prosecute ICE agents for violence.
00:28:51.000Two, ban any law enforcement agency from using race, ethnicity, language, or location to detain or arrest migrants.0.64
00:29:00.000So, like any of those, like all of those in combination.0.51
00:29:04.000So, if you are at like a Home Depot where illegal immigrants are known to be, and you know that those people are typically from, say, El Salvador, and they're speaking only Spanish.0.64
00:29:17.000And they're waiting to be picked up by a random truck, then you should be criminally prosecuted if you are an ICE agent and you use that for a detention.
00:29:29.000They want to send special investigative units to collect evidence at detention centers to prosecute ICE agents.
00:29:34.000You can have state investigative units going into federal facilities to seek prosecution, which I can't see how that goes wrong.
00:30:13.000And the wages of craziness in some cases are death.
00:30:18.000Which brings us to this horrible story about a DHS employee who was murdered by a convicted felon immigrant naturalized by the Biden administration.
00:30:26.000According to the New York Post, Lauren Bullis, who worked as an auditor for DHS's Office of Inspector General, was shot and stabbed in Atlanta when a 26 year old.
00:30:36.000Immigrant who was given temporary protected status and then final status went on a deadly rampage on Monday morning.
00:30:42.000Bose was a 40 year old auditor for DHS.
00:30:44.000She had taken her dog out for a stroll about 7 a.m. when she was targeted as part of three random attacks carried out by the madman across the Atlanta area.
00:30:53.000The alleged rampage also killed another woman outside a Checker's restaurant and critically injured a homeless man who was sleeping outside a Kroger store.
00:31:00.000Apparently, this alleged perp was born in the UK and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2022 under Joe Biden and had a lengthy rap sheet.
00:31:08.000And then there is the case of a Haitian illegal immigrant who bludgeoned a Florida mother to death.
00:31:17.000According to the New York Post, Rolbert Joachim, 40, is accused of striking a Florida mother multiple times, leaving her to die in the parking lot of a Chevron gas station in Fort Myers, according to court records reviewed by the Post.
00:31:29.000That Haitian native arrived in the United States in August 22 and was released into the country by, wait for it, the Biden administration.
00:31:36.000He was given temporary protected status and then was issued a final order of removal by a judge, but.
00:31:41.000He was safe because TPS ran out in 2024.
00:31:45.000And the results of that a dead person.
00:31:48.000Again, this is your warning, this is some graphic footage.
00:31:54.000Yeah, this is the woman walks out, and here comes an in.
00:32:00.000He literally hits her in the head with a hammer and then just beats her with the hammer.
00:32:09.000This is just one reason why many in the GOP are objecting to extending legal protections for Haitian migrants.
00:32:20.000According to the Washington Post, several House Democrats and Republicans have now joined to oppose President Trump's immigration policy Wednesday.
00:32:27.000They are forcing to advance a measure to reinstate temporary protections for 350,000 Haitians living in the U.S. for three years.
00:32:35.000There will be no more TPS for Haitians living in the United States.1.00
00:32:39.000People who are here illegally need to go home.1.00
00:32:42.000Now, again, I understand that there are a lot of people who are sympathetic to Haitian immigrants who are really being sent back to a place that is hellish.1.00
00:32:51.000The United States does not have an obligation to take in every person who is leaving a bad place.0.98
00:32:56.000And if we are going to do temporary protected status, then we ought to try to cut a deal.
00:33:01.000With some other country, a third party country, a Mexico or El Salvador or somewhere else, because those people do not have to come to the United States.
00:33:09.000There are many other places they can go, and we can help facilitate that.
00:33:13.000But the notion that you're coming from a bad place, therefore, we must inherently grant you asylum no, that is incorrect, especially when we have no great way of actually enforcing our immigration laws.
00:33:26.000Meanwhile, on foreign policy, well, it seems as though something is coming to the end when it comes to the war and run.
00:33:36.000That is the thing that is coming to an end.0.98
00:33:38.000The Kalshi markets, by the way, are right now suggesting that traffic at the Strait of Hormuz is going to return to normal.0.57
00:33:45.000And by the way, in relatively short order, which is to say that the war is going to end.
00:33:49.000According to those Kalshi markets, some 30% of people believe that the Strait of Hormuz will return to normal before May 15th, which is like one month from now.
00:34:00.000A majority, 53%, believe that it will be open completely, like back to normal before June 1st.
00:34:16.000That is not the way this is going to work.0.98
00:34:17.000Now, listen, the Iranians are continuing to try to posture for their own population, mainly because if they do not posture for their own population, they're in serious trouble.0.93
00:34:25.000They are also, of course, posturing on behalf of the woke right, of the grievance party right.0.63
00:34:32.000They're trying to take advantage of any split they can find in American public opinion to try and rip into Trump.
00:34:37.000So they took that dumb meme that Trump posted where he appeared to be.
00:34:40.000According to Trump, a Red Cross doctor, or alternatively, Jesus.
00:35:13.000The people in the Trump meme started, Your reckoning has come.
00:35:16.000And then Jesus, muscular Jesus, comes from the sky and smashes Trump in the face and sends him into the fiery bowels of hell.0.79
00:35:22.000Well, unfortunately for the Iranians, the only people who have been sent to the fiery bowels of hell are, you know, their entire leadership cadre, who are now legitimately burning in hell.0.91
00:35:40.000The naval blockade has now been fully implemented.
00:35:43.000According to CENTCOM, no ships are being allowed in or out of Iranian ports.
00:35:47.000The blockade is being enforced impartially against vessels of all nations.
00:35:50.000Freedom of navigation remains for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, except for the ones that are going into or out of Iran.
00:35:58.000In the first 24 hours, no ships from Iranian ports made it past the blockade, and six merchant vessels complied with directions from the United States to turn around.
00:36:07.000And this is unbelievably damaging to the Iranian economy.
00:36:10.000Really, really bad for the Iranian economy.
00:36:14.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the Rich Stari, a sanctioned Chinese oil and chemical tanker, masked its exact location in the Persian Gulf for more than 10 days before leaving through the Strait of Hormuz this week.
00:36:24.000When it emerged into the Gulf of Oman, near where the U.S. Navy is operating to enforce its blockade of Iranian ports, the tanker made an abrupt U turn.
00:36:31.000On Wednesday, it anchored off the coast of Iran.
00:36:34.000The ship's maneuvers, tracked by shipping data firms and analysts, are evidence of an emerging cat and mouse game.
00:36:39.000Between the so called shadow fleet of tankers and U.S. troops blockading Iran's coast on the orders of President Trump.
00:36:45.000Ships that have been changing their names, trying to evade shipping databases and all the rest of it, they are no longer able to evade the United States.
00:36:55.000Those ships employ various methods to avoid detection.
00:36:58.000They turn dark, they switch off their transponders, but the United States is monitoring all of this.
00:37:03.000And this is doing massive damage, massive damage to the Iranian economy.
00:37:09.000The Iranian economy is in serious, serious trouble.0.89
00:37:13.000And by the way, again, it is not just that we are turning around all of their tankers.0.95
00:37:18.000It is also that we have now announced Operation Epic, Fury's counterpart in the economic sphere, Economic Fury.0.82
00:37:27.000The Treasury Department put out a tweet saying Treasury is moving aggressively with Economic Fury, maintaining maximum pressure on Iran.0.58
00:37:34.000Financial institutions should be on notice that the department is leveraging the full range of available tools and authorities and is prepared to deploy secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions that continue to support Iran's activities.
00:37:45.000The short term authorization permitting the sale of Iranian oil already stranded at sea is set to expire in a few days and will not be renewed.
00:37:54.000Money being held by Iranians in foreign banks not being allowed to go forth.
00:37:59.000Those banks will now be sanctioned by the United States.
00:38:01.000Here was the Treasury Secretary announcing this yesterday.
00:38:05.000We have told companies, we have told countries that if you are buying Iranian oil, that if Iranian money is sitting in your banks, we are now willing to apply secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure.0.63
00:38:20.000And the Iranians should know that this is going to be the financial equivalent of what we saw in the kinetic activities.0.63
00:38:27.000And again, this is hitting people directly in the Iranian regime.
00:38:31.000According to the Treasury Department, this intensifies pressure on Iran's illicit oil transportation infrastructure by sanctioning more than two dozen individuals, companies, and vessels operating within the network of Iranian oil shipping magnate Mohammed Hossein Shamakhani.
00:38:44.000That would be the son of Ali Shamakhani, who, of course, was killed in the middle of this operation.
00:38:51.000Scott Besant continues to say that oil will come down again.0.89
00:39:26.000And I'm optimistic that during the summer, we will see gas with a three in front of it sooner rather than later.
00:39:33.000And again, he happens to be correct about this.0.98
00:39:36.000Now, the reality is that the strategy in use here is putting significant pressure on China.
00:39:40.000China is heavily reliant not only on the oil that is coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, they are also heavily reliant on trying to move away from the so called petrodollar.
00:39:47.000The petrodollar system was based on the United States getting off of the Bretton Woods system.
00:39:55.000Under a security for oil pricing bargain between the United States and Saudi Arabia, in which people everywhere were buying oil in dollars and transactions were settled in dollars and oil revenue was recycled into dollar denominated assets.
00:40:08.000Well, there were certain players like the Chinese who were trying to start paying for oil in, for example, Chinese Yuan.
00:40:15.000Well, no longer, because it turns out the United States is in charge of basically a lot of the global oil supply at this point.
00:40:23.000We are currently choking off Venezuelan oil, which is a big supply point for China.
00:40:28.000The Straits of Hormuz are now under basically our control, which means that China isn't getting what it wants.
00:40:33.000And if it wants what it wants, it's going to have to actually pay in American dollars.
00:40:36.000We are redirecting enormous amounts of traffic to the American oil industry.
00:40:40.000The amount of oil that is being bought in the United States right now is extraordinary, like the highest in human history because of what's going on right now.
00:40:48.000China, thus, is looking for an off ramp.
00:40:51.000The president put out a statement on Truth Social saying that China is happy that he's opening the Straits of Hormuz.
00:40:57.000He says, I'm doing it for them and also the world.
00:40:58.000The situation will never happen again.
00:41:00.000They've agreed not to send weapons to Iran.
00:41:02.000President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks.
00:41:05.000We're working together smartly and very well.
00:41:22.000The rest of the Iranian regime, that would be Mohammed Khalibaaf, the parliament speaker, probably Mahmoud Pazeshkian, the president, they may not have any authority, but they also understand if this keeps going, the regime just will not exist.
00:41:34.000If they have no money to pay their IRGC guys, Then their security, Praetorian Guard, is basically gone.
00:41:41.000Caroline Lovett at the White House says those discussions continue via intermediaries.
00:41:47.000We remain very much engaged in these negotiations, in these talks.
00:41:51.000You heard from the vice president directly and the president this week that these conversations are productive and ongoing, and that's where we are right now.
00:41:59.000The president has said he is not particularly interested in extending the ceasefire beyond the next week and a half.
00:42:03.000He believes he can get to a deal before that.
00:42:05.000Pakistan's Field Marshal General Asima Munir, who is One of the people leading the negotiations showed up to Iran and hugged the foreign minister, Abbasaraki.
00:42:12.000Of course, Pakistan and Iran are very much aligned, and both of them are aligned with China.
00:42:20.000Here's the footage, him coming off the plane and him giving a big old hug to Abbas Araki, the foreign minister of Iran.
00:42:30.000The president, however, believes that he has the leverage.
00:42:32.000He says the field marshal is doing a great job.
00:43:37.000And I don't think that's going to happen.
00:43:40.000Meanwhile, you can always count on, again, the grievance party to come together in the end, which is why Representative Yasmin Ansari of Arizona, Democrat is now praising Nick Fuentes.
00:43:53.000Again, she's a Democrat praising Nick Fuentes, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, And Marjorie Taylor Greene, yes, the coalition is coming together.
00:44:02.000I have been very impressed actually to see non elected, but Republicans, people like Tucker Carlson, former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, people like Nick Fuentes, Alex Jones, people I never thought I would ever agree with on anything, recognize that Donald Trump is so mentally unstable and he clearly is in a state of cognitive decline.
00:44:25.000And I'm grateful that Representative Braskin is leading the charge on this 25th Amendment bill and has started an investigation into.
00:44:33.000His cognitive decline because he is unfit and he is a national security threat to the United States of America.
00:44:40.000One of the most delicious things will be when all of these people, many of whom have already come out and said vote Democrat, when they try to undermine the Republicans in the midterms and then they turn around and blame everybody else if the Republicans do poorly in the midterms.
00:44:52.000They are actively working with Democrats at this point, clearly and actively doing so.
00:44:55.000Hassan Piker, Tucker Carlson, MTG, this Congresswoman, they're all on the same page with Mick Fuentes.
00:45:44.000Because, first of all, don't tell me what my job is.
00:45:48.000You know, I don't tell you what your job is.
00:45:49.000My job is whatever I decide my job is, whatever my employer allows me to do.
00:45:55.000Well, actually, he literally tells people what their job is.
00:45:57.000And then he tells them when they're not fit for their job because they once ran a plumbing outfit, which he did with the DHS secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, like a week and a half ago.
00:46:07.000But of course, Jimmy Kimmel is also very, very critical of comics who are picking up the MAGA tour.
00:46:33.000It's especially sad to me because you look at some of these comics and maybe they're not doing so great and they, you know, I'm going to pick up this MAGA torch.
00:48:12.000So, in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, you talked mostly about how there has been a shift in the nature of how human beings in the West define themselves, how they define their own identities.
00:48:22.000The suggestion was if I I'm not simplifying the thesis too much.
00:48:26.000That it used to be that the way that you created your identity was the interaction between you and the rest of society, between you and institutions.
00:48:33.000You were shaped by those institutions.
00:48:35.000You, in turn, shaped those institutions.
00:48:37.000And it was that interaction with the world that defined you, as opposed to the way that we now think of ourselves, which is in opposition to everything external, in opposition to institutions.
00:48:46.000Anything that is not quote unquote authentically me is somehow an imposition on me.
00:48:50.000And I think that way of thinking about it is really useful.0.98
00:48:53.000And you helped explain things like the transgenderism movement through that lens and the desecration of man.1.00
00:48:59.000You talk about sort of the belief systems that undergird a lot of that sort of move.
00:49:03.000So, what's the thesis of the desecration of man?
00:49:06.000Yeah, well, what I was intrigued by at the end of the earlier book was the fact that we seem to be taking such exultant delight in what seems to me to be a basic destruction of what it means to be human.
00:49:19.000In the new book, I used the example of how the language on abortion has changed from safe, legal, and rare to something one shouts about or boasts about.
00:49:26.000Why is it we take such glee in these anti human philosophies?
00:49:33.000And the thesis of the latest book is, well, actually, it's a way of asserting our God-like powers.
00:49:39.000If human beings are made in the image of God, how do we demonstrate our freedom from God?
00:49:47.000Paradoxically, that is both an exhilarating thing, but also reduces us to nothing, even in our own eyes.
00:49:56.000So that's the basic thesis of the new book.
00:49:59.000And, you know, there's been a lot of talk recently, obviously, about the decline of religion in America.
00:50:03.000The number of people who are going to church continues to decline.
00:50:06.000The people who are going to church are going to more religious and traditionalist churches, but the numbers continue to decline.
00:50:12.000Do you see a sort of reversion back to a mean at some point here, or is this trend just going to continue down into the dust?
00:50:19.000I think there are some encouraging signs.
00:50:21.000You know, one of the striking things is the number of what I would describe as the sort of the intellectual class who are beginning to take Christianity seriously again.
00:50:30.000So I'm having conversations with people now that I would not have had 10 or 15 years ago.
00:50:37.000On the other hand, I'm concerned that the recovery of a sort of cultural Christianity doesn't go to the real heart of the issue of, you know, does God exist?
00:50:49.000God has to be more than a good idea, if you like.
00:50:51.000You know, if you go to mass, Because you think mass is beautiful.
00:50:55.000Well, that's great, but do you actually think the mass is true as well?
00:51:02.000I think that latter point is really important when it comes to passing that on to children.
00:51:06.000It is certainly possible as an adult to sort of hold the cognitive dissonance of seriously questioning faith and thinking it through and then thinking, well, you know, in the absence of clear answers, the utility of faith is what's going to carry me through.
00:51:19.000But you can't transfer utilitarianism over to a child.
00:51:23.000And so the idea of utilitarianism, you know, requiring A sort of faith practice, how deeply do people actually have to believe in order to preserve and restore the civilization?
00:51:34.000I think you have to be able to answer the why question.
00:51:36.000You know, I think your analogy with children is a great one.
00:51:40.000You think when you were being brought up and your parents would tell you to do something and you ask them why and they would say, because I say so.
00:51:47.000And that sort of carried power and punch up until the age of about 10.
00:51:52.000And then suddenly you start asking, well, why shouldn't I steal?
00:51:55.000Why should I speak respectfully to other people?
00:51:58.000You need to be able to answer the why question and simply answering, well, Well, everybody's always done it this way or, you know, it just makes the world a better place raises big questions about, well, how do you find, define the world as a better place?
00:52:12.000Why is it that the way people have always done things is the way we should do them?
00:52:16.000So I think you're pointing to the importance there of, of, of a proper catechesis that goes beyond mere cultural concerns and towards the, the importance of religious metaphysics.
00:52:27.000Well, one of the things I think that you make so clear in the book, and I think that that's quite beautiful, is the reason why, as you say, there is this radical shift in language and thinking that is legitimately anti-human.
00:52:39.000The ways that even the left used to talk about these issues had as its baseline the idea that, for example, there was something that was not quite morally right about abortion.
00:52:47.000Maybe it was something that you feel like you had to do, or the balance of competing interests weighed in favor of abortion, but nobody was proud of it.
00:52:54.000The same thing was true with regard to things like euthanasia.
00:52:57.000The idea was that, yes, it was a tragedy.
00:52:59.000Somebody who had terminal cancer, we wanted to Make sure that they suffered less pain.
00:53:03.000And instead of simply relying on sort of old Catholic or religious ideas of essentially dual purpose, that essentially when you are giving somebody opium in order to relieve pain, that it then may end with that person's death, instead of relying on that sort of idea, instead it was no, no, you just go ahead and kill them.
00:53:21.000But it's a tragic thing that they're being killed.
00:53:23.000Now it's sort of celebrate euthanasia to the extent that you're trying to legitimize euthanasia of people who are otherwise healthy, not people who are terminal.
00:53:58.000I think some of it comes down to the psychologizing of the human person when we tend to think that how I feel in the here and now is definitive of whether I'm living a I think some of it comes down to the radical individualism that's come to grip society.
00:54:14.000And we tend to, you know, in an expressive individualist world, we tend to look on other people as always potentially first and foremost threats to us.0.93
00:54:22.000So the elderly become a threat to my ability to do what I want at weekends.0.73
00:54:27.000If I have an elderly parent, for example.1.00
00:54:29.000Um, and I think the, the whole idea of, of human beings as, as being exceptional creatures has vanished.
00:54:37.000Peter Singer, the, the great advocates of euthanasia and infanticide, I think he makes a very good point.
00:54:42.000point when he says that, uh, a high view of life and of living creatures is really built around the fact that, you know, as, as Judaism and Christianity teaches, we're made in the image of God.
00:54:53.000Once that belief has gone, the question comes up, why should I treat grandma any differently than I treat my, my elderly dog?
00:55:02.000Uh, if grandma is ill, if grandma is a burden on me, then I can have her euthanized.
00:55:07.000And you look at a place like Canada, where roughly one in 20 deaths in Canada now is as a result of medically assisted, uh, uh, suicide.
00:55:16.000You, you see, I think, the wave of the future.
00:55:19.000So, when you talk to people who are coming from a secular place and you're saying, listen, you need to get right with sort of your basic philosophy here, how would you recommend that people get involved?
00:55:29.000Would you recommend that they go to church and just start practicing?
00:55:31.000Would you recommend that they sit and they read?
00:55:33.000What would be the best way for people to get involved?
00:55:35.000I think there are three factors really that shape our imagination of what it means to be a human being.
00:55:40.000And in the last chapter of the book, I talk about the church's creed, cult, and code.
00:55:45.000Certainly, I think having the right beliefs is very important, reading the right books.
00:56:00.000There's even been research done that shows that people who sing corporately tend to think of themselves less as individuals and more of part of a group.
00:56:10.000So I think worship is something that helps shape our imagination of what it means to be human.
00:56:16.000And then finally, I think something like hospitality.
00:56:20.000We're told there's an epidemic of loneliness today.
00:56:23.000Yeah, opening our homes to other people is a way of acknowledging their humanity.
00:56:28.000When you look into the eyes of another person, it's very, very hard to treat them as an object.
00:56:34.000I think actually of Peter Singer here.
00:56:36.000Peter Singer's mother was, I think she had some form of dementia and Singer helped care for her.
00:56:42.000And he's, there's an interview online where he's asked, you know, is this not inconsistent with your philosophy?
00:56:48.000And his comment is, uh, well, yes, I guess it is, but it's, I guess it's different when it's your mother.
00:56:54.000Well, of course, it's different when it's your mother.