Shane Gillis burns up the ESPYs. Plus, brand new breaking news on Joe Biden s not-all-there scandal. First, my brand new book, Lions and Scavengers, is now available for pre-order on Amazon Prime. It s a rallying cry against the lies poisoning our culture.
00:00:40.000We are scaling up with new talent like Isabel Brown and her new show premiering this fall, with new docs like Journey to the UFC, the Joe Pfeiffer story premiering Friday, July 25th.
00:00:50.000And here's the thing, members get all of that first.
00:00:52.000The drops, the trailers, the truth uncensored.
00:00:55.000Plus, you get to connect with the community that doesn't think biology is optional.
00:01:03.000So there's a lot of interesting and serious news to talk about, but I just want to say not all comedic heroes wear capes.
00:01:10.000Shane Gillis, you recall him from originally being on SNL, and then he was actually canceled on SNL before he ever did an episode of SNL.
00:01:19.000And then because we now live in the post-cancel culture era, he was rehabbed and has now been on SNL, has become one of the most famous comedians in the country.
00:01:28.000Well, somehow, someway, Shane Gillis, who is incredibly politically incorrect, who is willing to go all the way to the edge on his jokes and who, yes, probably has some rather conservative leanings, Shane Gillis somehow was hired to be the host over at the SPs.
00:01:46.000And because I just enjoyed the living hell out of this, I wanted to share it with you because it is really great and indicative, by the way, of the fact that if you are a comedian who is not of the radical left, people on the left get very angry at you.
00:02:09.000For those who don't know, the Espys are a kind of silly award show that ESPN put together to give trophies to rich and famous athletes.
00:02:18.000And typically, they are an exercise in pandering.
00:02:23.000And because ESPN is a left-wing network, that means they go out of their way to sort of play into left-wing social tropes.
00:02:30.000Well, suffice it to say, Shane Gillis really didn't do that.
00:02:34.000Instead, Shane Gillis just started taking shots, and there are a bunch of people who took strays.
00:02:40.000So here's Shane Gillis doing a joke about Caitlin Clark, the WNBA star, that is definitely too edgy for 2025, but perfect for a Richard Pryor set in 1977, and it's quite fantastic.
00:02:53.000When Caitlin Clark retires from the WNBA, she's going to work at a waffle house so she can continue doing what she loves most, fistfighting black women.
00:03:07.000Even the crowd couldn't help but love that one.
00:03:12.000That, of course, is a riff on the fact that the WNBA has basically turned into a hockey game with Caitlin Clark being bullied about by various members of the WNBA contingent, mostly black, supposedly because she's being famored because she's white or something.
00:03:28.000That wasn't his only WNBA joke of the night.
00:03:31.000In fact, his best WNBA joke of the night, I have to say, this is like an all-timer of a joke.
00:04:44.000It's not clear where his sympathies lie in that joke, but people are just so used to left-wing humor that the fact this is not a left-wing joke leaves them absolutely puzzled.
00:04:54.000Well, Shane Gillis also did a January 6th joke and an Epstein joke.
00:04:57.000So, and I got to say, this is one of the great all-time sets.
00:05:01.000This is almost up to, it's not quite there.
00:05:04.000It's almost up to the Ricky Gervais set that he did years back where he just launched into a bunch of rich and famous actors.
00:05:13.000This is really solid stuff here from Shane Gillis.
00:05:17.000Donald Trump wants to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
00:05:21.000The last time he staged a fight in D.C., Mike Pence almost died.
00:09:00.000Producer Savvy in particular, her chunky baby is basically growing up just on Good Ranchers.
00:09:05.000And she says that the Good Ranchers Wagyuburgers are like the thing.
00:09:09.000Her chunky toddler is eating two of them every single week.
00:09:13.000Again, head on over to goodranchers.com, use promo code Bennett, check out to get an extra 40 bucks off and free meat for life because the moments that matter deserve meat that's made right and raised in America.
00:09:22.000Good ranchers, American meat delivered.
00:09:24.000Okay, in significantly more serious news, it is amazing to me that the greatest scandal of the last half century, you know, the fact that the president of the United States was dead for several years and no one knows who the president was, that one continues to fly under the radar.
00:09:39.000I understand that people are very obsessed with the Epstein scandal because, again, there are so many unanswered questions and because all we really have is a statement by the DOJ and the FBI to this point and because so much speculation had taken place about this case for literally years on end, the gestalt of the case sort of entered into the common parlance.
00:09:56.000Everybody sort of believed they knew something about the case without looking into the details of what was actually out there and then came to conclusions.
00:10:02.000And then the DOJ and the FBI sort of just released a conclusory report.
00:10:06.000And we don't know what went into the baking of that case.
00:10:09.000I get why everybody is very upset about that.
00:10:12.000I will say that if we are talking about serious scandals, it seems to me that the scandal that is right in front of our eyes, not one that is rooted in conspiracy theorizing, not one that is rooted in speculation, one that is just rooted in absolute overt reality is, again, the fact that Joe Biden was not mentally functional for several years at the end of his presidency.
00:10:32.000And somehow this wasn't the biggest scandal in America, even at the time.
00:10:38.000Well, yesterday, a man named Anthony Bernal, who it turns out was Joe Biden's top aide, was called to testify in front of Congress about Joe Biden's health situation.
00:10:50.000And he proceeded to take the fifth seven straight times.
00:11:18.000Are you declining to answer the question put to you solely on the ground that you believe the answer will incriminate you?
00:11:23.000On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.
00:11:29.000Did any unelected official or family member of President Joe Biden execute the duties of the presidency?
00:11:36.000On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question.
00:11:39.000Mr. Bernal, did President Joe Biden ever instruct you to lie regarding his health at any time, including but not limited in your testimony to Congress today?
00:11:49.000On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer the question.
00:11:52.000Mr. Bernal, is it your intention to decline to answer all questions put to you today by the committee on the basis of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination?
00:12:03.000I can represent that that is his intention.
00:12:08.000Again, that's the top aide to Joe Biden, who certainly knew that Joe was in ailing health, that his mental fitness was in serious question.
00:12:17.000According to Original Scent, that again is the book from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, all about this.
00:12:22.000Quote, Anthony Bernal, Jill's top aide, had the title of deputy campaign manager, unusual for a staffer to espouse.
00:12:28.000He had started out as an advanced man for the Clinton-Gore campaign, but since joining Jill's team in 2008, he had become her closest confidant and strategist.
00:12:36.000As Jill's power rose, so did Bernal's.
00:12:39.000Biden's aides would say that she was one of the most powerful first ladies in history.
00:12:42.000And as a result, he became one of the most influential people in the White House.
00:12:46.000Bernal was the Biden's eyes and ears, the keeper of the flame, the protector of the myth.
00:12:51.000As we researched this book, it was difficult to find many Bernal defenders.
00:12:54.000He freely trash-talked senior, mid-level, and junior aides.
00:12:57.000Some described him as the worst person they had ever met.
00:12:59.000He would not be welcome at my funeral, one longtime Biden aide said.
00:13:03.000You don't run for four years, you run for eight, Bernal would tell others.
00:13:06.000Whenever the idea of Kamala Harris running came up, Bernal and other senior staffers reacted dismissively.
00:13:12.000Well, that part was true, but this does speak to the fact that Jill Biden was basically keeping her president in office, her husband in office, because he wasn't the president.
00:13:36.000The American people vote for a president.
00:13:38.000If that president is non-complos mentis, the members of the cabinet for that president have a constitutional responsibility to remove him from office.
00:13:47.000So this scandal should not just implicate Joe Biden, shouldn't just implicate Jill Biden, shouldn't just implicate the White House doctor or Anthony Burnell.
00:13:56.000It should implicate any member of the Biden cabinet who knew better and did nothing and fundamentally betrayed the duty to ensure that the American people had a mentally functional president of the United States.
00:14:07.000That scandal is not going to go away anytime soon.
00:14:09.000It's one that Democrats are still going to have to live down.
00:14:12.000I will say President Trump got off a pretty good joke on this basis.
00:14:15.000He signed into law an act that was meant to crack down on the trafficking of a fentanyl.
00:14:21.000And as he was signing it, he says, this is not an auto pen, you may notice.
00:14:56.000So in Judaism, you're not supposed to have corn on Passover.
00:15:01.000You're not supposed to have grain on Passover.
00:15:03.000And so because you're not supposed to have grains on Passover, you end up not having Coca-Cola with corn syrup in it.
00:15:10.000And so what we very often do is you actually ship Coke in from Mexico that has natural sugar because sugar is okay on Passover.
00:15:18.000And let me tell you, sugar-based Coke, way better than high fructose corn syrup-based Coke.
00:15:22.000Well, the president of the United States is making Coke great again.
00:15:25.000He put out a statement yesterday, quote, I've been speaking to Coca-Cola about using real cane sugar and Coke in the United States, and they've agreed to do so.
00:15:31.000I'd like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola.
00:15:34.000This will be a very good move by them.
00:15:42.000So I hope that you all enjoy a Coke and a smile on behalf of President Trump.
00:15:47.000By the way, the actual way to get Coke to use sugar again would be to end all the various tariffs that we have on sugar, but that gets to economic policy.
00:15:55.000Speaking of which, the Senate is now set to debate cuts to NPR, PBS, and Foreign Aid under a process called rescission.
00:16:02.000The Senate voted by a razor-thin margin late on Tuesday to advance debate on a package of funding cuts requested by President Trump, according to NPR.
00:16:09.000They are aimed at clawing back $1.1 billion previously allocated to the corporation for public broadcasting, along with $7.9 billion earmarked for international efforts to combat famine and disease.
00:16:22.000Vice President Vance had to be called on the floor to cast that tie-breaking vote because it was voted against by Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins, which led to a 50-50 tie.
00:16:31.000That vote follows approval in the House last month for the president's request.
00:16:34.000Again, there's a process by which if the executive branch requests that certain spending not be done, then the House and the Senate can vote for what's called rescission.
00:16:43.000The Senate Appropriations Committee did remove PEPFAR, the U.S. AIDS relief program begun by President George W. Bush from the package of cuts.
00:16:49.000So the cuts are less significant than the cuts that were happening in the House.
00:16:54.000The cuts to the corporation for public broadcasting remain.
00:16:58.000And this is setting off the Democrats every so often.
00:17:00.000Whenever Republicans talk about the fact that the most lucrative parts of, for example, PBS, like Sesame Street, would be totally self-sustaining in a free market system.
00:17:09.000You don't actually need government subsidies in order to make Sesame Street profitable.
00:17:13.000Whenever you say this, people accuse you of killing Big Bird.
00:17:16.000If you go all the way back to 2012, Mitt Romney proposed the possibility of defunding the corporation for public broadcasting with taxpayer dollars.
00:17:24.000And then he was accused of wanting to kill Big Bird.
00:17:27.000Well, now, Catherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, she says, we shouldn't be defunded.
00:17:32.000I know people are saying we're biased.
00:17:33.000We're not biased, says Catherine Maher, the CEO of NPR.
00:17:37.000As far as the accusations that we're biased, I would stand up and say, please show me a story that concerns you because we want to know and we want to bring that conversation back to our newsroom.
00:17:49.000NPR is one of the most biased news sources in America and it's sponsored with your dollars, going all the way back to Uri Berliner, who was, in fact, a veteran at NPR, writing for the free press just last year, saying that NPR had become a left-wing agitprop outlet.
00:18:06.000Quote, it's true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed.
00:18:12.000In recent years, however, that has changed.
00:18:14.000Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different, the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
00:18:21.000If you're a conservative, you'll read this and say, duh, it's always been this way, but it hasn't.
00:18:25.000And then he points out that by 2023, only 11% of the NPR audience described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21% as middle of the road.
00:18:34.00067% of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal.
00:18:44.000NPR completely failed to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story with NPR's managing editor saying, quote, we don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.
00:18:53.000And we don't want to waste the listeners and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions.
00:18:58.000NPR has been biased in favor of the left on every single issue for nearly my entire lifetime.
00:19:03.000Of course, we should not be subsidizing it.
00:20:40.000SimplySafe's new active guard outdoor protection actually stops break-ins before they start.
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00:20:59.000There are no contracts or hidden fees to worry about.
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00:21:17.000SimplySafe is keeping my studio and my people safe.
00:21:32.000Also, we've all heard the common myths like you only use 10% of your brain.
00:21:35.000But here's one that might surprise you.
00:21:36.000Thread count is nonsense, total nonsense.
00:21:38.000Thread count is simply a measure of fabric density.
00:21:41.000It doesn't actually mean that the quality of the material is good.
00:21:44.000If you want truly great sheets, you need to stop looking at thread count and start looking at thread quality.
00:21:48.000And that is why Bull and Branch focuses on using the highest quality organic cotton threads, creating long-lasting sheets that are not relying on inflated thread count numbers to impress their customers.
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00:22:20.000I literally bring Bull and Branch products with me on the road.
00:22:40.000Speaking of things that most Americans support, most Americans are not in favor of the president of the United States firing the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
00:22:47.000Most investors certainly are not in favor of that.
00:22:50.000President Trump, the reports from the New York Times, he was pondering that possibility.
00:22:53.000He then came out and said at the White House, it was highly unlikely he would fire Powell, adding later, unless he has to leave for fraud.
00:22:59.000There's an effort by some White House advisors to suggest that renovations at Fed properties are costing more than planned and therefore somehow Jerome Powell has violated his duties as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
00:23:11.000I will say that that is a very weak excuse for getting rid of Jerome Powell.
00:23:15.000More importantly, the markets upon the news of those rumors started to, it really started to roil.
00:23:22.000It started to move in really negative directions.
00:23:24.000Then it quickly sort of petered out because people realized that there's a good shot that President Trump was not going to actually fire Jerome Powell.
00:23:31.000I don't think President Trump is going to go in that direction.
00:23:33.000The last thing he wants is to put the economy behind the eight ball at a moment of actual peril where the economy could theoretically move either way.
00:23:42.000Yesterday, we had the opportunity to sit with Senator John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, and talk about President Trump's economic program, particularly the one big beautiful bill, as well as upcoming Senate races for Republicans in 2026.
00:23:53.000And yes, a little bit of Jeffrey Epstein.
00:24:09.000So, first of all, congratulations on the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill.
00:24:12.000That is not an easy process by any stretch of the imagination.
00:24:15.000And I think that it is worth noting the sort of legislative leisure domain that has to be worked in order to get together a coalition of 50 senators to vote for it, Vice President breaking the tie.
00:24:26.000Why don't you talk about what are the big wins in the Big Beautiful Bill for people who are still sort of on the fence about it?
00:24:32.000Well, first and foremost, Ben, I would say that, you know, working Americans, middle-income families are the biggest winners.
00:24:38.000Those that make under $50,000 get the biggest proportionate tax break in all of this.
00:24:44.000But clearly with an increase in the child tax credit, standard deduction, both of those being made permanent, lower rates getting locked in, made permanent.
00:24:54.000And so if you take a family, for example, in my state of South Dakota, average family, if we hadn't acted at the end of the year, would have been facing a $2,500 tax increase.
00:25:03.000And as it is, they're going to be facing lower taxes and we're allowing them to keep more of what they earn so they can provide for themselves and their families instead of sending the money to Washington, D.C. So I think the tax pieces of this, and of course, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, those are huge wins for, again, for working Americans.
00:25:22.000And we created a big bonus deduction for seniors, so lower taxes for people who are on Social Security.
00:25:29.000I think to your point, though, I mean, it was a very sweeping piece of legislation, addressed border security, addressed modernizing our military, energy dominance, the tax pieces I mentioned.
00:25:39.000And then the other thing is it was historic in terms of the savings that we were able to achieve.
00:25:44.000And really frankly, for the first time since I've been in Washington, we did something serious and meaningful about starting to rein in the runaway cost of our entitlement programs and getting rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse in a lot of those programs.
00:25:58.000So a trillion and a half In savings there.
00:26:04.000There's a school choice that was concluded in there.
00:26:07.000Obviously, we were able to do something on taxpayer-funded funding of abortions in this legislation.
00:26:13.000I mean, this was a very comprehensive piece of legislation that included a lot of President Trump's agenda.
00:26:20.000And Senator Thun, I think one of the things that's kind of astonishing about so much of the debate around the Bay Beautiful bill is, number one, people on the left who are claiming that it spends too much money, which is always rich coming from people who spend more money than God has ever created.
00:26:32.000But it's also sort of fascinating because the reality, of course, is that if we were truly going to bend the cost curve in the United States, the American people are not up for the kinds of measures that would be necessary in order to bend the cost curve on our entitlement programs in the kind of way that many of the critics are suggesting.
00:26:48.000Like, for example, Senator Paul, who voted against the One Big Beautiful bill in the end.
00:26:51.000You know, the sort of assumption here that has to be made is that in a legislative process, you have to put together all the interests you can.
00:26:59.000And if you are capable of making the kinds of cuts to future spending in Medicaid, which is really what happened here, what really happened here is that there was a program that was being used by states to essentially bilk the federal government out of money.
00:27:11.000I mean, that program was such a boondoggle that even Barack Obama wanted to change the nature of how that program worked.
00:27:17.000And the Republicans were actually able to do that here.
00:27:19.000Or when you put work requirements on Medicaid, these are bending the cost curve in a way that that might be the only way that the American people were going to go along with any real cuts at this point in time.
00:27:30.000And I think, Ben, to that point, these are common sense reforms.
00:27:34.000And reforms that I think when the American people hear about them, they say, well, that makes sense.
00:27:38.000You know, I've seen polling that suggests 72% of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, support work requirements.
00:27:45.000And so I think that was a very important starting point.
00:27:48.000As you point out, there have been states and, you know, have really abused the issue of provider taxes, state-directed payments.
00:27:57.000And great examples of that, of course, are New York and California, where they've used those types of things to cover illegals, people who shouldn't be on Medicaid in the first place.
00:28:06.000And so what we've tried to do is say, you know what, we aren't, and frankly, the Democrats, and they're going to lie about this because that's what they do, particularly on the issue of healthcare, you know, talk about steep cuts to Medicaid.
00:28:18.000You know, we're going to continue to, Medicaid is going to continue to grow in terms of just its rate of inflation over time.
00:28:25.000It's just not going to grow at the 50 or 60 percent that it's grown at in the last five years.
00:28:29.000So we're slowing the rate of growth, not cutting it, but doing it in a way that gets rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse in the program and restores the program to the people for whom it was intended.
00:28:42.000Those are disabled people instead of able-bodied adults that states have been adding to the program so they can get more federal money, 90% federal match.
00:28:52.000And so these are common sense reforms that I think when people hear about them, and that's going to be our challenge, is getting out and telling the story, they're going to agree with.
00:29:00.000Senator Thun, there's also been moves in the Senate toward more funding of, or at least movement toward sending of more weaponry to Ukraine.
00:29:09.000That obviously is following hard on the president of the United States, who has now shifted his opinion on this.
00:29:14.000I think that he has taken the correct position here.
00:29:17.000He has recognized reality, which is Vladimir Putin has provided no signs that he is interested in an end to the war at this time.
00:29:23.000He continues to increase his aggression.
00:29:25.000President Trump has said that NATO is essentially going to pay the United States, those weapons are going to then be shipped to Ukraine, sufficient so that Ukraine can fight off Russia.
00:29:33.000What do you make of the president's approach to Russia, Ukraine?
00:29:36.000And what do you think that says more broadly about the president's foreign policy?
00:29:39.000There were some who tried to label him early on an isolationist in sort of classic fashion.
00:29:43.000I've been saying for a very long time that is obviously not who President Trump is.
00:29:59.000I think honestly, the president, to his credit, sees the world in a very clear-eyed way and realizes that America's got to be a leader in that world.
00:30:09.000And I think what he did with NATO was really important because it's not American tax dollars, you know, taxpayers are going to be paying for this.
00:30:15.000It's going to be NATO countries, but it's American weaponry.
00:30:18.000And we have the most sophisticated high-tech and lethal weaponry in the world.
00:30:24.000And so that helps Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
00:30:27.000And I think it was an important step forward and one that I think where he recognizes, notwithstanding some of the voices he has in his ear from there's an isolationist crowd, obviously, out there.
00:30:37.000But I think he realizes that the relationship, the partnership that we have with NATO is really important, not only to the United States, but to the entire West.
00:30:46.000And I think that the leadership and courage he's shown with respect to what he did with Iran, too, was truly remarkable.
00:30:53.000And again, another example that deterrence is back, peace through strength is back.
00:30:58.000And, you know, people around the world noticed that when what he did with how flawlessly that campaign was executed with, you know, in Iran, I think that was a message to all of our adversaries out there that America is, you know, we're here to play.
00:31:17.000And I think that message was sent loudly and clearly.
00:31:21.000Now, Speaker Johnson has spoken about the possibility of a couple more uses of reconciliation.
00:31:25.000He hasn't really talked about what the topic of those reconciliation bills will be at this point.
00:31:30.000Do you have any sort of broad ideas of what sorts of matters might be approached in further reconciliation?
00:31:35.000I think there's always an opportunity when you have unified control of the government.
00:31:39.000Obviously, the Democrats took full advantage of it when they had that.
00:31:48.000When Democrats have power, they grow government.
00:31:50.000And I always tell people that I've never really been around any spending fight in my time here where Democrats didn't want to spend more and Republicans wanted to spend less with one exception, and that's defense.
00:31:59.000Democrats are always happy to cut defense and national security, but they want to grow everything else.
00:32:05.000And so they create a, you know, that's their game.
00:32:09.000And so as we think about these things in this last reconciliation bill, it wasn't about growing government.
00:32:14.000It was about reducing the size of government and allowing the American people to keep more of their hard-earned money.
00:32:19.000And so as we think about another reconciliation bill, I think we have to look at are there other tax policies that we can, and frankly, one of the things I'd like to see in the next reconciliation bill Is a simplification of the tax code.
00:32:32.000I think our tax code is incredibly complicated.
00:32:34.000And I'm a big believer in lower rates, broader base, and just get tax rates down.
00:32:40.000And I think that's an incredible incentive for people to invest.
00:32:46.000And when it applies to small businesses and individuals, so I think if we see other potential tax policies that can deliver more assistance to American families and put them more in charge of their own futures and their families' futures, that's a good thing.
00:33:00.000And if there are other things that we can do to reduce the overall size, cost of government, get us on a more sustainable fiscal path, that too would be something I'd like to see in another reconciliation bill.
00:33:13.000Now, Senator Thun, there's been a proposal by Senator Cruz and backed by Senator Cotton to label the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.
00:33:21.000What do you see as the future of that piece of legislation in the Senate?
00:33:24.000Well, I think I'd love to see us pass that.
00:33:26.000They are a terrorist group, and they need to be labeled as such.
00:33:29.000And so I don't think there's any two ways about that.
00:33:32.000That's legislation that potentially could ride on a defense bill.
00:33:35.000We've got a defense authorization bill coming up here that we'll be dealing with hopefully in the next few weeks.
00:33:41.000And so I think that anytime we're having a conversation about national security, that to me is a place where a legislative vehicle where that proposal could perhaps hitch a ride.
00:33:56.000Senator Thun, looking forward to 2026, and this, of course, is the big worry for a lot of Republicans, is what happens if Republicans lose the Congress that essentially turns the president into a lame duck.
00:34:06.000Obviously, that's a big worry in the House, but it is a worry in the Senate as well.
00:34:10.000There are a couple of Democrat seats that are currently Democrat-held that are toss-up seats, John Ossoff in Georgia.
00:34:47.000I think the Democrats are so off their game, and I think they have moved so far left where the American people are that they really don't have an identity right now.
00:34:58.000You see this mayoral contest in New York and all the issues that are being talked about there.
00:35:02.000That's representative, I think, of where the Democrat Party in this country is right now.
00:35:06.000So, you know, notwithstanding it's a midterm election, which obviously in a president, particularly a second midterm, generally doesn't go well for the party in power.
00:35:13.000But I think we can defy that by going out and putting up a record of accomplishment, talking to the American people in a relatable way about the things that they care about.
00:35:22.000And if we do that well, I think we can win these seats.
00:35:25.000You know, North Carolina obviously will be very expensive, and it's an open seat now.
00:35:28.000As you mentioned, Maine is obviously a seat that we have to defend, but we also have opportunities in Georgia and Michigan and perhaps even New Hampshire, places like that, where we have some pickup opportunities.
00:35:38.000So a lot of it is about, one, having a message, having a record of accomplishment you can talk about, obviously raising the resources to deliver it, and then putting the ground game together to get your voters out.
00:35:48.000And in a midterm election, that's going to be really critical and really important.
00:35:52.000So, but I honestly think as you look at the map, and one of the things in the Senate for sure, keeping a majority in the Senate to work with the White House is the reason that's so important, and they're all important, unified government, as you can see from the big, beautiful bill, what we're able to get done there.
00:36:07.000But the Senate is where the judges are confirmed.
00:36:10.000It's where the executive branch nominees come.
00:36:13.000We're in the personnel business constitutionally, meaning that every open vacancy on the court comes through the United States Senate.
00:36:21.000And if Republicans are control here, we're going to be able to put President Trump's nominees into these positions.
00:36:26.000And that has enormous long-term consequences for the country.
00:36:29.000So we're going to fight really hard to protect the majority here in the Senate and work with our colleagues in the House to protect that majority as well.
00:36:36.000But these elections have consequences.
00:36:41.000And that's why it's really critical that we do everything we can to maximize our opportunity to extend these majorities for another couple of years.
00:36:50.000Senator Thun, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about the sort of controversy of the day.
00:36:53.000Obviously, the Epstein case continues to roil a lot of the base.
00:36:57.000The President of the United States has already said that there is effectively what the DOJ and the FBI found is the result of the investigation.
00:37:04.000He has authorized the Attorney General and said publicly, the Attorney General should release all credible evidence at this point.
00:37:09.000Speaker Johnson has said the same thing.
00:37:13.000Do you trust the administration to handle this case properly and then to release in more expeditious fashion, be more transparent about how they came to these conclusions?
00:37:24.000I mean, I think the president, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, FBI Director Cash Patel, I mean, I think these are the people ultimately are going to be tasked with making decisions about what can or should be made available to the public.
00:37:37.000And I certainly have confidence that they'll make the right decisions concerning that.
00:37:42.000Clearly, there's a high level of interest.
00:37:44.000And, you know, this was an example of somebody who exploited a lot of people.
00:37:50.000And I realize that people want justice, and so do I. And I think all American people do.
00:37:56.000And I think as this plays out over time, I think you'll see the president and his team handle it in a way that creates that disclosure and holds people to account for the things that they did.
00:38:10.000Senate Majority Leader John Thune is doing an amazing job on behalf of the American people.
00:38:13.000Senator Thune, really appreciate your time, your hard work.
00:39:24.000According to Politico, Mamdani, the polarizing Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, huddled privately with Democratic lawmakers at a Washington restaurant on Wednesday.
00:39:33.000The conversation attendee said focused on campaign strategy and lessons learned from his surprise win.
00:39:39.000Those included, quote, the effective communication strategy that they employed, very dynamic and natural, said Representative Chuy Garcia of Illinois.
00:39:46.000And it allowed him to project who he is and his vision for New York.
00:39:49.000Representative Alexander Ocasio-Cortez organized the event, which was billed as a communication and organizing skill share breakfast.
00:39:56.000Now, of course, AOC has turned into a big stand for Momdani because AOC and Momdani align on all of these matters.
00:40:04.000The Radical Democratic Party is on the march.
00:40:07.000In fact, says Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, before you make a judgment about Zorn Mamdani, you really need to get to know him.
00:40:16.000Not the him who's the scion of a couple of rich parents and really a trust fun kid, not the fake rapper.
00:40:22.000She means you have to know the absolutely inauthentic Instagram guy who talks about nationalizing grocery stores and also a little bit about the Jews.
00:40:34.000I think a lot of people just need to get to know folks before they issue an endorsement.
00:40:39.000And I hope that this conversation can be constructive to bringing the party together and rally behind our nominee.
00:40:55.000He has the defense of Representative Andre Carson, fellow Democrat, who says, you know, when he says that globalize the intifada is not that big a deal, some people mean to globalize the intifada literally.
00:42:17.000They don't look like our chief author.
00:42:19.000They don't look like the folks up in the gallery.
00:42:22.000They don't look like the folks on the rotunda.
00:42:25.000They look like many of the members that sit in the front.
00:42:29.000And you don't have to take my word for it.
00:42:31.000According to DHS, Madam President, the greatest domestic threat facing the United States comes from, quote, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.
00:43:06.000The Democrats are definitely operating in the realm of reality and where most Americans want them to be.
00:43:11.000They want to hear from Representative Ilhan Omar, who was taken in by this country as a refugee, as a child from a really crappy country, Somalia.
00:43:20.000And we want to hear from her when she says, quote, we don't suffer from scarcity.
00:43:25.000It's just being hoarded by the wealthy while everyday people are struggling to afford groceries and rent, which is an unbelievably dumb economic take.
00:43:32.000The notion that rich people just sit there and hoard their money and that they get it from the poor people is so economically ignorant.
00:43:39.000If that's the case, if rich people just take money from poor people, where did poor people get the money?
00:43:47.000Why is it that some societies are richer than other societies?
00:43:51.000None of these questions are answerable by this particular ideology.
00:43:54.000But again, the Democratic Party is taking some really bad rabbit holes all the way down, and it's going to be a problem with them going forward.
00:44:02.000They're, of course, being egged on in this by a compliant media.
00:44:06.000Annabar really made a fool of herself the other night.
00:44:08.000She was on CNN, and she, too, was doing this sort of racial essentialism routine.
00:44:14.000Also, I want to respond to you saying that I was hyperbolic when I talked about a reign of terror.
00:44:49.000Unfortunately, I don't think that's the way that it works.
00:44:51.000I've been talking for a long time about a sort of horseshoe right that agrees with the left on so many things, but there's a great piece over at the free press by Rebecca Heinrichs that goes a little bit further, and it explains much of what we are seeing on X. As I've said before, X is not reflective of reality.
00:45:09.000The polls do not line up with the preferences of people on X. There's a major arbitrage opportunity for politicians in ignoring the stupidity of the conspiratorialists on X and instead operating in the world of reality.
00:45:22.000That doesn't mean that reality will never mirror what's happening on X. It just means that if you go outside and you touch grass, whether you're a politician, a company, or an individual, You are likely to do much better in life than if you follow the insanity that's happening over at X. There is something happening on the right that is a real problem, something that is quite ugly.
00:45:40.000The recasting of America as the bad guy in the world, particularly since World War II.
00:45:46.000The attempt to treat America as somehow a gigantic failed experiment, specifically since World War II.
00:45:54.000This is a point that Rebecca Heinrichs is making.
00:45:56.000She says, when President Trump ordered B-2 stealth bombers to fly 37 hours from Missouri to the Middle East and back to drop bunker-busting bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities last month, he wasn't merely backing up Israel's war or demonstrating superpower military competency.
00:46:10.000He was also rejecting the growing clamor from a visible faction of the MAGA coalition that sees the use of American power abroad as fundamentally illegitimate and a danger to the American people.
00:46:20.000These voices had spent months issuing hysterical warnings about World War III if America became involved in the war.
00:46:28.000All of this talk was aimed directly at convincing the president.
00:46:31.000Here she names Check Tucker Carlson, Dave Smith, Candace Owens, and some others.
00:46:34.000Carlson and his ilk failed, she says, and spectacularly so.
00:46:38.000Not only did President Trump initiate U.S. strikes against Iran, he also took aim at Carlson directly, saying to reporters, quote, I don't know what Tucker Carlson is saying.
00:46:45.000Let him go get a television network and say it so people listen.
00:46:48.000And then he labeled Tucker Carlson kooky, of course.
00:46:50.000For a moment, it felt like this wing of MAGA, self-styled as anti-war, had suffered a true political defeat and that perhaps they would do what they longed for the U.S. to do in the world, retreat.
00:47:00.000That these MAGA influencers and pundits were out of step with the American president, the creator and standard-bearer of MAGA, and that their doomsday scenarios never materialized, did little to humble them.
00:47:11.000And then, again, she cites the fact that a wide variety of these same influencers claimed that the president had betrayed MAGA in some way.
00:47:21.000And she quotes Carlson saying, earlier this week, unnamed American sources expressed concern over Israel's ability to fend off Iran's retaliation, which would inevitably lead to Benjamin Netanyahu ordering the American military to step in and fight on his country's behalf.
00:47:35.000Let's be clear, the United States is not ordered by a small state in the Middle East what to do or what not to do.
00:47:41.000But, says Heinrichs, Carlson's views might seem outlandish, but he isn't dumb.
00:47:44.000He is among the savviest operators out there, and he is well aware that anti-Israel invective and conspiracy thinking attracts attention in a culture that has lost trust in expertise and institutions and is hunting for a scapegoat for America's very real challenges.
00:47:59.000He represents an influential segment of an emerging online movement that never encounters a conspiracy about American military power, Jewish power, or Israel that it doesn't embrace.
00:48:08.000And it is on a collision course with the president himself.
00:48:23.000Still others have rightly described it as a meeting of the horseshoe, the strange reality wherein Marjorie Taylor Greene praises Zoran Mamzani.
00:48:33.000She says, I believe this emerging movement can best be understood as the 1939 project, a decentralized right-wing online analog to the left's 1619 project.
00:48:42.000While differing in content and cultural context, both initiatives aim to radically revise Americans' understanding of their national story, their cultural mores, and conversational guardrails in order to seize power.
00:48:52.000The 1619 project argued America's 1776 founding was subordinate to the arrival of African slaves in 1619.
00:49:00.000America, in other words, should not be celebrated for its exceptionalism in ending slavery, but condemned for being like most other countries that allowed it at all.
00:49:08.000The 1939 project, she says, is similar in its ambitions and revisionism.
00:49:12.000It seeks to discredit America's role in World War II and the post-war international order it shaped, replacing it with a dark vision of America sitting atop a globalist empire run by shadowy warmongers, including Winston Churchill himself.
00:49:25.000The year 1939 is meant to replace the national identity marked by 1945, the year the United States with its allies liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny, dropped the atomic bombs to end Japanese imperialism, ended the war, stopped the genocide of the Jewish people, and saved the free world.
00:49:40.000The Allies' victory in that war led to the creation of NATO, a political military alliance of democratic sovereign nations held together by a commitment to stave off another massive world war initiated by another imperialist authoritarian nation.
00:49:53.000The United States extended a nuclear umbrella to allies to encourage non-proliferation.
00:49:57.000And, says Heinrichs correctly, the results of this post-World War II international order are astonishingly positive.
00:50:03.000There has been a dramatic drop in wartime fatalities as a percentage of world population.
00:50:07.000Economic prosperity for Americans has steadily improved.
00:50:10.000Life expectancy has grown longer and of a higher physical quality.
00:50:14.000But if the 1939 project people are right, and Churchill was in fact the warmonger, which is something that, for example, Daryl Cooper, who is set to be a guest on Tucker again this week, I believe, has said, and if Hitler really wanted peace and perhaps had a point about the outsized and nefarious impact of Jewish people, and if the United States was wrong to drop the atomic bombs, then NATO was a mistake, the ties to the nation of Israel is a mistake, and none of the post-World War II international order is worth maintaining today, let alone restoring or defending.
00:50:43.000The 1939 project has turned its focus toward undermining the righteousness of the United States and America's participation in World War II itself.
00:50:50.000They need to retcon the past in order to loosen the affection and support Americans feel for and have for our allies in Europe and Israel.
00:50:57.000This is necessary to weaken the American people's support for U.S. statecraft in the world, whether in the form of sanctions, military deployments, or military action in defense of its allies and state and official interests.
00:51:08.000It's a fascinating take, and it does somewhat explain what the goals here are, like what exactly is happening, why this battle is happening over things like, for example, Iran or Ukraine, when, again, the Republican base is very supportive of the president on all of these matters.
00:51:25.000Now, radicalism, again, is not relegated to one side, and it does meet on the other side of the horseshoe with radicals in the Republican Party as well.
00:51:36.000And that's something I think that President Trump is attempting to fight.
00:51:40.000President Trump is significantly more practical than his critics inside the Republican Party.
00:51:44.000That is just the reality of the situation as it currently stands.
00:51:47.000All righty, folks, the show is continuing for our members.
00:51:49.000Right now, we're going to jump into the Vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag.
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