Americans don t like ugly pictures of ICE agents in confrontations with illegal immigrants, and they don't like pictures on TV of people being shot in their cars, even under disputed circumstances. But when bad things elevate to our TV on a consistent basis, people tend not to like it.
00:00:00.000Anti-ICE protesters take over a church in Minneapolis.
00:00:03.000Americans' opinions on ICE action seem to be in chaos.
00:00:07.000And we get into the latest on Iran, on Greenland, on new deals between Canada and China, a lot going on in the world.
00:00:14.000First, for decades, the left has been pushing its agenda through movies and TV shows.
00:00:17.000Stories that used to entertain, now lecture you.
00:00:19.000Characters that used to inspire now exist to check the box.
00:00:22.000We can all feel something changed, and we knew what they were doing.
00:00:26.000Well, you might not realize that the same thing has been happening in our schools.
00:00:29.000Just like Hollywood, the left quietly took control of our curriculum and used it to push their views.
00:00:33.000The new Daily Wire Plus series, Real History with Matt Walsh, is a reset.
00:00:37.000It's American history that isn't anti-American.
00:00:40.000Watch the season one premiere, The Real History of Slavery.
00:00:42.000It streams right now on Daily Wire Plus.
00:00:45.000If there is one key rule to American politics, that key rule is this: Americans do not like ugly pictures on their TV.
00:00:51.000There's a lot that Americans will stand so long as they don't have to look at it on their TV.
00:00:56.000Bad things are happening all over the world on a constant basis.
00:00:59.000In the United States, there are 340 million people.
00:01:02.000So bad things are constantly happening.
00:01:03.000But when bad things elevate to our TV on a consistent basis, people tend not to like it.
00:01:08.000And that's what has happened with ICE activity in major cities.
00:01:11.000Now, who gets blamed for those ugly pictures on the TV becomes the question, but it is not typically good for the elevation of an issue when those issues are raised under a particular president.
00:01:23.000So if there are lots of pictures of people crossing the border en masse, ugly pictures on our TV, and Joe Biden is the president, it is not going to redound to the benefit of the president of the United States.
00:01:32.000If there are a lot of ugly pictures on the TV of ICE agents in confrontations with illegal immigrants or people who are attempting to block and tackle on behalf of illegal immigrants, it turns out that Americans aren't going to like that either.
00:01:45.000New polling data from CBS News now finds that Americans are feeling a little bit skittish about the ICE activities that are going on around the country.
00:01:53.000Again, Americans like generally the idea that immigration and customs enforcement is, you know, doing immigration enforcement, and they are finding people who are here illegally and they are deporting those people, particularly if those people are criminals.
00:02:05.000However, what they do not like is pictures on their TV of mass mobilization in the streets.
00:02:10.000They don't like pictures on their TV of people being shot in their cars, even under disputed circumstances like Renee Good.
00:02:16.000This new CBS News poll shows that, according to this poll, when stopping and detaining people, ICE is being too tough.
00:02:25.00056% of people thought they were being too tough in November.
00:02:50.000Among independents, only 35% of independents say that the protesters have gone too far.
00:02:56.000The biggest statistic in this poll that is not great for the Trump administration is the question for Americans: who is the Trump administration prioritizing for deportation?
00:03:05.000The Trump administration would like to believe that the American people think the people being prioritized for deportation are criminal, illegal immigrants, because that is who is generally being prioritized: criminal, illegal immigrants.
00:03:17.000Yes, illegal immigration is criminal, but people who have another crime to their name.
00:03:22.000However, that is not what the American people increasingly are feeling.
00:03:25.000In November, 48% of Americans said that it was largely dangerous criminals who are being prioritized for deportation, as opposed to 52% who said that it was people who aren't dangerous criminals.
00:03:36.000Today, that number is 44% say dangerous criminals.
00:03:39.00056% say people who are not dangerous criminals.
00:03:44.000How about whether ICE is making communities more or less safe?
00:03:54.000And as for approval or disapproval, the approval for the Trump administration's program to deport immigrants illegally in the United States has dropped from 51% in December down to 46% today.
00:04:04.000The disapproval number is all the way up at 54%.
00:04:09.000And among independents, disapproval is at 60%.
00:04:39.000And this is, of course, related to the shooting of Rene Good.
00:04:43.00054% of people polled said that that shooting was not justified.
00:04:46.000Only 28% say justified, and 17% say too soon to say.
00:04:53.000All of which means that when you aggregate all of this, 53% of Americans apparently say that ICE operations in the United States should be decreased, as opposed to 25% saying increased and 22% saying not changed.
00:05:06.000So again, those are not great numbers for the president on an issue where generally he is quite popular.
00:05:11.000Now, that doesn't mean that people trust Democrats.
00:05:13.000There is a poll out from the Wall Street Journal, same time period, looking at which party in Congress is best able to handle border security, Republicans, plus 28, immigration, Republicans, plus 11.
00:05:25.000And so those numbers remain good, mainly because Democrats are not trusted on this sort of stuff.
00:05:30.000With that said, the ugly pictures on the TV are making a difference.
00:05:35.000And presumably, this is why Democrats are sending protesters out into the streets.
00:05:39.000Now, Democrats can overplay their hand.
00:05:42.000Right now, people are attributing the ugly pictures to the activities of ICE.
00:05:46.000But what happens when, for example, chaos breaks out at a church, which is something that happened over the weekend?
00:05:52.000Already coming up, Democrats decide they're going to invade a church service in Minneapolis to protest ICE, which is about as stupid a thing as you can do.
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00:08:19.000So, over the weekend, there was a chaotic mob storming through a Minnesota church over a pastor's alleged ties, true immigration and customs enforcement.
00:08:30.000According to Foxnews.com, video shows agitators chanting justice for Renee Good inside the sanctuary at City's Church as the service began, raising concerns among law enforcement and religious leaders about protesters targeting houses of worship.
00:08:43.000In one video circulating online, agitators can be heard chanting justice for Rene Good.
00:09:09.000He was in the middle of a church service.
00:09:22.000that's when we're praying for the protesters You see a little bit of chaos is breaking out here.
00:09:28.000One person filming described the disruption as a clandestine admission.
00:09:32.000They found out supposedly that a pastor had been connected to ICE.
00:09:36.000One of the people who is a pastor is a pastor named David Easterwood, who shares the same name as the acting director as ICE's St. Paul Field office.
00:09:46.000Unclear whether this is in fact the same human being.
00:09:50.000Okay, well, Don Lemon happened to be at this church.
00:09:52.000You would imagine this meant that he had some sort of heads up.
00:09:55.000And Don Lemon proceeded to lecture the pastor for the great crime of, you know, being a pastor at a church while people were protesting in the middle of the church service, which is utterly inappropriate, of course.
00:11:04.000Don Lemon was not there to worship, obviously.
00:11:06.000He was there to help promote the cause of these protesters who decided to shut down a service.
00:11:10.000By the way, the First Amendment does not mean that you get to walk onto private property and start shouting in the middle of somebody's business or in the middle of a church service.
00:11:17.000In fact, there is something called the FACE Act, which is all about desecrating houses of worship or interfering with Christian worshipers.
00:11:24.000The DHS says they will investigate all of this, so will DOJ.
00:11:28.000Agitators aren't just targeting our officers, said the DHS in a post.
00:11:55.000If the goal here is to create peace and safety and calm, there's a very clear antidote here, which is leave.
00:12:03.000The second these ICE agents leave the city, I'm telling you, you're going to have calm in Minneapolis and you will continue to see the great comeback that we had been experiencing.
00:12:15.000Now, again, this sort of activity by Democrats is likely to backfire.
00:12:19.000So at the moment, the image that people have in their heads, the ugly image that people have in their heads right now, is again that image of Renee Good.
00:12:26.000However, that image can be replaced by a series of ugly images from Democrats, including, for example, storming churches.
00:12:35.000There's a fascinating piece by Roland Fryer in the Wall Street Journal talking about the sort of effect of protest, typically speaking.
00:12:42.000And one of the points that Roland Fryer makes is that actually nonviolent protest that does not disrupt things like church services is likely to work out better for you than being absolutely confrontational or violent or chaotic.
00:12:58.000He says in this piece, Roland Fryer, professor of economics at Harvard, when I was young, I mistook restraint for weakness and anger for honesty.
00:13:04.000What I failed to see, what we still failed to teach students, was that Martin Luther King wasn't avoiding conflict.
00:13:09.000He was engineering it on terms that made progress possible.
00:13:13.000In other words, don't just kind of run into a church and start screaming at the top of your lungs and hope that Americans are going to like that sort of thing because they very likely will not.
00:13:22.000But with that said, to pretend that the Trump administration has facilitated popular immigration policy here would be to belie the polls at this point.
00:13:32.000So again, it's less about the policy than it is about the implementation.
00:13:35.000Democrats who are smart are going to focus in on the implementation and they are not going to give credence or credibility to people who are violently protesting or invading churches.
00:13:45.000They're also not going to use the sort of outstanding radical language that the radical left would like to use.
00:13:52.000So for example, I was on Gavin Newsom's podcast last week.
00:13:55.000I pressed him on the fact that his press office had suggested that what happened to Renee Good was state-sponsored terrorism.
00:14:00.000What it really was was a tragedy, a tragedy presumably of a differential interpretation of circumstance.
00:14:07.000As we say, I don't know what Renee Good was thinking when she decided that she was going to hit the gas on her car.
00:14:11.000And when I look at that, say, I'm not sure that her intent is to hit the officer.
00:14:15.000It looks to me like she's trying to turn the wheel to avoid hitting an officer who's in front of her car or stepped up in front of her car.
00:14:21.000But that doesn't mean that he did not perceive her as trying to hit him.
00:14:25.000Both of those things can be true at the same time.
00:14:27.000And so when Governor Newsom suggested it was state-sponsored terrorism, that obviously is untrue.
00:14:33.000However, now Gavin Newsom, who told me that he thinks that it was fair to criticize that particular statement, I don't know whether he's trying to buy back the love of his base after those comments or what.
00:14:43.000But here was Governor Newsom over the weekend suggesting that President Trump is trying to stoke a civil war.
00:14:48.000He is trying to stoke a civil war in this country.
00:14:52.000It is a disgrace what he's doing in Minneapolis.
00:14:56.000It is a disgrace what he's doing all across the United States of America, terrorizing communities.
00:15:02.000It is a disgrace what his Department of Homeland Security is putting out.
00:15:09.000I mean, these ads of evoking the worst, the 1930s, very intentionally stoking tensions, white supremacy being promoted actively by this administration, the corruption and graft, the likes of which we've never seen in modern history, modern world history.
00:15:33.000And now, again, is this sort of language useful?
00:15:38.000It wasn't useful last week when he denounced it.
00:15:40.000It's not useful now when he's sort of using it again.
00:15:42.000Meanwhile, Democratic strategist Megan Hayes says President Trump wants to normalize the use of the military on the streets.
00:15:47.000And we are now in this reactionary ping-pong that is not great.
00:15:52.000I think this is what he is planning all along with these ICE raids and wanting to call for an insurrection in most of these places.
00:15:58.000He wants to normalize military on our streets so he can call for an insurrection so he doesn't have to have elections.
00:16:04.000So I don't necessarily think that the American people should think this is outrageous.
00:16:07.000I think this is part of Donald Trump's plan and it's been part of his plan all along.
00:16:11.000Now, again, ripping into Trump may be a sort of rich vein for Democrats, but the minute they decide to push the abolish ICE program, things are going to go squirrely on them because Americans, once again, do not like ugly pictures on their TV.
00:16:22.000And when ICE pulls out and then violence reigns, that is not going to be a wonderful program either.
00:16:27.000So when Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, a supposed moderate, overturned this weekend an executive order mandating cooperation with ICE, you know, that's a risky move.
00:16:36.000Here she was doing that over the weekend.
00:16:38.000And this executive order rescinds executive order number 47.
00:16:43.000State and local law enforcement should not be required to divert their limited resources to enforce federal civil immigration laws.
00:16:53.000It is a responsibility of federal law enforcement.
00:16:56.000Virginia's state and local law enforcement officers must be able to focus on their LaCore responsibilities, investigating crime and community policing.
00:17:05.000Now, again, do I think that's going to work well for Democrats?
00:17:08.000I do not, especially when it's being pressed forward by celebrities like Bruce Springsteen, who says ICE should get the hell out of Minneapolis.
00:17:15.000If you believe in the power of the law and that no one stands above it, if you stand against heavily armed mass federal troops invading an American city and using established tactics against their fellow citizens,
00:17:38.000if you believe you don't deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest, I send a message to this president.
00:17:53.000And as the mayor of that city has said, ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.
00:18:03.000This home is for you and in the memory of the mother of three and American citizen Renee Good.
00:18:12.000Again, this is starting to feel an awful lot like BLM summer in 2020, when a bad situation involving the death of George Floyd under, at the very least, significantly disputed circumstances turned into widespread rioting and chaos and looting.
00:18:27.000And the blowback to that was actually in the short term good for Democrats, but in the long term, very, very bad for Democrats because Americans, once again, do not like ugly pictures on their TV.
00:18:35.000Now, the Trump administration, the way they should be handling this is with absolute calm, with just tremendous, predictable enforcement of the law.
00:19:36.000He is right about that, which is why it is so important that in the pursuit of the law, the Trump administration has to be the most effective it can be.
00:19:43.000And this has been sort of one of the bugaboos of the Trump administration, number two, and that is very good ideas on policy, sometimes poorly executed.
00:19:51.000I would say that the Department of Governmental Efficiency would be a good example of this.
00:19:55.000I know that the Trump administration, number two, really wants to move fast and break things.
00:20:00.000I totally get it because you only have a certain limited time in office in order to get things done.
00:20:05.000On the other hand, if you move so fast and break so many things that you end up generating a tsunami of anger at you, what you end up with is a reaction that wipes away the effect of what you're trying to do in the first place.
00:20:17.000So as an example of this, when it came to the Renegade situation, I said from the very outset that the DHS should not have called her a domestic terrorist.
00:20:25.000They should have said this is a tragic circumstance.
00:20:28.000We'll get back to you when we get to the end of that.
00:20:30.000It appears to us that an objective officer could believe or should believe that she was trying to hit him with the car or that he was going to be hit by the car.
00:20:39.000And therefore, it looks like the shoot was justified.
00:20:42.000Instead, the administration came out very strong with language that I thought was, frankly, not connected strongly enough with the facts on the ground, which is what the polls are showing right now.
00:20:53.000And so it's not a particular wonder that Harry Ensign over at CNN is now reporting that a majority of Americans don't trust the feds to investigate that case.
00:21:00.000Do you trust the federal government to investigate the Minneapolis police shooting, the federal government?
00:21:04.000And I think it just sort of speaks to the trust of the federal government overall.
00:21:07.000And the overwhelming majority, more than three in five you see on your screen, say 62% say, no, they don't trust the federal government.
00:21:14.000And this comes on top of other polling data, which shows that ICE's net approval rating is way, way down from where it was back at this point during Trump's first term.
00:21:23.000It also shows at this point that Trump's net approval rating on immigration is way, way down from where it was just, say, at the beginning of last year.
00:21:30.000So what should the Trump administration do?
00:21:32.000Again, calmly and consistently enforce the law.
00:21:35.000And if the law is violated, arrest people in calm and consistent fashion.
00:21:40.000That is the best thing they can do and wait for the left to make the mistakes that they certainly will make because they will.
00:22:10.000Effective and quiet is a really, really good thing, politically speaking.
00:22:15.000Less effective and very loud is likely to lead to the kind of blowback that leads to your electoral loss or your party's electoral loss.
00:22:23.000Now, Democrats should pay attention to the same thing because if their resistance to ICE is both ineffective and loud, then they are likely to be in a world of hurt themselves.
00:22:33.000Meanwhile, on the economic front, the Trump economy continues to do really well, and yet enormous amounts of dyspepsia about the economy, according to the polling data.
00:22:45.000According to the Wall Street Journal, by 15 percentage points, more voters rate the economy as weak rather than strong.
00:22:52.000That's a deterioration from July when negative views predominated by four points.
00:22:55.000About half of voters say the economy has gotten worse in the past year compared with 35% who see improvement.
00:23:01.000That finding continues a years-long disconnect between traditional measures of inflation and economic growth, which are relatively positive, and a negative public outlook.
00:23:10.000So President Trump's in-party approval rating remains 92%.
00:23:13.000There is not a split inside the Republican Party.
00:23:17.000However, 54% of voters disapprove of the president at this point.
00:23:23.000He is at a 54% job disapproval rating at 45% approve.
00:23:28.000And when it comes to the handling of the economy, his numbers have been dropping.
00:23:34.000So as I was just saying, if you look at the breakdown, President Trump's approval rating, where is it the best?
00:24:06.000Again, I think that doing things well and doing them quietly is the way that presidents become popular.
00:24:11.000What Americans mostly want, and no president has allowed them to do this, maybe for most of my adult lifetime at this point.
00:24:19.000What Americans mostly want from the president is to be left alone.
00:24:22.000They want to believe that they'll wake up in the morning and life will be the same or slightly better than it was yesterday.
00:24:27.000They don't want to wake up and be bothered by the latest chaos.
00:24:30.000And that is why it is a mistake for the president to futz around so much with, for example, tariff rates and to tie those so much to international issues, like, for example, should we grab Greenland?
00:24:41.000Americans do not want to pay higher rates at the grocery store because the president wants Greenland.
00:24:56.000Well, because it turns out that we're about to launch apparently a new trade war over Greenland.
00:25:00.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the president announced over the weekend that he would impose 10% tariffs on imports from several European countries in an effort to pressure Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States.
00:25:13.000So there was a trade deal that President Trump reached with the EU last year, and it was supposed to lower tariffs on many U.S. exports.
00:25:21.000The president in a social media post on Saturday said the 10% tariffs would go into effect February 1 and would apply to all goods sent to the U.S. from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, Netherlands, and Finland.
00:25:32.000Then, apparently, the tariffs are going to go up to 25% on June 1st and remain in place until a deal is reached for what he called the complete and total purchase of Greenland.
00:25:42.000That is after the Europeans sent like a dog sled and a couple of guns to Greenland to deter the United States.
00:25:48.000That would not stop us if we wished to invade Greenland.
00:25:51.000President Trump wrote on Truth Social: These countries who are playing this very dangerous game have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable.
00:25:58.000Therefore, it is imperative that in order to protect global peace and security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly and without question.
00:26:08.000Now, again, the United States under 1951 treaties does have the ability to radically increase our military presence in Greenland if we so choose in order to deter the Russians from their predations in northern waters.
00:26:22.000The EU, for its part, started to push back.
00:26:25.000The EU's top two officials, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, said, quote, tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.
00:26:36.000Europe will remain united, coordinated, and committed to upholding its sovereignty.
00:26:41.000The Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Christerson, said, quote, we will not let ourselves be blackmailed.
00:26:47.000President Trump did not say if this would be added on top of the existing levies, which are still like 15% for most EU countries and 10% for most UK goods.
00:26:58.000So, again, those Greenland threats are starting to make waves, and they'll make economic waves as well.
00:27:06.000The NATO allies put out a statement complaining about all of this.
00:27:11.000Their joint statement suggested: quote: As members of NATO, we are committed to strengthening Arctic security as a shared transatlantic interest.
00:27:20.000The pre-coordinated Danish exercise, Arctic Endurance, conducted with allies, responds to this necessity.
00:27:26.000We stand in full solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of Greenland.
00:27:30.000Building on the process begun last week, we stand ready to engage in a dialogue based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that we stand firmly behind.
00:27:41.000So NATO is saying, I don't even understand what is going on right now.
00:27:45.000Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, seems to be trying to talk people off of a ledge.
00:27:49.000He says, there's not really a choice between Greenland or NATO.
00:27:52.000We're not trying to undercut NATO here.
00:27:54.000Since 1980, the U.S. has spent U.S. military spending versus NATO military spending.
00:28:01.000We have spent $22 trillion more than the Europeans have, that we are peace through strength.
00:28:09.000And the Europeans now are only trying to play catch-up.
00:28:13.000And that is only through President Trump.
00:28:15.000President Trump believes in NATO, but he does not believe in the American people being dragged in.
00:28:20.000Okay, I understand that he doesn't want the American people being dragged in, but it seems to me that if we are in a conflict with NATO and NATO is redirecting its resources from, you know, our enemies like Russia toward, say, Greenland, that is not necessarily the best use of NATO resources.
00:28:36.000Scott Besson's also suggested we're not going to outsource our national security.
00:28:40.000And that is why we must have full control over Greenland.
00:28:42.000Again, we have by treaty power the ability to place more troops in Greenland if we so choose.
00:29:18.000Again, this notion that the United States has to be, like, if we want to defray costs, why are we then picking up more costs?
00:29:25.000It will cost more, by the way, to actually administer Greenland than it would to have Greenland administered by Denmark and for us to just place a few military bases.
00:29:32.000That's just the reality of the situation.
00:29:34.000Again, this is more of a territorially expansionist policy for the United States.
00:29:39.000And if we wish to buy from Denmark, that makes some sense to me.
00:29:42.000But the idea that this is like a core national security interest is such that we must grab the territory, not that we must increase our military presence, but that we must own Greenland is strange to me.
00:29:52.000The reason that this is a problem, because normally I just sort of laugh this stuff off.
00:29:59.000The world is adjusting to America's sort of aggressive take against everyone, not just against our enemies or our opponents, but also apparently against our allies, by reorienting, by shifting its own strategy on a broad level.
00:30:12.000So I've been commenting about this with regard to, for example, Canada for a while.
00:30:16.000The president decided to slap Canada with extremely high tariffs.
00:30:19.000I mentioned when this happened earlier last year that this would only drive Canada into the arms of the Chinese.
00:30:26.000And this is also true with regard to the Canadian elections, where the president of the United States slapping tariffs on Canada helped to ensure that the Canadian election would move in the direction of Mark Carney, who is a far left-winger, as opposed to in the direction of a significantly more right-wing figure, Pierre Polyev.
00:30:44.000There are knock-on effects to doing things.
00:30:47.000Now, the president of the United States is wonderful at a great many things.
00:30:50.000He's heterodox on a great many things.
00:30:53.000But also, he can be a hammer in search of a nail.
00:30:55.000And when he doesn't have a nail, he sometimes hits a baby.
00:30:57.000And the problem is there are knock-on effects to all of that.
00:31:00.000And so when we look at the international results of all of this, what it seems is happening is that all over the world, everyone is reorienting in their perception of the United States.
00:31:09.000Instead of the United States being the country that is sort of the black hole of politics where everything revolves around us, instead of that, it seems as though people are looking for new loci of gravity.
00:31:21.000They're looking instead to other places.
00:31:24.000They're looking for other relationships.
00:31:25.000They're looking to defray the cost of losing the United States as, for example, a trade partner or a security partner.
00:31:31.000So what does this mean in practical terms?
00:31:33.000Well, to take one example, this means that the EU and the Mercosur bloc of South American nations have now signed a landmark free trade agreement.
00:31:41.000So they could get a free trade agreement with the United States.
00:31:44.000Instead, they decided to sign one with each other, which means they're maximizing trade with each other, but not with the United States.
00:31:51.000According to the Associated Press, the EU and the Mercosur bloc of South American countries formally signed a long-sought free trade agreement on Saturday, strengthening commercial ties in the face of rising protectionism and trade tensions around the world.
00:32:02.000The signing ceremony in Paraguay's capital, Asunción, caps more than a quarter century of torturous negotiations.
00:32:09.000It marks a major geopolitical victory for the EU in an age of American tariffs and surging Chinese imports, expanding the bloc's foothold in a resource-rich region increasingly contested by both Washington and Beijing.
00:32:22.000Now, this will likely be ratified in South America.
00:32:24.000It includes, by the way, Argentina and Brazil, as well as Paraguay and Uruguay.
00:32:29.000And Venezuela, of course, was suspended a long time ago.
00:32:33.000But the goal here for the EU is to forge trade relations outside the United States.
00:32:38.000And if this were relegated to simply increase trade relations between some of our allies and other allies, that'd be one thing.
00:32:46.000But actually, what's happening here is that China is beginning to capitalize with regard to trade relations.
00:32:50.000I warned last year that alienating the Canadians by smacking them with lumber tariffs and all the rest, that all this was going to do was give a permission structure an excuse for Mark Carney to draw closer to China.
00:33:12.000According to Axios, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's decision to ease trade tensions with China is the latest sign that U.S. allies squeezed by Trump-era tariffs are recalibrating and in some cases drifting closer to Beijing.
00:33:24.000President Trump's tariff-driven trade strategy is accelerating efforts by U.S. partners to hedge and diversify, creating openings for China as countries manage retaliatory trade fallout.
00:33:34.000China and Canada struck a deal on electric vehicles, agriculture, and energy.
00:33:39.000A statement said, quote, Canada's new government is working with urgency and determination to diversify our trade partnerships and catalyze massive new levels of investment.
00:33:47.000As the world's second largest economy, China presents enormous opportunities for Canada in this mission.
00:33:52.000So Canada dropped its 100% electric vehicle tariff on China and will allow up to 49,000 Chinese EVs into the Canadian market.
00:34:02.000So more relations between China and Canada.
00:34:05.000Here's Mark Carney over the weekend announcing his strategic partnership with the Chinese.
00:34:10.000It's been eight years since a Canadian prime minister visited China, and this is a relationship that has been distant and uncertain for nearly a decade.
00:34:19.000That has held back investment, it's stalled business growth, and cost Canadian workers good opportunities.
00:34:25.000And that's why Canada's new government began to recalibrate our relationship with China.
00:34:29.000Through periods of global tension and disruption, we've created more opportunities for our workers, businesses, and investors by working together.
00:34:57.000And I'm not going to accuse them of making the smartest decisions all the time.
00:35:02.000I think they will live to regret the day they partner with China and bring it in their vehicles.
00:35:08.000Now, China's increasing flex is going to move toward Taiwan.
00:35:12.000Taiwan, in an attempt to keep the United States in the fold, is trying to build more resources in the United States, less because they're trying to offshore to the United States, more because they're trying to please the Trump administration, which again is fine, so long as the quid pro quo is that the United States actually is going to provide for some element of defense to Taiwan in case of a Chinese move.
00:35:32.000The big question with regard to President Trump's foreign policy after all is said and done here is whether what we are looking at is a hawkish realist foreign policy from the president, one where he pursues America's interests aggressively around the globe, from Venezuela to Greenland to the Middle East, to Taiwan, to defending trade routes, or whether what we are watching is a retrenchment in which the United States strengthens its hand in places like Greenland, maybe Cuba or Venezuela, but other places on earth basically draws back.
00:36:00.000And nobody seems particularly clear on this at this point, which is why presumably you are starting to see all the geopolitical puzzle pieces moving, China getting more aggressive, the EU starting to make overtures toward both China and towards South America.
00:36:12.000The Canadians trying to make their move toward China.
00:36:17.000And to pretend otherwise would be to ignore the chess pieces as they move on the board.
00:36:21.000Meanwhile, Democrats seem pretty confident that they are going to take over Congress.
00:36:25.000And you can tell by the kind of language that they are using.
00:36:28.000Chuck Schumer is vowing that if the Democrats were to take over the Senate, that they would restore all Doge cuts, which is pretty astonishing since Doge cuts some pretty useless stuff.
00:36:38.000If you look at the budget, actually, we're working on right now, and we'll have the T HUD budget, you know, transportation and HUD budget, we restore most of the cuts and even go higher than previous years on many of the programs that Doge slash.
00:36:55.000So again, the fact that Democrats are perfectly willing to go right back into spending even bigger than we are currently spending is pretty incredible.
00:37:02.000Meanwhile, other Democrats are openly promoting the idea that there should be such a thing as a wealth tax.
00:37:07.000The big force behind that in the state of California, again, Gavin Newsom, who I spoke with last week on his show, denounces a wealth tax in the state of California because he understands it will drive all the wealth out of his state.
00:37:17.000Ro Khanna, the congressman, is one of the people pushing a wealth tax.
00:37:20.000Newsom has sort of suggested that while he opposes it on a state level, because it will drive wealth out of his state, it's fine and dandy on a federal level, which is insane.
00:37:29.000Because again, very, very wealthy people can actually move offshore as well.
00:37:42.000A wealth tax, for those who missed out, is not an income tax.
00:37:45.000A wealth tax is a tax on your unrealized assets.
00:37:48.000So, for example, just to take an example that might arise in everyday life if the wealth tax applied broadly, you buy a house, the house was worth $200,000 when you bought it.
00:37:58.000Today, the house is worth $500,000, but you didn't sell it.
00:38:01.000And now they're going to say you have to pay a couple percentage of tax on the value of the house, the unrealized value of the house.
00:38:09.000So now you're going to owe, say, $60,000, $70,000 on a house you never sold.
00:38:22.000But for Democrats, it's never about the efficacy of the program.
00:38:26.000It is all about the revenge to be taken on the people who actually earn.
00:38:29.000So Kara Swisher had Rokana on her show, and she suggested that if you leave the state, if you're Larry Page or Sergey Brin or other founders who are leaving the state now because they don't wish to bankrupt themselves or their companies, which is what would happen here, then this means that you are somehow ungrateful.
00:38:46.000I got 100 people, I think it is, who are threatening to leave California, except for Jensen Huang, who's apparently staying.
00:38:54.000One is you made your, and I said it to one this weekend.
00:38:59.000I said, you made all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of sh.
00:39:03.000You could figure out a way to get pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you, given you made your wealth here.
00:39:10.000The second thing is, yes, there are different ways to do this, but the length of time it would take at the kind of vehemence you would fight, whatever happens, means nothing would happen.
00:39:20.000So why don't we just do shock and awe at this point?
00:39:22.000Because you don't seem to be, you know, availing yourself to thinking that you owe your state something more.
00:39:31.000Okay, you don't owe the state of California gigantic chunks of the wealth that you built in the state of California because you happened to be in California when it was built.
00:39:39.000You could have easily built it in Nevada or someplace else.
00:39:42.000The state of California benefited from having your gigantic business in it, not the other way around.
00:39:49.000But again, the sort of jealousy and nastiness of that particular comment is really quite astonishing.
00:39:54.000The idea that Larry Page or Sergey Brin, Elon, all these billionaires, that they should be sitting around grateful for the wonders of California's regulatory structure as California attempts to bankrupt them, because that is actually what you are talking about, or attempts to radically change the market cap of their company through a wealth tax is totally insane.
00:40:16.000But this is what happens when you have a Democratic Party that, again, can't go back to normalcy.
00:40:20.000All people want is just some level of normalcy.
00:40:23.000I will say that Republicans have done a pretty poor job of fighting back ideologically against all this sort of stuff.
00:40:28.000This is one of my big problems with the new pro-centralized state Republican Party.
00:40:34.000There are large swaths of the Republican Party that have jettisoned economic, laissez-faire conservatism, that have decided that the free markets are bad now, that actually what we need is some state-sponsored capitalism.
00:40:48.000We need the state picking and choosing winners and taking stakes in private companies.
00:40:52.000We need the centralized government deciding what is good business and what is bad business and which deals are fair and which are not.
00:40:59.000Well, if you do that, it's going to be very hard to make the case against the centralized state as run by the Democrats, because frankly, the case against the centralized state in the economy is a case that the state really has no part to play here other than ensuring that people don't defraud one another, that they don't steal from one another.
00:41:17.000But the minute that you get into the state should pursue the common good with your money, there's no limiting principle there.
00:41:23.000And this is why I think that if you look at all the polls recently, what you see is the rise of socialism.
00:41:28.000You see people who are getting warmer and warmer toward the concept of socialism.
00:41:34.000And so when you hear Senator Tim Scott saying we have a chance to make sure America is never socialist, which of course, you know, is something you have to fight for consistently, it is hard for Republicans to make that argument while continuing to use the government to do outsized things.
00:41:48.000The truth of the matter is that when you look at the candidates that they're putting up, they're Democrats, socialists, or just outright socialists.
00:41:54.000We have a chance to reinforce that America will never be a socialist nation.
00:41:59.000Holding the House, holding the Senate, and making sure that President Trump has a Republican majority means the attention, as he said, will not be on impeaching him.
00:42:09.000The attention will be on the American people who deserve a president who listens to the people and then delivers.
00:42:18.000Again, I think Republicans can campaign against socialism.
00:42:21.000We'll make it a lot easier if they stop, you know, acting kind of like socialists.
00:42:25.000Meanwhile, on foreign policy, President Trump continues to push for the ouster of the Iranian regime.
00:42:31.000The president told Politico over the weekend it's time to look for new leadership in Iran, which, of course, is true.
00:42:38.000The president said on Saturday, the best decision that Ayatollah Khomeini ever made was not hanging more than 800 people two days ago.
00:42:46.000That came shortly after Khomeini's ex-account posted a series of hostile messages aimed at Trump.
00:42:53.000President Trump said, quote, what he is guilty of as the leader of a country is the complete destruction of the country and the use of violence at levels never seen before.
00:42:59.000In order to keep the country functioning, even though that function is a very low level, the leadership should focus on running his country properly, like I do with the United States, and not killing people by the thousands in order to keep control.
00:43:09.000Leadership is about respect, not fear and death.
00:43:13.000The president said, the man is a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people.
00:43:17.000His country is the worst place to live anywhere in the world because of poor leadership.
00:43:20.000Now, obviously, I think that that's true.
00:43:22.000The question is, what's going to happen now?
00:43:24.000Because this idea that things have gone silent, that everything is fine and hunky-dory there, is not true.
00:43:30.000We have reports ranging from 3,000 dead all the way up into the 23,000 range dead.
00:43:35.000There have been multiple reports anywhere in that spectrum.
00:43:38.000At the very least, you're looking at thousands upon thousands of people who have been murdered by the regime, tens of thousands of people who have been wounded by the regime.
00:43:44.000Right now, Iran has basically locked down the entire country.
00:43:48.000You're still unable to get on the internet in Iran.
00:43:52.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the protesters who filled the streets of Tehran are gone, replaced by security forces and reminders of the violence used by the regime to suppress a national uprising aimed at ending its rule.
00:44:03.000Members of the Basij pro-government militia patrolled the streets of Tehran on motorbikes in recent days, with some shouting, Don't come out, we'll shoot you.
00:44:10.000A medical student in Tehran said he counted the charred remains of at least five men's.
00:44:38.000All that happened is that Iran shot a crapload of people in the streets and then put guns and tanks and human beings on motorcycles in the streets and threatened to murder people for walking out.
00:44:50.000Authorities said they are easing an internet shutdown that started January 8th, but apparently it is still not possible to fully get on the internet.
00:45:00.000Tajrish, an affluent neighborhood of North Tehran, normally known as the capital's top dating spot, has been eerily quiet in the past week, according to one resident.
00:45:08.000Armed security forces have taken over the streets of several cities across the country, imposing what some Iranians have described as unofficial martial law.
00:45:16.000In Karaj, an industrial town to the west of Tehran, police loudspeakers are blasting calls to people to stay away from their windows, apparently.
00:45:25.000So there's still rumors coming out of people being shot in back rooms, that there's still murders that are going on.
00:45:30.000They're just not happening in the middle of the street.
00:45:33.000We don't know the answer to any of that.
00:45:34.000Suffice it to say, the crisis in Iran is not yet over.
00:45:38.000Meanwhile, nearby in Syria, the Syrian regime, which again is supposed to be this moderate regime, it is not in fact a moderate regime in any real sense of the word.
00:45:49.000It was run by an Islamist who was a member of ISIS and al-Qaeda and now is backed by the Turkish regime.
00:45:56.000Syria has been slaughtering the Kurds.
00:45:59.000Again, the Kurds have been fighting for their independence in this region for quite a long time.
00:46:03.000They are opposed by the Turks in this effort.
00:46:06.000Well, now this has resulted in the Syrian military seizing swaths of Kurdish-held territory at the behest of the Turks.
00:46:13.000The Turks are now trying to turn Syria into essentially a Turkish client state.
00:46:19.000That's what they are attempting to do.
00:46:20.000Erdogan is a radical Islamist himself.
00:46:23.000He has full solidarity with, for example, Hamas.
00:46:39.000It is increasingly Islamist, and the military has basically been purged of any of its secularist elements.
00:46:46.000And now it is working hand in glove with Syria to wipe out the Kurds.
00:46:49.000According to CNN, in the space of two days, the Syrian military, aided by tribal militia, has driven Kurdish forces from wide swaths of northern Syria that they've held for more than a decade.
00:46:58.000Among the towns and cities reported to have fallen is Raqqa, that is once the notorious capital of ISIS.
00:47:05.000After the territorial gains, Syria's president said Sunday an agreement had been reached with the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces to end the fighting in the northeast of the country.
00:47:17.000Well, the SDF, the Syrian Defense Force, again, a Kurdish force, is a U.S.-backed group that was not part of the rebel alliance that overthrew Bashar al-Assad in 2024.
00:47:26.000And so the Syrian government decided to basically wipe them out with the help of the Turks.
00:47:31.000Now, for some odd reason, members of the administration seem to believe that the Turks are friends to the United States and to the Western powers.
00:47:43.000The United States has announced that the Turks are going to be involved in the so-called Gaza Oversight Board, the Gaza Peace Board.
00:47:53.000I see zero reason why the Turks, who again were pretty openly allied with Hamas, should be part of helping to reconstitute the Gaza Strip when the entire question is whether Hamas is going to retain any controlling part of the Gaza Strip.
00:48:05.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Israel is publicly pushing back against the makeup of a U.S. committee created to oversee Gaza, which includes both Turkey and Qatar.
00:48:12.000Turkey, again, is an Islamist rival to Israel, and Qatar, of course, is in Iranian cutout.
00:48:18.000Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday the committee established by the White House to help advance the next phases of the Gaza ceasefire was, quote, not coordinated with Israel and contrary to its policy.
00:48:29.000Among the members included on the board are Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and senior Qatari official Ali Tawadi.
00:48:47.000So this would be a large-scale mistake.
00:48:49.000Okay, closer to home on the cultural front, the most bizarre story of the day.
00:48:54.000Apparently, Dylan Mulvaney, I don't know why brands wish to touch with a 10-foot pole, Dylan Mulvaney's brand, but apparently they want to.
00:49:03.000Dylan Mulvaney has now been cast in the Broadway musical about women's history 6, which is about the six wives of Henry VIII.
00:49:10.000Dylan Mulvaney will now play Anne Boleyn, which makes perfect sense because certainly the king would have been very upset when his trans female bride could not give birth.
00:49:25.000I mean, if you know your history, gang, the reason the king was pissed is because Anne Boleyn gave birth to a female child, but not a male child.
00:49:32.000I have a feeling that the king would have been significantly less concerned about that if Anne Boleyn had been a dude.
00:49:42.000That doesn't seem to make a lot of historical sense.
00:49:45.000The musical's official ex-ann account announced Friday, quote, losing our heads to introduce your newest Anne Boleyn.
00:49:52.000Show some royal love to Queen Dylan Mulvaney.
00:49:58.000Again, like the whole point of this show supposedly is that it is re-centering the female experience.
00:50:03.000Well, now the female experience is male.
00:50:06.000And again, if we are just talking about the history of Henry VIII here, it doesn't make a ton of sense that a woman executed for her failure to bear a male heir would be played by a male who can't bear anything not having a uterus.