The Trump administration is in the middle of a very hot fight with regards to a deported Salvadoran migrant, whose case has now been remanded back to a lower court for further clarification. The case centers around the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant who was sent back to El Salvador. He claims that he was mistaken for a member of MS-13 and should be returned to the United States.
00:00:41.000And then there was a withholding order that suggested that he could not be sent back to El Salvador because he claimed that he had fear for his life, that he'd be killed in El Salvador because he's a Salvadoran migrant and maybe he had gang ties and maybe he didn't.
00:00:53.000The court said that the executive branch of the United States government, He had good cause to believe that he might in fact be a gang member, a member of MS-13.
00:01:02.000President Trump then declared MS-13 a terrorist organization.
00:01:06.000And so the idea now is that sort of retroactively he becomes a terrorist because he was suspected of being a member of MS-13.
00:01:13.000Well, he was sort of accidentally deported.
00:01:16.000He was not supposed to be on the plane because of that withholding order that said he was not supposed to be sent back to El Salvador.
00:01:23.000A district court found that The government had to facilitate his return from El Salvador back to the United States so he could have due process before we deported him.
00:01:32.000Again, that case ended up going to the Supreme Court.
00:01:35.000And in a 9-0 order, the Supreme Court stated that the district court had the power to say that the United States government, the White House, ought to facilitate his return to the United States, but they didn't define the term facilitate.
00:01:49.000So here is what the actual court order said.
00:01:54.000It said, quote, The application is granted in part and denied in part subject to the direction of this order.
00:01:59.000Due to the administrative state issued by the Chief Justice, the deadline imposed by the District Court has now passed.
00:02:04.000To that extent, the government's emergency application is effectively granted in part and the deadline in the challenged order is no longer effective.
00:02:10.000The order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been properly sent to El Salvador.
00:02:21.000The intended scope of the term effectuate in the district court's order is, however, unclear and may exceed the district court's authority.
00:02:27.000The district court should clarify its directive with any due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.
00:02:32.000For its part, the government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.
00:02:38.000So if that sounds vague to you, that's because it's incredibly vague.
00:02:41.000So the government apparently, under the Supreme Court order, has a duty to facilitate his release from custody.
00:02:49.000How that doesn't infringe on the executive branch's ability to do deportations, that part is unclear.
00:02:55.000So that's left the door open to the administration claiming, well, when you say that we need to facilitate, we asked the Salvadorans and they said no, so I guess that's us facilitating.
00:03:02.000And the opposite case would be, well, you do have a contract with the Salvadoran government to keep these prisons filled with illegal immigrants being deported there, criminal illegal immigrants, and so you could do more than ask.
00:03:13.000You could basically demand in the Salvadoran government under the terms of the contract.
00:03:19.000Well, now, things are getting very hot because, as the case, you heard, was remanded back to district court for clarification.
00:03:32.000The higher court will say, the district court, the lower court, needs to look at it again and clarify what exactly they meant before we decide whether it was right or whether it was wrong.
00:03:40.000Well, now, that case, which has been remanded back to a U.S. district court judge, and Paula Gines, that case, Is again in the news because Zinas ran out of patience with attorneys for the DOJ at a hearing on Tuesday regarding the deportation and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia,
00:03:55.000eviscerating their efforts to redefine the word facilitate from a Supreme Court ruling and instructing them to cancel their vacations to comply with a two-week inquiry into the matter.
00:04:15.000Two, that maximum security prison in El Salvador.
00:04:19.000In at least three court filings, Trump administration officials have concluded that he was mistakenly deported.
00:04:25.000Now, the DOJ officials who said that have now been fired.
00:04:27.000So the Trump administration didn't like that they admitted in court filings that it was a mistake to send him back to El Salvador.
00:04:32.000Junius had ordered the administration to arrange his return.
00:04:35.000The Supreme Court ruling then said what we said it said, that they had to facilitate, but what did it mean by facilitate?
00:04:40.000Well, now the White House is insisting that Abrego Garcia's arrest, deportation, and imprisonment We're justified.
00:04:45.000They called him a gang member and a terrorist, and they say that they have no power to actually get him back from that Salvadoran prison.
00:04:52.000Well, Gina said that you're not doing anything to facilitate.
00:04:56.000They said you're not even giving us answers.
00:04:57.000Quote, to date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done, said the judge.
00:05:00.000Nothing. She then added the court would have no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding to thwart getting the answers it sought and scolded the lawyers to clear their schedules.
00:05:17.000The judge then granted the attorneys for the illegal immigrant the ability to subpoena documents, send interrogatory requests and subpoena up to two additional people to collect evidence about where exactly this guy is, what the government has done to secure his immediate return for more due process to the United States,
00:05:37.000And then in the order, there's a specific section talking about what facilitate means.
00:05:41.000Quote, notably, to facilitate means to make the occurrence of something easier to render less difficult.
00:05:46.000Merriam-Webster defines the term as to make easier or less difficult to free from difficulty or impediment.
00:05:51.000Defendants remain obligated at a minimum to take the steps available to them toward aiding, assisting, or making easier Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and resuming his status quo ante.
00:05:59.000The record reflects defendants have done nothing at all.
00:06:01.000Instead, defendants obliquely suggest facilitate is limited to taking all available steps.
00:06:05.000To remove domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien's ability to return here.
00:06:09.000The fallacy in the defendant's argument is twofold.
00:06:12.000First, in the immigration context, facilitating return of those wrongly deported can and has included more governmental efforts.
00:06:18.000Thus, the court can't credit that facilitating the order relief as limited to just domestic action.
00:06:24.000Second, defendants appear to have done nothing to aid his release from custody.
00:06:28.000So, this raises a couple of questions.
00:06:30.000One is sort of the legal question and one is the political question.
00:06:33.000So, the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, went on X and put out the following statement related to due process because there are people right, left, and center who are saying, listen, this guy isn't going to end up in the country, nor should he end up in the country.
00:06:45.000But you do have to go through a process, and if you do the process wrong and the court says you did the process wrong, you do actually have to facilitate his release back to the United States, not into the general population, but back to the authorities of the United States for more due process so he can check the boxes and then the guy can be deported again.
00:07:01.000And again, that's not a political thing.
00:07:03.000There are people who are right and left and center who are all saying, yeah, this guy has to go, but you do have to actually fill out the boxes.
00:07:10.000You can't just randomly deport people and then if you admit you made a mistake, then go, oh, well, no harm, no foul, whoopsie-daisy.
00:07:15.000So Vice President Vance is taking the position that the administration is totally right not to facilitate due process in this particular case, essentially due to hardship.
00:07:26.000And this is one arena where I think that the administration...
00:07:31.000One, the administration should, in fact, deport this guy.
00:07:33.000They should deport anybody who's connected with MS-13, anybody who does not have American citizenship, who's engaged in sympathy for anti-American views, engaged in action that is anti-American.
00:07:45.000The administration should absolutely deport all those people.
00:07:48.000We don't need more of those in our country.
00:07:51.000It matters your belief system and your activity.
00:07:53.000Those are the things that matter when it comes to deporting people.
00:07:56.000And this administration has pledged to deport.
00:08:00.000That does not mean, on the other hand, that there shouldn't be due process, because due process is something that is spelled out by the judiciary.
00:08:09.000And the argument that's being made on this sort of legalistic right is, well, if due process can be curbed for non-citizens, then due process can be curbed for citizens as well.
00:08:32.000But if you're making the argument that, sure, due process might be able to be abridged for cases of necessity by the executive branch for non-American citizens, then you really should draw a hard line between, you know, American citizens and non-American citizens.
00:08:44.000Here's President Trump talking about the idea of sending Americans to El Salvador to go to prison there.
00:08:49.000Well, again, if you're going to make that case, that you actually want to do that, what you'd have to say is they would remain under our jurisdiction such that we could get them back if a mistake was made.
00:08:57.000What you don't want is the situation of this Albrego Garcia fellow, now applied to, say, an American criminal who ends up in El Salvador and we quote-unquote can't get him back because the Salvadoran government says no.
00:10:02.000She's not going to reject what Trump is saying out of hand.
00:10:04.000The reality is there's no legal basis for taking Americans and shipping them down to El Salvador if we don't have control of the prison system in El Salvador, at least contractually in some way.
00:10:14.000Okay, now, that's the legal side of this, and the question here is whether that legal fight is the fight that the administration wants to have.
00:10:20.000Maybe this goes back up to the Supreme Court, and maybe the Supreme Court says, you know what, it's quite possible that the executive branch does have the power to curb due process here, but by continuing to fight the judiciary sort of every step of the way, as opposed to, I mean, this is very easy, just tell Bukele in El Salvador to return the guy,
00:10:37.000give him his day in court, and ship him out again.
00:10:40.000But the administration takes the view.
00:10:44.000This administration and the entire right has been conditioned to take the view that ever admitting a mistake or a course correcting is some sign of weakness.
00:10:51.000And I get it because the legacy media are willing to attack on any basis.
00:10:54.000Listen, I get why President Trump and his team don't want to admit any mistakes.
00:10:57.000I'll tell you what would be a mistake.
00:10:59.000It would be to rely on a new sort of stability in the markets.
00:11:04.000I just don't think that's what's going to come over the next few weeks.
00:11:07.000President Trump specifically exempted gold and silver bullion from these sweeping tariffs.
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00:12:05.000When I started Daily Wire, I thought the hard part would be creating the excellent content.
00:12:08.000Turned out that dealing with the behind-the-scenes stuff like hiring, HR policies, employee issues, that's the stuff that eats up enormous amounts of time.
00:13:09.000Sometimes it is better to just do the quick and easy thing and then move on to the actual priorities because, especially with regard to immigration, there are actual priorities.
00:13:17.000However, here's what the Vice President said on X, quote, Now,
00:13:43.000again, I agree with every word of that, every single word.
00:13:46.000He continues to say the administration must observe due process is to beg the question.
00:13:49.000What process is due is a function of our resources, the public interest, the status of the accused, proposed punishment, and so many other factors.
00:13:56.000To put it in concrete terms, imposing the death penalty on an American citizen requires more legal process than deporting an illegal alien to their country of origin.
00:14:05.000He says, when the media and the far left obsess over an MS-13 gang member and demand he be returned to the United States for a third deportation hearing, what they're really saying is they want the vast majority of illegal aliens to stay here permanently.
00:14:16.000And here is where things start to go awry.
00:14:25.000The administration can be taking a legally dicey position and also a politically popular position.
00:14:29.000Those two things can live in perfect harmony.
00:14:32.000Legally dicey and politically popular?
00:14:34.000Our constant aspects of many of the policy decisions made by leaders on both sides.
00:14:38.000And as we'll get to in a moment, it's a political winner for the Trump administration to say we want to deport all these people and force the Democrats into the position of defending illegal alien gang members or suspected gang members.
00:14:49.000That is a politically winning position.
00:14:51.000However, if you are setting up a predicate where you actually want to get things done, you should be doing things the right way because it's faster and easier to do it the right way than it is to do it the wrong way and then fight it out in the courts every step of the way.
00:15:05.000Ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with Biden's millions and millions of illegals.
00:15:10.000And with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year?
00:15:16.000If the answer is no, they've given the game away.
00:15:31.000Okay, this particular human had a withholding order, meaning that he was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador.
00:15:37.000The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of illegal immigrants do not, in fact, have such an order.
00:15:41.000And you could effectuate the law on them quickly and easily without some sort of subsequent hearing because there's no paperwork on them.
00:15:47.000The whole problem with this particular guy is you picked a bad example and you should just fix it and then send him out of the country again and then continue deporting hundreds and thousands of illegal immigrants.
00:15:57.000Remember, with Abrego Garcia, same plane.
00:16:00.000There were hundreds of illegal immigrants.
00:16:01.000Who are not subject to any of this controversy because none of them had any sort of withholding order put in place by a court.
00:16:09.000So you can have both and is sort of the argument that I'm making.
00:16:13.000You can do the right legal thing, which continues to give people the assurance that due process is carried out, gives the courts the assurance due process is carried out, and also win the political fight.
00:16:22.000Now Democrats, fortunately for Republicans, are willing to Leroy Jenkins pretty much every political fight, just run directly into the heart of danger.
00:16:31.000The Democrats have decided they are now going to visit an El Salvadoran prison.
00:16:35.000And this, of course, leads to the very wide open political argument.
00:16:39.000You guys won't even stand and clap for the family of Lake and Riley at the State of the Union address.
00:16:45.000But you will fly down to an El Salvadoran prison to meet with illegal immigrant gang members to grant them some sort of American sympathy.
00:16:53.000What the hell is wrong with you people?
00:16:55.000You won't get up at the State of the Union and applaud for the family of Jocelyn Nungary, who is a child murdered by illegal immigrants when a national park was named after her.
00:17:05.000But you will go out of your way to fly all the way down to El Salvador just to do a photo op with people, the vast majority of whom we know are gang members.
00:17:24.000Like, if Democrats really wanted to make this an issue, what they really should do is they should stand outside the Supreme Court and they should say, This president refuses to abide by the orders of the Supreme Court that threatens due process.
00:17:34.000Okay, it wouldn't be like an amazing political argument, but it's certainly better than flying down to an El Salvadoran prison to hang out with the world's worst criminals on the basis that America somehow owes them more.
00:17:44.000That's just a political fail on every possible level.
00:17:47.000So Chris Van Hollen, speaking of political fails, senator from Maryland, here he was getting on a plane going down to El Salvador.
00:17:55.000I'm about to board my flight for San Salvador.
00:17:58.000The goal of this mission is to let the Trump administration, to let the government of El Salvador know that we are going to keep fighting to bring Albrego Garcia home until he returns to his family.
00:18:13.000I hope to meet with representatives of the government.
00:18:16.000I hope to have the chance to actually see Kilmar and see what his condition is.
00:18:22.000We are going to keep fighting because this is a miscarriage of justice.
00:18:26.000The Supreme Court has ruled nine to zero, nine to zero, that he was illegally taken out of the country and put in a prison in El Salvador.
00:19:20.000That the Trump administration is pushing on the bounds of legality in a wide variety of areas.
00:19:24.000Again, a case that you could at least facially make.
00:19:28.000But instead, they are pushing on the idea that this person needs to be freed and brought back to the United States where he can live in Maryland.
00:19:36.000And I'd love to see the same sort of enthusiasm from Chris Van Hollen for, you know, bringing home American citizen Idan Alexander, who's currently sitting in a tunnel thanks to Hamas.
00:19:46.000He just doesn't have the same enthusiasm.
00:19:48.000He certainly doesn't have the same enthusiasm for victims of illegal immigrant crime in the United States, but he has a lot of sympathy on a personal level for this person, an illegal immigrant who was deported.
00:19:58.000And again, by the way, this person is not going to end up in the United States.
00:20:00.000This is a point Stephen Miller, the deputy special advisor to the president, was making the other day, which is that there's no situation in which this person ends up back in the United States permanently.
00:20:26.000Axios reported on Tuesday, Representatives Robert Garcia of California and Maxwell Frost of Florida sent a letter to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer requesting an official congressional delegation to conduct a welfare check of deported El Salvadoran and alleged MS-13 gang member Kimmel Abrego Garcia.
00:20:52.000Let them go hang out with the illegal immigrants, many of whom are gang members down in El Salvador, and say that those people deserve more from the United States.
00:21:01.000Really, truly high-level political malpractice from the Democrats.
00:21:06.000The legal stance being taken by the Trump administration, I think, is counterproductive in the end.
00:21:10.000I think it's going to tick off the courts, and I think it's going to make it harder for them to do the things they need to do.
00:21:14.000At the same time, The politics of the situation play strongly in favor of Republicans because most Americans are not interested in arguments over whether suspected MS-13 gang members ought to be in the United States.
00:21:27.000And again, one of the reasons I'm saying that the Trump administration should get out of its own way legally here is just bring him back.
00:21:32.000They should do whatever hearing they have to do, send him out again.
00:21:35.000The reason I'm saying that is because actual important things are happening on the immigration front, according to the Washington Post.
00:21:41.000The Trump administration is now using personal data normally protected from dissemination to find illegal immigrants where they work, study, and live, often with the goal of removing them from their housing and the workforce.
00:21:51.000At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, officials are working on a rule that would ban mixed status households, in which some families have legal status and others don't, from public housing.
00:22:00.000Affiliates from the U.S. Doge Service are also looking to kick out existing mixed status households, vowing to ensure undocumented immigrants do not benefit from public programs, even if they live with citizens or other eligible family members.
00:22:13.000Last week, Social Security Administration entered the names and social security numbers of more than 6,000, mostly Latino immigrants, into a database it uses to track dead people, effectively slashing their ability to receive benefits or work legally in the United States.
00:22:25.000In other words, they're looking for fake social security numbers so they can bar people from illegally working in the United States.
00:22:31.000All of this is good and all of this is necessary.
00:22:33.000Doge is doing a great job of tracking down the misuse of American resources.
00:22:39.000And by the way, there are other legal fights that the Trump administration can be taking on that are going to be winners.
00:22:43.000So, for example, a federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking Joe Biden's migration program for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
00:22:54.000A U.S. District Court judge in Boston issued a stay of an executive order saying the early termination without any case-by-case justification of legal status for non-citizens who have complied with DHS programs and entered the country lawfully undermines the rule of law.
00:23:08.000Ridiculous. Joe Biden unilaterally declared widespread migration temporary protected status for entire countries.
00:23:17.000And the Trump administration is reversing that somehow Biden can do it with the stroke of a pen, but Trump can't undo it with the stroke of a pen.
00:23:23.000That is one that should go to the Supreme Court and Trump will win.
00:23:26.000So there are lots of wins on the table.
00:23:27.000It just seems to me that fighting the due process considerations for Abrego Garcia should not take precedence over the rest of the Trump agenda.
00:23:38.000And again, it does play into a narrative that the left is currently trying to build about the Trump administration, that they are lawless, they're attempting to violate the law.
00:23:47.000One of those issues is, for example, the Trump administration, President Trump directing the DOJ to look into Chris Krebs, who was the person who oversaw cybersecurity during the 2020 presidential election, an appointee of President Trump.
00:24:03.000Now, you'll remember, just a few days ago, President Trump signed an executive order.
00:24:06.000Basically, not only revoking his security clearance, but ordering a DOJ review of his activities as a government employee.
00:24:13.000Because Krebs said that he lost the election fair and square in 2020.
00:24:17.000So Jonathan Swan, who is in fact a very good reporter, he asked Caroline Levitt, doesn't this appear to be an abuse of power?
00:24:25.000Like, you don't want the DOJ directing, being directed to target President Trump.
00:24:29.000Why are you using the DOJ to attack President Trump's political opponents?
00:24:35.000Last week, President Trump explicitly directed the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs to see if it can find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
00:24:46.000How is that not an abuse of power to direct the Justice Department to look into an individual, a named individual?
00:24:54.000Look, the president signed that executive order.
00:24:56.000It's the position of the president in this White House that it's well within his authority to do it.
00:25:01.000Otherwise, he wouldn't have signed it.
00:25:02.000And he signed it, and that's his policy.
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00:27:10.000Again, like this sort of attack angle by the Trump administration gets in the way of real agenda items because some of what they're doing is amazing.
00:27:20.000Like, for example, you have to just admire what President Trump is doing with the IRS.
00:27:26.000According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration on Tuesday named a political ally who raised concerns about Hunter Biden's taxes as the new acting commissioner of the IRS.
00:27:36.000Gary Shapley was elevated in March to become deputy chief of IRS criminal investigations and a senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
00:27:43.000Soon after his promotion, the IRS acting commissioner, a person named Melanie Krauss, announced plans to leave the agency, making her the third IRS leader to step down since Trump took office.
00:27:51.000Well, now Shapley is taking over the IRS, and Shapley is one of the people.
00:27:54.000Who testified to Congress that prosecutors were slow walking the prosecution of Hunter Biden.
00:28:01.000And he was basically retaliated against by the IRS.
00:28:03.000And now, in a thing that President Trump loves to do, and it's one of my favorite things that he does, President Trump is now elevating a person targeted by an agency to head up the agency.
00:28:12.000He did this with Jay Bhattacharya at NIH, and now he is doing it with Gary Shapley at IRS.
00:28:18.000Shapley's swift elevation alarmed some current and former IRS officials.
00:28:22.000Who told the Washington Post they were concerned his roles within criminal investigations and atop the agencies could consolidate Trump's power both over criminal and civil tax investigations and audits for the first time since Richard Nixon's presidency.
00:28:49.000There's good stuff happening under President Trump.
00:28:51.000That includes, by the way, President Trump's efforts to target Harvard University.
00:28:55.000So Harvard is not just now being targeted on the basis of its violations of Civil Rights Act Title VI, which says anti-discrimination law applies to those who receive federal funding.
00:29:06.000Now President Trump is threatening to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status.
00:29:13.000Social, quote, perhaps Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status and be taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist-inspired supporting sickness.
00:29:21.000Remember, tax-exempt status is totally contingent on acting in the public interest.
00:29:39.000Well, the idea of going after Harvard in this way is not only perfectly appropriate, it is a use of the Trump administration, of the laws, and the systems created by the left.
00:29:51.000One of the things that the left is really objecting to is that they created really terrible, censorious, and ugly systems.
00:29:56.000And now, all those systems are being turned against them.
00:29:59.000The answer to that, of course, to the left would be, well, maybe you shouldn't have built those systems in the first place.
00:30:04.000Here is Caroline Levitt at the White House saying that all Trump is saying is that Harvard has to abide by the law.
00:30:10.000So, the president made it clear to Harvard, follow federal law, no longer break Title VI, which was passed by Congress to ensure no student can be discriminated against on the basis of race, and you will receive federal funding.
00:30:28.000Now, that's not stopping Chris Van Hollen, who...
00:30:30.000Apparently, he was the leader of Idiot Day yesterday.
00:30:33.000Between flying to El Salvador to explain that he wanted to bring back an illegal immigrant, bring him home, a person who's a suspected gang member, and then suggesting that somehow it's a violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights to tell them to abide by the law, man, Van Hollen outdid himself yesterday.
00:30:48.000So, Kate, I applaud Harvard's decision not to give in to bullying from the Trump administration.
00:30:55.000Donald Trump believes in First Amendment rights for himself, but apparently for nobody else.
00:31:00.000Others they will punish when there's an exercise of First Amendment rights.
00:31:07.000Okay, so it's not about First Amendment rights.
00:31:24.000In fact, I've had serious objections my entire lifetime to certain aspects, not all aspects, certain aspects of the Civil Rights Act, particularly its intervention into private markets, for example.
00:31:34.000But the idea that it only applies to certain groups of people, but not other groups of people, is obviously violative of the law.
00:31:41.000And the fact that Chris Van Hollen and company continue to defend Harvard, like these are the people, you want to defend Harvard University right now?
00:31:46.000Really? So your choice of people you are defending does not include the hostages.
00:32:36.000I remember pulling in, pulling into the parking lot, and I had never seen, I had never seen hardly any black people in Scranton at the time, and I was only going in fourth grade.
00:32:50.000And I remember seeing the kids going by at the time called colored kids on a bus going by.
00:32:55.000They never turned right to go to Claymont High School.
00:33:11.000Remember, this is the person Democrats thought needed to run up until the point where he actually did this live in a debate with President Trump.
00:35:18.000So again, this idea that no one is working at the Social Security Administration, that this is somehow the end of the world, is ridiculous.
00:35:26.000Yes, the number of beneficiaries continues to rise.
00:35:28.000Yes, staffing is at a, quote, 50-year low.
00:35:30.000But presumably, one of the things Doge is going to actually be doing is increasing efficiency at SSA by, for example, not processing forms underneath a mountain using paper.
00:35:49.000Which is the correct answer, by the way.
00:35:52.000Well, the leader in the House of Representatives is Hakeem Jeffries, and he will be the next Speaker of the House.
00:35:57.000He is the voice, though, of the Democratic Party?
00:36:00.000Like, is that who the Democrats should be rallying around, pushing forward?
00:36:04.000That's who should be driving the message?
00:36:07.000Well, I think we've got a whole new generation of talent, people who are speaking out on economic issues.
00:36:13.000I gave a speech in Cleveland on economic patriotism, our vision of how we're going to bring prosperity and manufacturing back around the country.
00:36:20.000But the most urgent issue is to stand up against the attacks on the rule of law.
00:36:28.000OK, well, it's not going to be Ro Khanna, but you know who it might be.
00:38:13.000She said in a post on X, the average campaign donation was $21.
00:38:17.000Apparently 64% of contributions came from first-time donors.
00:38:21.000So pretending her way is not going to do it for Republicans.
00:38:24.000This is why President Trump's agenda better succeed, because if he fails, the progressive left, And their sort of economic populism is the next wave.
00:38:32.000Now, could AOC shoot herself in the foot?
00:38:34.000Sure. I mean, she's trotting out new accents every day.
00:38:37.000She was in Idaho the other day and she was trotting out.
00:38:40.000She's trying out something with her voice here.
00:39:33.000And AOC is smarter than people give her credit for.
00:39:35.000She, for example, like, you know, listen, I think she's a dummy, but she's smarter politically than people give her credit for.
00:39:39.000She sort of kept Nancy Pelosi on side, for example.
00:39:42.000Nancy Pelosi thinks she's a moron, but she hasn't overtly gone to war with Nancy Pelosi in a while.
00:39:48.000And AOC is going to make the case to people in the sort of mainstream of the Democratic Party that she has moderated somewhat.
00:39:54.000She's de-elevating issues like trans issues and the sort of woke issues.
00:39:58.000She's putting those secondary to her economic populace, the Bernie Sanders message.
00:40:05.000So she is, again, the emerging leader of the Democratic Party and Republicans, this is why Republicans need to do a good job of running the country because if they do not, what comes around the bend next is going to be something particularly ugly.
00:40:17.000Speaking of which, the Dow Jones Industrial Average continues to sort of Futs around.
00:40:33.000It's lost about 10% of its value since Inauguration Day.
00:40:36.000More than half of that decline came this month after the new tariffs were unveiled.
00:40:42.000The weaker dollar could have some upward impact on inflation.
00:40:48.000Meanwhile, President Trump is now unleashing more tariffs on China.
00:40:53.000He apparently is going to impose on China tariffs up to 245% as a result of Chinese retaliatory action.
00:41:00.000At a certain point, by the way, these percentages mean nothing because beyond a certain point, nobody's going to import paying those tariffs.
00:41:08.000If you are talking about a product that was $3, now going for 245% that, a $3 product now goes for $7.35 after tariffs, people are just going to stop importing from China.
00:41:22.000And so you can say it's a thousand percent or two thousand percent and at a certain point you've now moved beyond the realm where the imports are actually going to happen.
00:41:29.000The problem, of course, is whether other countries are going to participate in our trade war on China.
00:41:37.000So Ursula von der Leyen at the EU, she seems to be triangulating.
00:41:41.000She said yesterday that there was a positive side effect to the tariff uncertainty created by the United States.
00:41:46.000More world leaders now want to do trade deals with the EU.
00:41:49.000She was talking to a German newspaper.
00:41:51.000She said, I'm currently having countless talks with heads of states and governments around the world who want to work together with us on the new order.
00:41:56.000Everyone is asking for more trade with Europe.
00:41:58.000And it's not just about economic ties.
00:42:04.000So the EU is already seeking new ways to diversify trade partnerships, and they're exploring opportunities to deepen ties with China.
00:42:12.000So if the Trump administration's goal was to militarize the rest of the world against Chinese economic dominance, Then it seems like just slapping really high tariffs on China, driving holes through the middle of tariffs on semiconductors and autos, and meanwhile alienating the people that you need to woo,
00:42:28.000that strategy needs to be reversed and quick.
00:42:31.000I'll tell you something else that needs to be reversed.
00:42:33.000There's a lot of talk right now, properly, and I hope expeditiously, about deregulatory action by the Trump administration.
00:42:47.000On the sort of waste, fraud, and abuse front, you can get some money out of that.
00:42:51.000But the thing where you really can unleash the American economy is if you had Doge actually analyze various executive branch regulations for the economic cost of those regulations and then just take a hatchet to them.
00:43:00.000Because those regulations, once they're gone, they're actually harder to put back in place.
00:43:05.000If you fire somebody, then the minute, God forbid, a Democrat gets elected, all those people get rehired.
00:43:09.000If you get rid of regulatory thickets, it's much harder to put those back into place.
00:43:16.000I have to say, I am concerned about the direction that's being taken by the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission.
00:43:22.000So, Mark Zuckerberg's meta is now being sued in federal court.
00:43:28.000They're suggesting that he might have to sell off, for example, Instagram.
00:43:33.000Why? Why would he have to sell off Instagram?
00:43:34.000They're claiming that when he acquired Instagram a decade ago for a billion dollars, it was illegally anti-competitive.
00:43:42.000What's the case that it was illegally anti-competitive?
00:43:44.000So there are a couple of different theories of antitrust.
00:43:46.000One theory of antitrust is that if you have a total market monopoly, that should be broken up because otherwise competitors can't rise.
00:43:52.000And presumably, that sort of theory of antitrust is consumer-directed.
00:43:57.000If it's bad for the consumer, then antitrust should step in.
00:44:00.000Then there is the sort of market-dominant position, which is, we just shouldn't have big companies.
00:44:05.000And those big companies are scary, and so we should break them up.
00:44:07.000That particular view was most famously...
00:44:10.000Mirrored by Lena Kahn at the FTC, who's constantly stopping mergers and acquisitions on the basis that she didn't want big companies to be able to get bigger or to merge with other companies.
00:44:19.000And she was constantly stopping all sorts of action in the business sphere that would have been actually quite good for the consumer.
00:44:25.000I don't understand the theory behind trying to break up Meta as far as Instagram and WhatsApp.
00:44:31.000They're trying to make them divestive of those things.
00:44:33.000Are either of those services going to get better if they are broken out?
00:44:37.000Famously. The federal government did this to Microsoft.
00:44:40.000They forced Microsoft to break into a series of companies, and it made Microsoft's products significantly worse for consumers.
00:44:46.000The U.S. District Court judge, James Boesberg, is the person in charge here.
00:44:50.000Boesberg, of course, you will remember from being the same judge who's going after President Trump on immigration.
00:44:56.000Boesberg could theoretically side with the FTC, and that would force Meta to divest itself of Instagram and WhatsApp.
00:45:02.000There is an anti-tech segment of the right.
00:45:06.000A bizarrely anti-business sector of the right that could be hampering economic growth.
00:45:11.000And that, of course, is not going to be good for the Trump administration either.
00:45:15.000OK, in other news, a piece of good news.
00:45:18.000So I criticized Steve Whitcoff pretty heavily yesterday because Whitcoff had said openly that he was sort of embracing the Barack Obama view of negotiations with Iran.
00:45:32.000He said a deal with Iran would only be completed if it is a Trump deal.
00:45:35.000Adding, quote, Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.
00:45:39.000That is a contradiction to what he said a couple of days ago, and that is a good contradiction.
00:45:44.000That is significantly more in line with everything that President Trump has said historically.
00:45:49.000Again, Whitcoff does not understand these issues, and Whitcoff is really not the person who should be running negotiations.
00:45:53.000This requires a level of sophistication and understanding that I just don't see in evidence with Steve Whitcoff.
00:45:59.000Maybe a fine fellow, maybe aligned with what President Trump wants.
00:46:04.000But I'm having a hard time seeing how President Trump's agenda with Iran is squares with what Whitcoff said the other night, which is presumably why Whitcoff changed his position, which is good.
00:46:15.000Meanwhile, Putin is not actually moving.
00:46:18.000There's been all this talk about how Whitcoff is going to move Putin to the table, and again, I'm not seeing any evidence of that at this point.
00:46:24.000The Wall Street Journal editorial board points out, Trump and his chief negotiator, Steve Whitcoff, keep saying Putin wants peace.
00:46:30.000President Trump's 30-day ceasefire proposal has now been on the table.
00:46:33.000For longer than the ceasefire would have lasted.
00:46:36.000Is there any evidence that Putin actually wants peace at this point?
00:46:40.000Okay, meanwhile, in kind of a shocking story, a top advisor to the Secretary of Defense, Dan Caldwell, who is widely seen as one of the isolationists inside the administration.
00:46:50.000And I've said before, there are a lot of different foreign policy views inside the administration.
00:46:54.000There's sort of the J.D. Vance view, which is that the United States should not be involved in pretty much any world affairs so far as he can see.
00:47:00.000And then there is the Peace Through Strength view, which is that the United States should only be involved where real interest is at stake, and where there is, the United States should put its resources.
00:47:07.000Well, Dan Caldwell was sort of of the former group.
00:47:09.000Well, he was actually escorted from the Pentagon on Tuesday after being identified during an investigation into leaks at the Defense Department.
00:47:16.000He was placed on administrative leave for an unauthorized disclosure.
00:47:22.000Well, presumably, the rumor is that that disclosure was that there were people...
00:47:28.000Who had talked to the New York Times, suggesting that the strikes on the Houthis were somehow less successful than they were, which would make sense.
00:47:35.000Again, Caldwell's position, politically speaking, has been very much the J.D. Vance who shouldn't be involved in foreign affairs position.
00:47:41.000So, you know, it'll be interesting to see if these accusations are substantiated, who he leaked to, and all the rest.
00:47:49.000And President Trump's agenda when it comes to foreign policy has actually been fairly consistent for his entire career.
00:47:55.000And people who are trying to undermine that agenda.
00:47:58.000By staffing people who oppose it, I'm not sure why they would do that, but it doesn't seem to benefit what the Trump administration is trying to do.
00:48:05.000All right, coming up, we'll get into a seminal change when it comes to the trans issue in the UK.
00:48:12.000Plus, we'll get to the mailbag, but again, you have to be a member in order to watch.
00:48:16.000If you're not a member, become a member.