Dems win the mayoralty in Miami, which has been a Republican stronghold for 30 years. What does that mean for Republicans? Plus, we get into the affordability debate, including a new poll that shows Americans are struggling economically at any time in their life.
00:00:06.000Plus, we get into the affordability debate first.
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00:00:47.000Some red warning sirens are beginning to sound about Republican hopes in 2026, and yes, in 2028, because American politics is like a pendulum.
00:00:56.000If it swings one direction one moment, then wait a minute, it'll probably swing back the other direction naturally.
00:01:01.000Right now, Miami has been Republican for decades.
00:01:04.000It's been Republican for decades, specifically because there's a large Cuban Republican population, very anti-communist.
00:01:10.000Well, for the first time in 30 years, Democrats have now taken control of Miami.
00:01:15.000That's after candidate Eileen Higgins clinched the city's mayoral election.
00:01:19.000Higgins beat out Trump-backed Republican Emilio Gonzalez in the Florida City's runoff Tuesday night.
00:01:24.000She becomes the first Democratic mayor in the city since 1998, according to the New York Post.
00:01:29.000The victory is an upset for GOP lawmakers around the country who rallied behind Gonzalez because, of course, South Florida has turned into a very red area over the course of the last 10 years or so.
00:01:41.000Florida itself was a very competitive area for Democrats up until about 2018 when Governor Ron DeSantis won an extremely narrow election against a man, Andrew Gillum, who would later be caught up in flagrante de lite with some awkward situations involving drugs in a hotel room, male prostitutes, perhaps.
00:02:05.000In 2022, DeSantis blew out his political opposition.
00:02:09.000And in 2024, Florida went to President Trump by a very heavy margin.
00:02:13.000Well, Miami has been Republican for a very long time.
00:02:15.000Apparently, now it has turned blue, despite the fact that Republicans rallied in favor of the Republican candidate.
00:02:21.000President Trump threw his weight behind the Republican candidate.
00:02:24.000He was joined by Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, and Governor DeSantis, but it didn't matter very much.
00:02:29.000Apparently, Higgins, the Democrat, had led Gonzalez 36 to 19 during the first round of voting amid a crowded field in November.
00:02:35.000She was the favorite to win this time.
00:02:39.000But this is a ding in the Republican armor for sure.
00:02:42.000Again, some of the early bellwethers are not moving in Republican directions right now.
00:02:46.000It is also a warning bell for Republicans with regard to the Hispanic vote in the United States.
00:02:50.000President Trump won an outsized share of Hispanics in the last election cycle.
00:02:54.000The polling shows that many, many Hispanics are falling off the Republican bandwagon right now because Trump solved some of the big issues like closing the southern border, but he has alienated an awful lot of Hispanic Republicans with some of the, shall we say, more public-facing ICE actions.
00:03:14.000He has also alienated some Hispanic Republicans because a lot of Hispanic Republicans were driven away from the Democratic Party by their social radicalism and DEI.
00:03:22.000Democrats have been smartly on a national level, sort of moving away from those discussions and back toward wait for it, affordability.
00:03:28.000So this is the issue of the day, affordability.
00:03:30.000Now, President Trump has labeled affordability a Democratic hoax.
00:03:34.000And I totally understand where he is coming from because affordability is a broad buzzword that encompasses many things.
00:04:24.000A new poll from Politico shows that nearly half of Americans said they find groceries, utility bills, healthcare, housing, and transportation difficult to afford.
00:04:32.000More than a quarter, 27%, said they have skipped a medical checkup because of costs within the last two years.
00:04:37.00023% said they've skipped a prescription dose for the same reason.
00:04:42.000More than a third of Americans say they could not afford to attend a professional sporting event with family or friends.
00:04:47.00046% said they could not pay for a vacation that involves air travel.
00:04:50.000Now, it is worthwhile noting, all of those numbers are minority numbers.
00:04:55.000A quarter of Americans saying that they have to skip a medical appointment or less than half of Americans saying they can't pay for a vacation involving air travel.
00:05:03.000With that said, overall, Americans are dissatisfied with how far their money is going right now.
00:05:10.000According to Politico, only 22% of voters who cast their ballots for President Trump in 2024 said that tariffs are helping the U.S. economy both now and in the long term.
00:05:21.000Meanwhile, when it comes to things like college costs, 62% of Americans say college isn't worth it because it costs too much or doesn't provide enough benefits.
00:05:30.000When it comes to food prices, half of those surveyed say they find it difficult to pay for food.
00:05:35.000A majority, 55%, blame the Trump administration for the high prices.
00:05:39.000Again, some of that is based on tariff concerns.
00:05:41.000When it comes to housing costs, a huge percentage of Americans are worried about housing costs and home buying.
00:05:49.000Only 10% of those who identify as MAGA Republicans believe the Trump administration is responsible for housing costs they see as unfavorable, but that figure is three times higher for non-MAGA Republican respondents.
00:06:00.000Nearly half of Americans find it difficult to afford health care, according to that Politico poll as well.
00:06:09.000I asked our friends and sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity, how much have rental costs escalated since 2019 in the United States?
00:06:16.000Health insurance costs, food prices, college costs.
00:06:23.000Rental, housing, health insurance, food, college have all risen substantially since 2019, with food and rent up roughly 20 to 25% or more, health insurance premiums up about 25%, average college tuition up around 8% to 12%, depending on the sector.
00:06:37.000I also asked Comet, how much have incomes risen in that same period non-inflation adjusted?
00:06:43.000And the reason that I'm not adjusting for inflation there is if you're talking about the increase in food prices, some of that is the inflationary increase in food prices brought about by the Biden administration.
00:06:55.000According to Comet, non-inflation adjusted nominal household incomes are up by roughly 10 to 15% since 2019, which is less than the increase in rents, food, and health insurance costs over the same period.
00:07:07.000So yes, you're making more dollars than you were in 2019, but those dollars aren't going quite as far.
00:07:14.000Things are less affordable than they were five years ago, six years ago.
00:07:18.000And also, when Democrats talk about the problems of affordability, they're neglecting the fact that most of those problems emerged under Joe Biden.
00:07:26.000That is what Trump means when he says that the affordability argument is a hoax.
00:07:30.000He means they created an inflationary spiral that jacked up prices, and then they handed him a bad situation.
00:07:37.000And then he has brought inflation down to manageable levels, and now they're shouting about affordability.
00:07:42.000They can't shout about inflation because if they say inflation, everyone's going to look at Joe Biden and look at Trump and realize Trump brought the inflation rates down.
00:07:49.000So if they talk about affordability as a catch-all basket, that is a much more lucrative political line for them to pursue.
00:07:56.000All right, coming up, we'll get to President Trump talking about affordability.
00:07:59.000Is this narrative going to play first?
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00:10:48.000If they just say affordability over and over, then they never have to come up with a solution, even if they created the problem in the first place.
00:10:54.000That is true with regard to healthcare, for example, where they keep talking about unaffordability in healthcare.
00:11:00.000And you and I may say to ourselves, wait, hold up.
00:11:02.000You're talking about unaffordability in healthcare.
00:11:04.000I thought Obamacare was supposed to solve all of this.
00:11:10.000But if they talk about healthcare unaffordability, then they get to blame Republicans for the fact that they made it unaffordable in the first place.
00:11:17.000Because affordability is a present tense question.
00:11:30.000Affordability is just about what you feel in the moment.
00:11:34.000This is why Democrats right now are getting away with the fact that they radically expanded Obamacare subsidies under Joe Biden during COVID, generating artificial funding for a program that is non-feasible on a monetary level.
00:11:47.000And now they're leaving Republicans holding the bag, trying to say Republicans need to fill in the gap.
00:11:52.000This is the game that Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, is playing.
00:11:57.000He's railing at Republicans for not expanding health care subsidies back to the sort of Joe Biden levels.
00:12:05.000Democrats have been pressing our Republican colleagues for months to deal with the health care crisis that they have created.
00:12:16.000And in a matter of just a few weeks, tens of millions of Americans who live in every single state across this country are about to experience dramatically increased health care costs.
00:12:33.000In some instances, premiums are going to increase by $1,000 or $2,000 per month.
00:12:41.000So, again, the game that he is playing here is they make it unaffordable.
00:12:45.000They destroy the mechanism for funding health insurance programs.
00:12:49.000And then they ask you to fill in the gap based on the current unaffordability.
00:12:52.000This is the beauty of being a Democrat.
00:12:54.000You can run a program into the ground, cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars with these welfare programs.
00:13:00.000And then, because people are dependent on them, you have to give them their fix or they blame you for their current suffering.
00:13:06.000The Senate is about to propose a bill put forward by the Republicans that would allow those ACA tax credits, which are just Obamacare subsidies.
00:13:15.000Again, tax credits really are just checks because it's not as though it's credited against taxes you are paying.
00:13:21.000They would allow the ACA tax credits to expire and instead approve new funds to boost health savings accounts or HSAs, which Americans up to 700% of the poverty level can use to buy bronze or catastrophic plans, the lowest tiers of insurance available under the ACA.
00:13:34.000It would also create the option for more people to buy those cheaper and less comprehensive plans.
00:13:38.000It would fund cost-sharing reduction payments under the Senate plan put forward by Republicans.
00:13:43.000Eligible adults under 50 years old would get $1,000 per year deposited into that HSA.
00:13:48.000Those 50 to 64 would get $1,500 per year.
00:13:52.000That legislation would block using the money for abortion or gender transition procedures.
00:14:41.000The bill not only fails to extend the tax credits, it increases costs, adds tons of new abortion restrictions for women, expands junk fees, and permanently funds cost-sharing reductions.
00:15:33.000And now you're calling it junk insurance.
00:15:35.000Okay, so again, the goal for Democrats when it comes to affordability is to create subsidization schemes that make things unaffordable and then deceive the American people that subsidies are going to make them cheaper.
00:15:44.000And then when Republicans say no, blame the Republicans for it.
00:15:47.000Now, this does put Republicans in purple states in a difficult position.
00:15:51.000Senator Josh Halley of Missouri is warning that Americans will blame Republicans if their premiums do skyrocket at the end of the month.
00:15:56.000He says, I just don't know how Republicans would explain that to 24 million Americans whose premiums are going to double.
00:16:01.000People at home are going to say, you're hurting me.
00:16:05.000Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina, who is stepping down from his seat, he said that people are currently paying $800 a month for health insurance.
00:16:15.000For a couple and three kids, they just communicated to me.
00:16:20.000So $1,000 is not going to make up for that, obviously.
00:16:23.000You're talking about a $7,200 increase over the course of the year.
00:16:28.000The reality is that Republicans have never had a comprehensive plan to replace Obamacare because every time we get into a comprehensive plan, the devil is in the details.
00:16:38.000And the attempt politically to avoid blowback by providing very small HSA boosts, that is not going to work.
00:16:47.000Politically speaking, listen, on an ideological level, I believe that the federal government should get entirely out of the business of funding health insurance.
00:16:55.000This should be a state and local governmental issue.
00:16:58.000It should be the social networks that we all exist in that help all of our friends who are sick and elderly pay for the health insurance bills.
00:17:05.000Like, I think, I don't know why the federal government is involved in this sort of stuff in the first place.
00:17:10.000With that said, on a political level, if Republicans are going to try to do a solve, what they actually should do is they should probably boost those ACA subsidies for another couple of years, but include a bunch of riders that transition it out and make way for larger HSAs.
00:17:29.000In other words, provide people some sort of glide path toward a new future as opposed to a hard stop.
00:17:35.000Hard stops in American politics typically create massive political blowback, and 2026 looks like it's going to be pretty ugly for Republicans anyway.
00:17:42.000So on a principle level, I totally understand why Republicans are saying don't continue the ACA subsidies.
00:17:47.000But I also understand that the political blowback is going to lead to Democrats in power in 2028.
00:17:53.000And Republicans who are pretending away the vulnerability that they have electorally here are missing the point.
00:18:00.000All right, coming up, President Trump continues to push his tariff policy.
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00:20:25.000By the way, the same thing is true on tariff policy.
00:20:28.000The reality is that the president's tariff policy is widely unpopular.
00:20:32.000The argument that President Trump has been making with regards to tariffs is not a particularly successful one.
00:20:38.000So, yesterday, he was speaking in Pennsylvania, for example, and he was again repeating this line: that you don't need $37 for your daughter, you need steel.
00:20:48.000Okay, let's just be clear: there are a lot of Americans who would like to buy toys for their kids.
00:20:53.000And also, it turns out that tariffs on steel make steel more expensive.
00:20:58.000That is literally the purpose of a tariff on steel.
00:21:02.000Also, we do not actually have steel shortages from foundries in the United States.
00:21:07.000The reality is that steel is no longer a sort of core American industry the way that it was in 1955.
00:21:13.000Here's the president: The one thing you need, you need steel.
00:21:17.000You know, you can give up certain products, you can give up pencils because under the China policy, you know, every child can get 37 pencils, they only need one or two.
00:21:29.000You know, they don't need that many, but you always need, you always need steel.
00:21:35.000You don't need 37 dollars for your daughter, two or three is nice.
00:21:41.000Okay, I mean, we should point out at this point that again, according to our sponsors over at Comet Project of Perplexity, the United States currently produces 90 million metric tons of crude raw steel per year and consumes on the order of 92, 95 million tons of steel per year.
00:21:55.000Any gap is covered by small amounts of net imports.
00:22:00.000But I don't understand why these are mutually exclusive.
00:22:03.000It turns out that we can have both steel and also dolls for our kids.
00:22:07.000Americans being told they need to make trade-offs have to have it explained to them why it is that you are asking for the trade-off.
00:22:14.000And if China, by the way, is a geopolitical enemy, then maybe we ought to treat it as such and not allow NVIDIA to ship its chips over there.
00:22:22.000All this is discombobulated and feels discombobulated to people.
00:22:25.000The same thing is true when it comes to President Trump's tariffs on the farmers.
00:22:28.000So, the truth is, American farmers are suffering right now because many of the export markets to which we ship are goods from the agricultural industry.
00:22:37.000Those export markets have had tariff rates increased.
00:22:41.000Here, for example, is the head of the American Soybean Association slamming President Trump's tariffs.
00:22:47.000Well, this is a band-aid on an open wound.
00:22:49.000And again, we're thankful that there's something that this will help keep some farms in business.
00:22:55.000But what we truly need are market-based solutions, those are sustainable long-term.
00:23:00.000Here domestically, we have opportunities for the administration to finalize the renewable volume obligations for biofuels here before the end of the year, the 45Z tax credit.
00:23:11.000We have numerous opportunities to expand markets worldwide, and we truly need demand because without demand, we're not able to receive a price that is economically sustainable for our crop.
00:23:25.000So, again, farmers are not feeling great about all of this, but President Trump is saying the tariffs are making them rich.
00:23:31.000One of the rules of politics is that when people are feeling bad about their own personal economic situation, you can't tell them that they are actually doing great.
00:23:40.000Now, again, it may be true that they are doing better than they would have been under an alternative system.
00:23:45.000But just as an elected politician, right, the idea here is that you have to provide them some answer as to why things are worse or what you're going to do to make them better.
00:23:54.000Here's President Trump saying the tariffs are making farmers rich.
00:23:56.000Farmers don't really believe this, by the way.
00:23:59.000And we just gave them right out of a tariff money, cost us nothing, right out of the billion, hundreds of billions that we've taken in, we gave the farmers a little help, $12 billion, and they are so happy.
00:24:13.000And all they want is a level playing field.
00:24:19.000It's going to be, you're going to see, you're going to see what happens over the next two years.
00:24:24.000Again, according to the Joyer Institute, one analysis of the prior trade war that the Trump administration engaged in between 2018 and 2024 estimated U.S. farm export losses of about $27 billion.
00:24:35.000So it turns out the government interventionism is actually not a great plan when it comes to a lot of this sort of stuff.
00:24:41.000What you actually need, as always, is more deregulation, lower taxes, better incentive structures for businesses to create new goods, product, and services.
00:24:51.000And this is why the American economy, it feels discombobulated.
00:25:26.000I think that case needs to be made by many of the AI tech bros who seem to sort of assume that people are fine with AI when in a time of transition, people are doubtful.
00:25:35.000But the reality is that there probably will be some winnowing in the AI field.
00:25:57.000According to the New York Times, the dot-com boom, a period of wild exuberance and extreme hype that began in the mid-90s, built the foundations for the contemporary wired world.
00:26:05.000When the internet media turned to bust in March 2000, it made a bit of a mess.
00:26:09.000The trouble spread from Silicon Valley to the larger economy, which went into recession.
00:26:13.000More than $5 trillion in stock market value was destroyed.
00:26:16.000The unemployment rate rose to 6% from 4%.
00:26:19.000Well, now Silicon Valley is in the middle of an artificial intelligence boom that bears some obvious resemblances to the dot-com boom.
00:26:25.000For all the similarities, though, there are differences that could lead to distinctly different outcomes.
00:26:29.000The main one is that AI is being financed and controlled by multi-trillion dollar companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta that are not in danger of going bust, right?
00:26:39.000Amazon is not selling less toothpaste while it shells out billions on AI data center.
00:26:43.000Google is still profitable while it is developing foundational AI models.
00:26:48.000Another difference, there are not very many regulatory barriers standing in the way of AI.
00:26:54.000Also, if people are already sort of hedging their bets and the economy on the AI level continues to grow, well, that suggests, again, that there's some underlying productivity increase.
00:27:04.000The New York Times reports that the dot-com boom and the AI boom were both narrowly focused.
00:27:08.00080% of venture investments in 2000 went to internet companies.
00:27:15.000But otherwise, the two booms have diverged in scale.
00:27:18.000The three most highly valued companies of the dot-com era were Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel, all of which supplied the technology that made internet startups possible.
00:27:26.000Each was valued around $500 billion at its peak.
00:27:28.000Today, NVIDIA is valued at $4.5 trillion.
00:27:33.000It and the other AI companies, Google, Meta, Amazon, and privately held OpenAI, probably worth $17 trillion in capitalization.
00:27:42.000So there is some insularity to the industry, and it means that probably these companies will not go bankrupt, or if one does, the others will pick up the sort of pieces.
00:27:53.000So maybe we're protected from the severe downsides of an AI bus stop.
00:27:58.000With that said, will there likely be some winnowing?
00:28:00.000There will likely be some winnowing that happens here.
00:28:02.000Right now, OpenAI is in a massive battle with Google.
00:28:06.000Gemini 3, which is the latest Google model, is incredible.
00:28:18.000Frankly, I think that Gemini is really outpacing its competition in a lot of these areas.
00:28:24.000Well, now Sam Altman over at OpenAI has made the dramatic call for a code red to beat back a rising threat from Google, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:28:32.000The world's most valuable startup should pause its side projects like its Sora video generator for eight weeks and focus on improving chat GPT, according to Sam Altman.
00:28:41.000In doing so, Altman was making a major strategic course correction and taking sides in a broader philosophical divide inside the company between its pursuit of popularity among everyday consumers and its quest for research greatness.
00:28:53.000OpenAI was founded to pursue artificial generative intelligence, but for the company to survive, Altman says it may have to pause that quest and give the people what they want, which is fascinating.
00:29:05.000So, again, this competition is going to have some winners.
00:29:07.000It's going to have some losers, but a lot of chips are in that AI basket.
00:29:12.000But this is why people are feeling a disconnect.
00:29:15.000They're looking at the debt-fueled deals that are generating these outsized returns on AI companies that are publicly traded right now.
00:29:22.000And they're feeling a little skittish at the same time that they're having affordability issues in their daily life that have, again, emerged over the course of the last five or six years.
00:29:31.000So you can see why people are feeling a little bit schizophrenic.
00:29:35.000So later today, the Federal Reserve is going to announce whether it is dropping the interest rates again.
00:29:39.000The high likelihood, of course, is that it probably will drop those interest rates.
00:29:44.000When you take a look at the Calci markets, Calci is one of our sponsors.
00:29:48.000When you look at the Calci markets, what you see is a 98% shot, apparently, that there is a 25-basis point cut.
00:29:58.000So it's very, very likely, in other words, that you're going to get that interest rate cut.
00:30:01.000But with that said, is there a lot more room to cut?
00:30:18.000The frontrunner right now is Kevin Hassett, who's a loyalist to the president for sure.
00:30:23.000Here is Kevin Hassett talking about rate cuts, interest rate cuts, and he's saying that there's more room for interest rate cuts.
00:30:30.000If you do become the Fed chair, Kevin, and he pressures you both privately but publicly on true social or says it, and your economic judgment is rates should not be cut now.
00:31:30.000And the president has done a lot of this already, right?
00:31:32.000Did this with regard to deregulating the car industry, getting rid of those CAFE standards that were forcing everybody toward electric vehicles?
00:31:39.000He has done this with regard to government regulations on the environment, which has prevented businesses from being able to pursue efficiencies that really don't damage the economy very much.
00:31:50.000So he's gotten rid of a lot of those regulations.
00:31:52.000We need more of that and less of the interventionism.
00:31:55.000All righty, coming up, we'll be joined by Senator Joni Ernst, as well as our own investigative reporter, Luke Roziak, talking about the problems of fraud in the U.S. government first.
00:32:03.000The best deals of the year are still live right now at Jeremy's Razors, and we are taking up to 50% off.
00:32:08.000Now is the time to get your final gifts and stock up for yourself.
00:32:43.000Joining us online is Senator Joni Ernst, as well as Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roziak to discuss.
00:32:48.000Senator Ernst, why don't we start with you?
00:32:50.000You are holding a Senate hearing on a massive DEI scheme that has been created by the federal government, apparently small business administration program expanded under Joe Biden.
00:33:01.000Why don't you explain what exactly is going on?
00:33:03.000And thanks so much for having us on today, Ben.
00:33:06.000This afternoon, I will be chairing the Small Business Committee hearing on various types of fraud through small business programs and the Small Business Administration.
00:33:18.000And the one in particular, and we're so glad to have Luke Roziak joining us as a witness today, the one that we will focus on is the 8A program, which was meant to assist small businesses that were supposedly socially and economically disadvantaged.
00:33:37.000But we have found a boatload of fraud in this program.
00:33:44.000So typically we will find when fraud is associated with this program, you may have a minority business owner who will then get these contracts and then subcontract out that work to a small business or even a large business that's not really socially or economically disabled.
00:34:58.000Because it's giving benefits oftentimes to non-Americans over Americans.
00:35:03.000This was a program that gives preference and government contracting to minorities.
00:35:07.000And it was created in 1978 mostly to help black people.
00:35:11.000But now we have this whole mix of different ethnicities in the country.
00:35:14.000So you could be fresh off the boat from India and they'll give you preference on an IT contract for the U.S. government over an American.
00:35:22.000Even though you were born here and an Indian person is there, that's actually a member of the most wealthy ethnicity in America.
00:35:29.000And obviously, Indians are not underrepresented in IT.
00:35:33.000And then the other element that reminds me of Minnesota is the widespread fraud that everybody kind of knew about, but nobody was willing to say anything.
00:35:41.000And so we're all pretending that they're actually doing this work and not subcontracting it out to other people.
00:35:47.000And you have these defense contractors that are getting contracts and they don't actually have to bid them out.
00:35:54.000They can just get a contract, like to build a tank.
00:35:56.000And the reason they have that exemption to do something so corrupt and give a contract directly to one company instead of competing it is because we pretend that they're native Alaskans.
00:36:07.000And I think it's time now to kind of drain the swamp and be honest.
00:36:11.000We all know, we all always knew there weren't Eskimos working at these defense contractors.
00:36:16.000The whole thing has been sort of a fraud that skims off about 5% of all federal contracting dollars for this fake DEI scheme that actually doesn't do anything to help anybody.
00:36:27.000So Senator Ernst, obviously you are the chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and you've introduced the Stop 8A Contracting Fraud Act.
00:36:35.000How much of this fraud could be undone by better action through the actual small business administration?
00:36:41.000Obviously, the Trump administration is in charge of the executive branch.
00:36:44.000And how much are you just trying to kill these programs now?
00:36:46.000Because there will be a Democrat at some point in the future, you have to assume, who's going to use the legislative capacity here in order to expand these programs.
00:37:16.000They, being the federal government and small business administration, have through the years just continually added different ethnic groups to be considered racial minorities.
00:37:43.000We think it'll undercut a lot of these programs already, making these programs unconstitutional for the federal government to engage in.
00:37:52.000But what I want to do, though, is uncover the fraud and make sure that, yes, we are putting appropriate measures into place to audit programs, whether it's the 8A program, whether it was the money that went out the door during COVID, any of our federal government programs.
00:38:09.000I have purview and oversight of small business by virtue of being the small business committee chair.
00:38:17.000And so that's what I'm focusing on today with this hearing.
00:38:21.000There is so much fraud, waste, and abuse out there just in that 8A program.
00:38:25.000There was one case that was $550 million of bribery that went into moving some of these contracts around, getting contracts, subcontracting them.
00:38:39.000It's just egregious the dollars that are pouring out that my folks in Iowa have had to work really hard in their jobs to pay taxes that then get handed out to these fraudsters.
00:38:55.000Minnesota, that's a billion dollars worth of fraud that happened.
00:39:00.000And Luke has uncovered so much of this in his investigative journalism.
00:39:05.000We could go on and on and on for days on the fraud that has occurred.
00:39:10.000Well, the hearing this afternoon, very important hearing.
00:39:12.000Senator Ernst, Luke, great to see both of you.
00:39:15.000And thanks so much for the hard work you're doing to ferret out this sort of fraud.
00:39:21.000Meanwhile, I think that Republicans, you know, we noted at the top of the show, Republicans did not do well in Miami in this mayoral election, and that comes on the heels of Zorn Mamdani winning in New York and Abigail Spanberger winning in Virginia and the loss of a few special elections around the country.
00:39:36.000When a party wins a national election as Republicans did in 2024, the general tendency is to believe that now you have a mandate and that you are in the ascendancy.
00:39:59.000And this is where I think that Republicans have to be very careful because Republicans can tell themselves a story where we are now in the ascendancy culturally.
00:40:10.000But what may actually be happening is that the most visible anecdotal evidence is in our favor, but the general statistical trend is not in our favor.
00:40:17.000And that's something we need to keep an eye on if we want to be accurate about the solutions that we actually posit.
00:40:22.000So there's a fascinating article in the Washington Post about religious practice in the United States.
00:40:33.000It's been on the decline for a long time.
00:40:35.000But the people who are religious are getting more religious.
00:40:38.000If you misread those trends, you tend to think either that all Americans are going secularist or that Americans, broadly speaking, are becoming more religious.
00:40:47.000The first trend is being noted by Democrats who are ignoring a growing number of young people who are becoming more religious.
00:40:54.000But that growing number of young people who are becoming more religious does exist in a context in which fewer young people, generally speaking, are becoming religious.
00:41:02.000So in other words, if seven out of 10 young people used to consider themselves religious and now it's five out of 10, but of those five, three are now very, very, very religious.
00:41:13.000Republicans are reading those three who are now very, very religious as bigger than they are.
00:41:18.000And Democrats are pretending they don't exist.
00:41:21.000But on an electoral statistical level, Democrats may be more likely to be right than Republicans are.
00:41:28.000This is a very important divide because if you're trying to game for the future, what the Republican Party looks like, who the Republican Party is appealing to, how you build a coalition, you do need to be accurate about the state of play.
00:41:40.000So according to the Washington Post, even as fewer and fewer young people consider themselves religious, a small percentage of young adults are practicing their faiths with unusual avidity.
00:41:49.000This cohort of people in their early 20s are rejecting both religion by habit, just doing whatever your parents did, as well as secularism, skepticism, and agnosticism that grew among their parents' generations, religious experts say.
00:42:00.000And the examples of this surge, albeit anecdotal, are visible across faiths, including traditional brick-and-mortar worship of Catholicism, more Jewish students attending the growing number of Chabad centers, and more esoteric spiritual practices, even including Wicca-based full moon rituals and the West African system of divination called Ifa.
00:42:16.000So in other words, in a time of chaos, people are looking for something to belong to.
00:42:21.000And that can be something great, like engaging more deeply in biblical faith, or it can mean that you're going to go out and howl at the moon.
00:42:31.000According to a campus chaplain, he said, in the past, it was more that you went to mass out of obligation.
00:42:38.000But despite the religious indifference of parents, there's now a line at the campus center because more and more people are interested in engaging more deeply.
00:42:47.000But that, again, comes amid a climate of less religious practice over time.
00:42:50.000According to an analysis of 2023-2024 Pew data released on Monday, 56% of 18 to 24-year-olds identified with any religion.
00:43:02.000So if you're somebody who believes in the importance of religious practice and adherence in America, that is a terrible statistic.
00:43:08.000It means, again, that just more than a bare majority of 18 to 24-year-olds even identify with a religion.
00:43:17.000Also, among 18 to 24-year-olds, a separate Pew survey finds about five times as many people have left Christianity since childhood as have converted to the faith.
00:43:26.000However, Gallup polls find worship attendance among adults under 30 is up from 19% in 2020 to 25% this year.
00:43:34.000And anecdotes abound that a subset of young people is collectively pursuing spirituality in a highly individualistic era.
00:43:41.000So looking at those countervailing trends is really important and noticing what's actually happening is important because what it means is that you will get a rise in radical socialistic atheism.
00:43:51.000You will, because that is the natural outgrowth of fewer and fewer people who are even culturally Christian.
00:43:58.000But at the same time, you're going to get a very right-wing traditionalist response that is convinced that because the church pews are swelling in those churches, that that is a majoritarian movement, when in fact it may not be.
00:44:11.000And that's really important to keep in mind as we consider electoral blocks and how things are going.
00:44:16.000Now, of course, this season, Christmas season, is a time when many Christians engage with their religious faith.
00:44:21.000Joining us on the line to discuss is Matt Fratt of Pines with Aquinas.
00:44:24.000And so Matt knows much more about this than I do.
00:44:26.000So Matt, tell me about why this season is so important.
00:44:30.000First of all, I need to say I'm so thrilled that I'm gradually edging Michael Knowles out of the Daily Wire in regards to his Catholic commentary.
00:44:49.000Yeah, well, I'm really pumped to be here.
00:44:51.000First of all, I'm just thrilled about everything.
00:44:53.000And on Saturday, I sat down with Dr. Scott Hahn, who's a biblical scholar, convert from Presbyterianism.
00:45:00.000And we recorded a beautiful Christmas episode for Daily Wire that comes out today on Daily Wire Plus.
00:45:08.000And then next week, we'll go out to the public.
00:45:10.000And so we talked about Christ as the long-awaited Messiah and even just this like bizarre idea that Christians have, hey, like in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, St. Paul talks about the scandal of the cross.
00:45:22.000I mean, it's such a scandal that the Mohammedans reject it outright.
00:46:03.000First of all, the very fact that you think that a lot of people get it wrong shows that you know more than most Catholics who are convinced that it has to do with Christ's conception in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
00:46:18.000The idea is that we would say that we have been redeemed by Christ medicinally, you might say, after the fact.
00:46:26.000But the Blessed Virgin Mary, because of her special role in being the mother of God, was preserved free from original sin and actual sin from the moment of her conception.
00:47:16.000And so from the earliest days of the church, you have people talking about the Blessed Virgin Mary as being sinless, spotless, without stain.
00:47:25.000And so on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we celebrate that.
00:47:31.000There's always a big debate every single year in conservative communities about the commercialization of Christmas, the turning of Christmas into a sort of season.
00:47:41.000And listen, as a Jew, I really enjoy it.
00:47:44.000Half the Christmas music that's great was written by Jews.
00:47:46.000But what should Christians be thinking about as Christmas approaches to get more out of the holiday spiritually and out of the season spiritually?
00:47:56.000I think when I was a younger man early on in marriage, I tended to be like really legalistic and upset about the fact that people were celebrating Christmas too early.
00:48:03.000I've kind of chilled out a little bit and I really enjoy watching Christmas movies with my kids and drinking eggnog and all of that.
00:48:09.000But I do think it's probably important to distinguish between the Advent season and the season of Christmas.
00:48:14.000And so Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas.
00:48:17.000It's kind of like a mini Lent in which we maybe fast, pray more, go to confession if we can as Catholics, and then just prepare our hearts for the Christmas season, which actually hasn't begun yet, right?
00:48:30.000So according to the Catholic Church, the Christmas season will begin on Christmas Day.
00:49:14.000Meanwhile, Democrats are also misinterpreting the movement.
00:49:17.000They are seeing that they are winning elections in some interesting places, and they have decided apparently to go whole hog.
00:49:24.000The kind of brain capture that happens in victory is quite real.
00:49:28.000Mayor-elect Zorn Mamdani, apparently, according to the New York Post, has now picked a controversial rapper who did seven years in state prison for armed robbery to advise him on the criminal justice system.
00:49:40.000You really outdate yourselves this time.
00:49:41.000Myson Linen, 49, a Bronx convict turned activist who was found guilty of two felony heists in the late 90s, was appointed by the Democratic Socialists to sit on his mayoral transitions criminal legal system committee.
00:49:53.000That's just one of many questionable picks for Zorhan Mamdani.
00:49:57.000This person obviously has something important to contribute.
00:50:00.000He had been part of a crew that robbed two cab drivers in the Bronx.
00:50:05.000Apparently, they pulled off a robbery of a taxi driver in 1997 and then a gunpoint theft from another cabby in 1998.
00:50:14.000We've got criminals in New York trying to make jail policy.
00:50:17.000Meanwhile, Mamdani is apparently telling illegal immigrants how to avoid ICE, which is a fascinating move for someone who supposedly wants to bring law and order to the streets in New York.
00:50:29.000Last weekend, ICE attempted to raid Canal Street and detain our immigrant neighbors.
00:50:34.000As mayor, I'll protect the rights of every single New Yorker, and that includes the more than 3 million immigrants who call this city their home.
00:50:40.000But we can all stand up to ICE if you know your rights.
00:50:44.000If you encounter ICE, these are the things that every New Yorker should know.
00:50:47.000First, ICE cannot enter into private spaces like your home, school, or a private area of your workplace without a judicial warrant signed by a judge.
00:51:01.000If ICE does not have a judicial warrant signed by a judge, you have the right to say, I do not consent to entry, and the right to keep your door closed.
00:51:09.000Sometimes ICE will show you paperwork that looks like this And tell you that they have the right to arrest you.
00:51:19.000ICE is legally allowed to lie to you, but you have the right to remain silent.
00:51:22.000If you're being detained, you may always ask, Am I free to go? repeatedly until they answer you.
00:51:27.000I mean, he's just a community organizer, and you guys elected this to your mayoralty.
00:51:30.000Like genius level stuff there, New Yorkers.
00:51:32.000And we'll see how this plays for New Yorkers as life gets markedly worse.
00:51:36.000Okay, meanwhile, big controversy continues to swirl around the attempt to buy Warner Brothers.
00:51:41.000So Netflix struck a deal to buy Warner Brothers.
00:51:45.000Paramount is now launching a $77.9 billion hostile takeover offer for Warner Brothers Discovery.
00:51:51.000Paramount, which is run by David Ellison, is arguing its all-cash 30 bucks a share offer for all of Warner, owner of networks like CNN, TBS, and HGTV, as well as HBO Max, is a better deal for shareholders and more likely to also pass regulatory muster.
00:52:04.000Netflix had agreed to pay $72 billion or $27.75 a share from Warner's studio and the HBO Max streaming business after the company splits itself in two.
00:52:15.000So this could set up a very fascinating public battle for the future of Warner's assets.
00:52:20.000Paramount said that its offer is backstopped by the Ellison family and Redbird Capital, as well as $54 billion of debt commitments from Bank of America City and Apollo Global Management.
00:52:29.000Paramount also says it has commitments from sovereign wealth funds of Saudi, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar, as well as Affinity Partners, the private equity firm of Jared Kushner.
00:52:37.000And all those groups are agreeing to forego any voting rights, which could ease the deal's path in Washington.
00:52:45.000Apparently, Netflix's CEO said that actually they're very happy with the offer that they made to Warner Brothers and they expect to consummate that offer.
00:52:54.000The involvement of the government has been one of the questions here.
00:52:58.000President Trump suggested over the weekend that Netflix's deal could be a problem and that he would be involved in deciding whether to bless that deal.
00:53:06.000You know, this seems to me problematic.
00:53:07.000I'd not like the government involved in private business transactions.
00:53:10.000This is not a monopoly concern, frankly.
00:53:14.000With that said, obviously, this is one of the biggest business transactions in the history of business transactions.
00:53:21.000And it'll be interesting to see whether Paramount's gigantic offer, I mean, they're going right over the top of Netflix here, whether that gigantic offer is successful in court, because there are regulatory burdens that have to be overcome.
00:53:35.000There are, in fact, questions about whether the shareholders can overcome the leadership of the Warner Brothers board.
00:55:32.000If we are too busy squabbling amongst ourselves to take up arms against him, here is your hope: a king will arise to hold all Britain in his hand.
00:55:42.000A high king who will be the wonder of the world.