Wild controversy over a new refugee program for Afrikaners, white people from South Africa, plus the latest on President Trump s Middle East trip, and some good economic news. Plus, a new trade deal with China, big changes on prescription drugs, a first look at House Republicans' tax cut legislation, and much more happening this week.
00:00:00.000Well, folks, enormous amount to get to on today's show.
00:00:02.000Wild controversy over a new refugee program for Afrikaners, white people, from South Africa, plus the latest on President Trump's Middle East trip and some good economic news.
00:00:11.000But first, a new trade deal with China, big changes on prescription drugs, a first look at House Republicans' tax cut legislation, and much more happening this week.
00:01:31.000Well, because the government in South Africa discriminates against white South Africans.
00:01:35.000According to the New York Times, dozens of white South Africans arrived in the United States on Monday on a charter jet after being granted refugee status by the Trump administration, which has made it virtually impossible for any other refugees to seek safe haven in America.
00:01:46.000And this, of course, is the problem that the left and the media are having.
00:01:49.000Why do these refugees get in when, say, Afghan refugees are not getting in?
00:01:53.000The arrival represents a drastic reversal, says The New York Times, in the United States'refugee policies, which have long focused on helping people fleeing war, famine and genocide.
00:02:01.000The South Africans say they've been discriminated against, denied job opportunities and been subject to violence because of their race, though the specifics of their case.
00:02:14.000There have been a spate of murders of farmers in South Africa.
00:02:17.000Farmers in South Africa, people who own land in South Africa, are disproportionately white compared to the surrounding population, which means that many of the farmers who are being killed are in fact white.
00:02:25.000And yes, there have been enormous numbers of farmers who are killed for racial reasons.
00:02:30.000I mean, at the very least, the sort of evidence left on scene at the murders suggests that race played a part.
00:02:36.000President Trump had this to say about...
00:02:39.000Why he was allowing the refugees to enter the United States from South Africa?
00:03:27.000you Okay, the last part is actually the relevant part.
00:03:31.000We'll talk about whether in fact there's a quote-unquote genocide.
00:03:34.000of whites in South Africa in just a little while with Dr. Ernst Root, who is the deputy CEO of Afroforum.
00:03:41.000And we will talk with him about what exactly is happening there because obviously he's the guy on the ground who's been on the show before and wanted to get an update.
00:03:48.000But in order to understand why the United States is bringing Afrikaners to the United States, we actually have to know a little bit of the history.
00:03:55.000So Afrikaners, boers, have been in South Africa since 1652.
00:03:59.000That's when the Dutch East India Company established a station at the Cape of Good Hope.
00:04:30.000The biggest conflict was the Second Boer War.
00:04:32.000That was because the Afrikaners were in an area called the Transvaal.
00:04:36.000The Transvaal, it turned out, was a region very heavy in gold.
00:04:38.000Today, you hear about the BRICS nations and you hear about the reliance on gold.
00:04:43.000South African gold has been a very big thing for a century and a half.
00:04:46.000The finding of gold in the Transvaal essentially incentivized the British Empire to try and expand its holdings in South Africa, leading to the Second Boer War.
00:04:55.000That eventually ended with the British Empire victorious.
00:04:58.000In 1948, fast forward half a century, the National Party came to power and adopted a formal regime of apartheid.
00:05:04.000By 1950, the races were being categorized by law with special privileges for whites as opposed to blacks.
00:05:10.000In 1960, the so-called Sharpeville Massacre ended with the death of 69 anti-apartheid.
00:05:16.000In 1961, Nelson Mandela, who you'll know from all the movies, of course, and the fact that he's one of the most famous men who ever lived, declared the end of nonviolent resistance and actually began engaging in violent activities directed against the government.
00:05:29.000He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and he would end up spending nearly the next three decades in prison.
00:05:34.000In 1965, South Africa finally gained its independence, but as Rhodesia, with a whites-only government.
00:05:40.000So the regime of apartheid, black people had no say in the government.
00:05:43.000They had no say over the direction of the country.
00:05:45.000Over time, international pressure led to the eventual end of apartheid with the ban on the African National Congress, which was Mandela's party, ended in 1990.
00:05:55.000Mandela's freed from prison in 1994, who's eventually inaugurated as president of South Africa.
00:06:01.000And according to the media, that's where the story basically ends.
00:06:04.000Because we're not supposed to talk about anything that happened after the end of apartheid.
00:06:07.000Apartheid bad, apartheid ends, everything hunky-dory from here on in.
00:06:15.000Also, things that happened after apartheid, lots of bad things have happened after apartheid.
00:06:20.000There are lots of bad things in the world.
00:06:21.000And one of the dumb ways to cover politics is to suggest that because a bad thing is happening in one direction, that means no bad things have ever happened in the other direction or will ever happen in the other direction.
00:06:32.000So, since the end of apartheid, there has been a radical upsurge in the amount of racial discrimination against whites.
00:06:41.000Now, We have to discuss the sort of population of whites in South Africa.
00:06:59.000So today, black Africans represent about 81.4% of the population of South Africa colored, which is a reference in South Africa to people of mixed race, ethnicity.
00:07:13.000That is a massive change since about 1900.
00:07:16.000So if you look at the population in 1904, for example, according to our friends at Perplexity, 67.3% of the population was Black African, but fully a fifth, 21.6%, was white.
00:07:29.000Even as of 1960, those population percentages were relatively similar.
00:07:34.000That 68% of the population of South Africa was Black African.
00:08:03.000The South African president, a guy named Cyril Ramaphosa, who again is the head of the ANC.
00:08:06.000The ANC has been the governing party in South Africa since literally 1994, which should be strange to you.
00:08:13.000I mean, usually you don't have one party that governs an entire country for 30 years, but that's what's happening in South Africa.
00:08:19.000He has now turned a bill into a law allowing land seizures by the state without compensation.
00:08:23.000This is one of the things that is driving so much angst and the possibility of violence in South Africa is the great fear that South Africa is going to do the same thing that Robert Mugabe did.
00:08:32.000In Zimbabwe, in which Zimbabwe basically just expropriated all land from whites and then targeted them as a government.
00:08:41.000Because land ownership in South Africa is still disproportionately white.
00:08:45.000And what that means is that South Africa, in an attempt to enact reparative justice, this is why reparations are always a problem, because you are taking away from a living human being because of something their grandparents did.
00:08:58.000When you do that, What you end up with is a system of racial discrimination.
00:09:03.000According to the BBC, back in January, black people own only a small fraction of farmland nationwide more than 30 years after the end of the racist system of apartheid.
00:09:11.000The majority remains with the white minority.
00:09:14.000This has led to frustration and anger over the slow pace of reform.
00:09:18.000Ramaphosa's ANC party hailed the law as a significant milestone in the country's transformation.
00:09:23.000Some members of the coalition government say that they might challenge it in court.
00:09:26.000The law outlines how expropriation can be done and on what basis by the state and replaces the pre-democratic expropriation act of 1975.
00:09:33.000Now, that expropriation act of 1975 put an obligation on the state to pay owners that it wanted to take land from under the principle of willing seller, willing buyer.
00:09:42.000Now, it's basically just the state coming in and saying they will take your land and they can pay you zero, literally zero.
00:09:48.000The new laws allow for expropriation without compensation.
00:09:53.000The government is only supposed to be able to do this.
00:09:55.000In circumstances where it is, quote, just and equitable and in the public interest to do so, which means basically anytime the government wants.
00:10:05.000I mean, that is not a limitation at all.
00:10:06.000Just and equitable and in the public interest?
00:10:08.000Ramaphosa can simply say it's in the public interest to rejigger land ownership in South Africa.
00:10:13.000We are now taking all the land of white people in South Africa in response to South African apartheid.
00:10:27.000Okay, so, this has been just one indicator of how bad things are getting for the white citizens of South Africa.
00:10:37.000Again, the sort of hunky-dory version of South African history says that everybody got together and gave a big group hug after the end of apartheid, and that is actually not what happened.
00:10:46.000The government has not done a particularly wonderful job of growing the economy, ending crime.
00:10:51.000Or not discriminating against one entire class of its citizens.
00:10:54.000There are a lot of laws on the books in South Africa that were originally meant as quote-unquote reparations after apartheid.
00:10:59.000Those included the Employment Equity Act, which basically acts as affirmative action for employment.
00:11:04.000It says that the government is supposed to mandate that certain numbers of black people be included in particular job sectors.
00:11:12.000There's the broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Act.
00:11:15.000That actually says that governments cannot give loans, except if there is a certain level of black ownership, management, or employment.
00:11:21.000There's the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act that requires government entities to prefer suppliers that have high points ratings, again, based on the amount of black ownership or black employment.
00:11:31.000According to one source, as of October 2023, there are 141 acts of parliament in the statutes that were openly preferential based on race.
00:11:39.000Again, this is the great danger of these sort of racial reparations logic.
00:11:43.000You've seen people try to enforce in the United States, too.
00:11:45.000This is what so much of Black Lives Matter was about.
00:11:48.000The idea was that America needed to enact its own system of racial preferences as a reparative to the sins of the past.
00:11:54.000And what you end up with is actual sins of the present in order to try and react to the sins of the past.
00:12:00.000In the immediate aftermath of apartheid, there was actually a slight decline in race-based law, but by the mid-90s, that had reversed dramatically.
00:12:06.000Now, as I say, the ruling ANC, the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, has been in charge of the country since 1994.
00:12:14.000In 2017, Jacob Zuma, the corrupt former president of the country from 2009 to 2018, adopted ANC policy that included, quote, fundamental change in the structures, systems, institutions, and patterns of ownership and control of the economy.
00:12:27.000In favor of all South Africans, especially the poor, that's coded language for it.
00:12:31.000We're going to completely redo all the structures on a racialized basis.
00:12:34.000That policy included the expropriation of land bill that eventually became law on the basis of race.
00:12:50.000They're also closely tied with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
00:12:52.000They are closely tied with Iran, which is, it's now suspected, probably bribed the country to initiate an international court of justice case against Israel just last year.
00:13:01.000The ANC has been losing electoral support over the years.
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00:15:45.000There also, in 2018, by the way, I should point out that the head of the ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa, allegedly said he wanted Malema back in his party.
00:15:52.000Malema used to be a member of the ANC.
00:15:55.000Here is a giant rally just a few years ago in which Julius Malema is leading an enormous crowd enchanting, kill the boar or the farmer, which is, in fact, the language of genocide.
00:16:06.000If you're talking about just kill the boars, that's no different than kill the blacks or kill the Jews.
00:16:13.000Everyone who's attempting to read, Some sort of crypto message in there that somehow lets Julius Malema and the people who are chanting this off the hook substitute any other race for boars and tell me that this isn't genocidal language.
00:16:49.000So he seems like a delightful fellow, a bunch of communists who are shouting to kill the boar, because never in the history of humanity have we ever seen communists attempt to exterminate an entire class of people.
00:16:59.000I mean, except for pretty much every communist regime everywhere.
00:17:01.000So yeah, you might see why South Africans, who are white, feel that they themselves are under threat.
00:17:08.000So why is it a big deal that Afrikaners are being granted refugee status to come to the United States?
00:17:14.000Well, the reason is because the left is utterly puzzled at the idea that white people can ever be refugees.
00:17:22.000And they're absolutely puzzled at the idea that has been expressed by, for example, the State Department Deputy Chris Landau, that Afrikaners might have an easier time assimilating in the United States than, say, Afghan refugees.
00:17:35.000Here's Chris Landau talking about this yesterday.
00:17:38.000That pause, of course, was subject from the very beginning to exceptions where it was determined that this would be in the interest of the United States.
00:17:49.000Some of the criteria are making sure that refugees did not pose any challenge to our national security and that they could be assimilated easily into our country.
00:18:01.000It's that last statement that the left is freaking out about.
00:18:05.000Why are Afrikaners, why is it that they can assimilate easily to our country?
00:18:09.000Well, believe it or not, it isn't about the fact that they are white.
00:18:21.000It has nothing to do with the color of their skin and everything to do with the ideas that they hold and the cultural hallmarks that they bear in common with the United States that may not hold true for...
00:18:33.000For example, Afghan refugees, where you literally have no idea what their ideas are.
00:18:39.000There are a lot of things culturally they do not have in common with Americans, up to and including a belief in constitutional rights.
00:18:45.000So, yes, I mean, are we going to just pretend that all potential immigrants to the United States have an equivalent level of assimilative capability?
00:18:54.000Is that what we're going to pretend now?
00:18:59.000It's clearly untrue, but the left is going insane about this.
00:19:02.000So the New Republic put out an entire piece just enraged about this.
00:19:06.000Trump official says quiet part out loud on white Afrikaner refugees.
00:19:10.000And so they say the deputy secretary's language indicates the Trump administration is willing to admit refugees who are more culturally and ethnically cohesive with the predominantly white U.S. population.
00:19:20.000Trump has repeatedly attempted to blow up perceived cultural differences between U.S. citizens and immigrants as a basis for installing blatantly racist immigration policies.
00:19:29.000Well, again, I'm not sure why this is chiefly about ethnicity.
00:19:33.000I mean, President Trump explicitly said it was not about ethnicity.
00:19:36.000It does have to do with the fact that, for example, they speak English.
00:19:39.000And, for example, they believe in constitutional rights, like, for example, property rights and freedom of speech.
00:19:44.000That makes them much better candidates for assimilation than your sort of rando from the Middle East.
00:19:52.000Because they are coming from, again, a country.
00:19:56.000Where they have been attempting to preserve, in the same way that, for example, Cuban refugees who are coming to the United States because they hate communism are going to be more assimilatable than people who are coming from regimes with giant government services and they're coming here for the welfare.
00:20:12.000Like, we can't pretend that everyone is equally capable or interested in assimilation.
00:20:37.000But you can see why the left is upset, because the truth is that the left believes many of the same fundamental things that the ANC, the modern ANC, believes in South Africa, which is to say that the world is basically just South Africa writ large.
00:20:51.000That the United States is South Africa writ large.
00:20:54.000That essentially, any population that is white and successful owes it to the rest of the world, literally the rest of the world, to import people regardless of assimilative ability because there is some sort of peculiar reparative guilt that must now be enacted.
00:21:12.000You can see that in much of the language that is being provoked and pushed forward by the left here.
00:21:19.000The Episcopal Church, by the way, has now withdrawn from its own working with the refugee program.
00:21:27.000They put out a statement saying, quote, in light of our church's steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step.
00:21:37.000Accordingly, we have determined that by the end of the federal fiscal year, we'll conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.
00:21:44.000So, again, the idea is that if they're white people, then the Episcopal Church is out.
00:22:03.000So the Trump administration, they're saying that essentially these white South Africans assimilate better, and they're also not as much of a security risk.
00:22:11.000That's really causing a lot of people to be appalled, frankly.
00:22:15.000And I also should tell people that this violence that they're talking about that are dealing with these Afrikaners, I've been hearing from people that say there is violence in South Africa, but it's affecting everybody of every single race, Katie.
00:22:27.000Okay, so again, it's got a lot of people appalled, according to Yamiche Alcindor, to say, That perhaps Afrikaners are going to be more easily to assimilate.
00:22:36.000So it has people appalled, according to Yamiche Alessandor of MSNBC, to say that it's easier to assimilate Afrikaners from South Africa than it would be to assimilate people from third world countries who have no history whatsoever of engagement with Anglo-American ideals, constitutional frameworks, property rights, or the language of English.
00:22:54.000Now, what's amazing about this is this is actually a widely held belief inside the Democratic Party.
00:23:01.000This sort of idea that America bears some sort of bizarre blood guilt for its success, that the West bears a blood guilt for its success against all sorts of peoples who are unsuccessful and therefore owes an obligation to import people from all over the world from these countries that actually do not share a cultural history with the Anglo-American sphere.
00:23:18.000This, in fact, is one of the driving forces behind the shift in immigration in the United States.
00:23:24.000This is a chart based on the yearbook of immigration statistics and crafted.
00:23:29.000By a woman named Talia Bronstein, showing the point of origin, the country of last residence, for immigrants throughout American history.
00:23:38.000And of course, what you see here is that if you go back to the 19th century, predominantly, you are seeing immigrants from Europe.
00:23:46.000You're seeing an enormous number of immigrants in, say, 1850 from the UK, an enormous number from Ireland, a huge number from Germany.
00:23:54.000Now, it's worth noting at the time that there were still major concerns in the United States about the assimilation of Germans and Irish.
00:24:00.000I mean, there is open anti-German and anti-Irish discrimination in the United States during this period.
00:24:05.000The Know-Nothing Party, which was actually a rather large force in American politics, was created as a response to immigration largely from Ireland.
00:24:15.000I mean, Gangs of New York, the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis, is based specifically on this thing, based on anti-immigrant sentiment.
00:24:23.000Against what we would now call white people.
00:24:25.000There's always been questions in the United States about how easy it is to assimilate people from various countries.
00:24:31.000And what does that mean for the people who are born in the United States?
00:24:34.000But what you see is a massive shift in the immigration status of the United States, in how immigration is done in the United States, beginning in about 1965.
00:24:43.000So all the way up until 1965, you see, first of all, enormous growth in the U.S. population via immigration.
00:24:51.000Basically, all the way up to the early 1920s.
00:24:54.000And most of that immigration, again, is from Europe.
00:24:56.000You're talking an enormous number from Austria-Hungary, from Ireland, from Italy now, from Russia.
00:25:02.000There's a shift toward Eastern and Southern Europe as opposed to Western Europe.
00:25:05.000But all those people would now be considered quote-unquote white.
00:25:09.000And again, there were serious considerations in American immigration history with regards to how do you assimilate, for example, Jewish immigrants from Russia.
00:25:19.000Rather discriminatory policies at, say, country clubs, for example.
00:25:23.000Okay, so in the 1920s, there was a radical downshift in terms of immigration.
00:25:27.000That's what, on this chart, you can see a giant decline in immigration that stretches from about 1920 all the way until basically the end of World War II.
00:25:35.000And then, following World War II, in 1965, there was an immigration bill sponsored by Teddy Kennedy, the so-called Immigration and Nationality Act, and it radically shifted how immigration was done.
00:25:46.000In the United States, you wonder why it used to be all European immigrants, and now it is almost no European immigrants.
00:25:50.000And the answer is because of Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.
00:25:56.000So it used to be that the United States had a system of quotas, and those quotas were largely based on who can assimilate most easily.
00:26:02.000And so it preferenced people who are from, for example, Western Europe, and then it went to people who are from Eastern Europe, and then went to people who are from Africa or from Asia.
00:26:10.000And there were quotas based on country.
00:26:12.000In 1965, those quotas were completely exploded.
00:26:15.000And instead, it established a new preference system that was based on family reunification, chain migration.
00:26:20.000So if you got in, you got to bring your entire family.
00:26:24.000And it obliterated all sort of quota systems with regard to Europe.
00:26:30.000So the law set annual caps at the time, 170,000 visas for the Eastern Hemisphere, and a cap of 120,000 visas for the Western Hemisphere.
00:26:39.000Now again, the Western Hemisphere would be South and Latin America.
00:26:41.000And you can see the predictable result, which is that Over the course of time, you now see a massive uptick in the number of immigrants from Mexico, a huge number of immigrants from the Caribbean and other Americas like Latin America, Central America, huge uptick from Asia as well.
00:26:57.000European immigration basically plummets to almost zero.
00:27:02.000And the question is, why exactly did Teddy Kennedy do this?
00:27:04.000And the answer is that Teddy Kennedy, like many members of the left, did believe in this idea of a sort of European guilt toward the rest of the world and an American guilt.
00:27:15.000And so what he said is that the existing quota system was fundamentally unfair and inconsistent with American values.
00:27:21.000This is where you get the Democrats today saying that the sort of credo of Americanism is the Statue of Liberty where you welcome your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free.
00:27:31.000That is how immigration needs to be done.
00:27:37.000But there will be no welfare system to support you.
00:27:39.000And this is a huge difference, by the way, in the pre-World War II era in the United States versus the post-World War II era in the United States.
00:27:45.000The type of immigrants who are drawn to the United States change over time.
00:27:48.000America, in 1900, basically had zero welfare system for people who were coming here.
00:27:52.000So when my great-great-grandparents got to the United States in the early 20th century, there was no welfare system, essentially.
00:28:08.000This is very common, by the way, in Jewish households in the early 20th century is that they would come speaking Yiddish and then they would tell their kids they were not allowed to speak Yiddish in the house so that their kids would learn to speak English with more alacrity and assimilate more quickly.
00:28:21.000And that is for both cultural reasons, you're leaving behind the old country, and also because the idea is that you need to assimilate to American culture.
00:28:29.000That's why you came, is to be part of the American dream, not to bring the European or Eastern European or Russian or Lithuanian dream to the United States.
00:28:36.000The American dream is a different thing.
00:28:38.000It's about upward mobility, assimilation to a commerce-driven culture that has at its basis Anglo-American law.
00:28:44.000After World War II, the growth of the American welfare state and the availability of that welfare changes the kinds of people who are coming to the United States.
00:28:50.000Not in terms of race, but in terms of who's trying to get in.
00:28:53.000There's a difference between a job available sign in the window of a store and a free donuts sign in the window of a store.
00:29:02.000A jobs available sign is likely to draw people who want to work and get a job.
00:29:06.000A free donut sign is likely to draw everyone who wants a free donut.
00:29:10.000And the United States totally changed its immigration system for the free donut crowd.
00:29:14.000And again, the reason that Teddy Kennedy did this, and he literally said this openly, is that he believed it was unfair and un-American to have quota systems based on the assimilative capacity of the people coming in.
00:29:33.000So it's all based on the sort of fairness and justice and reparative fairness and justice.
00:29:37.000And this is why you're seeing so much heartburn over the possibility of Afrikaner immigrants because what President Trump is saying is the truth, which is that not everybody is going to assimilate to American values at the same rate.
00:29:56.000The fact that the left is resisting that speaks to A bizarre idea about what America is and what it needs to be, which is basically an open-door free donut shop to everybody who wants to get in.
00:30:08.000And somehow America owes that to the rest of the world because America is only successful through some form of exploitation.
00:30:14.000In the same way that there needs to be reparative justice in South Africa because whites used to harm blacks, America somehow owes it to the rest of the world to let anybody in.
00:30:22.000And if you say that that's not true, then you're undermining the left's perception of Americanism.
00:30:26.000And that, of course, is wrong and destined for failure.
00:30:30.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
00:30:31.000First, tax day may have passed, but for millions of Americans, the real trouble is just starting.
00:30:35.000If you missed the April 15th deadline or you still owe back taxes, the IRS is, in fact, ramping up.
00:30:40.000Enforcement every day you wait only makes things worse.
00:30:42.000With over 5,000 new tax liens filed daily and tools like property seizures, bank levies, wage garnishments, the IRS is applying pressure at levels we have not seen in years.
00:30:51.000Increased administrative scrutiny means collections are moving fast.
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00:32:39.000Well, joining us online is Ernst Roots.
00:32:41.000He, of course, is Executive Director of the Pioneer Initiative.
00:32:49.000Ben, thank you very much for having me on the show.
00:32:53.000And thank you again also to The Daily Wire for being a voice of reason in crazy times.
00:33:00.000So let's discuss what exactly is happening with President Trump and the South African refugee plan.
00:33:05.000So first of all, I just want to get some facts on the table for folks who are not familiar with the situation there.
00:33:10.000There have been claims that there is a quote unquote genocide against whites in South Africa.
00:33:14.000There have been claims with regard to the targeting of white farmers in South Africa.
00:33:25.000I think that's a very important point.
00:33:27.000The term genocide has been used quite a lot lately.
00:33:30.000And it's a term that we have to be very careful in using because, of course, it's a technical term and it's a legal term.
00:33:36.000And it opens up a can of worms in terms of debating what a genocide really is and so forth.
00:33:42.000I do think the appropriate way to describe the crisis in South Africa is to say that it is a systemic crisis, that we live under a political system that is very deeply and fundamentally structured in such a way.
00:33:58.000That it continuously and inherently discriminates against minority communities, treating us as second-class citizens.
00:34:05.000And so we've gotten to the point now where we have more than 140 race laws in South Africa aimed at discriminating against the white minority and the Afrikaners.
00:34:15.000But other than the racial discrimination, we do have threats by the South African government, not just threats, but attempts.
00:34:22.000To change the property rights clause in the South African Constitution to empower the government to expropriate property without compensation.
00:34:31.000We have a very serious problem of farmers being targeted with very brutal farm attacks and murders.
00:34:38.000But on top of that, what we also have is politicians Very senior and very influential politicians openly chanting about Kill the Boer, chanting about the extermination of minority communities, and them then being protected by the president, by the ruling party, and by the courts and the legal system in South Africa.
00:34:59.000So let's talk for a second about the sort of Kill the Boer chant.
00:35:02.000So those have been obviously issued over and over and over by Julius Malema, who's the head of the EFF, which is a radical communist party in South Africa.
00:35:10.000The ANC government, which has been running the place.
00:35:12.000The ANC has been running the place since the end of apartheid, essentially since 1994.
00:36:18.000We would often hear leaders, including the president himself, inviting Julius Malema in particular to join, to rejoin the ANC, to become a member of the ruling party.
00:36:28.000So it's important to understand that even though the EFF is seen and presented as more radical, ideologically, there's not much difference between them.
00:36:38.000So, you know, there's been a lot of talk, obviously, in the United States about taking in Afrikaners to the United States, the refugee plan.
00:36:44.000There's been opposition from many of the usual suspects who suggest that perhaps they don't deserve refugee status or people who are offended by the idea that whites can't be refugees, which of course is absurd.
00:37:04.000For people who want to leave South Africa, and there are people who want to leave.
00:37:07.000And there are a lot of people who have experienced trauma, having been in a farm attack, having lost loved ones and so forth, or another form of trauma, and they want to get out.
00:37:17.000And then there are people who are really struggling because of these race laws, struggling to get employment, don't have a job, but who are willing to work and able to work, but they are pushed out because of the colour of their skin.
00:37:28.000And so if these people want to leave, it's good for them to leave, to be able to do so.
00:37:33.000And we would hope our message to them would be to remain connected and to be ambassadors for our cause where they are.
00:37:59.000We have a systemic crisis, which means that we need systemic reform.
00:38:02.000We need to relook the political system.
00:38:07.000The way we see it is by decentralizing the system and giving communities self-governance, to have them have a say over their own affairs as opposed to this very close to a dictatorial system that we have.
00:38:19.000So the refugee program could be a good thing, but if it's only that, then it would not be a good thing.
00:38:24.000If it's coupled with pressure towards relooking the political system in South Africa, then that's fine.
00:38:29.000And I think that's something that certainly will receive a lot of support from all over the world.
00:38:35.000And as you and I discussed when last we spoke, you're the executive director of the Pioneer Initiative.
00:38:39.000Your goal is to essentially have more dissemination of rights to local government so that people can actually be protected in the areas in which they live, instead of having an overarching, very strong government at the top that essentially presides over a racialized system.
00:38:55.000Instead, just evolve more authority to a local system that actually allows borers to preserve their property rights, their rights, their culture, and all the rest.
00:39:04.000It's very comparable, you could say, to the American system, or what the American system is supposed to be, a federal system where there is some form of decentralization.
00:39:13.000Now, decentralization can take different forms, and there are many examples all over the world of decentralized system.
00:39:19.000We have the Canton system in Switzerland.
00:39:21.000We have attempts in countries like Finland and Estonia to accommodate minorities.
00:39:26.000And there are examples all over the world that we can find.
00:39:28.000But in South Africa, we're sort of stuck in this mindset that you have to choose between Thank you.
00:39:36.000And our initiative is saying that we need to break through this false dichotomy.
00:39:41.000We need to look at good practices all over the world, and we need to find a system for South Africa that is based on self-governance.
00:39:49.000And it's not just for the Afrikaner people.
00:39:51.000Obviously, I am an Afrikaner, so I want my community to have self-governance.
00:39:54.000But we are just one out of many communities in South Africa.
00:39:57.000And I cannot speak on behalf of the others, but I think it's safe to say that most people in South Africa, we can already see that most people Most people in South Africa very strongly agree with this idea that we need to bring government closer to the people.
00:40:12.000Well, Dr. Roos, if people wish to help out beyond, obviously, the refugee issue, how should they help you out?
00:40:19.000So we have started this new initiative, the Pioneer Initiative.
00:40:22.000If people are willing to help, they can sign up with that.
00:40:25.000They can become a contributor from anywhere in the world.
00:40:29.000People in South Africa should know that we don't have the luxury of being idle bystanders.
00:40:34.000People should become involved with solutions and people should do what they can do to raise awareness about what is happening in South Africa, to spread truth and facts about what is happening in South Africa and to apply pressure.
00:40:45.000People should understand that Dr. Roots, really appreciate your time and your insight and good luck with that.
00:41:16.000Thank you very much, and thank you for having me on the show, and again, for talking about this issue.
00:41:21.000Okay, meanwhile, President Trump, his trade thought is sparking a massive stock rally.
00:41:26.000The Dow Jones Industrial Average is kind of hanging around after its big jump yesterday.
00:41:31.000Again, everything is momentum-driven in the stock market right now because of all the uncertainty.
00:41:35.000As I suggested yesterday, it was my feeling the stock market would not continue to rapidly increase on the basis of President Trump rolling back the tariff regime.
00:41:45.000Because the reality is that before Liberation Day, we had a certain tariff rate, and we've now probably quadrupled or quintupled that average tariff rate, and that is going to have some impact on the American economy.
00:41:55.000According to the Wall Street Journal, stocks are surging, but Wall Street isn't ready to declare victory in the trade war just yet.
00:42:01.000The Dow Industrials ended yesterday with a gain of 2.8% and settled above 42,000, which is above where they stood on Liberation Day.
00:42:09.000But investors remain cautious because they're not really sure what the impact of the continued tariff regime is going to be.
00:42:14.000President Trump yesterday talked up the total reset with China.
00:42:18.000In addition, yesterday we achieved a total reset with China after productive talks in Geneva.
00:42:26.000Both sides now agree to reduce the tariffs imposed after April 2nd to 10% for 90 days as negotiators continue on the larger structural issues.
00:42:39.000Okay, now, the reality is the United States...
00:42:42.000We've gained very little, kind of in general terms, from this mini trade war with the Chinese.
00:42:48.000I mean, we are not ending in a better position than we started with the Chinese, per se.
00:42:52.000We could have put a 30% tariff on them in the first place.
00:42:54.000So all the kind of talk where people say, well, this is all strategery.
00:43:00.000And then reality hit, and they walked back Liberation Day by giving Treasury Secretary Scott Besson control of the vehicle, which is the correct move.
00:43:08.000There are some downside effects to what's been going on, namely, A lot of heartburn with regard to our normal trade partners who are now triangulating with China.
00:43:17.000Also, Beijing now knows that if the United States threatens a thing, it is probably pretty easy to back the United States off that threat.
00:43:24.000If the idea is economic sanctions, if, for example, they blockade Taiwan, well, how long would that last?
00:46:19.000These impressive weight loss results come from a physician-developed dietary supplement called Lean.
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00:47:16.000It's not a substitute for care from a healthcare provider.
00:47:19.000All right, so, how about that tax bill?
00:47:22.000The latest on the tax bill is that Republicans are now, in fact, looking to raise the debt limit substantially, like a lot.
00:47:28.000The House has unveiled a plan to raise the debt limit by $4 trillion, according to The Hill.
00:47:34.000The proposal, which was included in legislative text unveiled by the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday, is in line with House instructions outlined in a blueprint adopted by congressional Republicans last month to kick off the process in order to push forward the big, beautiful tax bill.
00:47:48.000Including the debt ceiling in the broader bill allows Republicans to avoid Democratic demands in exchange for their votes to raise the debt limit.
00:47:56.000So that also means they need to move faster because you actually have to push the debt ceiling in a faster timeline.
00:48:02.000You have to do it by July, essentially.
00:48:11.000Unless they're willing to full-scale restructure entitlement programs, nothing is going to change about the debt trajectory of the United States.
00:48:18.000Anybody who's telling you differently is lawing to you.
00:48:19.000It ain't going to be done through cutting, quote, waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:48:23.000What actually needs to happen is restructuring the entitlement programs.
00:48:26.000Meanwhile, House Republicans have released a highly anticipated plan, according to the New York Post, late on Sunday to slash roughly $900 billion in spending over the next decade that is supposed to, quote, unquote, pay for the tax cuts.
00:49:43.000And you can do it via volunteer work or by going to school also to be eligible for Medicaid.
00:49:47.000That does not seem like too big a push for me.
00:49:49.000Unless you're on full-scale disability, in which case you can show a disability and you'll still be eligible.
00:49:55.000Yeah, you should have to work like a little in order to get Medicaid.
00:49:59.000States that enrolled in the Affordable Care Act expansion of Medicaid would see a federal reimbursement rate drop from 90 to 80 percent if illegal immigrants are part of the program.
00:50:07.000So again, the goal there would be, why should the federal government pay for a state?
00:50:11.000That is essentially taking care of illegal immigrants because then they're just passing that cost on to the federal government.
00:50:18.000Medicaid beneficiaries with incomes over the federal poverty line would have to pay up to $35 per medical service.
00:50:24.000And again, it's a means-tested welfare program, so that makes sense.
00:50:26.000It required eligibility checks on expanded Medicaid enrollees every six months as opposed to annually.
00:50:32.000State Medicaid programs cannot reimburse health care providers like hospitals more than Medicare does.
00:50:37.000Because then you're basically competing against yourself.
00:50:40.000So if the idea is that Medicare is paying for a reimbursement of a state hospital and Medicaid is coming in at a higher rate, then obviously that leads the hospitals to take Medicaid more than Medicare.
00:50:51.000It thrusts people onto Medicaid rather than Medicare.
00:50:57.000You put a ban on Medicaid and CHIP, that's Children's Health Insurance Program funding, for transgender nonsense.
00:51:05.000And it bars middlemen pharmacy benefit managers from charging higher prices to Medicaid than if they were to actually just pay for the drugs straight up.
00:51:12.000Now, of course, the CBO is freaking out about this.
00:51:15.000They're saying it could lead to 8.6 million Americans losing health insurance and $715 billion worth of cuts over a 10-year period.
00:51:22.000But in reality, the program was designed for people who are disabled, for people who are truly poor.
00:52:05.000He called the proposal, quote, morally wrong and politically suicidal.
00:52:09.000He writes in the New York Times, quote, a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans, call it the party's Wall Street wing, is urging Congress to ignore all of this and get back to old-time religion, corporate giveaways, preferences for capital, and deep cuts to social insurance.
00:52:28.000Unless you have a severe disability, obviously, or you're unable to work for some other reason.
00:52:32.000And again, we have provisions for that in law.
00:52:36.000Medicaid, says Chip Roy, the excellent congressperson from Texas, said was never meant to be this expansive.
00:52:42.000We have a duty to safeguard taxpayers and ensure Medicaid does not bankrupt us.
00:52:46.000Cut the waste, cut the fraud, cut the abuse.
00:52:49.000So it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out with various dynamics in the Senate and the House as well.
00:52:54.000Meanwhile, speaking of deregulation, I'll tell you what is not deregulation is this Trump executive order to quote-unquote lower drug prices by essentially cramming down Medicaid prices On pharma companies.
00:53:41.000Now, in reality, what is this actually going to do?
00:53:44.000According to Axios, it's not quite as clear-cut as President Trump just yelling at pharma companies.
00:53:48.000The order calls for drug makers to voluntarily cut their prices or face the threat of a most favored nation pricing regime that would peg the cost of their medicine to what's paid in other wealthy nations where they often sell for less again.
00:53:58.000He's applying the pressure in the wrong place.
00:54:00.000It shouldn't be on the pharma companies in the United States.
00:54:02.000The pressure should be on foreign countries to pay what the price would be in a free market.
00:54:07.000That's where the pressure should be applied.
00:54:08.000Now, President Trump loves clocking our European allies.
00:54:14.000You want to talk about the Canadians and the Europeans cheating us?
00:54:16.000That is an area where they actually are cheating us, where you have nationalized healthcare systems that are basically cramming down pricing on America pharma companies, and then by squeezing...
00:54:27.000This is not the kind of deregulation that the Trump administration should be seeking at this point.
00:54:47.000The EO does call for other countries to increase what they pay for drugs to share the cost for biomedical innovation, but there are no actual methodologies attached To forcing all these other countries to actually do it.
00:55:00.000So it'll be fascinating to see how all of that plays out as well.
00:55:03.000Meanwhile, President Trump is in Saudi Arabia today to kick off his Middle Eastern trip.
00:55:07.000He's going to be visiting the Saudis, then he's going to head on over to the UAE, and then finally to Qatar.
00:55:12.000Of course, massive controversy breaking out over Qatar, as we discussed yesterday on the show.
00:55:17.000And when it comes to his trip to Saudi, he's bringing with him an enormous number of business and tech leaders, the goal being to get the Saudi...
00:55:24.000To actually invest in American tech, which is wonderful.
00:55:29.000Getting Saudi money to invest in American business is great.
00:55:32.000The question is, what concessions lie on the other side of that?
00:55:36.000And what can actually be done in the Middle East?
00:55:38.000And President Trump's signal contribution to Middle Eastern history in his first term was the recognition that there are a lot of countries there that actually care more about the economy than just hating Jews.
00:55:47.000That was the basis of the Abraham Accords.
00:55:49.000It's why, for example, the UAE and Bahrain and Morocco all joined the Abraham Accords.
00:55:53.000The idea was economic development, tech development in the region would be better served than a sort of cross-religion hatred.
00:56:02.000That was also pushed forward by the fact that Iran was deeply threatening.
00:56:06.000Well, now the question in the Middle East is whether President Trump is going to maintain that very wise strategy in the Middle East or whether he's going to shift off of that toward something else.
00:56:15.000The reality is that America could easily push into Abraham Accords, too, by linking many of the things that are happening in Saudi, UAE, even Qatar, with what's happening in Israel.
00:56:26.000The United States seems to be simultaneously linking and delinking.
00:56:31.000Honestly, it's kind of unclear what the strategy is with regard to Saudi Arabia and Israel with regard to some sort of Abraham Accords, are they going to try to speedrun and end the war in Gaza?
00:56:41.000Are they going to let Israel finish the job in Gaza and then approach an Abraham Accord?
00:56:47.000But the idea that President Trump is bringing along business leaders to meet with the Saudis or the UAE to actually invest in American business without the possibility of, say, policy concessions on the other side by the United States, that's fine.
00:57:01.000Again, more investment in American business, better.
00:57:03.000The concessions from the United States should not be particularly rich to countries that historically have not had a particularly wonderful record with the United States.
00:57:14.000President Trump was asked about all of this yesterday when he was still in Washington, D.C. while signing an executive order by a member of ABC News.
00:57:23.000Mr. President, what do you say to people who view that luxury jet as a personal gift to you?
00:57:55.000Okay, President Trump did, in fact, through Steve Witkoff, broker the release of Idan Alexander, the last American hostage who was left in Gaza.
00:58:21.000He has big hugs, for those who can't see.
00:58:24.000He was held in captivity for well over 500 days.
00:58:27.000Reports are that he was tortured and held in a cage by Hamas, which is why it would be ridiculous for Hamas to have any role in governing the Gaza Strip any time in the future.
00:58:37.000He's hugging his dad, hugging his brother.
00:58:45.000Etan Alexander, obviously extraordinarily grateful to President Trump, held up a sign.
00:58:49.000For President Trump on his way back into Israel from the tunnels that Hamas was holding him in for well over a year, saying, thank you, President Trump.
00:58:57.000Am Yisrael Chai, meaning the nation of Israel lives.
00:59:01.000And he was a member of the Golani Brigade.
00:59:04.000So he has a saying there in favor of the Golani Brigade.
00:59:15.000And we'll see what deals Steve Witkoff tries to cut off the back.
00:59:19.000With that said, big credit for freeing Edan Alexander, obviously.
00:59:24.000Now, meanwhile, again, the relationship with Qatar continues to be a problem.
00:59:27.000The Palestinian Authority obviously is now working in coordination with Qatar, which is a bad thing.
00:59:33.000The Palestinian Authority is slightly better than Hamas.
00:59:37.000I say slightly because the Fatah wing of the Palestinian Authority is, in fact, a terror group.
00:59:40.000And the Palestinian Authority still has on its books pay for slay, meaning that if you kill a Jew...
00:59:46.000The Palestinian Authority had a ban on Al Jazeera because Qatar was so radical that it was sponsoring Al Jazeera in order to push pro-Hamas propaganda, and the Palestinian Authority didn't like that.
00:59:59.000Well, now, as the days of Hamas seem to be waning, now the Palestinian Authority is warming up to Qatar, according to the New York Times.
01:00:06.000The Palestinian Authority said late Monday it would lift a ban on Al Jazeera in the West Bank that had put into effect.
01:00:14.000I think this may be the prelude to a sort of rapprochement between Qatar and Palestinian Authority to use the Palestinian Authority as the new tool to attack Israel, which, of course, the Palestinian Authority historically was.
01:00:27.000Joining me on the line is Jerome Spielman, born and educated in the United States.
01:01:49.000And the army today, I was in the Gaza border just a few days ago.
01:01:52.000The soldiers are committed to finishing this job.
01:01:56.000The state of Israel, even though our heart's torn over the hostages, He's committing to finish his job.
01:02:00.000And the military plan that was put forth now is a plan that says we will hold territory, as opposed to doing strike, moving in and out, and we will push Hamas to the limit.
01:02:11.000This is the opportunity to finish them off.
01:02:13.000Giving them any type of state is a historical blunder and would not serve U.S. interests either.
01:02:19.000I mean, basically, it's supporting an enemy that denies Israel, denies Jewish faith, denies the sources, foundations of America.
01:02:28.000Well, that gets to the topic of your book, When the Stones Speak, which is about the sort of archaeological history of the land of Israel and the attempt by the Palestinian authority and much of the Arab world to deny the connection between Judeo-Christian heritage and the land of Israel.
01:02:44.000So why don't you talk a little about what City of David is for people who don't know?
01:02:48.000So the City of David is actually ancient Jerusalem.
01:02:52.000Most people think ancient Jerusalem is in the walls of the old city, which would make sense if it was anywhere else in the world.
01:02:57.000However, Queen Victoria sent an explorer to find the Ark of the Covenant 150 years ago, and he didn't find it or anything biblical in the old city walls.
01:03:05.000So one day he leaves the old city walls and finds a spring of water, walks through a cave, and finds a shaft, and when he climbs up, he uncovers an entire ancient city beneath the ground.
01:03:14.000After a short period of time, he realizes, wow, the ancient city of Jerusalem from the Bible, the city of King David, is actually outside the old city walls.
01:03:22.000And that is the site that I spent over 21 years excavating.
01:03:26.000And today, if you want to walk around with the Bible and pull stuff out of the ground and match the pages of the Bible, that's the City of David.
01:03:34.000Essentially, it is the foundation of Jewish, Christian, and American faith.
01:03:39.000And every time we find something, Ben, it sends out shockwaves.
01:03:43.000One part of the world cheers when we find a name that matches from the book of Jeremiah.
01:03:47.000However, another part of the world, the part of the world you just mentioned, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, The Muslim Brotherhood that have been denying Israel's history as part of this campaign, they then circle the site and say, that's something we have to stop.
01:03:58.000And that's what the city of David's been facing.
01:04:03.000I think that one of the things that's so fascinating about your book, When the Stones Speak, and about this entire controversy, is if you really want to understand what happened on October 7th, you have to understand that it is not a territorial issue.
01:04:14.000It is really, in its essence, a historical issue.
01:04:18.000In which you have one party that basically denies the historicity of the entire Bible, suggests that everything that is Jewish-related or Christian-related in Jerusalem is an overt falsehood, and that that is why the land ought to belong to the Palestinian Authority or to the Muslim Brotherhood or to whomever.
01:04:37.000I mean, the stuff that you're uncovering, the reason it's controversial is specifically because it connects the history of Jerusalem to an ancient past that predates Islam by several thousand years.
01:04:47.000That's why they call it, right, Ben, the Al-Aqsa Flood.
01:04:56.000So I stood on October 8th in the southern border in massive wreckage, hundreds and hundreds of cars, I describe it in When the Stones Speak, that had just been obliterated, and the smoke was still coming out of them.
01:05:07.000And I opened up the door, I could see the driver's registrations there, and I looked around, I said, this is a flood, but they're not calling it.
01:05:14.000Their whole intention, it goes back to Al-Aqsa, to the foundations of Jewish belief.
01:05:19.000And they have spent decades, and we saw this in the city of David, denying the foundations of Jewish belief.
01:05:26.000Every time we found something, they would claim it was a Zionist plot.
01:05:29.000And to the point of which, we found this incredible road, which you've been on, this pilgrimage road that stretches all the way up to the temple.
01:05:38.000And they threatened, not the Jewish workers.
01:05:41.000They threatened our Arab workers until the Arab workers quit.
01:05:44.000And when that didn't work, they tried to assassinate the head of the city of David.
01:05:47.000And when that didn't work, they took us to court.
01:05:49.000They even enlisted the State Department in the Obama presidency, all because they realized that when we uncover this foundation, it bashes and obliterates this entire Palestinian narrative out of the water.
01:06:01.000And as you've talked about so eloquently, this is now spilled over into American campuses.
01:06:06.000This is the battle in Israel and in the United States.
01:06:10.000I mean, it truly is kind of incredible that you actually have an entire group of people who deny that the Temple Mount has anything to do with the temple, which is truly, I mean, it beggars the imagination to make that argument, but that argument is constantly made, which is why, if you're wondering why they care about a pilgrimage road, so there's a giant road that people at City of David have uncovered that goes from the Siloam Pool, which is a place where people used to essentially cleanse themselves before going to the temple, and then they would walk up by two-thirds of a mile.
01:06:37.000From the Siloam Pool all the way up to the Temple Mount.
01:06:39.000And you guys have actually uncovered this gigantic staircase that goes all the way from the bottom of the City of David up through.
01:06:45.000And in order to preserve Arab housing and shore it up, actually, you built this entire extraordinarily expensive tunnel.
01:06:52.000In the United States, we would just declare eminent domain, blow up whatever was on top, and then uncover the staircase.
01:06:56.000In Israel, because of the political sensitivity, billions of dollars have been spent in order to preserve the housing on top and shore it up against earthquake.
01:07:06.000And still, you have the Palestinian Authority and advocates for Palestinian-Arab domination of the land and Muslim domination of the land.
01:07:14.000You have those advocates suggesting that this staircase is somehow fake or unreal.
01:07:19.000And folks should understand that this staircase is certainly, when Jesus was yelling at people as they were going up to the temple about corruption in the temple, he was literally standing on this staircase.
01:07:29.000I did a documentary with Jordan Peterson about the foundations of Western civilization.
01:07:33.000You can watch us walk this road and stop by a stone that almost certainly Jesus stood on while yelling at his fellow Jews not to corrupt the temple.
01:07:41.000You know, Ben, the time that this really struck me and why I wrote this book is I was explaining this to Leslie Stahl.
01:07:47.000She came to the site to do 60 Minutes, and she brought her husband with her.
01:07:51.000She said to me for the first time ever of any shoot she's ever done, Leslie Stahl from 60 Minutes, I show them the clay seals.
01:07:58.000That we found that of the two people that tried to kill the prophet Jeremiah, she's blown away.
01:08:11.000The only thing she talked about was the fact that we were digging underneath the Arab homes and Arab homes are falling under, which the reality is exactly the opposite.
01:08:20.000In addition to preserving archaeology, we have spent so much money that the only homes in the entire area that now have supports underneath them, Are the Arab homes we've actually dug beneath because of what we've built.
01:08:31.000And at that moment, I realized if Leslie Stahl, if I did a whole 60 Minutes episode and she can't get off the story, I have to write the story of the City of David.
01:08:40.000And that's basically why I wrote the book, because these challenges and the efforts to stop the archaeology are so intense and they affect Jews all over the world on campus.
01:08:49.000They affect Americans because the founding fathers of America, of course.
01:08:53.000The Liberty Bell, Declare Liberty, all these symbols come from the Bible.
01:08:56.000If you wither away, if you chop away at the Jewish Bible, there's nothing left for any of us.
01:09:02.000And that's exactly what the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, their head, by the way, the U.S. still keeps talking about, certainly in the Biden administration, he should head the new Gaza.
01:09:11.000He said three weeks ago on the news that the temple is in Yemen.
01:09:17.000So, you know, it's right up to the top when it comes to this.
01:09:23.000You can check out his brand new book, When the Stones Speak, The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and What Israel's Enemies Don't Want You to Know.