Homeless people in New York are freezing to death because of the insane, "unquote" empathy of Zorhan Mamdani. Plus, more insane empathy causing more death up in Canada where apparently pretending that boys can be girls actually does not prevent people from doing terrible, terrible things. And we get into the latest on the economy. The economy is pretty good, so why are people feeling so down on it? First, we just looked at what's trending on Daily Wire Plus right now, and there it is: The Real History of Slavery, Episode 1 of Real History with Matt Walsh.
00:00:00.000Homeless people in New York freezing to death because of the insane quote-unquote empathy of Zorhan Mamdani Plus.
00:00:06.000More insane empathy causing more death up in Canada, where apparently pretending that boys can be girls actually does not prevent people from doing terrible, terrible things.
00:00:15.000And we get into the latest on the economy.
00:00:18.000So why are people feeling so down on it?
00:00:20.000First, we just looked at what's trending on Daily Wire Plus right now, and there it is: the real history of slavery, episode one of Real History with Matt Walsh.
00:00:27.000People are realizing that for decades, schools taught one version of the story, backed by institutions and Hollywood.
00:00:33.000And a lot of what you were told was just not true.
00:00:36.000All it took was one person to go back and actually check the facts.
00:00:43.000Real history with Matt Walsh is streaming on Daily Wire Plus.
00:00:46.000Also, the debates happen here on the show, and now the takeaways can land in your inbox.
00:00:50.000Every week, I write a newsletter that distills a full week of analysis into one place.
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00:01:08.000You know, there's a professor named Gad Sad.
00:01:11.000Gad Sad coined a term called suicidal empathy.
00:01:13.000And the basic idea is that you're so empathetic to somebody that it ends up harming you.
00:01:18.000So a great example would be the way that the West has approached immigration from third world countries.
00:01:23.000You feel bad for people, you open your borders, lots of people come in, and then they harm your civilization.
00:01:27.000But it seems like we are now moving beyond even suicidal empathy into homicidal empathy, by which I mean that your empathy for someone actually gets them killed.
00:01:36.000Great example of that happening today over in New York City.
00:01:39.000So Zorhan Mamdani, who promised, as producer Sarah points out, the warmth of collectivism.
00:01:46.000We're going to move beyond the grittiness of individuality and we're going to bask in the warm embrace, the warm bath that is collectivism.
00:01:54.000It turns out people are freezing to death in New York City.
00:01:57.000They are freezing to death on the streets of New York City, despite all of his photo ops shoveling the snow.
00:02:48.000The serious side of this is that, as the New York Post points out, Zor Mamdani has embraced a hands-off policy with regard to homelessness.
00:02:58.000It remains the policy in places like Los Angeles.
00:03:00.000This hands-off policy that basically is empathetic toward the homeless to the point where you're killing the homeless.
00:03:05.000You say that they should be able to live out on the streets, that it is a form of cruelty and intolerance to involuntarily commit people who are usually drug addicted or schizophrenic, serious mental illnesses, people who can't take care of themselves.
00:03:20.000Somehow, it is more empathetic to leave them out on the streets to get scabies or to die in the cold.
00:03:25.000This seems to be the way that the left-wing brain is working in Mamdani land and also out in California and other liberal areas of the country.
00:03:35.00018 people have died in the cold snap that has hit New York City.
00:03:41.000Brian Stedden, who served as a senior advisor to Mayor Eric Adams' administration, told the New York Post: quote: When a person is in imminent danger, there's no debate.
00:03:49.000Whatever ideological divides we have should not have any impact on these policies during a code blue.
00:03:54.000Apparently, there was a mumbling homeless woman who braved sub-Antarctic temperatures on the front cover of the Post on Monday.
00:04:05.000According to the Post, the unidentified woman was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, slippers, and two blankets as she clipped her nails, put lotion on her hands, and talked to herself while hunkered down on East 34th Street across from the New York University Langone Hospital as temperatures neared zero degrees early on Sunday.
00:04:19.000She then refused repeated offers for help from EMS workers and cops who explained to the Post that they had to leave the shivering vagrants in the extremely dangerous bone-chilling weather because she could answer basic questions, which again is Mamdani shtick is that if you can answer basic questions like what day of the week is it and what is your name, then they will leave you out on the streets to freeze, assuming that you are totally fine.
00:04:40.000Again, those are literally the kinds of questions that she was asked.
00:04:42.000According to a firefighter, she knew the year 2026.
00:04:58.000EMS workers said their hands are tied.
00:05:01.000Well, Zorhan Mamdani did a presser over the weekend in which she said, yeah, we did have to force some homeless people inside because they weren't wearing enough clothes.
00:05:15.000Tonight, you've implored the people in the streets who don't want to feel more comfortable in the streets to come inside.
00:05:21.000But what happens if they don't at this point?
00:05:23.000I mean, you had said it, 20 minutes out in the cold could lead to a fatality.
00:05:27.000So are you not using it as a last resort at this point to bring them inside and voluntary, remove them, even if it's just a few hours, doesn't lead to a placement?
00:05:36.000So involuntary transport continues to be used in the same manner it was as the prior administration.
00:05:41.000And thus far, we have seen clinical determinations of a number of New Yorkers who have been deemed to be a danger to themselves or to others.
00:05:48.000And sometimes that designation comes from an assessment that a New Yorker is not adequately clothed given the weather that they are living through in that moment.
00:05:56.000And that is going to continue to be part of the assessments that outreach workers are making over the course of tomorrow, the next day.
00:06:03.000Okay, so again, the last resort policy under Momdani says that you can only be forced indoors if you are deemed a danger to yourself or others.
00:06:12.000But the problem, of course, is that if you're a Zorhan Mamdani and you have spent your entire career ripping down cops and treating people as though they are committing a human rights violation by pushing people indoors, people might be a little hesitant to actually take responsibility for calling somebody a danger to themselves or others.
00:06:32.000Down in Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott, according to the New York Post, late last month called the cold a life or death issue and ordered the PD to take people off the streets, even if they were refusing services.
00:06:41.000He said that direction order came from me because we can't allow folks to be out in this kind of weather.
00:06:48.000And the fact that this has somehow become a matter of public controversy is totally insane, obviously.
00:06:55.000Zorhan Mamdani apparently has so much sympathy for people.
00:07:00.000If you are out on the streets sleeping on the sidewalk, that is not a housing problem in the middle of a cold snap.
00:07:07.000That is a crazy problem if other options are given to you.
00:07:11.000No sane and rational person, definitionally, who is not a danger to themselves is sleeping out on the street in zero degree weather.
00:07:20.000That is not a thing that sane and rational people do unless they are Arctic explorers of some type.
00:07:27.000And again, this comes down to Momdani's bizarro world empathy that legitimately gets people killed.
00:07:34.000This sort of policy, when you apply it to crime, it leads to more criminals on the streets.
00:07:38.000When you apply it to homelessness, it leads to more homeless on the streets.
00:07:41.000The empathy that you have for the purported victim of America's evil, racist, abusive system leads to the very people you are supposedly trying to help sometimes dying.
00:07:51.000Mamdani, by the way, had not actually budged on his plans, his last resort policy, as of last weekend.
00:08:01.000On February 6th, for example, the New York Post reported that Zimdani was still refusing to clear homeless camps and forcibly remove people from the streets, despite a rising death toll and a fresh snap of deadly deep freeze.
00:08:12.000Instead, he implored people to come inside, as you heard.
00:08:15.000Well, I mean, imploring people to come inside ain't enough.
00:08:17.000Again, if people are refusing to come inside in the middle of zero-degree weather, living on the streets, that is not going to be solved by you imploring them.
00:08:27.000And to those who may consider themselves more comfortable on the streets, I want to speak directly to you, to employer, to come inside.
00:08:36.000These temperatures are too low and too dangerous to survive.
00:08:40.000Please wait out the cold in a safe place with a warm bed.
00:08:45.000By the way, during last year's campaign, Mamdani, according to the City Journal, had promised to end a program initiated by his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, that deploys clinicians backed by police officers to assess people's ability to care for themselves and, if necessary, to transport them involuntarily to a hospital for psychiatric treatment.
00:09:02.000So that was a proactive move by Adams to determine whether somebody ought to be on the streets or not.
00:09:06.000And Mamdani wanted to kill that because I guess the presumption is that unless they are in the throes of some sort of crime, they should never have an engagement with law enforcement.
00:09:18.000He has disavowed dismantling homeless encampments.
00:09:21.000The message that's being sent is basically, you have a right to live on the streets.
00:09:26.000The message that is sent to public service workers, cops, and mental health professionals is that you're going to be called on the carpet if you make the mistake of bringing somebody in.
00:09:35.000It's nuts and it's bad and it's stupid.
00:09:38.000And again, it's indicative of a deeper brain rot that has set in on large parts of the left.
00:09:43.000That empathy amounts to humoring people in their delusions, even at danger to them.
00:09:48.000A lot of ugliness going on on planet Earth in New York and Canada, but there's still some nice things happening.
00:09:54.000It's the month of love, flowers, chocolates.
00:09:56.000There are a lot of young people trying to find that special someone.
00:09:59.000But before they just go to a bar and try to find that special someone, they probably should be thinking about the important questions like, do you want kids in the future?
00:10:05.000Or what are your thoughts on religion?
00:10:06.000That's how you can figure out exactly whether this is the right person for you.
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00:12:18.000So it has now been confirmed that the school shooter in British Columbia, Canada was, in fact, a boy who believed he was a girl, a transgender girl.
00:12:29.000The media, of course, covered this up.
00:12:31.000The media and the cops knew this right away.
00:12:33.000We reported it as a quasi-rumor yesterday because it was basically being uncovered by places like Juneau News, but everyone knew this from the very beginning.
00:12:40.000I mean, how could you not know it from the very beginning?
00:12:43.000If the cops come upon a dead body and the dead body is dressed in a dress and has a penis, it is pretty clear what is going on.
00:12:50.000But the cops covered that up yesterday.
00:12:54.000They said that they were not going to provide details and, in fact, referred to the person as a gun person.
00:13:00.000ABC News, quote, the person who carried out a school massacre is an 18-year-old woman with mental health issues, but she did not give a motive for one of the worst mass shootings in Canada's history.
00:13:12.000I'm sorry, you can't blame this one on the ladies, folks.
00:13:14.000This was a man who had a mental health problem and pretended he was a woman.
00:13:19.000And you, quote unquote, respecting the pronouns is part of the problem.
00:13:23.000You are leading more people to engage in the delusion that their problems can be solved by quote unquote switching sexes.
00:13:30.000And if society refuses to accept them, it's society's fault.
00:13:32.000And now you are a victim of erasure, which means that if somebody tries to erase you, you must preemptively erase them.
00:13:38.000It is a permission structure, actually, for violence and for mental degradation.
00:13:44.000Nonetheless, you have an entire left-wing thought structure that has been established that says to people who are suffering from gender confusion and body dysmorphia, it tells them that we are so empathetic to you that we're going to pretend along with you.
00:13:58.000And if we pretend along with you, that won't have any harm.
00:14:00.000Well, it turns out it has massive harm.
00:14:02.000Here are the Canadian police yesterday playing along with the gun man, was a man.
00:14:10.000In fact, you're the first media to ask the question.
00:14:12.000I will say this: we identify the suspect as they chose to be identified in public and in social media.
00:14:18.000I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who, approximately the information that I have approximately 60 years ago, began to transition to female and identified as female, both socially and publicly.
00:14:34.000And then the cops said they would, quote-unquote, respect the pronouns.
00:14:37.000Okay, first of all, human beings are not magical butterflies where they go into the gender cocoon and come out a different gendered butterfly.
00:14:45.000That is ridiculous, is ridiculous and it is delusional and it is bad.
00:14:48.000And yes, it has damage connected to it.
00:14:51.000As I've said before, there is a permission structure that is deeply embedded in the entire argument of the trans identity movement, which is that if people refuse to acknowledge your version of fake reality, then they are a threat to you and they must be removed.
00:15:07.000That is inherent in the entire ideology because it is rooted in the idea that society is harming you and is genocidally denying you what you are in your deepest recesses of self if they don't go along with the nonsense that you're spewing.
00:15:22.000The shooter launched a horrifying attack, according to the New York Post, at a private residence in a remote community before continuing the carnage at a high school where authorities said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
00:15:36.000Police had visited the family home several times over the years over concerns about mental health.
00:15:41.000But the beauty of this insane thought structure is that if you go there and you say, okay, this person has depression, suicidality, we can't connect it to, you know, the fact that the man is saying that he's a woman.
00:15:52.000We have to pretend these are two completely separate issues.
00:15:56.000In fact, we have to humor one part of the delusion while trying to clamp down on the depression and suicidal ideation that result.
00:16:05.000Firearms had been seized from the home, according to the New York Post, but the lawful owner successfully petitioned to have them returned.
00:16:13.000Six people were discovered dead inside the school.
00:16:16.000Roughly 25 others were wounded during the chaotic shooting.
00:16:30.000So, the mom of this person, who described herself apparently as a conservative leaning libertarian, in July 2024, unleashed a profanity-fueled rant on Instagram, yelling at people who refused to acknowledge boys becoming girls.
00:16:56.000Quote, as a conservative-leaning libertarian who lives in the North and loves living in a small town, I really hope the hate I see online is just bored old people and not true hatred.
00:17:04.000And then she urged people to evolve and do better and educate yourself before spewing BS online.
00:17:09.000I normally don't say anything, and I normally don't go on bleep book to see the keyboard warriors.
00:17:13.000And I know I can't control everything or shield my kids from everything, but please, for the love of F, can you get your bleep together so we don't have to bring our kids up in a world full of hatred?
00:17:21.000Do you have any idea how many kids are killing themselves over this kind of hate?
00:17:54.000It is bad adulting, whether you are the mayor of New York or whether you are the mom of a person suffering from a mental illness.
00:18:00.000It is bad adulting to pretend that empathy is manifested in treating people who have delusions or mental illness as though they are acting perfectly normally and they ought to be given every quote-unquote right to sleep on the streets in the freezing cold, or they have a right from the rest of the world to be told that they are, in fact, a member of the opposite sex.
00:18:24.000Meanwhile, in general news here in the United States, the economic reports continue to be very healthy coming out of the Trump administration.
00:18:34.000There's a lot of dyspepsia, as I've mentioned before, a lot of heartburn over the state of the economy.
00:18:40.000January's numbers, the jobs numbers, were quite good.
00:18:43.000The reality is that it's happening kind of differently in different sectors.
00:18:46.000So if you look at the losers and winners in terms of change in payrolls, 2024, 2025, according to the Wall Street Journal, the big winners in terms of payroll have been healthcare, leisure, and hospitality.
00:19:02.000Trump has cut it a little bit, but it increased pretty significantly in 2024, obviously.
00:19:07.000So the areas of the market that have really been growing hand over fist are the healthcare areas of the market, which is not a gigantic shock.
00:19:15.000Number one, because Americans are using more and more healthcare, but also because healthcare does require hands-on actual treatment of people.
00:19:23.000You're going to need more nurses, you need more doctors.
00:19:25.000This is an area where there's high demand and where AI can supplement, but it cannot replace.
00:19:29.000And so you're going to see that increase, I would assume.
00:19:33.000However, all other private jobs sectors combined have actually shrunk, according to the Wall Street Journal, which is why I think people are a little worried.
00:19:43.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the past year was lackluster for many white-collar workers.
00:19:47.000The financial activities sector, which includes banking and insurance in January, had about 25,000 fewer jobs than a year earlier.
00:19:52.000Employment in the field has been basically unchanged since 2024.
00:19:57.000Professional and business services sector fared worse, driven by a large decline in employment at temporary staffing agencies.
00:20:04.000Meanwhile, manufacturing payrolls since January 2024 have dropped by almost 300,000.
00:20:10.000The manufacturing sector, again, is being replaced by technology.
00:20:13.000It is not going to come back simply as a result of tariff policy.
00:20:20.000When it comes to construction payrolls, those have been going up in non-residential areas.
00:20:24.000That would be AI data centers, for example.
00:20:26.000Heavy construction, civil engineering, that is up.
00:21:25.000When you think about it, it's a paper charge.
00:21:28.000We should be the lowest interest rate in the world.
00:21:33.000So he essentially would like for us to have a weaker dollar so that our deficit is not as large.
00:21:38.000That essentially is the deal that he is attempting to make.
00:21:42.000Now, it'll be interesting to see, again, what Kevin Warsh, as the new selected Fed chair, does once confirm, because he tends to agree with President Trump about lowering those interest rates, but simultaneously, he wants to sell off a bunch of assets owned by the Fed, which is somewhat deflationary because it draws money back into the Federal Reserve.
00:21:59.000The case being met by Scott Besson is that the goal here is to put the jobs into the private sector economy.
00:22:04.000And that is one of the things that's happening.
00:22:06.000You have seen very significant private sector job growth, although, again, it is largely located in the healthcare sector overall over the course of the last year or so.
00:22:14.000Look, this is what we've been setting the table for for all of 2025.
00:22:52.000Now, one of the beautiful things about being a socialist, like say a Bernie Sanders, is that you can always rip on the state of the capitalist economy and pretend that you have a solution, even if your solution basically involves collectivizing all of the economy.
00:23:04.000It must be wonderful to be Bernie Sanders.
00:23:06.000He has the intellect of a seven-year-old, truly.
00:23:08.000He stands around and he rails against things that he thinks are unfair cosmically about the universe without any real solutions to offer other than the government will solve it if you give us enough money.
00:23:18.000And, you know, somehow people resonate to this, I suppose.
00:23:23.000You wonder whether Trump is completely crazy and delusional or just a pathological liar.
00:23:30.000But the idea that anybody would believe that this is a great economy when 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, when the cost of the health care is going up, people can't afford housing.
00:23:45.000People can't afford their basic groceries.
00:24:06.000It's always, you know, all the shortcomings that everyone feels.
00:24:09.000And of course, everyone feels it in their pocketbook.
00:24:12.000Everyone feels that costs are too high.
00:24:14.000There has never been a point across my entire life, and I've earned many different amounts of money in a given year, where I've said, you know what?
00:24:19.000Things are really, really affordable until your income goes up dramatically.
00:24:23.000If you walk around to any middle-class person, you say, are things wildly affordable right now?
00:24:27.000The answer is no, because you're middle class.
00:24:32.000And realistically speaking, when you talk about self-reported figures of people feeling like they live paycheck to paycheck, it doesn't necessarily mean they are living paycheck to paycheck, number one.
00:24:41.000But number two, the reality is that virtually for as long as we have data, a huge percentage of Americans have said that they live paycheck to paycheck.
00:24:53.000When it comes to hardship figures, you know, actual data, the number tends to drop.
00:24:58.000The Bank of America Institute, for example, found in 2024 that about 25% of households were living paycheck to paycheck.
00:25:07.000The Federal Reserve estimates that it's 37 to 40% of people who are living paycheck.
00:25:12.000There could be better numbers, you would assume.
00:25:14.000But Bernie Sanders sort of claiming that the economy is somehow down in the dumps when you have a 4.3% unemployment rate, Dow Jones industrial average over 50,000, and rising wages, like real rising wages under President Trump, and the inflation rate down at 2.5%, 3%.
00:25:32.000It's a pretty good economy, historically speaking.
00:25:35.000So if the economic numbers are so solid, then why are people feeling so bad about them?
00:25:43.000According to Axios, one year in, President Trump has squandered a bunch of political advantages.
00:25:50.000Apparently, a new Harvard Caps poll shows that 51% of registered voters say Trump is doing a worse job than Biden.
00:25:58.000According to Rasmussen, 48% of likely voters say Biden did a better job compared with 40% who chose Trump.
00:26:04.000According to YouGov, 46% of U.S. adults say Trump is doing a worse job than Biden, compared with 40% who's saying that he's doing better, and another seven who say he's doing about the same.
00:26:13.000Those are not resounding numbers for President Trump, obviously, when it comes to issues including immigration and on economy.
00:26:44.000I will theorize that one of the things that is going on is that what people actually want at this point, it has been many years in American politics since we've had any level of quietude.
00:26:53.000Truly, I said in 2024 that Trump's victory was the normie revolution.
00:26:59.000It was people looking at Joe Biden and saying, none of this is actually normal.
00:27:02.000You have a brain dead president who is promoting extraordinarily radical policies, and then he's replaced at the last minute by another befuddled politician who is only there because she was selected for certain pre-existing characteristics.
00:27:16.000And then she is pledging more radicalism.
00:27:19.000What we need is sort of the normie middle, just like a normie policy president.
00:27:23.000And the thing that's happened with President Trump is in many areas, he has delivered a normie policy.
00:27:29.000And in some areas, and these are the areas where he is the most loud, he's delivered a very not normie policy.
00:27:34.000So I think that, you know, regardless of how you think the tariffs have gone, and I think it's pretty obvious the tariffs have not done nearly the amount of damage to the American economy that I, for one, thought they might do.
00:27:44.000And maybe that bleeds in, maybe it doesn't.
00:27:45.000But so far, President Trump's tariff policy, while not fulfilling the promises that he suggested that it would make, I mean, it hasn't brought back manufacturing by leaps and bounds, for example.
00:27:55.000His tariff policy hasn't created the economy, clearly.
00:27:58.000But that is also the thing that he talks the most about.
00:28:04.000And it also happens to be the area of his economic program that is the most unpopular by the polls.
00:28:09.000So when President Trump suggests that he is raising Switzerland's tariffs because, for example, he just doesn't like how they talk to him, that is not the sort of solid, normal, quiescent presidency that I think people are actually looking for.
00:28:22.000They just want the good policy and they don't want the feeling of chaos.
00:28:27.000So I put on a 30% tariff, which is very low.
00:28:31.000Still, we were having a big deficit, but it was half the deficit.
00:28:36.000Then I got an emergency call from, I believe, the prime minister of Switzerland, and she was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive.
00:29:20.000We'll do something that's a little bit more palatable, at least now.
00:29:25.000I mean, this sort of vacillating, variable policy based on how he feels about a particular nation's leader at a particular time, that is not the sort of sort of solid, steady leadership that Americans are looking for in a time that's very chaotic.
00:29:37.000Again, a lot of the policy coming out of the administration is excellent, but if it's retailed as up and down and all around, people are going to feel a little bit unbalanced.
00:29:47.000That is not the way that you retail this policy, which brings us to Pam Bondi.
00:29:51.000So yesterday, the Attorney General of the United States, who I think has done truly a poor job as the Attorney General, I think that her victories have been limited and her losses have been many and myriad on PR level.
00:30:04.000Most obviously with regard to the Epstein files and the rollout of the Jeffrey Epstein case, I said this from literally the day that they did this, at the rollout of the announcement, there would be no further prosecutions in the Epstein case and that there was no foreign intelligence intervention and that there's no evidence that he was trafficking minors to other people.
00:30:23.000That you can't just put that out as a written statement on a random day and not explain that to the American people after all the rumors fostered by many in the administration.
00:30:34.000But you actually owe it to the American people to be transparent.
00:30:36.000So what they did is they were very non-transparent at the beginning about their thought process.
00:30:41.000And then over time, the pressure built.
00:30:42.000And then they basically just vomited into the public view millions of documents, leading to the crowdsourcing of terrible ideas.
00:30:49.000And all of that blew up onto the internet.
00:30:51.000Some of the information that came out, I think, is fascinating and interesting.
00:30:54.000We've talked about that with regard to, again, some of the people in the British government.
00:30:58.000We talked about it with regards to Steve Bannon.
00:31:00.000And there are a bunch of figures who are mentioned, and it's interesting.
00:31:03.000But it also has meant the revealing, for example, of some of the alleged victims' names.
00:31:08.000It has led to the revealing of people's names who are not actually accused of a crime.
00:31:13.000And it has led to the crowdsourcing of pretty much every tip in there.
00:31:16.000And a lot of those tips are trash, like truly trash.
00:31:20.000So Pam Bondi appeared on The Hill yesterday.
00:31:25.000She showed up in front of the House Judiciary Committee and Democrats went after her largely.
00:31:31.000A few Republicans went after her as well.
00:31:34.000And the reason that this is not good for the Trump administration is because, again, what you need, it's true for immigration policy as well.
00:32:01.000You need Tom Holman there calmly explaining how policy works.
00:32:04.000When it comes to the economy, you don't need Howard Luttnick, the commerce secretary on TV talking about how we are going to solve the entire national debt with tariffs.
00:32:11.000You need Scott Besson, a calm and collected presence to actually explain how the economy works to people.
00:32:16.000And when it comes to the law and the effectuation of the law, you need a calm presence to explain how the law is being impartially implemented, equal justice before the law, and why you make the decisions you're making.
00:32:29.000What you don't need is performative TV theatrics that are almost certainly designed to earn more kudos from the president who watches these sorts of hearings and looks for the clips.
00:32:41.000And the more militant you are, particularly if you are praiseworthy of President Trump, the more President Trump likes that.
00:32:46.000That might help President Trump and it might help his cabinet officials who are managing up with him, but it doesn't help the Trump administration as a whole, but the broader American public.
00:32:55.000Now, again, not everything that Pam Bondi said is wrong.
00:32:58.000I think some of the things she said were right.
00:33:01.000But as per usual arrangements, many of the things that were right were obscured by the things that were wrong.
00:33:05.000So there was a bit of good Bondi, bad Bondi going on yesterday.
00:33:08.000So Pam Bondi was asked about the idea that Trump was covering things up with regard to the Epstein case.
00:33:14.000And she said President Trump has been the most transparent president in history, vomiting out all this information into public.
00:33:27.000This has been around since the Obama administration.
00:33:30.000This administration released over 3 million pages of documents, over 3 million.
00:33:37.000And Donald Trump signed that law to release all of those documents.
00:33:43.000He is the most transparent president in the nation's history.
00:33:50.000Now, again, I don't know that he's the most transparent president in all of American history, although there's a case to be made that given the fact that his thoughts are constantly in the public view and he talks to the press all the time, that that's the case.
00:34:01.000The manner that she says this stuff matters, however.
00:34:04.000Remember when I said calm and cool and collected, making people feel a sense of steadiness?
00:34:11.000That is not what is happening right there.
00:34:13.000So even the content that she's delivering that I think is largely true is being delivered in a non-useful fashion, a non-utilitarian fashion.
00:34:22.000Representative Jerry Nadler, who is, again, I've appeared in front of this committee.
00:34:25.000I mean, I know a lot of the people on this committee.
00:34:28.000Representative Jerry Nadler was going after her on Russia, and she went after him on the Russian collusion hoax.
00:34:35.000And again, what she's saying here is not wrong.
00:34:37.000It's just that the way she says it is so performative that it sort of undercuts the point she's making.
00:34:43.000First, he brought up the president saying they indicted me twice.
00:35:27.000I don't disagree with the stuff she's saying, but the performative nature of it does not make the American people feel as though there is a professional in charge of the Justice Department.
00:35:39.000Eric Swalwell, man, that dude, the representative from California who wants to run for governor over there.
00:35:46.000He asked her about political violence, and here was her response.
00:35:50.000Congressman, I completely agree with you.
00:35:53.000I know about several of those personally involving you.
00:35:58.000I believe one has been charged publicly, and there's something I would be happy to talk to you about off camera.
00:36:07.000But I can assure you that they are very serious.
00:36:10.000They are being looked into, and I can give you more details on those.
00:36:15.000None of you should be threatened ever.
00:36:17.000None of your children should be threatened.
00:36:20.000None of your families should be threatened.
00:36:22.000And I will work with, you can come into my office any day.
00:36:26.000I will work with all of you on both sides of the aisle if you are ever threatened.
00:36:30.000And I'll gladly talk to you after this hearing about your cases.
00:36:36.000Okay, so again, this is actually like the high point of her testimony.
00:36:39.000Then we got to the stuff that was really the problem.
00:36:41.000So as I said before, when it came to the revelation of what exactly the DOJ was doing on Epstein, I know for a fact from people who were in the DOJ at the time, there needed to be, the DOJ, the FBI, there needed to be a full-scale explanation with full Q ⁇ A with the revelation of particular documents to demonstrate why the DOJ was doing what it was doing.
00:37:02.000That's the thing that needed to happen.
00:37:04.000So when you show up, you should at least be able to do that in sort of a calm, collected fashion.
00:37:09.000This is again why I think that William Barr, who was AG under President Trump the first time, Bill Barr, was a very good AG.
00:37:20.000This was the most awkward moment by far.
00:37:23.000So she was asked about Epstein, and she promptly started doing a cable news spot about how no one should ever mention Epstein again.
00:37:34.000They should only talk about the stock market, which, again, listen, I generally agree that the coverage of Epstein, given the evidence that we have, far exceeds the claims made about Epstein, far exceed the evidence that we have, and thus the coverage of Epstein far exceeds the actual evidentiary claims.
00:37:53.000With that said, I'm not sure the attorney general's job is to go out there and be like, why are you even covering this?
00:39:03.000Listen, I think Thomas Massey has been grandstanding on this.
00:39:05.000I think that Thomas Massey believes and has propagated stories about the Epstein evidence that go well beyond what the facts show at this point.
00:39:15.000Still, I don't think she did a great job handling him.
00:39:17.000She suggested that Massey has Trump derangement syndrome, which, again, I don't think she's wrong.
00:39:22.000It's just this is not particularly useful.
00:39:25.000Within 40 minutes, you asked me a question.
00:39:28.000Within 40 minutes, Wexner's name was added back within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed.
00:39:54.000Okay, so again, like, I think that she's actually right on this, and I think that Massey is wrong on this, but there's a good way to do this, and there's a bad way to do this.
00:40:03.000And she was not doing this the good way.
00:40:05.000Jamie Raskin, I think, is one of the most scruulous members of Congress, the Congressman from Maryland.
00:40:10.000He went after Pam Bondi, but it turned into her just saying that she was a washed-up loser.
00:40:23.000But if, again, the thing that the Trump administration is seeking right now is a feeling of quiet, steady success, which is the thing that you need in a second term if you wish to have a successor who wins a third.
00:40:36.000This is not the stuff that's going to get it done.
00:40:39.000You can let her filibuster all day long, but not on our watch.
00:41:01.000Nothing happens of any value other than political gamesmanship, opportunism, and all the rest.
00:41:08.000There was one headline that emerged from all of this, aside from the Attorney General's behavior, and that was apparently there was a photo of a black binder that Bondi had at the hearing showing the words Jayapal Pramilla search history with a list of documents whose numbers coincided with the number of Epstein files.
00:41:28.000So what it looks like right there, what Jayapal is accusing her of, is having a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails she searched.
00:41:41.000I'm not sure exactly why the DOJ should be monitoring Congress people as they go through the Epstein files or the documents.
00:41:51.000That doesn't seem like a smart thing to do.
00:41:54.000The DOJ did not immediately respond to CNBC when asked if Bondi had a printout of the Congresswoman's search history, why she had it, or if the DOJ kept track of searches by other members of Congress.
00:42:02.000But again, there's another area where the alleged cover-up or the purported cover-up or the dumb behavior of members of the administration is significantly worse than the thing that they are supposedly covering up.
00:42:15.000They've revealed 3.5 million pages of documents into the public view, and they're still being accused of cover-ups because, again, of the poor botchery that is the PR rollout.
00:42:25.000And that goes to the professionalism of some of the people in charge of particular agencies.
00:42:31.000Joining me on the line to discuss the latest on the economy is Professor Jason Furman, Harvard Professor of Economics.
00:42:36.000Professor Furman, thanks so much for the time.
00:43:27.000I do think people at the very top are doing even better than people in the middle, but people in the middle are doing better than they were a year ago.
00:43:38.000So when you look at what President Trump has been talking about doing, a lot of it is sort of for show.
00:43:44.000I mean, when he's talking about freezing credit card rates, which he can't do unilaterally from the White House, or when he's talking about barring corporations from buying single-family homes, none of this is actually going to change systemically the direction of the economy, just as tariffs were unable to change the directionality with regard to manufacturing jobs in the United States.
00:44:02.000Some of the things that I think are weighing here are the general American nervousness about AI and also the fact that the president talks so extensively about some of the least popular things in his platform like tariffs.
00:44:37.000Every college student I talk to is either terrified about AI, thrilled about AI, or often some combination of the two.
00:44:46.000So far, it doesn't appear to have taken a lot of jobs.
00:44:50.000And so far, it doesn't appear to be showing up very much in productivity growth.
00:44:54.000In fact, the main way it's showing up in the jobs numbers is the people being hired to build data centers to run these models.
00:45:03.000But I do think that that's going to change in the coming years.
00:45:06.000And just really big question that no one knows the answer to is to what degree does it complement people's skills and enable them to be better workers and paid more or substitute for those skills and lead them to be more dispensable and paid less.
00:45:20.000Historically, technology was much more about complementing and raising wages.
00:45:24.000I'd place a soft bet on that for AI too, but with a huge amount of uncertainty and a certain amount of dread about the downside here.
00:45:34.000So to go back to sort of the second point that I was making with regard to tariffs, it seems to me that one of the problems is that President Trump actually himself expresses a fair bit of upset at various factors in the economy, up to and including his attacks on, for example, Jerome Powell and his open statements that he wants the interest rate lowered, which seems to, again, express that there's a lack of liquidity in the economy, which I really don't think is the case right now.
00:45:57.000I don't think that the problem is liquidity.
00:45:58.000I think the problem is, if there is a problem, is sort of uncertainty.
00:46:01.000It seems like all of the investors that I know have been stacking their investments at the top end of the market.
00:46:07.000The MAG7 have been growing by leaps and bounds.
00:46:10.000The rest of the market is up, but certainly not by that same sort of margin.
00:46:15.000What do you think the president could be doing differently in terms of PR, how he addresses these issues?
00:46:20.000Yeah, look, I mean, we've said that the economy is getting better for most people.
00:46:24.000The question, though, is, would it be doing even better but for President Trump?
00:46:30.000And when it comes to the tariffs, I think that is certainly true.
00:46:33.000Prices are probably about a half a point, maybe even a percent higher than they otherwise would be because of the tariffs.
00:46:41.000Economic growth would be even better were it not for the tariffs.
00:46:45.000And in some sense, I think the president understands this because when it comes to certain politically sensitive ideas, he's taken the tariffs off of it.
00:46:53.000You know, things like coffee, he's taken the tariffs off.
00:46:55.000He's tried to reduce them on other countries.
00:46:57.000He's delayed some of the tariffs on furniture.
00:48:34.000And then he wants to, at the same time, lower the interest rates in order to present more liquid opportunities for banks and financial institutions.
00:48:42.000What do you make of that sort of strategy?
00:48:44.000And what do you think of Warsh as pick for Fed chair?
00:48:54.000That being said, I plan to handle him the same way I've handled the Fed, which is respectfully to disagree when I disagree and explain what I disagree about.
00:49:02.000In particular, his desire, as you just said, to dramatically shrink the balance sheet would mean selling off a lot of the bonds the Fed holds.
00:49:11.000That would drive up mortgage interest rates.
00:49:14.000I don't think we need dramatic interest rate cuts in our economy, but I don't think we need dramatic interest rate increases either.
00:49:21.000My guess is in the seat, he'll end up being pragmatic.
00:49:24.000And some of the ideas that make less sense, like that one, will end up being, you know, facing reality and being dramatically scaled back when you see what the data says.
00:49:34.000But to me, that's going to be the most important test for Warshaw.
00:49:39.000And two, can he change his mind when the data changes?
00:49:45.000I mean, his theory there is pretty interesting, which is basically that the United States government is overinvested in particular areas, like, for example, the mortgage market, and that it would be better if the private sector were to, we should shift essentially the air in the balloon over to the private sector and away from public investment in its own bonds.
00:50:01.000What do you make of the actual generalized theory there?
00:50:05.000There's a lot of people in financial markets that think that, and a lot of economists disagree with that.
00:50:10.000And I guess I'm part of my tribe on this one.
00:50:13.000I'll be with the economists, which is I don't think it's distorting the market that much.
00:50:20.000The market basically wants interest rates to be where they are now.
00:50:23.000That's roughly what's balancing supply and demand, roughly consistent with the inflation rate that we want.
00:50:30.000And if the Fed dramatically sold off a lot of these assets, we'd get interest rates in a place we'd rather not have them.
00:50:37.000The other thing to understand is the Fed has a lot of assets, but it also has an equal set of liabilities.
00:50:42.000Those liabilities are bank deposits with the Fed.
00:51:10.000In cultural news, James Vanderbeek, who many people of my generation know, of course, from Dawson's Creek, he died on Wednesday at the age of 48.
00:51:20.000Apparently, there's a GoFundMe page up for his family.
00:51:23.000He had six kids with his wife, Kimberly Vanderbeek.
00:51:27.000He had financial difficulties because of the cost of coverage with regard to the stage three colorectal cancer that he was diagnosed with.
00:51:49.000Today's my birthday, and it has been the hardest year of my life.
00:51:54.000And I wanted to share something that I learned with y'all.
00:51:59.000When I was younger, I used to define myself as an actor, right?
00:52:04.000Which was never really all that fulfilling.
00:52:07.000And then I became a husband, and that was much better.
00:52:09.000And then I became a father, and that was the ultimate.
00:52:12.000I could define myself then as a loving, capable, strong, supportive husband, father, provider, steward of the land that we're so lucky to live on.
00:52:24.000And for a long time, that felt like a really good definition to the question: who am I?
00:52:49.000So I could no longer be a husband that was helpful to my wife.
00:52:53.000I could no longer be a father who could pick up his kids and put them to bed and be there for them.
00:52:57.000I could not be a provider because that wasn't working.
00:53:00.000I couldn't even be a steward of the land because at times I was too weak to prune all the trees during the window that you're supposed to prune them.
00:53:11.000And so I was faced with the question: if I am just a too skinny, weak guy alone in an apartment with cancer, what am I?
00:53:28.000And I meditated and the answer came through: I am worthy of God's love simply because I exist.
00:53:40.000And if I'm worthy of God's love, shouldn't I also be worthy of my own?
00:53:49.000And as I move through this healing portal toward recovery, I wanted to share that with you because I think that revelation that came to me was due in no small part to all the prayers and the love that have been directed toward me.
00:54:01.000So I offer that to you, however, it sits in your consciousness, however it resonates, run with it.
00:54:07.000And if the word God trips you up, I certainly don't know.
00:54:12.000I can't even know what God is or explain God.
00:54:15.000My efforts to connect to God are an ongoing process that is a constant unfolding mystery to me.
00:54:22.000But if it's a trigger, it feels too religious.
00:54:24.000You can take the word God out and your mantra can simply be, I am worthy of love because you are.
00:54:38.000Thank you for the love and prayers, everyone.
00:54:42.000I mean, it's quite a beautiful message.
00:54:44.000Obviously, he doesn't want you to take God out of that.
00:54:46.000And I think that, you know, in the throes of true pain and suffering, you know, reliance on the understanding that in the end, you're beloved of God is really, really important.
00:54:55.000Joining me on the line is Senator John Cornyn, the Republican senator from Texas.
00:54:59.000Senator, thanks so much for your time.
00:55:04.000So, yeah, I want to start with the 2026 election.
00:55:07.000Obviously, a lot of Republicans are looking at the map and they are looking at the House map, which looks not wonderful at the moment.
00:55:13.000And they look at the Senate map and they say, okay, well, Republicans, they could afford to lose three seats, still retain a majority.
00:55:19.000The three most vulnerable seats for Republicans right now in the Senate are North Carolina, Ohio, and Maine.
00:55:25.000But the sort of firewall for Republicans is Texas, Iowa, Alaska.
00:55:31.000Obviously, you're the senator from Texas.
00:55:32.000You are now in a very hard-fought primary battle with the Attorney General of the state of Texas, Ken Paxton.
00:55:38.000He has some endorsements that have recently come in.
00:55:41.000Can you talk to me a little bit about the race?
00:55:43.000How seriously should Republicans take the risk that possibly the Texas Senate seat turns blue if you're not the nominee in Texas?
00:55:51.000Yeah, I think Republicans could blow it in Texas.
00:55:55.000And, you know, Texas has always been the one state we could depend on to remain red.
00:56:00.000Democrats have been working for years to try to turn Texas blue without success.
00:56:05.000But unfortunately, if the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, is the nominee, it provides the opening they've been hoping and praying for for years.
00:56:16.000And at the very least, if he were to win, which I think is in doubt, it would require hundreds of millions of dollars to try to salvage him.
00:56:25.000He would not win by a substantial margin and would not be able to help with the down ballot races.
00:56:31.000Conversely, in 2020, I won by 10 points.
00:56:35.000And I think I could be a help to the president and his agenda for the last two years of his second term by helping carry some of these House seats.
00:56:44.000And of course, the House majority is absolutely critical as well.
00:56:50.000So for those who are unfamiliar with sort of your record versus Ken Paxton's record, Ken Paxton obviously is a very controversial figure in Texas.
00:56:59.000You're a longtime senator in your state.
00:57:02.000What are the sort of things that you can expect Democrats to attack Ken Paxton on were he to be the nominee?
00:57:09.000Well, look at a website, crookedken.com, which is updated regularly.
00:57:15.000But I think a lot of his baggage is notorious.
00:57:19.000It's well known in some circles, but not universally.
00:57:23.000And I think his impeachment by the Republican House, his $6.6 million judgment against Texas taxpayers by whistleblowers who turned him into the FBI for interfering with a federal investigation of a donor.
00:57:39.000And then, of course, he's become so reckless, he's even blown up his family.
00:57:43.000And I just don't think he's a trustworthy individual.
00:57:47.000This is a job not for performance artists, not for people who just want to be famous and get the most clicks on social media and raise money, but serious people who actually want to do important work.
00:58:04.000So, meanwhile, the Senate, you know, obviously there's important business that needs to be taken up in the Senate that includes the Save America Act, which has now passed the House.
00:58:11.000A lot of talk in the Senate about whether or not the Senate majority leader is going to force a talking filibuster on the Save Act.
00:58:18.000First of all, why don't you tell people what the SAVE Act is?
00:58:20.000Second, do you think that the Senate is going to force a talking filibuster as opposed to the sort of the usual arrangement where people can claim a filibuster without actually having to get up there and jabber for 25 hours?
00:58:32.000Well, the Save America Act is basically voter ID, which is a very popular, bipartisan issue.
00:58:41.000And it seems like it should be a no-brainer.
00:58:44.000But these days, everything is contested by the resistance on the Democratic side.
00:58:51.000And so I would say there's almost universal support in the Senate.
00:58:56.000I know the House has now passed the bill.
00:58:58.000The challenge, as you mentioned, is, and typically in the Senate, you need 60 votes in order to proceed.
00:59:05.000And I think regardless of the outcome, I still think we need to vote on this bill and put people on the record.
00:59:11.000And then that needs to become one of the components of our campaign in the 2026 midterms.
00:59:17.000But the talking filibuster is an innovation.
00:59:21.000I know people who are of a certain age remember Jimmy Stewart and Mr. Smith goes to Washington, but that hasn't been the rule for a long time now.
00:59:31.000And it requires 60 votes in order to proceed.
00:59:34.000The idea, of course, is that there needs to be some place in America where there is deliberation on important issues that affect 330-plus million Americans.
00:59:57.000Okay, meanwhile, one of the other bills that you've been promoting is the ICE Protection Act, which would apparently increase penalties for people who are attempting to resist law enforcement.
01:00:20.000And the two tragic incidents in Minneapolis where people interfered with law enforcement activities and lost their lives, those are obvious tragedies.
01:00:32.000But the lesson is, I think, two lessons.
01:00:35.000One is sanctuary cities are dangerous because ICE had no real alternative but to arrest these people with final orders of deportation, criminal aliens in the street, where typically those handoffs occur in a county jail where the local government respects a federal detainer.
01:00:56.000And so you don't have that problem in places like Texas.
01:00:59.000But finally, I think one of the lessons that we should all know is to cooperate with law enforcement.
01:01:06.000Don't try to interfere with an ongoing law enforcement operation.
01:01:12.000They're doing the best they can under very difficult circumstances.
01:01:15.000And I stand firmly with President Trump and those who believe that we need to enforce our immigration laws.
01:01:23.000Well, I mean, I will note at this point that you do have a 99.2% record of voting with President Trump's policy proposals, despite all sort of protestations to the contrary.
01:01:32.000Senator Cornyn, thanks so much for the time.
01:02:30.000And the world's most famous millionaire matchmaker, Patty Stanger, who stops by to help us find that special someone on the year's most intimate day.
01:02:41.000Guys, did anyone even try to clear this with me?