The final New York City mayoral debate between Zoran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Sliwa. Plus, we discuss the latest on the government shutdown and that Senate Democrat from Maine, the candidate who has a Nazi tattoo.
00:00:07.000Plus, we discussed the latest on the government shutdown and that Senate Democrat from Maine, the candidate who, you know, has the Nazi tattoo.
00:00:44.000I could be calling you to give you my personal lifetime membership.
00:00:48.000But before any of that happens, you actually do need to download the Daily Wire Plus app and follow me inside it right now in order to win.
00:00:54.000Well, last night was the second big New York mayoral debate.
00:00:58.000It involved, of course, the frontrunner, Zoran Mamdani, the pro-Islamist, pro-jihadist, Marxist frontrunner who won the Democratic nomination versus Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, who had to resign office after, you know, getting a bunch of old people killed with his bad COVID policy and also grabbing ass.
00:01:21.000He lost the Democratic nomination to Mom Dani and has been trailing him in the polls ever since, largely because there's a third candidate in the race, Curtis Sliwa, a radio host from New York, longtime New York kind of mainstay.
00:01:34.000He's the head of an organization called the Guardian Angels, which back in the 1970s and 1980s did a bunch of work where they'd walk around with red berets on the subway, making the city safer for people who are living there by intimidating would-be criminals.
00:01:47.000And of course, he's become a pretty popular radio host, has been a big sort of iconic figure in New York's right-wing politics for half a century at this point.
00:01:57.000Well, the polls right now have Mom Dani ahead, and it is unclear whether if Sliwa dropped out, the consolidated support between Cuomo and Sliwa would be enough to overcome Mom Dani.
00:02:06.000What is amazing is Momdani's base of support.
00:02:09.000According to a brand new poll out from the Patriot Polling Survey, Mom Dani has 62% of the foreign-born vote in New York City.
00:02:18.000For those who seem to believe that it makes no difference when you import a bunch of people to the United States who have different views of the United States, shall we say, than the sort of mainline, mainstream, average American view, yeah, it makes a very, very big difference.
00:02:32.000In New York City, 62% of the foreign-born vote is moving toward Momdani, Cuomo at 24%, Sliwa at 12%.
00:02:41.000Among American-born New Yorkers, Cuomo leads at 40%.
00:02:48.000So Mamdani's almost running in third among native-born New Yorkers, which says something about the importation of people, again, from places that do not share basic American values and are significantly warmer to Islamism and to Marxism.
00:03:02.000Now, this poll does show Momdani at the top of the pack overall.
00:03:34.000We've seen it most recently during the Israel-Hamas war, in which extraordinary amounts of propaganda were put out by foreign actors on TikTok and on X, deliberately designed to split the American body politic over that particular issue.
00:03:48.000And apparently now, TikTok has been heavily, heavily promoting Zoran Mamdani, according to a brand new report from the New York Post.
00:03:59.000TikTok is allegedly putting its thumb on the scale to help Zorin Mamdani win the New York City mayoralty.
00:04:03.000According to a new report, the Chinese-owned app's algorithm is distorting the playing field in New York City's mayoral race by amplifying pro-Mamdani content while suppressing videos backing his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, according to a Tel Aviv-based tech insider who cited a key leaked document from the social media company.
00:04:19.000Early evidence points to algorithmic influence that may be shaping voter perception in the New York City elections, according to this tech insider, Johonatan Dodelis.
00:04:27.000He wrote that in a medium post published on Thursday.
00:04:30.000He noted TikTok's algorithm doesn't just determine which videos go viral.
00:04:33.000It's shaping what millions of people understand to be true about the world.
00:04:36.000And this, of course, has been true about TikTok for a very long time.
00:04:38.000It is not a shock that a Chinese-based app would prefer a Marxist Islamist as the mayor of New York.
00:04:44.000Okay, well, last night featured the second debate and the last debate before the election between Momdani, Cuomo, and Sliwa.
00:04:53.000And it did not go amazing for Zoran Mamdani.
00:04:55.000Turns out that when questioned in any serious fashion about his views, dude has nothing.
00:05:00.000He's got that phony, smarmy, pasted on smile that sends a chill up the spine of everyone who can identify basic authenticity, but seems to charm the pants off a bunch of wild left progressives who see Mom Dani smiling and somehow think that's that's genuine.
00:05:16.000Cuomo and Sleewa went on the attack, according to the New York Post.
00:05:22.000The candidates sparred over President Trump, anti-Semitism and Mamdani's anti-Israel stance, mayoral control over the city's public schools, and much more with plenty of mudslinging.
00:05:46.000Now, this has been a major issue, at least for the last several weeks, where it's been clear the only way to beat Mom Dani would be for there to be a consolidation of the vote.
00:05:55.000Curtis was asked about this by Sid Rosenberg, who's another host, sort of an iconic host in New York City.
00:06:01.000And Curtis basically melted down because Sid asked him, you know, you should really spend your time attacking Mom Dani and you should get out of the race because you're not going to be the next New York mayor.
00:06:13.000I have armed security guards now protecting my life and Nancy's life.
00:06:18.000I've been bribed by the billionaires to drop out of here.
00:06:22.000If anything happens to me or anything happens to my wife because of this frenzy that I hear constantly coming from some of your colleagues here at WABC, it's on you guys and you gals.
00:06:37.000My life, my life is on the line here, Sid.
00:06:40.000My wife, Nancy, who has never harmed anybody who only cares about people and animals, is under threat now.
00:06:48.000Even when the Gottis and Gambinos put a hit on me, five Hollow Point bullets, I never had armed security.
00:06:56.000The frenzy that is coming out of people's mouths.
00:07:02.000I mean, again, that is not an excuse for why you're staying in the race, Madute.
00:07:05.000I mean, like, many of us have armed security at all times.
00:07:08.000Unfortunately, that is the nature of the beast right now.
00:07:11.000It is just an unfortunate point in American politics.
00:07:14.000There's a report yesterday that Barry Weiss, the new CBS news editor, has to have six armed security guards.
00:07:19.000And I will tell you that our team is very, very large when it comes to security.
00:07:23.000And that is an unfortunate result of the fact that there are so many political actors these days who use unhinged rhetoric about their opponents and include in that unhinged rhetoric insane conspiracism that leads unhinged people to believe that prominent political commentators and politicians are controlling their lives and making their lives worse in such a way they can only be removed by force.
00:07:46.000But that's not a reason why Curtis should stay in the race.
00:07:49.000Putting all of that aside, the debate last night was not good for Mom Dani.
00:08:07.000He seems to believe that the mayoralty should simply fall in his lap.
00:08:11.000But last night, he was definitely more lively than usual.
00:08:13.000Here was Andrew Cuomo's opening statement: New York is the greatest city on the globe, but we are at a pivotal moment.
00:08:23.000And the voters are going to have to decide in this election what candidate has the plan to save this city and what candidate can get it done, not just talk about it.
00:08:53.000And I will end, end this hate-mongering and division that is tearing this city apart because that's not who we are as a New Yorker, as New Yorkers.
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00:11:24.000Curtis Sleewa's opening remarks were better than Cuomo's for sure.
00:12:06.000Tonight, I want you to look at the content of my policies, to know that I've served this city for more than 50 years, the city that I love.
00:12:14.000And I'm going to share with you my vision to make New York City safer again, to make New York City more affordable again, and where everybody once again can live the American dream.
00:12:28.000Now, again, if Sleeve were not a Republican, you might have a shot at the Mayor Royalty.
00:13:08.000It's, it's so, but the things that he campaigns on are, he just says affordability and the future a lot.
00:13:13.000And what does he mean by affordability?
00:13:15.000He means that he is going to promise a bunch of things he can't actually fulfill because he doesn't have the ability to raise state taxes, as the Wall Street Journal points out.
00:13:23.000Quote, Mamdani has said he wants to generate $9 billion in new tax revenue by raising taxes on New York City's wealthiest residents and businesses.
00:13:29.000He's calling for a 2% tax income on incomes over a million bucks, which would produce $4 billion in tax revenue.
00:13:35.000He wants to increase the state's corporate tax rate to 11.5%, generating $5 billion annually.
00:14:14.000Zora Mamdani is a weirdo creep Marxist who seems to believe that he can run a junior high presidential campaign in which you promise no homework and free candy every day and people will vote for it.
00:14:30.000Apparently, it's going to work, which is a testament to how bad a candidate Andrew Cuomo is and how out of touch New Yorkers are, apparently.
00:14:38.000Here is Mamdani's opening statement in which he said affordability in the future 2,619 times.
00:14:45.000While there are three candidates on this stage, you will hear only two messages.
00:14:49.000My opponents who spend more time trying to convince the other to drop out than actually proposing their own policies will speak only of the past because that's all that they know.
00:14:59.000I am the sole candidate running with a vision for the future of this city.
00:15:05.000By the way, his vision for the future very much approximates Vladimir Lenin's vision for the future circa 1917.
00:15:13.000Well, he was battered about Zor Mamdani.
00:15:16.000He didn't get out of this debate scot-free.
00:15:18.000Andrew Cuomo in particular was on attack against Mamdani.
00:15:21.000He pointed out quite correctly that Zor Mamdani is a leech on the ass of society, that he has never held a job, that he has been a completely useless person his entire life, which is absolutely true.
00:15:30.000He is a trust fund baby who tried to make a career as a bad rapper before getting elected to the assembly, where he has ditched pretty much every major vote.
00:15:39.000He is 33 years old and is yet to hold a real job.
00:15:41.000And he's running for mayor of the financial capital of planet Earth.
00:15:45.000Here's Andrew Cuomo smacking him around.
00:16:33.000And Mamdani is trying to smile his way through it.
00:16:36.000Como also slammed Mamdani on his anti-Semitism, which is clear and obvious to anybody who's been watching this race for more than two seconds.
00:16:43.000Mamdani is globalized the intifadashtik.
00:16:46.000His unwillingness to say that Hamas should disarm, his statements that he will arrest the sitting prime minister of the state of Israel, despite the fact he has no authority to do so.
00:16:54.000The fact that in his past he's made excuses for the Holy Land Five, people who are literally linked by law enforcement to terrorism and are in jail for those links.
00:17:02.000The fact that Zorin Mamdani has campaigned alongside and taken pictures alongside people involved as unindited co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
00:17:10.000Like, that's just the beginning of the list of his pro-jihadism, Mamdani.
00:17:15.000Here is Andrew Cuomo smacking him over it.
00:17:19.000You know, not everything is a TikTok video.
00:17:22.000You're the savior of the Jewish people.
00:17:24.000You won't denounce globalize the Intifada, which means kill Jews.
00:17:28.000There's unprecedented fear in New York.
00:17:34.000It was 650 rabbis who signed the letter, not several.
00:17:41.000And he then went on to go after Mamdani over LGBTQ issues, because one of the weird things about Mamdani is that Mamdani is the scavenger coalition, all in one human.
00:17:52.000I talk in my book, Lines and Scavengers, about the scavenger coalition, which would be the leeches, the lechers, and the barbarians.
00:18:00.000He really is more in the barbarian line, meaning he is somebody who is not originally from the United States, who does not believe in the basic ideals of the United States, but is using the free speech and freedom of thought and free politics in the United States to make his way to destroy the civilization from the inside.
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00:22:16.000Cuomo also went out of his way to slam Momdani on his economic proposals, which are totally crazy.
00:22:50.000And of course, Cuomo is right about that.
00:22:51.000Mamdani is making promises he has no intention of keeping.
00:22:54.000As I say, this is a junior high school presidential campaign in which he promises free cookies and milk, endless candy, and no homework.
00:23:01.000And if New Yorkers buy this, well, they're going to get to take the ride after they buy the ticket.
00:23:06.000Cuomo points out that Momdani is a great actor who missed his calling, which I mean, honestly, I think that's a little too complimentary to Mamtani.
00:23:23.000I am going to increase that pilot program to more than 200 schools, and we're going to do it because we have to deliver for these children.
00:25:10.000He has a bunch of positions that are absolutely between incoherent and insane.
00:25:15.000And he has a population in New York City that is delusional enough to believe that they can endure another horrific mayoralty along the lines of Bill de Blasio and everything will suddenly be okay.
00:25:26.000What kind of stuff is Mom Dani proposing?
00:25:28.000Well, just to take from his apple tree of stupidity, one apple.
00:25:33.000At one point last night, he was asked about the police, and he said that dispatchers should decide whether it's appropriate to even send the police.
00:25:42.000Maybe they should instead send mental health professionals and the dispatcher should decide.
00:25:49.000What I am proposing is something that will address the needs of New Yorkers in the present.
00:25:54.000We speak and hear from New Yorkers across the five boroughs who outline how the mental health crisis is one of the major challenges in this city.
00:26:02.000And yet what we have in our city is asking those same police officers who are being asked to respond to shootings, respond to murders, to also respond to these calls.
00:26:10.000I trust the dispatchers who would be receiving these calls to make the determination as to whether there was any indication of violence.
00:26:17.000If there is no indication of a threat of violence, then we would set the mental health experts and providers to respond to those same incidents.
00:26:32.000So, you want the 911 dispatchers to be the people who are now determining whether to send a cop or whether to send a social worker.
00:26:41.000So, I asked our friends over at Comet, which is a project of perplexity: what are the qualifications for a 911 dispatcher in New York City?
00:26:48.000Since apparently, Zorn Momdani now wants them to make judgment calls on the spur of the moment, whether to send a social worker or a cop.
00:26:55.000Apparently, according to comments, it qualifies a 911 dispatcher in New York City.
00:26:59.000Applicants must meet strict educational, experiential, and training standards set by the NYPD in New York State.
00:27:24.000You have to pass the New York City Civil Service Examination for a police communications technician administered by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.
00:27:31.000I'm sure that is an extraordinarily challenging task, I'm sure.
00:27:35.000And then you have to complete 200 hours of training under the Emergency Services Dispatch Training Evaluation Program, which I assume is like a month of training or so, and includes courses in communications, radio operations, stress management, and legal aspects.
00:27:57.000And then you have to have emergency medical dispatcher certification and also emergency fire certification and CPR certification.
00:28:07.000So, I don't know where in there that qualifies you to make a judgment call based on a loose set of facts about whether to send a cop or not.
00:28:14.000I'm not super comfortable with people with a high school GED and 200 hours of some form of training and a couple of state certifications, being a person who decides whether or not a cop shows up with a gun or a social worker shows up with a pencil and a clipboard when a nut is trying to push somebody in front of a train on a subway platform.
00:28:50.000He said that some of the accusers were in the audience, and then Cuomo responded: here was Mom Dani's accusation: Mr. Cuomo, in 2021, 13 different women who worked in your administration credibly accused you of sexual harassment.
00:29:08.000Since then, you have spent more than $20 million in taxpayer funds to defend yourself, all while describing these allegations as entirely political.
00:29:21.000You have even gone so far as to legally go after these women.
00:29:25.000One of those women, Charlotte Bennett, is here in the audience this evening.
00:29:31.000You sought to access her private gynecological records.
00:29:36.000She cannot speak up for herself because you lodged a defamation case against her.
00:29:44.000What do you say to the 13 women that you sexually harassed?
00:29:48.000Okay, so Cuomo then responded to those claims.
00:29:51.000One of the big problems for Cuomo here is that the guy still hasn't come up with a great answer on this.
00:29:55.000Now, first of all, if you lodge a defamation claim against somebody because what you're saying is that they said something that is absolutely false, that I know that Mamdani is trying to claim that that's a form of silencing.
00:30:06.000That is a legal procedure because you are claiming the person lied about you.
00:30:09.000I'm not sure exactly what the alternative would be.
00:30:11.000Now, again, that's not a defense of Andrew Cuomo and his behavior with women.
00:30:13.000I just think that it's kind of legally pernicious to suggest that if there is, for example, an NDA, which is a normal employment thing, or if there is a defamation case that you lodge against someone you say is lying, and somehow this in and of itself amounts to an act of silencing.
00:30:29.000It can be used that way, but not necessarily.
00:31:11.000The reason that Mamdani is winning is not just because, obviously, he's a TikTok hot thing.
00:31:16.000It's also because Andrew Cuomo is a crappy candidate.
00:31:18.000Andrew Cuomo has never been a wonderful candidate in the state of New York.
00:31:22.000And he's run a really lackluster race.
00:31:24.000If Mamdani ends up as the actual mayor of New York, yes, part of the blame goes to Curtis for not dropping out of the race, but a huge part of the blame goes to Andrew Cuomo, who should have been able to defeat Zorin Mamdani in a Democratic primary.
00:32:04.000But if you are hopeful at all for the future of New York, Zora Mamdani as mayor is a bad idea.
00:32:09.000Now, again, I'm of divided mind about this because to my mind, I still have the H.L. Mankin phraseology.
00:32:15.000And that is that democracy is the theory that people get what they vote for good and hard.
00:32:20.000And so if New Yorkers really, really want Zora Mamdani, they can have him.
00:32:23.000And then the prices in Palm Beach will go up.
00:32:27.000But as somebody who would actually like to see New York not become even more of a bleep poll than it has become recently, I'm obviously rooting very hard for the defeat of this Marxist Islamist as mayor of New York.
00:32:38.000It says an awful lot about the state of the country, the state of Gen X and millennials, that this is even a close race, and that Mamdani certainly is likely to win, which is wild.
00:32:47.000Already coming up, we have the Senate Majority Leader.
00:32:50.000We have the EPA administrator, plus our own White House reporter, Mary Margaret Olihan, stops by to talk about this White House reconstruction project.
00:32:56.000First, folks, the response has been huge.
00:32:59.000I did a signing on All Access Live with some of you a little bit earlier this week.
00:33:02.000Since then, Lions and Scavengers have been flying off the shelves faster than we can even restock the book.
00:33:37.000Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has its continued struggles with people who seem pretty warm toward both the sort of new Nazism in Hamas and also sometimes, I guess, the old Nazism.
00:33:48.000Graham Plattner continues to be a controversial figure.
00:33:51.000He, of course, is Bernie Sanders, endorsed candidate in that Maine Senate race.
00:33:58.000He actually released the tape because he knew it was going to break.
00:34:00.000He was caught on tape shirtless at a wedding a few years back.
00:34:03.000And the problem with that is not that he's shirtless at a wedding, although, you know, just as a general rule, dudes, keep your shirts on at weddings.
00:34:09.000But particularly, keep your shirt on at a wedding if you have a giant death's head tattoo, like a Nazi death's head tattoo.
00:34:15.000And for those who don't believe that that's what that is, I'm just going to point out that if you watch Schindler's list, okay, Ralph finds his character, literally wears it on his collar as a member of the SS.
00:34:24.000This is not like an obscure symbol here.
00:34:28.000So now Graham Plattner is trying to buy it back.
00:36:15.000And I think as a nation, especially given the fact that we have a president who is convicted of 34 felonies, maybe we have to do a little bit of forgiveness.
00:36:35.000Well, I guess that the red-brown alliance rides in tandem as per the usual arrangement.
00:36:41.000Meanwhile, the government shutdown continues apace.
00:36:43.000Doesn't seem like it's going to end anytime soon.
00:36:45.000Democrats seem to think that this is a winning issue for them, despite the polling that doesn't demonstrate that in any way, shape, or form.
00:36:51.000Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, he is trying to blame this on President Trump, which is wild because literally Trump's position is: what if we just keep funding the government at the current rates we are funding the government?
00:37:21.000Wait, wait, are you saying Obamacare has been generally a fail?
00:37:25.000Anyway, Hakeem Jeffery says we have to save Obamacare by shutting down the government.
00:37:31.000Donald Trump has spent more time on the golf course than he has in talking to Democrats on Capitol Hill to reopen the government to enact a spending agreement that's bipartisan and to address the Republican health care crisis.
00:37:46.000His behavior, unpresidential, unhinged, unpatriotic, un-American, throughout this process, speaks for itself.
00:37:58.000Now, I think that actually what speaks for itself is the bizarre Democratic insistence that we shut down the government so they can undo a bill they were unable to stop a few months back.
00:38:11.000Joining me on the line is the Republican Senate Majority Leader, John Thune.
00:38:14.000Senator Thun, thanks so much for taking the time.
00:38:18.000So let's talk about the latest on the government shutdown.
00:38:21.000Democrats seem to have shown very little sign that they are interested in caving.
00:38:24.000You have a few Democrats who are sort of moderates on the other side who have talked about the necessity to get past the government shutdown, Senator Fetterman being the most obvious.
00:38:32.000Where do you think we are at this point?
00:38:40.000The Democrats will vote it down again.
00:38:42.000Tomorrow, we're going to give them a different something else to vote on.
00:38:45.000We gave them a defense appropriations bill to vote on last week, which would have funded the troops, and they block voted against that.
00:38:52.000This one tomorrow is a Ron Johnson bill, which essentially what it does, Ben, is it basically just pays everybody who's working.
00:38:59.000So anybody in the federal workforce, you know, furloughed employees will obviously get back pay, but anybody today who is working in any government agency would get paid.
00:39:07.000And I don't know what they're going to do, but as you suggest right now, it looks like they're sort of digging in.
00:39:14.000I think this is a real losing hand for them to play.
00:39:17.000It's certainly costing people all over the country big time, particularly federal employees.
00:39:23.000And the longer this thing drags on, the worse it gets.
00:39:25.000But they, at this point, at least right now, don't seem prepared to want to come to their senses and actually do the right thing for the American people, which is to keep the government open.
00:39:36.000And Senator Thun, they've talked a lot about the idea that what they're trying to do here is lower the cost curve on health care, that premiums are too high.
00:39:42.000What they really mean by that, I assume, is that they want to continue to subsidize Obamacare at essentially pandemic levels, despite the fact that the pandemic has been over for several years at this point.
00:39:52.000Isn't this also sort of a tacit admission that Obamacare didn't do its job?
00:39:56.000We were told that Obamacare was going to radically bend the cost curve and bring down the cost of premiums.
00:39:59.000And here you have Democrats openly acknowledging that absent a gigantic infusion of more government subsidy from the federal level, the premiums are too high.
00:40:07.000And they created this crisis, this COVID cliff, if you will, and these enhanced subsidies, which did go into effect, as you point out, during the pandemic.
00:40:21.000So this is really a problem of their own making.
00:40:23.000But the broader point is the right one, and that is that everything that Obamacare has done, including these enhanced subsidies, has added to the cost of insurance policies.
00:40:32.000In fact, if you look from 2013 to 2025 to where we are today, insurance rates and the exchanges, the Obamacare exchanges, have gone up about 221%, if you can believe that.
00:40:44.000And so it's done nothing but inflate the cost that people are paying for health insurance across this country.
00:40:50.000And that's because the fundamental program is flawed.
00:40:53.000And then the enhanced subsidies were flawed, too.
00:40:57.000So you've got people who are making $5,000, $600,000 a year who qualified.
00:41:00.000They have zero premium policy, so people don't even know they're covered.
00:41:03.000Insurance companies are incentivized to auto-enroll people.
00:41:07.000And so it's become a money maker, you know, just a factory for insurance companies to make money because there are a lot of people out there that they enroll who don't even know they have coverage.
00:41:15.000And so you've got this flawed structure with no incentive to constrain costs.
00:41:21.000And as a consequence, you've got just the costs going up at astronomical rates every year.
00:41:41.000Now, Senator Thun, Senator Fenderman has suggested that actually the filibuster ought to be nuked, which is, I think, unique.
00:41:47.000I've never seen a situation in which a member of the opposition party calls for the majority party to nuke the filibuster in order to get something done.
00:41:54.000Obviously, you have reservations about doing that.
00:41:56.000Every time the filibuster has been nuked in the past, it has led to a new precedent, which is that it no longer exists for those types of scenarios.
00:42:04.000That's obviously been true when Democrats nuked the filibuster for judicial nominees.
00:42:07.000That led to the Republicans being able to actually get onto the Supreme Court a bunch of nominees they otherwise might not have been able to get through.
00:42:14.000Why do you think it's important to maintain the filibuster in cases like this?
00:42:18.000Well, I think that legislative, and by the way, the executive calendar, which is different, so that's judges, all the executive branch nominees are on the executive calendar.
00:42:26.000We changed the rules most recently here, just about six weeks ago, on nominees, Trump executive branch nominees, the Democrats had just completely filibustered and shut that process down.
00:42:38.000The legislative filibuster is designed to protect the voice of the minority in this country, and it's been used effectively for a long time to do just that.
00:42:44.000And it's prevented a lot of bad things from happening.
00:42:49.000And most recently, the Democrats tried to get rid of the filibuster for what they called their elections reform bill, which basically was consolidating all of elections in Washington, D.C. It would have taken power to regulate elections away from the states, would have done away with voter ID.
00:43:05.000And had it not been for Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, they would have succeeded in doing it at that time.
00:43:12.000But the Democrats have made it clear they would love to get rid of the filibuster to enact their agenda, which includes statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., an expanded Supreme Court up to 15 seats there, abortion on demand.
00:43:25.000As I said, federalizing our election system.
00:43:28.000Those are just a few of the list of horrible bowls that they put out there.
00:43:42.000And now that they are on the outside, they're going to use this to their advantage.
00:43:47.000I just think that we ought to be able to do this the old-fashioned way, and that is open up the government by just having five more Democrats vote with us.
00:43:57.000Everything is harder than it should be right now because of Trump derangement syndrome.
00:44:02.000But I still think at some point there are going to be some rank-and-file Democrats who break with their leadership and do the right thing for the country, and that is open up the government.
00:44:10.000Senator, one of the other things is that you've been busy actually getting President Trump's nominees through.
00:44:14.000There is a lot of heartburn about the inability to get nominees through.
00:44:18.000You have been getting an enormous number of executive branch nominees through judicial nominees.
00:44:32.000We've been here more days, more hours, cast more votes than any Senate in history, at least in the last 40 years, as a result of the Democrats' obstruction.
00:44:40.000And so we did make a change in the rules that enables us to start processing some of the executive branch nominations in batches, and that's enabled us to catch up.
00:45:06.000But as you know, the judiciary is an enormously important part of what we do here.
00:45:10.000And we want to make sure that we are filling those positions with people who are constitutionalists, who understand that the role of a judge is not to write the laws, but to interpret and apply them.
00:45:22.000And so those are the kinds of judges that we're looking for.
00:45:25.000And it's going to be really important for us to continue to fill the judiciary and the executive branch.
00:45:31.000President Trump's nominees, the executive branch, to be able to implement the agenda that he ran on and that the American people voted for.
00:45:37.000And Senator Thun, meanwhile, the Trump administration, obviously very active on the foreign policy front over the course of the last couple of weeks, the Trump administration has made some extraordinary moves in the Middle East, particularly with regard to Israel and freeing Israeli hostages from the tender mercies of Hamas, trying to unite the rest of the world around extirpating Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
00:45:56.000I had the privilege of actually being in the Knesset when President Trump made his speech at the invitation of Ambassador Huckabee.
00:46:02.000What do you make of what the Trump administration has been doing in the Middle East?
00:46:04.000What do you think is the future of the Gaza Strip right now?
00:46:37.000But the way in which this administration has worked with the Israelis, with our Arab allies in the region, to bring about an outcome that I think nobody thought achievable just a few weeks ago, and that is getting these hostages released.
00:46:51.000And then, you know, now, obviously, the hard part begins and trying to come up with a security force to maintain security there and figure out what the next step is in order to make that a place in the world that people want to visit that enjoys some of the success and prosperity that folks in the neighborhood have.
00:47:07.000I think there is some tremendous opportunities there.
00:47:10.000It wouldn't have been possible had it not been for President Trump and his leadership.
00:47:16.000But we still have a lot of work to do.
00:47:18.000And Prime Minister Netanyahu and our president working together with our allies in the region, hopefully will continue to stabilize that area and make it a place that's attractive for people to live and work and invest.
00:47:29.000And Senator Thun, once the government shutdown ends, and I have to assume that at some point in the future it will end.
00:47:34.000We won't be here a year from now with the government shutdown continuing, I would assume.
00:47:37.000Once it ends, what are the legislative priorities for you and for the rest of the Republican caucus?
00:47:42.000Well, obviously, you know, funding the government the old-fashioned way through the appropriations process.
00:47:46.000This is a short-term funding resolution that buys us some time, but we need to do the full year.
00:47:52.000But I think there are a lot of opportunities out there.
00:47:55.000There are things like permitting reform.
00:47:57.000There are things like AI, which has become a very, very big issue in our lives.
00:48:03.000There are, we've got to do a farm bill.
00:48:05.000We've got to do a highway, a transportation bill.
00:48:07.000There's a lot of work for Congress to do that has been put on the, you know, kind of on the back burner while the government's been shut down.
00:48:14.000But, you know, the most important thing that we do is take care and make sure that we protect the country.
00:48:19.000I always tell people, if you don't get national security right, the rest is conversation.
00:48:23.000So we did get the defense authorization bill across the finish line in the Senate.
00:48:26.000We tried, as I said earlier, to put the defense appropriations bill on the floor, which funds all those priorities, and the Democrats blocked it.
00:48:34.000But taking care of America's national security interests in what is a very dangerous world is going to continue to be a big priority for us.
00:48:41.000And then, like I said, there are lots of other legislative priorities that I think, and there are some areas where we can work together.
00:48:48.000There's some things that we can do in a bipartisan way with Democrats, but we've got to get past this government shutdown and the Democrats holding the federal employees hostage, basically, if you will, to try and get a bunch of unrelated policy things that they want to get done.
00:49:05.000And I've said I'm perfectly happy to have the conversation and talk with them about some of those things.
00:49:09.000But we can't do that while the government's being held hostage.
00:49:13.000Well, Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
00:49:14.000Senator, really appreciate your time and your hard work on all of the aforementioned topics.
00:49:22.000Meanwhile, the Trump administration, they're actually doing their best to actually not make the American people feel the pain of the government shutdown.
00:49:28.000That is a different thing that has happened in the past.
00:49:30.000Typically, if it's a Republican Congress that shuts down the government because they want changes and a Democrat in the White House who's attempting to fight back against that, for example, usually Democrats try to maximize the pain to bring pressure on Congress.
00:49:43.000Republicans are not doing that this time.
00:49:44.000They're actually running the government in a responsible fashion.
00:49:47.000One of the people doing that is the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldon.
00:49:57.000So why don't you tell me about sort of what the impacts are of the government shutdown?
00:50:00.000I know that for most Americans, this has become kind of a rote thing, actually.
00:50:04.000I think that if you went back 10 years, this would have been the top headline every day for the last several weeks.
00:50:09.000Now, because we've gone through it a few times, I think most Americans just figure it'll eventually peter out, but it is having real impacts.
00:50:16.000Well, one, as you saw with Congresswoman Clark over the course of these last couple of days, talking about how they acknowledge congressional Democrats that this is causing American families to suffer.
00:50:28.000And she refers to it as leverage that needs to be used in this negotiation.
00:50:33.000So there is an acknowledgement that this does cause suffering.
00:50:36.000And as time goes by and snap payments start to be missed, paychecks start to be missed.
00:50:42.000I think more Americans will be feeling it in the days and the weeks to come.
00:50:47.000The other thing, too, is that this is a shutdown where the Republicans keep voting to have the government open and it's the Democrats voting no.
00:50:56.000I think if it was reversed, some of these outlets like New York Times, it might be above the fold front page every single day that the Democrats are having votes to have the government open and the Republicans would be voting no.
00:51:09.000So I think that the issue is on the other foot.
00:51:13.000For us here at the EPA, we operate off of a lot of carryover funding.
00:51:17.000It's not necessarily a fiscal year that ends on September 30th.
00:51:21.000We have funding that's multiple, that multiple years.
00:51:24.000We had a furlough that kicked in, a little over 4,000 people this past Monday.
00:51:29.000As we move forward in coming weeks, that will go up.
00:51:32.000If we had a total lapse of funding, that would be about an 89% furlough here at the agency.
00:51:38.000And the more you furlough this agency, the more that we are unable to fulfill our statutory obligations and work to implement the people's agenda of ensuring clean air, land and water for all Americans, which gets to our core mission.
00:51:55.000Minister Zeldon, one of the things that the Trump administration has done differently during this government shutdown than the Obama administration did during government shutdowns that happened under their watch, the Obama administration really attempted to maximize pain.
00:52:06.000And I'm old enough to remember when they attempted, for example, to shut down open-air World War II memorials and not let anybody into national parks and all the rest of it.
00:52:14.000You and the Trump administration, by contrast, have been attempting to minimize the impact on Americans' lives.
00:52:20.000You have a contingency plan for a shutdown that still allows your agency to continue functioning, even under these circumstances.
00:52:29.000We're trying to minimize, mitigate the impact of the shutdown as much as possible.
00:52:36.000When I said that we just had this furlough kick in of about 4,000 employees, this isn't something that we enthusiastically did on October 1st.
00:52:45.000We prevented it as long as we possibly could, as long as there was funding that was available.
00:52:51.000A total lapse of funding, as I pointed out, would be an 89% reduction in the services that we provide.
00:52:58.000I mean, listen, we could attempt to do that right now, but we're trying to mitigate the damage of the shutdown on the American people.
00:53:06.000That's an example of one agency looking to do its part.
00:53:09.000We're hearing the same thing from other agencies trying to accomplish the same.
00:53:13.000We want to mitigate impacts as much as we can and hope that congressional Democrats decide to vote yes on what is a clean CR.
00:53:21.000This is not something that is filled with a partisan wish list of conservatives.
00:53:27.000This is just a funding bill to keep the government open.
00:53:31.000And Minister Zeldon, I also want to talk to you about the fact that the EPA has done extraordinary work under your auspices in making sure that the economy functions.
00:53:39.000One of the things that's been kind of amazing to watch over the course of President Trump's second term, there have been a lot of crosswinds.
00:53:44.000I mean, obviously, the tariffs have roiled a lot of people.
00:53:48.000You've had the concerns over the government shutdown.
00:53:51.000You've had the one big beautiful bill.
00:53:52.000It has not been, shall we say, like the smoothest economic road for people who are looking for consistent policy.
00:53:58.000But one of the areas that has really spurred the economy and ensured that the economy continues to grow, investment continues, has been the EPA's approach to the economy.
00:54:06.000The attempts to streamline and cut regulation is a massive thing you've been doing over at the EPA.
00:54:17.000There was this belief that in order to protect the environment, you had to strangulate entire sectors of the economy.
00:54:24.000We this year at the Trump EPA reject that notion.
00:54:27.000We are going through an amount of deregulation that, when finalized in one year, would be more deregulation than entire federal governments have done in the past across all federal agencies across entire presidencies.
00:54:41.000That's just that one agency here at the EPA.
00:54:45.000One proposal alone, a proposed rescission of the 2009 Obama endangerment finding, if finalized, would be the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States.
00:54:56.000We are not just imposing our will on the American public and saying this is what we believe to be right.
00:55:02.000This is our final decision and we implement it.
00:55:05.000We have a proposal that goes out to the public.
00:55:09.000We respond to those comments and then we meet our final decision.
00:55:13.000Ben, you're somebody who follows Supreme Court decisions.
00:55:18.000You're well read in our law and our Constitution.
00:55:21.000The Supreme Court in recent years, they issued a decision in the Loperbright case overturning the Chevron Doctrine, saying essentially that agencies like the EPA can't use vague language in getting creative and giving themselves more power.
00:55:37.000If there's an absence inside of statute, it doesn't say that the agency can't.
00:55:42.000That was an interpretation of the past.
00:55:45.000Now that the Chevron Doctrine is overturned, we at the EPA will follow the plain language of the law.
00:55:51.000We will follow the law and we will not take creative liberty in giving ourselves more power because of it.
00:55:57.000That was one of the ironies, by the way, of this no kings protest that just took place.
00:56:02.000The president's directive to me at the agency is that every single day we should be reducing our powers, that we should be empowering states, empowering the people to be in charge of their own lives and to help the economy flourish.
00:56:17.000One other quick point I wanted to mention: you know, we've gone through substantial efficiencies over the course of this year to save tax dollars.
00:56:25.000The annual operating budget of EPA is about $10 billion.
00:56:29.000I've canceled over $29 billion worth of grants, $750 million annually in staffing reductions, money saved in media consolidations, real estate consolidations.
00:56:41.000I'm sorry, media cancellations of subscriptions, real estate consolidations, closed an EPA museum that no one knew about or even visited.
00:56:50.000And the savings just keep getting racked up on behalf of the American taxpayer.
00:56:55.000Another important thing to fight for Americans, American families, and also the American economy.
00:57:02.000Well, that is EPA Administrator Lee Zeldon.
00:57:05.000Lee, thanks so much for your hard work and thanks for joining us on the show.
00:57:36.000In fact, in order to get into the East Wing of the White House, they usually have to set up these giant tents outside if it's raining or snowing or something.
00:57:43.000And then the room where they hold these sort of events with foreign dignitaries hold like 200 people.
00:57:51.000Putting in a ballroom is not only not a bad idea, it's quite a good idea.
00:57:55.000And yet, Democrats are freaking out over it.
00:57:57.000Images of a partially destroyed East Wing, according to Politico, first published by the Washington Post on Monday, sparked an outcry online and a quick defense from the White House.
00:58:05.000The National Trust for Historic Preservation added to criticism of the administration in a letter to the National Park Service and other organizations Tuesday, warning the current redesign of the ballroom threatens to overwhelm the White House and requesting a freeze on further construction until a commission that oversees the iconic urban landscape of the nation's capital is consulted.
00:58:22.000Hillary Clinton said it's not his house, it's your house, and he's destroying it.
00:58:26.000Madam, may I recommend that you sit down on this one?
00:58:29.000Your husband literally had oral with an intern in the Oval Office.
00:58:33.000We're talking about degrading the spaces of the White House.
01:00:24.000Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said the obvious.
01:00:27.000Well, you know, you're going to be able to use it as well, actually.
01:00:32.000President Trump's going to add the greatest improvement to the White House in the history of the building since it was originally constructed in 1800.
01:01:08.000You've obviously seen the construction that's going on over on the East Wing.
01:01:12.000Apparently, this is one of the great disasters of the modern era.
01:01:15.000It's equivalent to tearing down the Washington Monument or burning down the Statue of Liberty or something.
01:01:20.000Why don't you explain what exactly is going on over there?
01:01:22.000What is the White House saying about it?
01:01:25.000Yeah, so I don't know if you can see behind me over my shoulder, there is smoke, kind of a cloudy look coming from the demolition of the East Wing, which the president is removing, changing to make room for the ballroom that he and his donors are funding.
01:01:40.000So this is a huge, costly endeavor, but the American taxpayer is not paying for it.
01:01:44.000The president is, and donors that he calls great American patriots.
01:01:48.000There has been a lot of hubbub about this around here, a lot of backlash.
01:01:53.000As I was coming in this morning, a lot of the photographers and videographers were getting footage of the smoke back there.
01:01:59.000I myself took videos of it because it's interesting.
01:02:02.000This is newsy, but what we're hearing from everyone is that how could the president do this?
01:02:06.000How could the president remove the east wing?
01:02:09.000And, you know, there's a lot of history, Ben, of different presidents making renovations to the White House, from Teddy Roosevelt to Harry Truman.
01:02:17.000All of these presidents have made changes to the White House, but this one in particular seems to have raised the ire of a lot of the reporters around here, a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill who do not want the president to do this.
01:02:28.000Now, Trump himself is saying that this is a gift to the American people.
01:02:32.000He's saying this is something that will be long-lasting and that many generations of Americans and American presidents and their families and their guests can enjoy.
01:02:52.000So he kind of whipped them out and showed them to us and said, well, I've been talking about this the whole time.
01:02:56.000I wanted to show this to anybody who would listen.
01:02:59.000And he showed us these pictures of what he wants the new ballroom to look like.
01:03:03.000You know, Alex Pfeiffer, one of the president's former staffers, I saw him tweeting about this last night, how the president has always been putting these pictures out there.
01:03:11.000It's very clear that the East Wing wasn't there in the photos.
01:03:15.000So a lot of the hubbub around here seems more noise than actual concerns for reality.
01:03:21.000And I think as Josh Hawley said last night, the senator from Missouri, there's a lot of people who are upset about this that had no problem with pulling down monuments to history over the past several years.
01:03:30.000So another ruckus news cycle at the White House.
01:03:33.000There's a press briefing later today, and I'm sure we will hear about it there.
01:03:37.000But in the meantime, it's an interesting news cycle to follow.
01:03:40.000And I think we'll soon have a beautiful ballroom here on the White House grounds.
01:03:45.000You know, Mary Margaret, I think that most Americans, they don't understand kind of how the White House is laid out.
01:03:49.000They see these rooms, the interior of the rooms.
01:03:51.000They don't understand where they are in the building.
01:03:53.000So you've spent time in the East Wing.
01:03:55.000You actually typically have to walk through the East Wing in order to get into sort of the main part of the building to get to the West Wing and all the rest of it.
01:04:01.000Because I think people think that the Oval Office and some of the more famous rooms in the White House are in the East Wing of the White House.
01:04:11.000In fact, you know, I'm standing right now on Petwell Beach, which is right outside the White House.
01:04:15.000The West Wing is where a lot of the offices of the comms team are.
01:04:19.000The main section of the White House is where a lot of these other important offices are, including the Oval Office, which is kind of, you know, we go back to, it's a little hard to explain a lot, but you go through the White House and it's on the back on the right.
01:04:32.000So it's not on the East Wing side of things.
01:04:35.000And a lot of the ruckus that's been raised about this has been suggesting that there's some kind of historical significance that's being destroyed with this.
01:04:43.000throughout the history of the White House for years.
01:04:46.000There have been many presidents who have made changes or modifications, you know, updating the White House for modern appliances, modern security endeavors.
01:04:55.000I mean, one thing that I found really interesting about the ballroom is that the president said it's going to have, I believe, a steel-proof ceiling.
01:05:02.000So a lot of different security measures that are being put in that he said the Army and the military is involved with.
01:05:07.000So it's really interesting on many levels.
01:05:09.000One thing that I find really interesting is that the man who is designing the ballroom is actually someone that I know that I've spent some time with, James McCrury, who's an architect.
01:05:19.000He's built some really beautiful churches around the country.
01:05:22.000So I think that's, you know, if anything, very encouraging to know that we have a traditional classical architecturist who is taking this plan into his hands and making a beautiful historic ballroom.
01:05:34.000And I, for one, hope that, you know, if there is a White House Christmas party for the media this year, it would be really cool if it was in there and I would love to see it.
01:05:42.000So Mary Margaret, obviously a lot of drama also over the course of the last weekend over this No Kings protest movement.
01:05:48.000Some 7 million people apparently showed up to these protests around the country.
01:05:52.000What has been the mood in the White House about all of that?
01:05:56.000Yeah, this is interesting because on the one hand, these No Kings protests were largely full of, I would say, elderly Americans who are very left-leaning Democrats protesting things that they did not really understand.
01:06:08.000So for example, our colleagues Amber Joe and Brecca did a phenomenal job this weekend covering the No Kings protests in D.C. And they asked people, why are you protesting No Kings if President Trump is not a king?
01:06:21.000And if anyone hasn't seen it, you should check it out.
01:06:23.000But at the same time, there was a very radical element of these protests.
01:06:27.000And if you look at some of the footage in Denver, in Chicago, in Los Angeles, in even in Washington, D.C., there were individuals that came to these protests specifically to advocate for violence.
01:06:40.000One person that I noticed besides President Trump that was receiving a lot of these very violent, explicit calls to violence was Stephen Miller.
01:06:47.000So he is Trump's deputy chief of staff.
01:06:50.000He received a lot of hate, I would say, in D.C., I saw, but then also in different cities around the country, people explicitly calling for acts of violence against him.
01:06:58.000We just covered a story for this that's live on the Daily Wire site about how I talked to the FBI about whether they're investigating any of these specific calls for violence, explicit, I would say, calls for violence.
01:07:09.000And, you know, I was told the FBI can't confirm active investigations.
01:07:14.000But I was told they are aware of very specific instances and that they are keeping an eye on them.
01:07:21.000So, you know, I think this is the closest we can get to confirming without actually confirming that there's investigations into these people.
01:07:27.000One that I found really disturbing and I just wanted to flag was this couple that were photographed in Denver.
01:07:33.000They're part of the Denver communist group.
01:07:35.000And this couple, each of them were wearing a different shirt calling for violence against individuals, specifically Republicans, conservatives, and they kind of harkened back to the death of Charlie Kirk.
01:07:46.000One of the shirts said make assassinations great again.
01:07:49.000And the other one said that not enough politicians are being killed nowadays.
01:07:52.000And that one I found particularly disturbing because on the graphic of the shirt, there's a little sign that says live indicating that the person who was being killed on the shirt was being filmed as it happened live.
01:08:04.000So this is really sickening, disturbing kinds of content.
01:08:08.000And I think that, you know, our story is evidence that the FBI is looking into this.
01:08:11.000DHS may also be looking into this and we're trying to get more answers from them on who exactly they're examining and when those people will be arrested or at least investigated at the bare minimum.