Islamic terrorists kill at least 15 people in Bondi Beach. Plus, a mass shooting at Brown University, and Rob Reiner and his wife murdered in Los Angeles. Also, in 10 days, episodes 1 and 2 of the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin, begins streaming for Daily Wire Plus members only.
00:00:00.000Islamic terrorists kill at least 15 people in Bondi Beach Plus, a mass shooting at Brown University, and Rob Reiner and his wife murdered in Los Angeles.
00:00:10.000Also, in 10 days, episodes one and two of the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin, begins streaming for Daily Wire Plus, all access members.
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00:00:50.000Well, on Sunday, the worst shooting attack in modern Australian history happened.
00:00:56.000It was a terror attack against the Jewish community in Australia.
00:00:59.000According to the Wall Street Journal, two gunmen killed 15 people during a Hanukkah event Sunday on Sydney's Bondi Beach in what officials called a terrorist attack on Australia's Jewish community.
00:01:11.000It was the country's worst mass shooting in nearly 30 years.
00:01:14.000Authorities increased the death toll after a 10-year-old girl and a 40-year-old man died in the hospital.
00:01:18.000Over three dozen people were injured as well, some seriously, including two police officers.
00:01:23.000Apparently, the suspects were a father and a son who legally owned six guns, despite the firearms laws in Australia, which are indeed incredibly restrictive.
00:01:34.000The two shooters were, of course, radical Muslims.
00:01:37.000They stormed the family-friendly Hanukkah, according to the New York Post.
00:01:41.000It's called the Hanukkah by the Sea event, and it was run by the Chabad.
00:01:45.000Chabad is basically a Jewish outreach organization.
00:01:48.000They exist in a lot of cities all over the world, including in places where there are not a lot of Jews, especially during Hanukkah.
00:01:54.000They tend to do these sort of big public events in public areas.
00:01:58.000They have them again all over the United States, all over Europe, all over the world, including in Sydney.
00:02:03.000And all it is is just people getting together and eating latkes and lighting the menorah and celebrating with each other.
00:02:10.000And this is apparently one of the most Jewish areas of Sydney.
00:02:14.000Bondi Beach, the area right around it, is a very Jewish area.
00:02:17.000And two radical Muslims, father and son, united by hatred of Jews, decided that they would show up and just start blowing people away.
00:02:25.000They were armed with shotguns and a bolt action rifle.
00:03:09.000But when you have a continuous mass shooting happening and you have apparently at least four police officers present and the police are doing nothing, you do have to ask some questions about the system in which this is existing.
00:03:20.000Apparently, as far as the firearm licenses go, according to the New South Wales police commissioner, Mal Vanyan, said he met the eligibility criteria for a firearms license.
00:03:31.000That would be the father who was part of a gun club and held a recreational hunting license for over a decade.
00:03:37.000Apparently, he was a member of a gun club.
00:03:39.000He was entitled by nature of the firearms act to have a firearms license issue.
00:03:42.000So it's very, very difficult to actually get a license for a firearm in Australia, but the father was able to get six firearms.
00:03:52.000Apparently, the background check did not include whether you are a radical Muslim in any real way.
00:03:58.000One of the people who was killed was a Holocaust survivor who was killed while shielding his wife in the middle of the attack.
00:04:06.000His name was Alex Kleitman, and he had traveled to Bondi Beach with his wife of 57 years for the Hanukkah event.
00:04:13.000Apparently, he decided, the Holocaust survivor, to protect his wife, and he was shot and killed as he lay on the ground on top of his wife, saving his wife in his final act.
00:04:24.000Eyewitness Arsen Ostrovsky, who was shot in the head, but survived.
00:06:22.000Now, again, this sort of attack, I would be lying if I said that Jews around the world don't expect this sort of thing to happen, especially in the aftermath of the radical increase in Islamic anti-Semitism and its presence all over the globe and the increase of generalized anti-Semitism all over the globe.
00:06:40.000Not a gigantic shock that this happened.
00:06:43.000And of course, when you're talking about the presence of radical Muslims, you can't just talk about anti-Semitic terror attacks.
00:06:48.000Obviously, there have been a wide variety of terror attacks by radicalized Muslims all over the world, including in the United States, whether you're talking about the Pulse nightclub shooting, whether you're talking about the attack on two National Guard members just a couple of weeks ago in Europe, whether you're talking about radical Muslims who decide to drive trucks into Christmas markets.
00:07:06.000This has become a regular feature of Western life.
00:07:09.000Attacks on people who are non-Muslim on the basis of their religion.
00:07:13.000This has become an unfortunate, recurrent feature of Western life because largely of the importation of radical Muslims and people who are then radicalized into the West.
00:07:24.000Mike Burgess, according to the Wall Street Journal, who leads Australia's domestic intelligence agency, said one of the suspects in Sunday's attack was known to the agency, but hadn't been considered an immediate threat.
00:07:33.000Police didn't say what ideology motivated the men, but I think it's a little clear when you show up to a Hanukkah by the sea event and just start mowing people down and you're a father and son team who attended the local mosque and you have an IED, apparently several IEDs in a vehicle nearby.
00:07:53.000I think we don't have to really guess too hard here.
00:07:57.000We really don't have to guess too hard.
00:07:58.000Jewish organization Chabad said among those killed was Ellie Schlanger, the assistant rabbi at the organization's local branch and a key organizer of the Hanukkah by the Sea event.
00:08:07.000Police began receiving reports of shot fired around 6:47 p.m. local time on Sunday.
00:08:11.000Again, there were over a thousand people there.
00:08:13.000Two men dressed in black could be seen firing guns from a pedestrian bridge in a video posted on social media by the Australian Jewish Association.
00:08:23.000Again, the footage is quite awful, obviously, and the proximity was fairly close.
00:08:30.000One eyewitness, a man named Shmulek Scuri, describes how the police, there were police officers there, and they basically did nothing.
00:09:09.000And he's just rifle and a pistol and just shoot, shoot.
00:09:17.000Okay, now, again, the police did pretty much nothing, apparently, for a long time.
00:09:22.000There was one local hero who tried to do something.
00:09:24.000This actually was a Muslim bystander named Ahmed al-Ahmed, 43-year-old Muslim father of two, showing that there are good people inside every religion.
00:09:33.000The question, of course, is whether when you import an enormous number of people of any particular religion, that changes the culture of the country or whether it creates enclaves that are dangerous to the rest of the country.
00:09:46.000But that doesn't mean there aren't individuals who are wonderful people.
00:09:48.000Apparently, Ahmed al-Ahmed, one of the bystanders here, sounds like an amazing person.
00:09:53.000Here he is tackling one of the shooters.
00:09:56.000Now, one of the things that's astonishing about this video is he takes away the gun from the shooter and then he points the gun at the shooter and then he lets the shooter walk away.
00:10:03.000And I assume that is only because the gun laws in Australia are so insane that if he had shot the shooter, he might find himself under threat of prosecution.
00:10:49.000According to the Times of Israel, dramatic footage showed the unarmed Ahmed wrestling the weapon from one of the two gunmen before pointing the attacker's weapon at him.
00:10:58.000According to Ahmed's cousin, who shot twice in the arm during the altercation and was taken to a local hospital for surgery.
00:11:04.000Apparently, he had no experience with guns prior to the incident and was shot by the second gunman, who was perched on a nearby footbridge after succeeding in taking the gun from the first assailant.
00:11:13.000He was called by the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Tanyahu, the pinnacle of heroism, and said, We saw the action of a brave man, a brave Muslim, and I salute him for stopping one of the terrorists from killing innocent Jews, which, of course, is incredible and an act of heroism.
00:11:28.000President Trump, for his part, obviously came out with a very strong statement condemning hatred of Jews and urging American Jews to celebrate Hanukkah unabated.
00:11:41.000Before we begin, however, I want to just pay my respects to the people.
00:11:47.000Unfortunately, two are no longer with us.
00:11:50.000Brown University, nine injured, and two are looking down on us right now from heaven.
00:11:57.000And likewise in Australia, as you know, there was a terrible attack, 11 dead, 29 badly wounded.
00:12:06.000And that was an anti-Semitic attack, obviously.
00:12:09.000And I just want to pay my respects to everybody.
00:12:18.000Because when there is a mass shooting, we have to ask what could have prevented that mass shooting.
00:12:21.000Now, the easy answer that people always give is gun confiscation, masgun confiscation.
00:12:25.000Well, clearly in this case, the shooters had the guns legally in the United States, as we'll discuss when you come to a shooting that happened at Brown University, another attempted mass shooting at Brown University.
00:12:35.000We'll get to talk about gun control, which springs up in the aftermath of every mass shooting in the United States and elsewhere.
00:12:43.000But we would be remiss, again, if we did not point out that to pretend that this was unexpected in Australia would be ridiculous.
00:12:52.000There have been warnings going out from the Australian Jewish community for two years about the radical increase in anti-Semitic attacks, including firebombing of a synagogue.
00:13:04.000Questions about the policies that have been promoted by the Australian government to import radical Muslims into the country and to make excuses for their violent actions.
00:13:16.000Questions asked about why hundreds of thousands of people in places like Australia marched in support of the terrorist group Hamas, or why in the immediate aftermath of October 7, there were rallies at the Sydney Opera House in which people were shouting, gas the Jews.
00:13:32.000Here's what it looked like when people were literally shouting gas the Jews outside the Sydney Opera House in the aftermath of October 7th.
00:13:53.000A country that imports and tolerates this sort of stuff.
00:13:57.000Are we supposed to be shocked when some of these people who are legitimately flying ISIS flags?
00:14:02.000It turns out that they are perfectly happy to commit acts of terrorism.
00:14:08.000Australia's Muslim population right now is around 813,000 people, representing about 3.2% of the total Australian population.
00:14:16.000It has increased 450% from 1991 to 2021.
00:14:21.000And the Muslim population of Sydney represents 6.3% of the total population, which is pretty significant.
00:14:28.000Thus, it should be not a particular shock that according to a report published Tuesday by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the country saw 1,654 incidents during the 12-month period from October 1st, 2024 to September 30th, 2025.
00:14:42.000That is about five times the annual average recorded in the decade prior to the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attack.
00:14:49.000And that was actually down from the prior year, which saw over 2,000 incidents.
00:14:55.000It is not a shock that this sort of stuff has been happening with increasing frequency, especially given the fact that the government of Australia, a very left-wing labor government, has decided to normalize and mainstream this sort of stuff.
00:15:11.000I have friends in Australia, some of whom are Jewish, and the amount of security required in Australia for the Jewish community is pretty astonishing.
00:15:18.000Of course, that now happens to be true, unfortunately, in a lot of places, including pretty much every major Jewish school in the United States.
00:15:26.000According to the Times of Israel, Linda Bennett-Minasha, the president of the National Council of Jewish Women in Australia, told the Times of Israel, I'm horrified and devastated that this happened, but not shocked.
00:15:37.000Over the past two years, anti-Semitism has been rising by the month, and the government has not listened to our pleas.
00:15:42.000When there's no visible consequence to incitement, violence always ensues.
00:15:47.000Over the past year, Jews in Australia have seen synagogues, schools, and homes firebombed, two nurses threatening to kill Jewish patients in their hospitals, and the discovery of a trailer filled with explosives said to have been intended to cause a mass casualty event at a Sydney synagogue.
00:16:02.000Again, not, again, a gigantic shock, and pretending otherwise would be ridiculous.
00:16:08.000There have been escalating anti-Semitic incidents in Australia for years.
00:16:11.000Miranda Devine writes over at the New York Post.
00:16:14.000Unchecked anti-Semitism, cowardly appeasement, lax policing, and foolish immigration decisions, half a century in gestation, have coalesced in multicultural southwestern Sydney an hour's drive from Bondi.
00:16:26.000In the two years since the Hamas attack on Israel, synagogues in Sydney have been firebombed, kosher restaurants vandalized, cars outside Jewish homes torched, and rancid anti-Semitic graffiti have become ubiquitous along the Bondi promenade.
00:17:01.000Australian immigration minister Tony Burke, who has been busy organizing visas for Gazans, was just busted for having a secret meeting with officials to repatriate ISIS brides from Syria.
00:17:13.000Women who went to Syria to marry members of ISIS were repatriated to Australia.
00:17:18.000Last year, during a diplomatic trip, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited Gaza, but refused to visit any of the sites of the October 7th massacres.
00:17:29.000Again, anybody pretending this is a shock is simply pretending.
00:17:53.000When we blur that fact, we betray the dead.
00:17:55.000But it is worth noting that Anthony Albanese, the prime minister, his original statement completely blurred that fact.
00:18:02.000Here is his original statement: quote: The scenes in Bondi are shocking and distressing.
00:18:06.000Police and emergency responders are on the ground working to save lives.
00:18:09.000My thoughts are with every person affected.
00:18:11.000I have just spoken to the AFP Commissioner and with the NSW Premier.
00:18:15.000We are working with the NSW police and will provide further updates as more information is confirmed.
00:18:19.000I urge people in the vicinity to follow information from the NSW police.
00:18:22.000You notice what that doesn't say anything about the identity of the assailants and anything about the identity of the people who were being shot.
00:18:29.000When people get shot at a Hanukkah by the Sea event, it's pretty clear why they are being shot.
00:18:35.000It took Anthony Albanese hours to actually call the attack what it was, which was an attack on Jews.
00:18:44.000What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of anti-Semitism, an act of terrorism on our shores in an iconic Australian location, Bondo Beach, that is associated with joy, associated with families gathering, associated with celebrities, and it is forever tarnished by what has occurred last evening.
00:19:11.000This was an attack deliberately targeted at the Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah, which of course should be a joyous celebration.
00:19:21.000And the Jewish community are hurting today.
00:19:25.000Today, all Australians wrap our arms around them and say, we stand with you.
00:19:30.000We will do whatever is necessary to stamp out anti-Semitism.
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00:22:19.000Ayan Herci Ali writes: One truth must be spoken without hesitation.
00:22:22.000Islamist extremism isn't merely another grievance-driven movement.
00:22:25.000It's an existential threat to Western society and to the values that sustain it.
00:22:29.000It rejects pluralism, despises freedom of conscience, and targets Jews and Christians precisely because those traditions stand for limits on power and the dignity of the individual.
00:22:39.000Where such extremism is tolerated, minorities suffer first and wider society follows.
00:22:44.000And that, of course, is totally correct.
00:22:47.000And pretending that you are hiding behind the guise of anti-Zionism in order to attack Jews as a conspiratorial force in the West manipulating the systems in order to commit genocide and promoting every lie issued by Hamas.
00:23:01.000Of course, that is going to lead to violence.
00:23:04.000Pretending otherwise, again, is blind or stupid or evil or all three.
00:23:12.000It was just back on August 17th, 2025, that Netanyahu wrote a letter to Albanese warning him about the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia.
00:23:22.000Writing, throughout the past year, anti-Semitism has scarred Australian cities since her public statements signaling recognition of a Palestinian state.
00:23:29.000And that, of course, is not a surprise because if people believe that violence is going to achieve its intended effect, they continue to do the violence.
00:23:37.000Following Hamas's savage attack on the people of Israel on October 7th, pro-Hamas extremists and left-wing radicals began a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence against Jews across the free world.
00:23:46.000In Australia, wrote Netanyahu to Albanese.
00:23:48.000Again, this is like a couple of months ago.
00:23:50.000That campaign has intensified under your watch.
00:24:00.000It rewards Hamas' terror, hardens Hamas's refusal to free the hostages, emboldens those who menace Australian Jews, and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.
00:24:13.000And by the way, it is worth noting that when it comes to media coverage of both the question of Jew hatred by radical Muslims in the West and also those links to lies told in Gaza, the former director of the BBC's Bureau in the Gaza Strip said that the Islamic terror attack in Sydney was an Israeli false flag operation.
00:24:34.000That person was overseeing the BBC's bureau in Gaza.
00:24:38.000So I'm sure the reporting there was absolutely outstanding.
00:24:50.000According to the Wall Street Journal, on Saturday afternoon, a gunman opened fire in a busy academic building, killing two and injuring nine.
00:24:56.000Police releasing a video of a suspect dressed in black and walking on a sidewalk near the scene of the shooting.
00:25:02.000Authorities detained a person of interest.
00:25:04.000They then released the person of interest.
00:25:07.000Brown University student Ella Cook was one of the people killed, according to her hometown church in Birmingham, Alabama.
00:25:14.000First-year student Kendall Turner of North Carolina was among those injured.
00:25:18.000The school said she's in critical but stable condition.
00:25:21.000Apparently, this was an economics study group.
00:25:26.000The professor was apparently an associate professor also of Jewish studies.
00:25:33.000And so we still are waiting on motive.
00:26:09.000And then as soon as everybody stood up and started exiting the room, we heard what sounded like gunshots outside the door and we heard screaming from various students.
00:26:21.000And then about five seconds later, we see a gunman enter the room.
00:26:27.000And then he just screamed something and just started shooting.
00:26:33.000So you saw the gunman enter the room where you were.
00:26:38.000Yeah, I was standing in the front of the auditorium and he came through the back.
00:26:44.000So we pretty much directly made eye contact.
00:26:48.000And then as soon as that happened, I looked at my students and signaled them to come to the front.
00:27:10.000And none of the other students know what he said.
00:27:13.000But yeah, then he just started shooting right after that.
00:27:17.000So from that moment to the first gunshot, it was probably around five to seven seconds.
00:27:28.000Now, again, we don't know what the shooter was shouting at this point.
00:27:32.000There's a lot of speculation, but speculation is not, in fact, evidence or fact.
00:27:35.000And so we're going to refrain from speculation until we know the identity of the alleged shooter or what actually happened.
00:27:42.000You know, President Trump put out a statement in the middle of all of this saying that all that could basically be done at that point is prayer.
00:27:49.000I've been fully briefed on the Brown University situation, what a terrible thing it is.
00:27:56.000And all we can do right now is pray for the victims and for those that were very badly hurt, it looks like.
00:28:06.000And we'll inform you later as to what's happening.
00:28:15.000Now, obviously, Democrats have been calling for more gun control because in the aftermath of every mass shooting, there's a call for gun control.
00:28:20.000It's always interesting when there's a call for gun control and when there is not.
00:28:23.000When several dozen people get shot every weekend in Chicago, no calls for gun control.
00:28:28.000When there is a high-profile mass shooting, a call for gun control, almost always, the prescribed method of gun control would have done nothing to stop the mass shooting.
00:28:36.000So citing a sort of outlier circumstance in order to justify a blanket gun policy is always a strange bit of political leisure domain.
00:28:44.000Here is Chris Murphy, the senator from Connecticut, who for some reason wants to run for president.
00:28:49.000I'm not sure exactly why, saying that this is all about the White House not taking on the gun industry.
00:28:54.000Again, this bizarre idea that the White House won't take on an industry that represents a very kind of rounding error part of America's industrial base is pretty wild.
00:29:05.000Could it just be that they disagree on the Second Amendment?
00:29:09.000Do you think that there is any appetite for any discussion right now?
00:29:16.000And, you know, a month or two before we passed that bill in 2022, people would have said, no way, there's no way Democrats and Republicans can come together.
00:29:24.000But after Uvalde, things changed and we were able to get a narrow but important agreement.
00:29:29.000So I will never stop trying to get bipartisan support.
00:29:32.000But I think it is pretty clear that President Trump and this White House are in the pocket of the gun lobby.
00:29:38.000I just don't foresee that this White House is going to support anything that would cross the gun industry.
00:29:45.000And as we know right now, unfortunately, the Republicans in Congress don't ever meaningfully break from this president.
00:29:52.000So until they get the okay from President Trump to break with the gun lobby, I think the chances of us getting something done are slim.
00:30:10.000No one is in favor of violence using a gun or using a knife or otherwise.
00:30:14.000At least no major politician that I've ever heard of.
00:30:16.000The question is, how do you formulate the public policy that is most likely to be effective without invading the rights of Americans?
00:30:22.000That, of course, is always the question.
00:30:24.000But this kind of emotivism in which you claim that your opponents just don't care about people who are killed in violence with a gun is silly.
00:30:38.000And as I make my way to my own pulpit this morning, I'm going to say a special prayer for Brown University and for our nation.
00:30:47.000And I can tell you that as a pastor who has presided over many funerals, I don't think that there's any pain deeper than when nature is violently reversed.
00:30:57.000And rather than children burying their parents, the parent has to bear the child.
00:31:03.000And so we pray prayers for these families.
00:31:07.000But we have to pray not only with our lips, but with our action.
00:31:10.000Any nation that tolerates this kind of violence year after year, decade after decade in random places on our college and school campuses without doing all that we can to stop it is broken and in need of moral repair.
00:31:28.000Now, again, the idea that gun laws are going to fix this, I have some very, very serious doubts.
00:31:33.000Democrats never be they seem unable to actually suggest specific gun laws that would prevent any of the types of gun crimes that are occurring other than mass gun confiscation, which they won't actually articulate out loud because they understand that it's politically unpopular.
00:31:47.000Nonetheless, you know, these sorts of situations seem to be for Democrats an opportunity to mouth platitudes about how the other side doesn't care about people who are dying, which, of course, is not true.
00:32:00.000Coming up, ISIS shooters in the Syrian military, three Americans dead.
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00:34:14.000And meanwhile, on the foreign front, another terrible shooting.
00:34:18.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the attacker who killed three Americans in an ambush on U.S. forces in Syria on Saturday was a member of the Syrian security forces who is set to be fired for holding extremist views, according to Syrian and U.S. officials.
00:34:30.000So, apparently, there was an attack on Saturday at the entrance of a fortified facility of the Internal Security Command that's Syria's main domestic security force, you know, Palmyra, according to the Interior Ministry spokesman.
00:34:42.000The meeting was described by U.S. officials as an effort to broaden cooperation between the U.S. military and Syria's interior ministry and extend it to central Syria.
00:34:50.000The assailant was armed with a machine gun and fired on both U.S. and Syrian troops from a nearby building.
00:34:55.000Two soldiers from the Iowa National Guard were killed.
00:34:58.000A U.S. civilian working as an interpreter was also killed.
00:35:02.000An Assyrian officer was killed and two others injured, according to the Interior Ministry.
00:35:06.000Iowa Guard soldiers had been deployed to the Middle East earlier this year, including in Syria.
00:35:12.000Again, apparently, the attacker appeared to be a former ISIS insurgent who had joined Syria's security forces after the fall of Assad as part of a quote-unquote infiltration operation.
00:35:20.000This is going to be very difficult because the reality is that the current head of Syria is a former ISIS member.
00:35:27.000And that government is working closely with Turkey.
00:35:29.000And so to pretend that the new security forces kind of turned over whatever flag was on their uniform and suddenly there's no threat of terrorism against Americans or allies is really, really silly.
00:35:42.000All of this is going to have to be done with tremendous caution because, again, to pretend that the Syrian president, Ahmed al-Shara, is suddenly a Muslim moderate.
00:35:56.000I'm waiting to see the evidence on that one, truly.
00:36:00.000It seems more like he is mouthing moderation to the West while simultaneously making common cause with Taib Rasip Erdogan, the dictator of Turkey, and also continuing to hug close many of his former ISIS colleagues who have now joined him inside the Syrian government.
00:36:15.000So listen, hope for the best in Syria, but remain skeptical.
00:36:20.000Navy Admiral Brad Cooper, the top U.S. commander in the region, visited Damascus in September with Tom Barrick, U.S. ambassador in Turkey and special envoy to Syria to thank Shara for his support in fighting militants.
00:36:32.000Shara had officially joined the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS during his White House meeting with Trump.
00:36:36.000That, of course, is after he sort of broke with ISIS.
00:36:40.000It is worth noting here that Tom Barrick, the ambassador in Turkey, is extraordinarily pro-Turkey.
00:38:02.000Okay, so it'll be interesting to see what happens from here.
00:38:05.000Alrighty, meanwhile, horrible story out of Los Angeles.
00:38:09.000Director Rob Reiner, who, of course, is incredibly famous for a wide variety of terrific movies, ranging from The Princess Bride to When Harry Met Sally to This is Spinal Tap, Misery, A Few Good Men.
00:38:17.000He had a kind of a historic run in the late 80s, early 90s.
00:38:21.000He's also the son of Karl Reiner, one of the great Hollywood comedians.
00:38:25.000He was found dead in his home with his wife, Michelle Singer, of what police are calling a homicide, a truly horrifying story.
00:38:43.000We asked for privacy during this unbelievably difficult time.
00:38:47.000Apparently, the police are conducting a death investigation.
00:38:51.000There is suspicion that a family member is involved.
00:38:57.000Obviously, when you're talking about the death of anyone, the murder of anyone who is a fellow American, politics go by the wayside, and they always should.
00:39:56.000And our prayers go out to the Reiner family.
00:39:59.000Just, ugh, just what a horrifying, what a horrifying end to a truly great artist.
00:40:04.000We'll get some more on this in a moment.
00:40:05.000First, the best deals of the year are still live right now at Jeremy's Razors, but today is your last day to order for Christmas delivery, like today.
00:40:11.000Now is the time to get your final gifts and stock up for yourself.
00:40:43.000And meanwhile, in domestic political news, the debate goes on with regard to Obamacare and extensions of Democratic subsidies.
00:40:54.000On Friday, House Republicans unveiled a health care bill that they will bring to a vote next week, including items that are broadly popular in the party, like cost-sharing reductions and reforms to the pharmacy benefit manager industry.
00:41:05.000It does not include extension of those Obamacare subsidies that Joe Biden put into place.
00:41:10.000He put these gigantic extensions of Obamacare subsidies into place during the late stages of the pandemic, and then he left them in place and now they are set to expire.
00:41:19.000And then Democrats are blaming Republicans for the fact that Joe Biden decided to create this massive new subsidy scheme that sunsets.
00:41:27.000House GOP leaders will allow an amendment vote on extending those Obama subsidies, according to a GOP leadership aide.
00:41:34.000That is a concession to moderates who'd been calling to go on the record on the matter.
00:41:38.000Unclear what that amendment is going to look like.
00:41:40.000A House Republican leadership ed said, we expect there will be an amendment that is being worked on.
00:41:44.000So the process will allow for that amendment.
00:41:47.000So this could be the House allowing for the possibility of an expanded Obamacare subsidy at the same time as there are changes to things like cost-sharing reductions and reforms to that pharmacy benefit manager industry, which adds some cost between the middlemen.
00:42:04.000Bill Cassidy, senator from Louisiana, on Sunday, expressed some cautious optimism that there would be a compromise to extend those Obamacare subsidies for a select group of Americans before the subsidies expire at the end of the year.
00:42:15.000Senator Cassidy appeared on CBS News' Face the Nation to discuss the possibility of a deal.
00:42:21.000We've got to do something for affordability for the people in the exchanges.
00:42:25.000And I will say that the only thing that Democrats would accept was something that would decrease the premiums.
00:42:30.000But if a family has a $6,000 out-of-pocket before they get into the strength of the insurance plan, then frankly, the policy is catastrophic.
00:42:40.000It brings profit to the insurance company, but not benefit to the patient.
00:42:45.000So I would argue that it actually is, there has to be a meeting of the minds between Democrats and Republicans.
00:42:52.000Let's acknowledge you've got to put cash in the patient's pocket to pay the out-of-pocket.
00:42:58.000I would be willing to do a short-term extension of the premium tax credits for those people with higher premiums if they will concede that we've got to do something for the $6,000 out-of-pocket.
00:43:10.000I think there's a deal to be had here.
00:43:15.000So why exactly is that deal not happening?
00:43:17.000Republicans are willing to make a compromise on the Obamacare subsidies, at least temporarily, in exchange for, for example, some health savings account to be set up that will eventually, we would hope, replace those Obamacare subsidies.
00:43:46.000But of course, they may say that about us.
00:43:48.000So what I am kind of searching for is a deal in which both have their concerns addressed.
00:43:54.000If you do that and you put this in place, you really have until the end of like March to get it done because with these kind of accounts that people have money in, they just save the receipts, they submit them, and they get reimbursed.
00:44:12.000And so we can get this done, and I think we can meet the concerns both about the out-of-pocket, but also about the premium.
00:44:21.000So what precisely will Republicans get in this deal?
00:44:23.000Presumably, Cassidy said there have to be some terms that cut out the amount of Obamacare fraud, which is pretty significant.
00:44:30.000Do you think that the Republicans, the ones that you talked to, would go for anything that does extend the premium help?
00:44:42.000It has to have reforms to cut out the fraud.
00:44:45.000There's an estimated billions of dollars in fraud the way the current system is currently constructed.
00:44:51.000But if you address the fraud and particularly you address the fact that the premiums being pushed, should be the policies being pushed, have $6,000 deductibles.
00:45:00.000Again, it's more about profit for the insurance company than protection for the patient.
00:45:04.000If we do that, I think there could be interest in a short-term extension.
00:45:11.000And so it'll be interesting to see whether that indeed happens.
00:45:14.000What Cassidy is suggesting is probably the most politically palatable thing for Republicans if they don't wish to lose a bunch of purple swing state seats in the midterm elections if the Obamacare subsidies were to expire and those prices were to rise and Democrats threw that at Republicans.
00:45:27.000It'd be very difficult for Republicans in purple states to be able to defend themselves.
00:45:30.000And so, of course, political considerations have come to sort of center stage in all of this.
00:45:34.000Meanwhile, a lot of controversy remains over the Trump tariffs.
00:45:38.000The Trump administration is interested in finalizing tariff payments.
00:45:43.000According to Politico, the Trump administration is racing to deposit the money it has raised from tariffs into the U.S. Treasury, a tactic that could make it harder for companies to get refunds for duties the Supreme Court may strike down in the coming months.
00:45:54.000So what they're trying to do is prevent, if the Supreme Court were to strike down these tariffs retroactively, they're trying to prevent companies from clawing back the amount that they paid to the federal government in tariffs.
00:46:05.000That has triggered a flurry of lawsuits in recent weeks with companies ranging from Costco to the canned tuna seller bumblebee looking to preserve access to potential refunds for tens of billions of dollars worth of tariff fees and it foreshadows the messy legal battles likely to play out if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs.
00:46:21.000Apparently, Trump's Customs and Border Protection Agency is denying requests to delay finalizing tariff payments and transferring the funds to Treasury.
00:46:28.000In fact, they are even fast-tracking the process.
00:46:30.000They suspect the Supreme Court might strike it down, and they are trying to grab as much tariff revenue as humanly possible.
00:46:36.000Typically, Customs and Border Protection grants a 314-day window after goods enter the U.S. to liquidate the tariffs and send money to the Treasury Department.
00:46:45.000Once that happens, importers can't challenge the tariff payment through routine customs correction.
00:46:49.000Instead, they have to go through a complex formal protest process and litigation.
00:46:53.000And apparently, the Trump administration is now trying to speed that up.
00:46:59.000So the Trump administration is very concerned the Supreme Court is going to strike down those tariffs.
00:47:03.000Kevin Hassett, chair of the National Council of Economic Advisors, who is now being considered for the chair of the Federal Reserve, he says that throwing out the tariffs would create a serious economic problem.
00:47:15.000The future of these tariffs, though, does hang in the balance right now, and the Supreme Court ultimately has to make the decision on this.
00:47:21.000If you had the opportunity to have the justices consider a version of this from your perspective, what is it that you would say to them?
00:47:30.000And how important is it that we keep these tariffs?
00:47:33.000The tariffs have been working, and they've been really good for the American people.
00:47:39.000We've got inflation going down, and we've got the biggest reduction in a year-over-year deficit that you've ever seen.
00:47:47.000And if they were to throw the tariffs out, then they could create a really serious economic problem.
00:47:54.000Now, I want you to know that we study all eventualities of this White House.
00:47:59.000People shouldn't panic if they throw these things out, but they create a real problem because a lot of the tariff revenue has to be refunded to people, potentially, and that's very disruptive.
00:48:07.000And the law says that we're allowed to regulate trade, but it doesn't use the word tariff.
00:48:11.000And that's what the left is, you know, they're hanging everything on that one thing.
00:48:27.000And when it comes to national emergencies, then there's the possibility of doing something on an emergency basis.
00:48:33.000But again, the authority being used to do these widespread tariffs on everything up to and including penguins in the Solomon Islands, that, of course, is a very shoddy legal case.
00:48:41.000I've been pointing that out since literally day one.
00:48:44.000Now, what will be the knock-on effects?
00:48:46.000Well, yeah, I mean, there will be some real problems as far as people trying to claw back the money that they paid to the federal government, especially because people already bought the products.
00:48:53.000So presumably the company then gets the payment for the product, and then they claw back the tax that they paid to the U.S. government.
00:49:01.000There is also the problem of what happens going forward to these tariff rates.
00:49:06.000Does the Trump administration go through another round of chaotic ministrations in an attempt to revive those tariffs through some sort of other executive authority?
00:49:17.000As far as the sort of rosy view of tariffs, neither the rosy view nor the catastrophic view of tariffs has actually come to pass.
00:49:24.000Some of that is because of uncertainty about the implementation of tariffs in the first place, according to the Wall Street Journal, analyzing various factors as to what would happen in the aftermath of the tariffs.
00:49:34.000When it comes to employment, employment is the highest in four years.
00:49:39.000Some of that is probably due to the tariffs.
00:49:41.000Manufacturers have not been gaining jobs.
00:49:44.000However, the tariffs have not skyrocketed inflation.
00:49:49.000According to the Wall Street Journal, both Trump and economists largely missed the mark on inflation.
00:49:54.000Tariffs swiftly hit Americans' wallets as major retailers from Macy's to Best Buy raised prices in response to the duties.
00:50:00.000But the worst inflation fears have not yet come to pass because tariffs touch a narrow band of consumer prices.
00:50:06.000Housing and gasoline have helped keep overall inflation in check.
00:50:09.000Believe it or not, housing has actually been declining in pricing over the course of the last year.
00:50:14.000Also, a lot of people have not actually lowered their prices in expectation that President Trump's going to shift his tariff policy because it's been up and down and all around.
00:50:21.000As far as tariff revenue, yes, the federal government has raised extraordinary tariff revenue, almost $200 billion in net customs duties collected on U.S. imports.
00:50:30.000Is that going to replace the income tax?
00:50:33.000However, as far as economic growth, in spite of the tariffs, economic growth has been really, really high.
00:50:39.000The third quarter GDP estimate is almost 4%, which is really, really high.
00:50:43.000And again, a huge amount of that is because so much of our investment is going into tech industries that really are not being affected by the tariffs in the same way.
00:50:52.000All the investment is going into AI, for example, AI development.
00:50:56.000Well, that's not affected by tariffs in remotely the same way.
00:50:59.000U.S. manufacturing activity has actually continued to contract.
00:51:02.000So contra, the White House, tariffs have not revived American manufacturing.
00:51:07.000Instead, U.S. factory activity has contracted for nine straight months.
00:51:13.000And as far as the trade balance, the trade balance basically looks kind of the same as it did before the tariffs.
00:51:19.000There was an immediate skyrocket, actually, of imports as people tried to beat the tariffs.
00:51:24.000And then what we've seen is that exports and imports have kind of remained similar to where they were before.
00:51:30.000So either the tariffs aren't big enough or they haven't been promoted heavily enough or they haven't been implemented strictly enough.
00:51:36.000And so you're kind of getting a mixed bag with regard to tariffs.
00:51:39.000But will there be some chaos in the economy if the tariffs are struck down by the Supreme Court, which, by the way, I think will happen?
00:51:46.000I mean, sure, there will be some chaos.
00:51:51.000And again, I think there's a case to be made that if the tariffs go away, you're going to get a boom economy.
00:51:55.000You already have an economy that is basically on the verge of booming if people had any level of predictability as to what happens next.
00:52:02.000Kevin Hassett says we're on the verge of perhaps the greatest economy in American history.
00:52:08.000If you had a crystal ball and you looked to the very end of President Trump's second term in office, where would you expect to see this economy?
00:52:18.000I think that we're already right on the cusp of having the greatest economy that the U.S. has ever seen.
00:52:24.000I think that Trump policies are about as good as it gets.
00:52:27.000I think that there's never been a time in American history where policy was more perched to make growth really, really high.
00:52:33.000And the fact that that's happening precisely when we're getting this big positive supply shock from artificial intelligence means that you could easily have 4% or 5% growth for the entire Trump term, which would be obviously the best four years in history, really.
00:52:48.000And so I think that that's my core expectation.
00:52:52.000And I think that this will go down in history as a golden age.
00:52:56.000Now, you know, his mouth to God's ears.
00:52:58.000Obviously, a booming economy would be fantastic for the country and also fantastic for the Republican Party.
00:53:03.000Okay, meanwhile, on Ukraine, the pressure has been almost universally on Ukraine from the United States to end the war, despite the fact that, again, it's really about the security guarantees that the West hands to Ukraine as to whether Ukraine even has the capacity to make a move like that.
00:53:18.000According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump's top envoys held five hours of talk with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Berlin on Sunday.
00:53:25.000Washington hailed progress as the administration steps up more pressure on Ukraine to seal a peace deal with Russia by year end.
00:53:31.000Now, again, what is Russia willing to give up?
00:53:34.000I'm just going to keep asking that question until we get any sort of answer at all.
00:53:47.000Ukraine is balking at Washington's call to withdraw its forces from areas that Kyiv's forces still hold.
00:53:52.000So the call is for Ukraine to surrender territory that Russia hasn't even won.
00:53:56.000European and Ukrainian officials are pushing for some clarity on what the U.S. would do if Russia were to break a peace deal and attack Ukraine.
00:54:03.000Well, yeah, that would be the biggest question considering that we did this routine in 2014 under Barack Obama.
00:54:09.000And then Russia walked right back in in 2022 under Joe Biden.
00:54:14.000After Sunday's talks ended in the late evening, the Trump administration's Russia envoy, Steve Woodko, said on X that the two sides held in-depth discussions on the peace plan.
00:54:23.000They will meet again tomorrow Morning.
00:54:26.000One person briefed on Sunday's talks described them as difficult, saying the U.S. side appeared unwilling to compromise on its peace proposal draft.
00:54:34.000I think what's going to end up happening here is the Europeans are simply going to have to radically accelerate their support for Ukraine because the Trump administration looks ready to walk away.
00:54:56.000If you read the speeches that Vladimir Putin has made in Russian to his own people, if you read the writings of Alexander Dugin, called Putin's brain by many, it is very clear that his vision for the future of Eastern Europe and for conflict with the United States is a dark vision.
00:55:12.000And pretending that appeasing Vladimir Putin is somehow going to amount to some sort of lasting peace with Vladimir Putin, that's a fool's errand.
00:55:21.000It was a fool's errand when Obama was trying it.
00:55:24.000It was a fool's errand when Joe Biden was trying it.
00:55:27.000And it's a fool's errand no matter who tries it, because Vladimir Putin has not changed, not one iota.
00:55:31.000His goals are exactly the same as they were when he took power.
00:55:35.000According to Axios, the proposal that is currently being made is a demilitarized zone with national security advisors of Ukraine, Germany, France, and the UK.
00:55:51.000Unclear exactly what that would trigger if Russia walked over that border.
00:55:55.000Typically, international security forces have totally failed.
00:55:58.000As soon as there's a major threat, countries simply withdraw their forces, and then the threatening force walks through.
00:56:05.000A U.S. official says there might be three separate agreements on peace: security guarantees, and reconstruction.
00:56:11.000Apparently, the negotiations over economic and reconstruction are going well, well, of course, because that's just a question of money.
00:56:18.000Several European leaders have been counseling Zelensky.
00:56:21.000He doesn't need to rush into a deal, especially one that forces him to cede territory Ukraine hasn't actually lost.
00:56:26.000And by the way, they're negotiating against themselves.
00:56:28.000Russia has not signaled that it accepts the deal.
00:56:31.000Turns out that negotiating against yourself is a pretty bad way to negotiate as a general rule.
00:56:35.000Alrighty, coming up, we'll jump into the mailbag as the show continues.
00:56:39.000Remember, in order to watch, you do have to be a member.
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