New polls show that Andrew Cuomo is closing the gap on Zoran Mamdani. Plus, we examine one of the most bizarre videos of the campaign season: a clip of a woman wearing a hijab on the subway. Plus we re joined by the Speaker of the House of Representatives about the government shutdown.
00:00:13.000Plus, we're joined by the speaker of the House of Representatives about the government shutdown.
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00:00:49.000Well, folks, there is some good news out of New York.
00:00:52.000Now, it's not enough good news out of New York, but it's some good news.
00:00:55.000Apparently, there's a brand new poll in New York that shows that Cuomo is actually catching up to Zoran Mamdani Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York, who is really the only hope at stopping Zorin Mamdani in the New York mayoral race.
00:01:06.000Curtis Lewa sticking around for reasons unknown to anyone but himself and his family.
00:01:10.000Apparently, this brand new poll that is out from Suffolk University shows that Mamdani no longer leads Cuomo by 20 points or 15 points.
00:01:19.000That lead is down to 10, and Mamdani is stuck at 44%.
00:01:22.000Now, typically, when somebody wins that New York mayoral race, they win well over a majority.
00:01:26.000Here, you have Mamdani at 44, you have Cuomo at 34, and you have Sliwa at 11%.
00:01:33.000And so, again, there's going to be a lot of talk if Mamdani ends up mayor about why Curtis Liwa stayed in the race.
00:01:38.000And this is not an anti-Curtis point, this is just a reality point.
00:01:40.000Curtis Lewa is not going to be the next mayor of New York.
00:01:43.000And if his vote share is larger than the margin of victory for Momdani, there are going to be a lot of questions to be asked.
00:01:48.000And again, the main question is going to be asked of Andrew Cuomo, why is he such a terrible candidate?
00:01:52.000And there'll be big questions with the New York population: why are you all insipid?
00:01:56.000But the real question for Sliwa is going to be why you didn't drop out.
00:02:00.000As David Paliologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, says, there's one person in New York City whose voters could have an outsized impact on the outcome, and it's Sliwa.
00:02:11.000So, this is the first poll since Mayor Adams, Eric Adams, dropped out of the race.
00:02:15.000Most of his support bled on over to Andrew Cuomo.
00:02:19.000It is also the second poll to show Cuomo narrowing the gap with Mamdani since Adams dropped out of the race.
00:02:27.000A lot of the opposition to Momdani is materializing his support for Cuomo, which is precisely what you would expect.
00:02:33.000Because, again, it's not like Andrew Cuomo has any great shakes.
00:02:36.000Momdani is running a terrible final week of this campaign.
00:02:39.000Truly an awful, awful final week of this campaign.
00:02:42.000He has decided that his closing message is going to be that New York City is famous for Islamophobia.
00:02:47.000And if you don't elect him, it's because you don't like Muslims, which is a wild statement in a city that suffered 9-11, where apparently the only victim of 9-11, according to Zorin Mamdani, was his not aunt.
00:02:59.000And I say not aunt advisedly, because as it turns out, it was not, in fact, his aunt who was wearing some sort of hijab on the subway and somebody gave him a mean look.
00:03:09.000According to the New York Post, the aunt who Zoran Mamdani said was too afraid to wear her hijab on the subways after 9-11 is actually his father's cousin, a distant relative.
00:03:19.000In other words, how many of your father's cousins do you know?
00:03:32.000The socialist mayoral frontrunner made the revelation during a press conference Monday after critics pointed out that his actual aunt doesn't have a hijab and was in Tanzania during the time period he was talking about.
00:03:42.000So instead, he said, I was speaking about Zara Fuhi, my father's cousin, who passed away a few years ago.
00:03:49.000That relative he affectionately called his aunt.
00:03:52.000Mamdani's campaign, however, did not provide the cousin's full name when asked.
00:03:56.000Because if they did, then there might be some fact-checking as to whether this person was in New York City at the time and whether this person was, in fact, subject to the predations of evil New Yorkers looking askance at hijab wearers on the New York subway system.
00:04:11.000And Zorn Mamdani, who has spent his entire life being useless, and now his final closing pitch is, why won't you give me the mayoralty?
00:04:17.000And if you don't, it's because you're mean to Muslims.
00:04:22.000I mean, that is the mark of a person who truly feels entitled to everything.
00:04:26.000Is that if you won't give him the mayoralty of the financial center of planet Earth, it must be not because he's a bad candidate, not because he's an out-and-out communist, not because he is a sympathizer with jihadists, but because you are mean to Muslims.
00:04:42.000So here is Zorn Mamdani doubling, tripling down on this yesterday.
00:04:49.000I was speaking about Zaya Fui, my father's cousin, who sadly passed away a few years ago.
00:04:58.000And for the takeaway from my more than 10-minute address about Islamophobia in this race and in this city, to be the question of my aunt, tells you everything about Andrew Cuomo and his inability to reckon with a crisis.
00:05:14.000Okay, so it's a crisis of Islamophobia is what's happening here.
00:05:17.000And you're even asking questions about the identity of his aunt, his father's cousin, who he won't even name.
00:05:24.000If you ask that question, it's because you must hate Muslims.
00:05:27.000It can't be because you doubt his honesty because he is, in fact, a manufactured candidate who is smarmy and fake and smug in every single video of him.
00:05:37.000But the bizarrely conjured emotional moments with the strange smile that breaks out creepily on his face like an outtake from get out.
00:05:50.000It is a very, he is a strange candidate, but if you ask questions, it's because you're being mean to him.
00:05:54.000And that's really the story, isn't it?
00:05:56.000The real story is that if you don't vote for Zora Mamdani, it's because you're a big meanie who doesn't like Muslims.
00:06:01.000You mean, mean person, you meany, mean, McMean, mean person who you are in your Islamophobia, not voting for the guy who wants to nationalize resources, not voting for the guy who wants to spread every idiotic third-grade secretary idea he ever had across America's most populous city.
00:06:31.000This tells you everything you need to know about the Republican Party.
00:06:35.000At a time when 4 million Americans are in danger of losing their health care, when the federal government is choosing to price hungry Americans across this country out of their very groceries, their focus is to take on the Muslim guy who won the Democratic primary by 13 points.
00:06:55.000This is a moment where active duty military families are lining up for food pantries across this entire country.
00:07:01.000And for congresspeople in the Republican Party to see that and say that their answer to it is to try and nullify the results of an election, it tells you everything that you have to know.
00:07:20.000Yes, he's very likely to be the next mayor of New York.
00:07:22.000But if you pay attention to that, what you should be paying attention to is all these other issues he wasn't talking about until five seconds ago.
00:07:30.000Look, Squirrel, seriously, what a sad, sad candidate he is.
00:07:34.000And it is a real statement about what a terrible candidate Andrew Cuomo is that he lost to the schmuck in a primary.
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00:10:05.000And just lest you, lest you truly believe that Mom Dani is some sort of soft-hearted, wonderful person.
00:10:12.000I'd just like to point out a clip of him from 2023.
00:10:14.000You want to know where his ideology comes from.
00:10:16.000His ideology is deeply, deeply ensconced in the red-green alliance that has characterized the wild left, the alliance between communists and radical jihadists that has characterized so much of the left these days.
00:10:29.000This is a clip from him in September 2023, explaining that basically his hatred for capitalism springs from his dislike of the quote-unquote Zionists.
00:10:39.000The importance for me of international solidarity is that it takes me out of the American political landscape and reminds me of just how tame some of the things are that I'm actually calling for.
00:10:53.000And it reminds me of the necessity of grounding ourselves in the struggles as opposed to the fights around the starts.
00:11:00.000For anyone to care about these issues, we have to make them hyper-limitable.
00:11:07.000We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF.
00:11:16.000We are in a country where those connections abound, especially in New York City, you have so many opportunities to make clear the ways in which that struggle over there is tied to capitalist interests over here.
00:11:32.000So you see, it's really the Jews in Israel who are tied to the capitalist interests in New York City.
00:12:22.000And I was proud to be on that stage alongside Senator Bernie Sanders, Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Governor Kathy Hochul, Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Hasty.
00:12:34.000And what I asked of those more than 10,000 New Yorkers yesterday was more.
00:12:40.000More door knocking, more phone banking, more commitment to this campaign that has already transformed our city and is on the verge of actually delivering affordability.
00:12:49.000And that is our message to New Yorkers with these final eight days.
00:12:54.000They're on the verge of delivering affordability.
00:12:56.000You know, just by just by electing him, everything will become more affordable.
00:13:00.000Now, maybe that's true because so many people will move out of the city to avoid his horrific tenure.
00:13:14.000Or maybe he's making promises he can't actually cash.
00:13:17.000But that doesn't matter because understand, Mom Dani is a mood.
00:13:21.000Mom Dani is not an actual basket of policy priorities.
00:13:24.000Nobody knows what the hell he's talking about when he talks about he's going to free freeze housing.
00:13:29.000He has no idea how he's going to actually be able to do that.
00:13:33.000He was quizzed by reporters over how he would specifically outmaneuver Mayor Eric Adams' latest plan to stack the rent guidelines board with members who will tank his rent freeze proposal.
00:13:45.000And he said, we would use the full extent of powers that we would have as mayor with the rent guidelines board.
00:13:50.000And when asked about how he would do that, he said, I continue to be confident of our ability to deliver a rent freeze.
00:13:55.000And I continue to be confident that we will be able to match whatever last-minute betrayal Eric Adams tries to concoct.
00:14:01.000Because we've seen, it's not just that he's actively looking to betray New Yorkers.
00:14:06.000So the answer is he has no idea how he's going to do any of this because it doesn't matter.
00:14:11.000The reason people support Mom Dani is because he's fetch and he's a brat.
00:14:15.000And apparently there are a lot of idiots in New York.
00:14:18.000And those idiots in New York are fully on board with the idea that if you don't vote for Zoran Mamdani, it must be because you're some sort of racist or because you hate gay people or because you hate black people or because you are one of those capitalist tools.
00:14:36.000I can't even really describe them how they would like to be described.
00:14:39.000There's a video going around of people who call themselves rabbis supporting Mom Dani.
00:14:46.000Now, I'm just going to point out here that not a single person here knows more about basic Jewish law or Jewish philosophy than my five-year-old.
00:15:01.000The history of the rabbinate goes back thousands of years, and you have to have like a baseline level of high learning in order to become a rabbi, or at least you're supposed to.
00:15:16.000There are other roles that women can fulfill.
00:15:19.000But putting aside the sex problem here, these women know less about Judaism than my five-year-old by leaps and bounds.
00:15:26.000There is no question this is the case.
00:15:28.000And so trotting out your Jewish identity and wearing it around as a costume.
00:15:32.000My identity is not your costume, ladies.
00:15:35.000Trotting around, pretending that you are a rabbi in favor of Zoran Mamdani, a pro-jihadi, pro-Marxist radical, betrays whatever supposed religion you profess to believe.
00:15:50.000And the joke, by the way, becomes inherently funny because at the very end, it turns out that the only male rabbi in this particular video is a trans female at the very end popping his head up to explain that as a trans female rabbi, who, by the way, openly says does not believe in God, is speaking on behalf of the Jews.
00:16:10.000The reason I point this out is because there are many idiots and crazy people all across the land, and many of them reside in New York.
00:16:15.000I'm also pointing this out because if somebody like this ever says, as a Jew, if the only time you, as a Jew, is when you're supporting someone who legitimately hates Jews, then I don't believe you.
00:16:31.000I think that what you are actually doing is just trying to claim minority status because you don't want to be labeled a liberal white lady, which is really what you are unless you're a liberal white man pretending to be a liberal white lady.
00:16:41.000So this video is going viral yesterday for good reason because it's nuts or lack thereof or maybe including nuts, depending on where you are in the video.
00:18:04.000First of all, you ain't going to get lower rent.
00:18:05.000Second of all, I mean, if you're going to do the identity politics things here, ladies, if this is your thing, if you're going to like do the as a Jew thing, you might want to make a reference to anything remotely relating to Jewishness as opposed to, as a generic human, I want lower rent.
00:18:22.000Like people are deservedly making fun of these people and they should.
00:18:27.000But I suppose that this is the new core of the Democrat coalition.
00:18:31.000The new core of the Democrat coalition is liberal white ladies and people who are angry about minority status in the United States in some way or have grievances against the majority culture, I suppose.
00:18:45.000I mean, that's what the polls show because it turns out the native-born New Yorkers are voting for Cuomo and the people who are voting for Mamdani tend to be immigrants, young, and liberal white ladies who proclaim that they're rabbis.
00:18:58.000And again, in order for me to actually take seriously your claims of Jewishness, you have to show me a scintilla of Jewishness other than you claiming it.
00:19:06.000Like, I need to know what would make you in the same way that if you claim, as a Catholic, I love abortion, I'd be like, well, you know, I'm going to need to see your credentials on that one.
00:19:16.000Just pathetic and deservedly being mocked.
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00:21:42.000Producer Justin, he basically is chilling down on these all the time because you know we're constantly on the go.
00:22:04.000Speaking of Saturday Night Live skits, Kathy Hochul, who you remember, replaced Andrew Cuomo.
00:22:09.000She should be backing Andrew Cuomo because if it weren't for Andrew Cuomo, she wouldn't be governor of New York.
00:22:12.000Kathy Hochul ended up as governor of New York because Andrew Cuomo couldn't stop grabbing ass or killing old people and he ran out of old people.
00:22:18.000And she ended up becoming the governor of New York.
00:22:21.000Well, now she's endorsing Zoran Momdani.
00:22:24.000And everyone booed her in the crowd, which is hilarious.
00:22:27.000And then she tried to interpret that as a chant in favor of the Buffalo Bills, which was awkward.
00:23:01.000That's what they're actually chanting.
00:23:03.000And then Mom Donnie came out, grabbed her hand, raised it, and walked her out because everyone hates Kathy Hochul.
00:23:08.000But this is the nature of the Democratic Party.
00:23:11.000The Democratic Party is made up of a bunch of more traditional, they're still very, very left-wing, more traditional liberals who are making way for the Marxists because every revolutionary movement is willing to break the movement in order to take over the movement.
00:23:25.000That's always the threat: Mom Dani and the rest of his Marxist, pro-jihadi crowd is going to break the movement in order to take over the movement, that they'll sit it out, that they won't get involved in politics anymore.
00:23:36.000And so, constantly, because they're willing to make those sort of extreme threats about their own side, the liberals, the good little liberals, are willing to pat them on the head and give them a hug and talk about how, really, yeah, we don't agree with them, but really, their great sin, if they have any sin, is that they're just too passionate.
00:23:59.000It is old school, mainstream left-wingers who are doing the work of the radicals in their party because they're afraid that if they don't, then they'll get eaten.
00:24:27.000And the amount of government dependency in this country is just way too high, period.
00:24:30.000But they are, in fact, dependent on food stamps.
00:24:33.000And when those cut off, there's going to be hell to pay for Democrats who won't just vote for a continuing resolution.
00:24:38.000And yet, Chuck Schumer continues to do the bidding of the AOC, Zoran Mamdani wing of his party.
00:24:42.000Here was Chuck Schumer yesterday, the Senate minority leader.
00:24:46.000Donald Trump says there's no money to pay hungry kids workers, but he's spending $40 billion to bail out Argentina, $300 billion on his vanity ballroom, $172 million on two luxury jets for Christy Noam, hundreds of millions for outfitting his foreign jet, but nothing, nothing, nothing to help hungry kids.
00:25:12.000What a bubble this president lives in, apart, away, and not caring about the trauma the American people are facing when it comes to health care.
00:25:25.000So this is his pitch, his final pitch is Trump is doing a ballroom.
00:25:55.000Starting this Saturday, tens of millions of Americans face the specter of financial crisis, all while Donald Trump is dancing on the tarmac in Malaysia.
00:26:08.000Donald Trump may be having a nice time abroad, but people here at home are dreading, dreading open enrollment.
00:26:34.000They want $1.5 trillion for people that came out of prisons for illegal aliens that come into our country.
00:26:41.000We don't want to do that because that will help really hurt the health care that we have in our country.
00:26:48.000Well, again, this seems like a bad move for Democrats.
00:26:51.000And in fact, according to Politico, the Democratic shutdown movement is fraying.
00:26:55.000According to Politico, Democrats grappled Monday with the first major fraying of their coalition amid the government shutdown with a federal employee union calling for them to stand down four weeks into the standoff.
00:27:04.000There was no immediate surrender from party leaders, but the union's plea forced many Democratic lawmakers into a defensive crouch.
00:27:10.000Their number two Senate leader said it would be subject of internal conversations this week, with bipartisan talks all but ground to a halt.
00:27:16.000Senator Dick Durbin said it has a lot of impact.
00:27:20.000And he says Democrats take them seriously.
00:27:21.000The push by the American Federation of Government Employees for Congress to immediately pass a clean stopgap funding bill, which is exactly what Republicans are offering, is among a long drealist of pressure points that are bearing down on lawmakers.
00:27:33.000By the end of the week, SNAP runs out, and Americans who get health insurance through Obamacare will confront premium spikes as open enrollment starts without a deal on how to extend soon-to-expire subsidies.
00:27:45.000Senator Mark Warner is showing some signs of caving.
00:29:46.000Now, Speaker Johnson, one of the things that's really astonishing about all this is, of course, their list of demands basically just involves rolling back a bill that they lost.
00:29:54.000I mean, the one big beautiful bill, which was a major legislative accomplishment by you and by Senate Majority Leader Thun and President Trump, they don't like it.
00:30:01.000And so now I guess their goal is they want to roll back many provisions of the OBBB in order to, I suppose, achieve a victory they couldn't have achieved any other way.
00:30:09.000And they are holding up the workings of government in order to do this.
00:30:13.000I've never seen a shutdown where the side that was demanding change was not blamed for the shutdown.
00:30:19.000Typically speaking, the side that is calling for a continuing resolution is usually considered properly, I think, by the American people to be the side that actually would like to keep the government open because it is just a continuation of government funding at current levels.
00:30:31.000It's Democrats who are demanding major changes.
00:30:33.000What are the major changes they're demanding here for those unfamiliar?
00:30:37.000First of all, this is the first time in history that any party has had the audacity to shut the government down over a clean, continuing resolution, clean CR.
00:31:07.000So what they're doing, again, motivated out of fear by the far left base, they can't face the angry mobs and the crowds and all of that.
00:31:15.000So they've decided to ask for the moon.
00:31:17.000And I mean, it's wild partisan spending priorities.
00:31:19.000Not only do they want us to restore free health care for illegal aliens paid for by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of almost $200 billion, they also want to give back money to the corporation for public broadcasting, for example.
00:31:33.000They want a half a billion dollars to go to that cause.
00:31:38.000They want to give money to all these boondoggle foreign spending priorities again.
00:31:44.000They want, you know, $4 million, for example, one of the line items that would go to LGBTQ, whatever the acronym is, plus, okay, awareness campaigns in foreign countries.
00:31:55.000They want to spend money in the Horn of Africa to promote feminist ideals.
00:31:59.000I mean, all this kinds of stuff that the American people have had enough of.
00:32:02.000During the Doge effort, early in this Congress and the administration, we recognized all the amazing abuses and fraud and waste that was being spent.
00:32:33.000They want to shut the government down because they think it's going to hurt President Trump and the Republicans.
00:32:37.000But the American people are smarter than they give them credit for.
00:32:41.000Now, Speaker Johnson, one of the things about this shutdown that I find fascinating is the amount of attention that's paid to the shutdown outside of the beltway, outside of the media, seems to be fairly low for most Americans, at least comparatively with other government shutdowns.
00:32:55.000I think part of that is because with Republicans in charge, there's been an attempt to mitigate the effects of the shutdown.
00:33:00.000Usually when Democrats are in charge, if there is some sort of shutdown, Democrats in the White House, Barack Obama did this, Joe Biden did the same thing.
00:33:06.000There is usually an attempt to maximize the amount of pain that Americans are suffering.
00:33:10.000So I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama literally shut down outdoor World War II memorials that required no actual staffing in order to sort of maximize the pain that Americans were feeling over a government shutdown.
00:33:22.000Republicans seem to be trying to minimize that.
00:33:24.000There have been several bills that have been promoted in the House and the Senate that would have continued to pay members of the military, for example, would have continued to pay certain tranches of federal employees, keep the FAA working and all the rest.
00:33:35.000And Democrats keep shutting that down in an attempt to maximize the amount of pain.
00:33:39.000So in this situation, it's not just the Democrats are calling for changes.
00:33:42.000They are the ones who are attempting to maximize the pain from their own refusal to reopen the government.
00:33:56.000Barack Obama turned them all up to level 10 immediately.
00:34:00.000I mean, remember, they put yellow-red crime tape around the World War II memorial out on the National Mall.
00:34:06.000They wouldn't even let veterans who traveled in Washington get close to the memorial because they wanted it to hurt so badly.
00:34:11.000And unlike the Democrats, Republicans do not take pleasure in hurting the American people.
00:34:16.000I mean, you've heard them in their own words say the quiet parts out loud.
00:34:19.000Chuck Schumer literally said here six or seven days ago that every day of the shutdown gets better for us, meaning his party.
00:34:26.000You had the number two ranked Democrat in the House just the other day say, yeah, we understand it's going to cause pain, but that's really the only time we have leverage.
00:34:34.000They admit that they're doing this intentionally and that they want people to hurt.
00:34:38.000Conversely, you've got the President Trump who doesn't want it.
00:34:42.000He's moving money around trying to find unobligated funds to cover troop pay and to cover SNAP benefits and all these other things.
00:34:51.000And this is a desperate, serious time, real Americans feeling real hardships because the Democrats are here playing politics and running away from the Marxists and their party.
00:35:00.000That is just clearly and simply exactly what's going on.
00:35:03.000And history will tell the story here of who imposed this pain.
00:35:08.000You know, Speaker Johnson, one of the things you've mentioned a couple of times here is the Democrats being hocked to their left wing.
00:35:13.000It is very clear the Democratic Party, unfortunately, continues to move to the left and away from even the moderates in their own caucus.
00:35:19.000There's been talk about attempts in the Senate to primary Senator John Fetterman, who remains a very popular senator in Pennsylvania.
00:35:25.000He's a Democrat who votes almost all the time with the Democrats.
00:35:28.000I think he's voted with President Trump some 6% of the time.
00:35:30.000But because he opposes the government shutdown and likes Israel, this means that he is not in fine federal with the Democratic base.
00:35:36.000Obviously, Zara Mandani and AOC are sort of leading a wing of the Democratic Party that seems to be trying to take control of the Democratic Party with very little objection from sort of the more mainstream Democratic Party.
00:35:46.000What do you make of the future of a Democratic Party that continues to hand itself over to these people?
00:35:52.000The party is committing suicide in a political sense.
00:36:12.000And you saw that they've endorsed Mondami for mayor in New York City.
00:36:16.000I mean, you know what this guy is for.
00:36:17.000He's a radical leftist, a true Marxist in his ideology and his belief.
00:36:22.000And not only does he hate Israel and engage in anti-Semitism and endorse that kind of anti-Semitic speech, but I mean, he wants to defund the police and legalize prostitution and take over the means of production.
00:36:33.000I mean, the guy is a true communist and they're supporting that.
00:36:38.000I saw his rally, a clip from his rally that he did with AOC and Bernie, where they stood up on the stage and literally promised everything for free to everyone.
00:36:46.000That's never ended very well in history, but they're not students of history, but we are.
00:36:51.000The point is that the chasm is so wide now between the two parties, you're actually seeing a split screen in American politics and society.
00:36:59.000And on one side, you think of it, you know, in the last nine and a half months, this Congress and the second Trump administration, President Trump and Republicans are delivering for the people.
00:37:09.000We have cut taxes, cut regulations, eliminated fraud, waste, and abuse on a massive scale.
00:37:37.000And hardworking Americans understand who is here every day working for them, trying to make their lives better, and who is engaging in this political obstruction and hugging up to the communists.
00:37:47.000I mean, when we get into this midterm election next year, we have quite a story to tell.
00:37:51.000And I think the facts speak for themselves.
00:37:53.000And it's a great time to be alive when you have the facts.
00:37:58.000Speaker Johnson, when we look at the future of this shutdown, can you lay out for us sort of the calendar of the things that are slated to happen if the shutdown continues?
00:38:06.000Because while the shutdown has not been, I think, at the forefront of most people's imagination right now, that's going to change very shortly as the calendar progresses.
00:38:13.000It is really by the end of this week, because the heroic measures that we discuss that the president and the administration have taken to mitigate the pain, we're running out of those funding sources.
00:38:23.000So there's a real question, as you and I speak right here, about whether the troops will get paid at the end of this month.
00:38:47.000These are young soldiers and airmen and sailors who are many of whom are deployed around the world defending American interest and our safety.
00:38:54.000And they've left young families at home.
00:38:57.000And for example, young moms, I know in my district, I have a big military district, two major bases there.
00:39:02.000And we've got young families, young moms with two or three kids, and they live paycheck to paycheck.
00:39:07.000And they're not going to get that paycheck because the Democrats are playing games.
00:39:10.000You have TSA agents and Border Patrol agents and air traffic controllers.
00:39:15.000If you have plans to travel in the coming weeks, you better factor in delays and maybe cancel flights because as Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said here in a press conference a couple of days ago with me, he's going to, he doesn't want, he wants you to be on time, but he'd rather you be late than jeopardize your safety.
00:39:32.000So, if we don't have people in the towers because they're not getting paid and the stress level is too high, they're going to cancel the flights.
00:39:38.000So, it's just going to reverberate all the way through the economy and to every community around the country.
00:39:43.000Snap benefits are going to dry up November 1.
00:39:46.000We have 42 million Americans who depend upon that for food, literally.
00:39:50.000It's food stamps as we used to know it.
00:39:52.000That funding is no longer going to be available.
00:39:55.000We had the small business administrator, Kelly Loeffler, with us at our press conference yesterday, and she explained how small businesses, which provide like 99% of the jobs in America, are really struggling because so many of them have government contracts that have been delayed.
00:40:08.000And it just goes on and on throughout the society.
00:40:11.000You have veterans' services, health services for the elderly and disabled.
00:40:15.000All the things that the federal government provides have been turned off by the Democrats.
00:40:19.000And it cannot be emphasized enough, Ben.
00:40:21.000We have voted 13 times to open the government.
00:40:24.000They have voted 13 times to shut it down.
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00:41:57.000The news might not sleep, but at least now I do with Helix.
00:42:48.000So Joe Biden is back out there talking.
00:42:50.000And honestly, it's a miracle of modern medicine that he is because clearly the former president is ailing.
00:42:56.000Never forget, they tried to run this person for president of the United States, telling you that he was healthy and fine and everything was going to be fine if you made him president again.
00:43:05.000It is currently what would have been 10 months into his second term, and the man does not look great.
00:43:20.000We are in one of those moments right now.
00:43:23.000From over 50 years of elected public life, this is the worst I've seen it.
00:43:29.000If Ted were here today, he'd still be fighting like hell.
00:43:33.000But his optimism would be surely tested.
00:43:36.000Because truth be told, our very democracy is at stake, in my view.
00:43:42.000We'll leave aside all the jokes about Ted Kennedy and Chapaquitik right here, but I'm just going to point out that Joe Biden does not look great.
00:43:47.000Corrine Jean-Pierre, meanwhile, his former press secretary, the worst press secretary in American history, by far, no close competitors.
00:43:54.000She has a brand new book out titled Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House Outside the Party Lines.
00:44:09.000Like it's really funny because Chotner does not understand for the life of him what she objects to about Democrats now criticizing Joe Biden's health.
00:44:17.000So he says, you feel like you had to leave the Democratic Party because of the way it treated Joe Biden.
00:44:24.000And the reason I say this, and I really want people to understand my perspective and where I come from and the role that I played in those three weeks from the debates, the president deciding that he was no longer going to be at the top of the ticket and handing over the baton is that I was the person who was standing on that podium behind that lectern, having to take in all the hard questions on this.
00:45:19.000There's a period of time that I questioned what was happening and how do we treat our own?
00:45:23.000How do we treat people who are decent people?
00:45:25.000And then you also have to think about how I'm thinking about this as a black woman who is part of the LGBTQ community and living in this time where I also don't think Democrats right now, Democrats' leadership is protecting vulnerable people in the way that it should.
00:45:37.000So she gets stuck in a question and she just starts babbling about how she's a gay black woman.
00:45:44.000Solid choice there by President Biden.
00:45:47.000Really good thinking there by President Biden.
00:45:49.000And then Chotner says, sorry, I'm not trying to be dense.
00:45:53.000To be fair to Chotner, he can be dense by accident.
00:45:56.000I mean, he's dense nearly all the time.
00:45:57.000But he says, sorry, I'm not trying to be dense.
00:45:59.000I'm a little unclear about what this has to do with Democratic leaders and many Democrats in the country thinking that Joe Biden was going to lose to Donald Trump, which is what all the polls showed, and therefore thinking he should be replaced.
00:49:16.000AOC, the amount of work that AOC has put into her political career pales in comparison to the amount of work that people actually have to put into becoming NCAA competitive swimmers.
00:49:26.000Riley was swimming hours a day from the time she was a small child in order to compete at that level.
00:49:31.000AOC has never done anything remotely like that.
00:49:33.000She was selected by the Justice Democrats to run in a primary where she won something like 17,000 votes, and then she was immediately elevated into stardom because she is a decent-looking person who is young and Latina.
00:50:22.000So Riley quite properly called her out on Fox News last night.
00:50:26.000And then AOC responded by attacking her again on Twitter, saying that she doesn't have to debate Riley Gaines because Riley suggested, hey, you know, you want to talk about this?
00:50:46.000That's the person Democrats are choosing going forward because progressivism and youth and energy and fresh-facedness and ethnic diversity and all the rest of this sort of stupidity.
00:50:57.000Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom left out there in the cold by himself as a white lizard person, incapable of generating enough enthusiasm or heat.
00:51:51.000He is the entire Amsterdam red light district of attention, Steve Bannon.
00:51:55.000He will say anything in order to maintain street cred with President Trump and in order to maintain himself at the center of American politics, despite the fact that he was kicked out the door by the president last term and named sloppy Steve as a result.
00:52:09.000And so Steve Bannon out there retailing the bizarre and stupid idea that Donald Trump is going to run for a third term, presumably so that Bannon can, I don't know, have an iron in the fire in 2028 himself, perhaps.
00:52:21.000The media, of course, are grabbing that and paying attention to it as though it's a real strategy in order to try and alarm Democratic voters.
00:52:28.000And so this is the new shtick: Democrats claiming that Trump isn't going to leave the White House.
00:53:49.000We will unite to stop a third term that can't possibly happen legally.
00:53:53.000Just to clarify that Steve Bannon and all the rest of the left-wing crew claiming Trump's going to run in 2028, that they're grifters, I decided that I was going to ask Comet, my sponsors, a new web browser by Perplexity, about this very question.
00:54:05.000Are there any plausible legal strategies by which a two-term president could run for a third term under the Constitution?
00:54:11.000There are no plausible legal strategies by which a two-term president could run for a third term under the current U.S. Constitution.
00:54:17.000The 22nd Amendment explicitly states that no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice.
00:54:22.000And constitutional scholars widely agree the prohibition is clear and comprehensive.
00:54:27.000The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, restricts any individual from being elected president more than twice.
00:54:33.000Suggestions, such as running as VP and ascending to the presidency after resignation, are barred by the 12th Amendment, which states that no person ineligible for the presidency may serve as vice president.
00:54:43.000Some academic discussions have considered rare technical scenarios related to succession and eligibility.
00:54:49.000Any attempts would almost certainly be challenged and blocked legally.
00:54:52.000In other words, the people who are telling you this kind of stuff, you shouldn't listen to them because they're lying to you for clicks or for power or for whatever, and they're making you actively stupider.
00:55:05.000Now, meanwhile, the only thing that theoretically could, as I've said many times, actually push AOC or the Democrats back into office would be economic downturn.
00:55:15.000That does not seem to be in the offing, at least in the immediate future, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:55:19.000From trade deals and foreign elections to merger announcements to corporate earnings, investors are finding plenty of reasons to be happy.
00:55:25.000Stocks hit fresh records on Monday, marking a significant pickup in momentum after a bumpy stretch in which tariff fears and worries about loan losses at regional banks weighed on major indices.
00:55:34.000The optimism is not limited to U.S. markets.
00:55:36.000Benchmarks in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan notched new records on Monday, while the Shanghai Composite closed at its highest level in more than 10 years.
00:55:43.000Argentine stocks rocketed 22% higher, powered by a decisive win for President Javier Millay in the country's midterm elections.
00:55:50.000Jed Ellerbrook, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management, said there's a lot of stuff in the good column and not a lot in the bad column.
00:55:56.000Stocks were lifted by hopes for improving trade relations between the United States and China.
00:56:02.000Worries ease stock indices have recovered since concerns just a few weeks ago over trade imbalances.
00:56:11.000Ellerbrook said investors have had no choice but to get comfortable with President Trump's negotiating style and his preference for doing trade deals publicly.
00:56:17.000And there's been a strong start to earnings season.
00:56:20.000There are some economic data releases like the October Jobs Report that have been delayed due to the government shutdown, but there are better than expected profits at major companies.
00:56:29.000So, again, the economy looks to be chugging along in the very near future.
00:56:33.000The Federal Reserve is going to lower those interest rates again, which will create more liquidity in the economy.
00:56:38.000Meanwhile, companies are, in fact, reporting larger profits because of technology, because of robots, because of AI.
00:56:46.000Amazon has announced job cuts of 14,000 workers on Tuesday.
00:56:49.000That's a first move in layoffs that are expected to affect as many as 30,000 corporate jobs, according to people familiar with the matter.
00:56:56.000The thousands of corporate ping slips going out on Tuesday, according to the journal, cut across the organization, hitting human resources, cloud computing, advertising, and a number of other business units.
00:57:07.000And again, the goal here, presumably, is for Amazon to repurpose some of those people.
00:57:12.000So apparently, Amazon offers most employees 90 days to look for a new role internally.
00:57:18.000And it won't be a surprise actually to see the economy continue to go up while unemployment numbers also go up thanks to transitions in the job market, thanks to AI and technology.
00:57:30.000When you have tech transitions, people in some of the old industries are going to lose their jobs and then they will find new industries.
00:57:36.000That does not mean that AI kills the market.
00:57:38.000It doesn't mean that AI kills the entire jobs market.
00:57:40.000It does mean that there are going to be some bumpy points here along the road.
00:57:44.000Okay, meanwhile, on the foreign front, Javier Millay's big win, that shocking win, spells a new future for Argentina.
00:57:52.000According to the Wall Street Journal, for decades, the poor suburbs that ring Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, powered the leftist Peronese movement on Sunday.
00:57:59.000They made a historic shift against Peronism that propelled President Javier Millé to a surprise victory in midterm congressional elections.
00:58:05.000The Argentine poor, whom Eva Perón lionized as the country's heart and soul, largely stayed home in a stinging rebuke to the Peronist movement that has dominated politics here for 80 years.
00:58:13.000At the same time, middle-class voters mobilized to rescue Millay and his free market revolt.
00:58:18.000Millay gave voters a choice: stick with his brand of self-described shock therapy for Argentina's ills or face the familiar economic ruin seen under the Peronists in the past.
00:58:38.000An unexpectedly strong mandate overhauling an ailing economy with the financial firepower of the Trump administration.
00:58:44.000So, again, that was a strong move by the Trump administration to basically say to the Argentine voting population: listen, folks, you want money and liquidity in your country.
00:58:52.000You're going to need a solid economic plan going forward.
00:58:54.000That does not happen if Millay is not the man in charge.
00:59:00.000Good for Javier Millay, good for the world.
00:59:03.000Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, even while the president is trying to negotiate a trade deal with China, China is trying to up the ante on pressuring the United States over Taiwan.
00:59:12.000That is because China is, in fact, a geopolitical enemy of the United States, not merely an opponent.
00:59:17.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said over the weekend that Americans shouldn't worry that the administration is going to get favorable treatment or trade in exchange for walking away from Taiwan.
00:59:28.000But Xi's big ask has been that the United States formally oppose independence for Taiwan.
00:59:33.000Right now, there's a policy of what we call strategic ambiguity, where the United States does not actually say what it thinks on the issue of Taiwan.
00:59:42.000Acknowledging China's position that Taiwan is part of China would mean that if China were to invade Taiwan, it would be very difficult to make the case that that invasion should be resisted.
00:59:52.000The United States, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, does not need to clarify its policy on whether it would defend Taiwan in a crisis.
00:59:58.000But a concession to Xi on independence would be self-defeating for Trump's goals.
01:00:02.000Trump wants the island to spend more on defense, but endorsing Xi's view would undermine morale and tell the Taiwanese that attempting to defend itself is futile, which is exactly what Beijing wants.
01:00:11.000The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 says, quote, any effort to undermine, to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, would be of grave concern to the United States.
01:00:23.000Right now, the Chinese are trying to intimidate the Taiwan Strait, not Taiwan directly.
01:00:28.000It'll be interesting to see what happens going forward.
01:00:31.000I believe the president will, in fact, stand up against Chinese predations here.
01:00:38.000Artie joining us on the line to discuss what is, I think, the major issue in American life.
01:00:42.000Right now, we are seeing history wiped away.
01:00:45.000We are seeing an American populace that doesn't know its own traditions.
01:00:48.000And that is how you end up with a Zaran Mamdani in office or an AOC as a presidential frontrunner.
01:00:54.000Joining us on the line to discuss all this is the author of a brand new book called The Golden Thread.
01:01:01.000Oh, it's a great pleasure to join you, Deben.
01:01:03.000I'm an original member of the Daily Wire.
01:01:06.000I just wanted you to know that I was the founding member.
01:01:10.000Wow, I mean, that says a lot considering there are not a lot of, I would assume, faculty members at Harvard University who are founding members of the Daily Wires.
01:01:37.000But why don't we begin with what drove it?
01:01:39.000Because there has been a loss of history, not just on the left, but also on the right, a willingness to sort of wipe away history, pretend that it doesn't exist, or at least ignore it, pretend that it doesn't matter.
01:01:48.000What drove you to write a golden thread?
01:01:51.000Well, basically, my motivation was that we're losing our civilization.
01:01:57.000We're declining into this state of techno-barbarism.
01:02:01.000And in this state of cultural Alzheimer's that we're in, we've got a series of very serious civilizational problems, starting with the fact that we can't talk to each other anymore.
01:02:17.000We don't have any common historical vocabulary to do that.
01:02:21.000You know, I teach what are supposed to be the best students in the country, and I constantly meet up with the fact that they don't know things that one would have taken for granted at a high school education two generations ago.
01:02:36.000So they don't know what the Reformation is.
01:02:38.000They don't know what the Renaissance is.
01:02:40.000They don't know anything about Greece or Rome.
01:02:44.000I mean, some of them know some things, but the idea that they don't have a connected sense of what the West is because they teach global history in high school and they just teach a piece of this, piece of that, go into the next 10 years, teach a big of this, then that.
01:02:56.000They never get a connected sense or narrative about the West.
01:03:00.000They don't know, you can't refer to anything.
01:03:03.000You can't refer to the Bible or to Shakespeare or to Michelangelo or to what democracy is.
01:03:10.000They have all different ideas about what democracy is.
01:03:13.000It's not grounded in any sort of historical sense of historical democracies in ancient Greece or republics in ancient Rome.
01:03:21.000So you're basically teaching students who are mature but have infant minds.
01:03:49.000And this is with the best students in the country.
01:03:51.000I mean, theoretically, the best students in the country.
01:03:55.000You know, Professor Hankins, I think that the project is summed up in the title of the book, A Golden Thread, because in order for people to have a holistic view of Western history, you do have to understand, number one, that actually there is a thread that runs throughout Western history.
01:04:09.000And number two, that actually the West is good.
01:04:11.000Because if you believe the West is bad, then you have to throw out all the good parts and focus in only on the bad parts or treat history as non-contingent, as sort of bizarrely fragmentary, sort of a mosaic of things that happened.
01:04:24.000And if you also think that the West is bad, then you have to basically discard the idea of history as a whole.
01:04:30.000And so re-establishing the idea that there is, in fact, a through line through history, and sure, that through line isn't always a direct line.
01:04:36.000It's more of a thread than it is a direct line between point A and point B. But following that thread is really, really important.
01:04:44.000When did we, do you think, start to lose that thread?
01:04:47.000When is it that we decided that the thread no longer existed so that we end up with a brand of student who really doesn't understand any of this?
01:04:54.000Well, we stopped teaching Western civilization two generations ago, basically late 80s, early 90s.
01:05:00.000And the educational establishment got together and said, well, we don't need to teach Western Civ anymore.
01:05:25.000But what happens when you don't teach any history, bad actors step in and activists step in and they poison people's minds.
01:05:36.000So our students, many of them anyway, not all of them, but many of them believe that the West is simply bad.
01:05:43.000And many teachers think the West is so bad, you shouldn't teach it because you'll infect people's minds with racism and white supremacy and colonialism and sexism and you name it.
01:05:58.000I mean, it's become the whipping boy of the left, the Western tradition.
01:06:02.000So you have to teach it or other people will start teaching it for you.
01:06:08.000And students now get most of their information from social media.