Ben Shapiro talks about the sudden departure of Mike Waltz from the National Security Agency, and why it could be part of a proxy fight inside the Trump administration over the direction of foreign policy. Plus, a piece of Daily Wire history.
00:00:46.000Perfect for your desk, bookshelf, or mantle of your teepee, longhouse, or other traditional dwelling.
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00:00:54.000And yeah, we're making fun of Elizabeth Moore and they're not Native Americans.
00:00:56.000Alrighty, so let's talk about what just happened in Washington, D.C. yesterday.
00:01:01.000So President Trump, in a shock move, decided to fire Mike Waltz, is what it looked like originally.
00:01:07.000And a bunch of people were celebrating this.
00:01:08.000Mike Waltz is the National Security Advisor or...
00:01:12.000Obviously, Mike Waltz had been under severe fire since this signal chat screw-up in which he accidentally included the Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who President Trump then gave an interview to.
00:01:26.000There's no question it was a screw-up.
00:01:28.000The question was how long Waltz would last over at NSA.
00:01:31.000Well, yesterday it was announced that Waltz would no longer be at NSA, and cheers went up from the anti-Waltz kind of...
00:01:40.000And then it was announced that Marco Rubio would become the temporary NSA and Walt himself would be moved over to the role of UN ambassador, a role that originally Elise Stefanik, the congresswoman from New York, had been nominated for.
00:01:54.000But when it became clear that the Republican majority in Congress was under threat, she was sort of removed from that nomination.
00:02:00.000So Walt is moving from NSA over to the UN ambassador role.
00:02:05.000Rubio is now serving in four positions simultaneously.
00:02:07.000He's the secretary of state, the national security advisor temporarily, the acting head of USAID, which of course is basically getting zeroed out, and the official archivist of the United States government.
00:02:18.000So he's like that kid in your third grade class who is simultaneously the secretary of the student government, as well as the vice president and the treasurer.
00:02:26.000That basically appears to be what's happening with Rubio.
00:02:29.000Now, there's still a lot of questions about what happened here.
00:02:32.000Because people are interpreting this as a proxy fight inside the Trump administration over the direction of foreign policy more generally.
00:02:40.000It is certainly plausible that there is, in fact, an ongoing conversation slash fight inside the administration over the direction of foreign policy.
00:02:47.000We know that because we know those conversations are happening largely from that signal chat that was originally leaked accidentally to the Atlantic, in which you had basically on one side, in favor of bombing the Houthis, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
00:03:01.000Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor.
00:03:05.000And then on the other side, you had Vice President J.D. Vance.
00:03:09.000Now, obviously, the Vice President and many people associated with his team, including, presumably, Special Envoy Steve Whitcoff, who we'll get to in a moment, they have a very different view on American foreign policy.
00:03:18.000They're very much in favor of a sort of isolationist-laden foreign policy, not a Reagan-esque peace through strength.
00:03:25.000And this is an ongoing conversation inside the administration.
00:03:28.000This is no great secret by any stretch.
00:03:32.000This move inside could betray more of that fight, but again, unclear which side of that fight Marco Rubio is on.
00:03:38.000Traditionally, a lot of people in the administration had perceived Rubio to be on the more traditional Republican peace through strength side of that fight.
00:03:45.000And now, presumably, because J.D. Vance is supporting Marco Rubio for taking over NSA, maybe that means that Rubio has sort of moved over to the Vance side of the argument.
00:03:56.000Again, a lot of this is sort of trying to read tea leaves as to the direction of the administration.
00:04:00.000And in the end, the only policymaker who really matters is, of course, the president of the United States.
00:04:05.000President Trump wrote on Truth Social, from his time in uniform on the battlefield in Congress, and as my national security advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our nation's interests first.
00:04:13.000I know he will do the same in his new role.
00:04:15.000Now, there are a lot of reports out of places like Axios that essentially the White House was already turning on Waltz from very early on in the administration, that he didn't get along supposedly with the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, that his foreign policy...
00:04:29.000The things that he actually believed were at odds with people like Vance or like Steve Whitcoff.
00:04:38.000Apparently, on a trip to Greenland in March, Vice President Vance counseled Waltz about, quote, working more collaboratively.
00:04:43.000And people inside the White House said that he didn't work well with Susie Wiles.
00:04:47.000And then apparently, Laura Loomer came in and, of course, started urging President Trump to fire some of the staffers that Waltz had appointed.
00:04:54.000Those would be the, quote-unquote, neocons.
00:04:56.000Now, again, the term neocon has basically become A term of universal opprobrium applied to people who clearly are not neocons.
00:05:03.000A neocon, just technically speaking, these are people who were Democrats in the 1960s, and they called themselves liberals mugged by reality.
00:05:12.000Many of them during the Bush administration were very interventionist, not just with regard to Iraq, but also with regard to, say, Libya and Syria, which is a sort of better acid test as to whether somebody was a truly interventionist neocon.
00:05:24.000Again, Iraq was widely approved by large swaths of the Republican Party, including some people who now count themselves isolationists.
00:05:30.000It was really the post-Iraq conflicts, like Libya and Syria, where these divisions started to really emerge between people who are very interventionist and almost Wilsonian style and people who are not.
00:05:41.000So a good example of this would be Ted Cruz.
00:05:43.000Ted Cruz was against the intervention in Libya and against an intervention in Syria as well.
00:05:47.000By the way, so was I. In any case, the attempt to label everybody a neocon...
00:05:52.000Is basically now just an all-purpose insult that you throw at anybody who doesn't agree with a more Pat Buchananite vision of American foreign policy.
00:06:01.000So, in any case, a bunch of people who are under Waltz were targeted by Laura Loomer, and some of them got fired.
00:06:08.000In recent days, according to Axios, Susie Wiles began collecting names to replace Waltz, but kept the process and discussion strictly under wraps.
00:06:15.000Secretary of State Rubio will fill in on an interim basis.
00:06:19.000Now, apparently, one of the original people who has floated for the job of NSA was Steve Witkoff.
00:06:23.000Now, I don't think that Witkoff wants the job.
00:06:26.000And the reason Witkoff doesn't want the job is because the NSA is actually an entire apparatus that you have to run.
00:06:31.000Witkoff's role so far has been flying off to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin or flying off to Qatar or flying off to Saudi Arabia or whatever it is.
00:06:38.000He's sort of a freewheeling agent in the mix, operating directly for the president of the United States and seems to have the president's ear on a lot of these negotiations.
00:06:48.000According to Axios, Waltz, Alex Wong, who is his assistant director of the NSA, and many of the National Security Council staffers who already departed were on the more hawkish wing within the administration, were perceived as quote-unquote neocons within the MAGA group.
00:07:01.000On Iran, both Vance and Wyckoff favored diplomacy.
00:07:03.000Waltz was much more open to the idea of military strikes.
00:07:06.000For now, according to Axios, it seems the restraint wing has won that argument and is generally in the ascendancy within Trump's national security team.
00:07:13.000And one of the sort of open questions is whether a straight wing is trying to say that the United States should not be involved in a strike on Iran, under what circumstances that would change, or whether they're trying to restrain Israel from a strike on Iran, which is a completely separate question.
00:07:26.000Because obviously Israel has a very strong interest in Iran not gaining a nuclear weapon, considering that Iran has specifically stated and has never stopped saying that once they gain a nuclear weapon, they're using it on the quote-unquote Zionist entity.
00:07:37.000So, J.D. Vance appeared on Fox News last night.
00:07:41.000Trying to explain what exactly had happened inside the administration.
00:08:02.000He's got the trust of both me and the president.
00:08:05.000But we also thought that he'd make a better U.N. ambassador as we get beyond this stage of the reforms that we've made to the National Security Council.
00:08:12.000You saw the president announce that Marco Rubio is going to step in as interim leader of the National Security Council.
00:08:19.000I think the media wants to frame this as a firing.
00:08:22.000Donald Trump has fired a lot of people.
00:08:24.000He doesn't give them Senate-confirmed appointments afterwards.
00:08:28.000Okay, so one of the things that's sort of fascinating about the way that the vice president is phrasing that is we.
00:08:32.000There's a lot of we, meaning that he was obviously involved in the decision-making around the movement of Mike Waltz.
00:08:38.000The alternative read here is that Waltz was on the outs with a lot of members of the administration, particularly, again, in these sort of non-peace through strength contingent of foreign policy, and that the president, basically because he didn't like hurting Waltz, I mean, Waltz gave up a very solid congressional seat that's now occupied by Randy Fine in Florida in order to come into the administration very early back to the president.
00:08:57.000Trump didn't actually want to hurt Waltz, and so he moved him over to the U.N. ambassador position, which is, in fact, a pretty nice position.
00:09:04.000Again, all of this is sort of Kremlinology, trying to figure out what's going on inside the administration, and it has some pretty significant ramifications for American foreign policy, especially because there's a lot of critique of the man who is now sort of leading American foreign policy in a wide variety of areas, and that, of course, is Steve Whitcoff.
00:09:19.000So Whitcoff, who I've suggested has not actually achieved any victories that I can see at all in any of the arenas where he has been placed, whether you're talking about the Hamas negotiations to free hostages, including an American hostage, Idon Alexander.
00:09:31.000Or whether you're talking about the Iran negotiations, where Witkoff doesn't appear to know his ass from his elbow, or whether you're talking about the Russia-Ukraine negotiations, where Steve Witkoff has been over there and then gone on TV and started sort of parroting many of the talking points that Vladimir Putin was putting out there.
00:10:00.000That I am not impressed with the results of his negotiating leisure domain at this point in time.
00:10:05.000And there are a lot of open questions about Steve Witkoff and his competence.
00:10:08.000The New York Post ran a piece yesterday suggesting that administration insiders are distressed by his approach to negotiating with both Russia and Iran.
00:10:18.000According to the New York Post report, Witkoff, who has become President Trump's de facto personal ambassador to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in addition to taking on the Middle East portfolio, takes part in high-level meetings alone.
00:10:29.000He is even relying on Kremlin translators.
00:10:34.000Having somebody who works for Vladimir Putin do your translation for you is not exactly an amazing move if you're negotiating a deal.
00:10:40.000Ahead of Witkoff's most recent meeting with Putin this past Friday, the New York native greeted the Kremlin tyrant like an old friend with no sign of the usual coterie of advisors, experts, and military officers who typically accompany U.S. officials during negotiations.
00:10:52.000Putin himself did not attend Friday's meeting solo.
00:10:54.000Instead, he was accompanied by one aide, a guy named Yuri Ushakov, and the head of Moscow's Sovereign Wealth Fund.
00:10:59.000Now, that in and of itself is a little bit weird.
00:11:01.000I'm not sure why the head of Moscow's Sovereign Wealth Fund was attending a meeting with Steve Witkoff about an end to the Ukraine-Russia war.
00:11:07.000What does the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Russia have to do with any of that?
00:11:11.000Raises some sort of rather interesting questions.
00:11:15.000Well, this prompted, this New York Post piece, which prompted a lot of heartburn.
00:11:21.000And inside the sort of Whitcoff team, it prompted tweets from Alex Whitcoff, his son, who's very close with the administration, and Donald Trump Jr., who, of course, is very close with Alex Whitcoff, as well as his brother.
00:11:34.000Well, this again kind of comes down to what approach is the administration going to take on foreign policy?
00:11:40.000And there are a lot of mixed signals coming out of the administration.
00:11:44.000On the one hand, you have Whitcoff, who is going around and attempting to cut deals, deals that...
00:11:48.000Again, do not reflect sort of the traditional Trump 1.0 peace through strength approach to places like Russia or Iran.
00:11:55.000And then at the same time, you have President Trump pushing quite hard on a number of sort of pressure points for Russia and for Iran.
00:12:07.000yesterday was pushing more sanctions on Iran, even as he was saying a little bit earlier this week that he was going to cut a deal with Iran.
00:12:14.000Very unclear whether this is putting on more sanctions to take them off.
00:12:17.000Well, these sanctions are largely targeted not at Iran, but at China, particularly because China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil at this point.
00:12:23.000Iran had no money when I was president.
00:12:57.000Well, Independence Day fell on May 1st.
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00:15:45.000The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmail Bahai, issued a statement describing the talks as postponed at the request of Oman's foreign minister.
00:15:52.000He said Iran remained committed to reaching a fair and lasting agreement.
00:15:56.000A U.S. source said that America had never confirmed its participation in a fourth round of talks, but the source said the U.S. expects the talks to take place in the near future.
00:16:04.000So, again, there's a lot of sort of mixed signals coming out of the administration with regard to what an Iran deal would look like.
00:16:11.000The Washington Post, by the way, is cheering.
00:16:13.000The idea of a JCPOA 2.0, an Obama deal 2.0.
00:16:19.000Although even the Washington Post, I will say, it's kind of amazing.
00:16:22.000The editorial board of the Washington Post is now free to admit that Obama's JCPOA deal was really bad, that the Iran deal in 2015 was a bad deal.
00:16:30.000Now they still want a bad deal, the Washington Post.
00:16:33.000They just want it to be slightly less bad than the Obama deal.
00:16:37.000Quote, the onus is now on Trump and his team to show they can negotiate a better deal, one that doesn't end up looking like the old one.
00:16:44.000Well, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State and now interim National Security Advisor, he was on with Sean Hannity last night, and he discussed what the United States' goals in the Iran Talks are.
00:16:55.000The only countries in the world that enrich uranium are the ones that have nuclear weapons.
00:16:59.000Iran, they're claiming they don't want a weapon, but what they're basically asking is to be the only non-weapon country in the world.
00:17:08.000And the level at which they enrich it is really not relevant, per se, because really, if you have the ability to enrich at 3.67%, It only takes a few weeks to get to 20%, and then 60%, and then the 80% and 90% that you need for a weapon.
00:17:22.000And so that really is the path forward here.
00:17:24.000Iran simply needs to say, we've agreed to no longer enrich, we're going to have reactors because we want nuclear energy, and we're going to import enriched uranium.
00:17:32.000This is an opportunity for them if they take it.
00:17:34.000And this is the best opportunity they're going to have.
00:17:37.000President Trump is a president of peace.
00:17:45.000It's to live in a world where Iran has a nuclear weapon.
00:17:48.000The path forward has been given to them, and now it's a matter of whether or not they're going to take it.
00:17:52.000And the president was very, very clear.
00:17:54.000He would lead the effort to stop them from ever achieving that nuclear weapon.
00:17:59.000And that statement was obvious in terms of that he would use military force to destroy those facilities.
00:18:05.000We have the capacity, obviously, to do it.
00:18:08.000But back to this question, would we need American inspectors and American scientists to shut it down?
00:18:14.000And would that have to be part of the deal?
00:18:16.000And anywhere, anyplace, anytime, American inspectors, would they have to agree to that in your mind?
00:18:21.000I think you would have to allow Americans as part of, you can send, you know, maybe there'll be French inspectors, there'll be Italian inspectors, there'll be Saudis, whoever, but I think you cannot basically say we will not allow any Americans.
00:18:32.000You also have to make sure, if you really want to prevent a nuclear program, and you're not building a nuclear weapon, then you should open all your facilities.
00:18:39.000You know, one of the failures of the Obama nuclear deal with Iran is that you could not inspect military sites.
00:18:47.000Well, if you're making nuclear weapons, you would probably make them on Okay, so, you know, Marco Rubio, again, taking a very strong position on the negotiations,
00:19:04.000but he's not the one leading the negotiations.
00:19:06.000Steve Witkoff is leading the negotiations.
00:19:08.000So all these sort of mixed signals are certainly leading to, as I say, a lot of Kremlinology, what exactly is happening inside the administration.
00:19:14.000Meanwhile, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, put out a message on Twitter yesterday, quote, message to Iran.
00:19:20.000We see your lethal support to the Houthis.
00:19:45.000That the United States would participate in some sort of military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if they don't actually denuclearize entirely.
00:20:05.000This deal between the United States and Ukraine, this rare earth minerals deal, which is something Ukraine should have signed on to in February.
00:20:10.000Well, they finally came around and they did it.
00:20:12.000Basically, the rare earth minerals deal.
00:20:14.000Inked on Wednesday, according to the New York Post, after months of negotiations, created a shared investment fund to which both nations will contribute, including through oil, gas, and mineral rights licenses sold in Ukraine.
00:20:24.000The profits are going to be split 50-50.
00:20:25.000So the United States is not taking money and just throwing it into this fund.
00:20:28.000Basically, we are going to earn credit toward our total contribution equal to the cost of military equipment, technology, or training that we send across the Atlantic.
00:20:36.000So basically, the deal is that additional military aid we provide to Ukraine is going to be counted against whatever we would have had to pay into this fund.
00:20:44.000So we're trading military aid in some ways for the rare earth minerals development from Ukraine, which, again, we need rare earth minerals because we're not going to get them from China anymore, presumably.
00:20:54.000Ukraine requires military aid in order to stand up against the Russian onslaught.
00:21:10.000Does not preclude the United States from dispatching remaining military aid approved by Congress under former President Biden.
00:21:15.000It doesn't require the U.S. to sell any military aid to Kiev either.
00:21:19.000It's not clear how much is supposed to go into the fund, but the bottom line is that instead of this just being pure military aid, we are now getting something in return.
00:21:27.000And for the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians see this as a way of ensuring continued American support.
00:21:35.000One source familiar with Kiev's strategy.
00:21:38.000Originally suggested that they thought that maybe they could leverage the president into a better deal for Ukraine.
00:21:44.000However, the representative of the Ukrainians has said that this is a good deal for both sides.
00:21:53.000The Kremlin recognizes the significance.
00:21:55.000The deal was blasted by Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev, who again, everybody in the Russian government is a cutout for Putin.
00:22:02.000Praise the U.S. leader for making a deal with a nation that will, quote, soon disappear.
00:22:06.000Quote, Trump has finally pressured the Kiev regime to pay for USAID with mineral resources.
00:22:09.000Now the country that is about to disappear will have to use its national wealth to pay for military supplies.
00:22:15.000So again, that does not sound like a Russia that is ready to come to the table.
00:22:20.000Again, the White House itself, in its actual explanation of the minerals deal, suggested this partnership represents the United States taking an economic stake in securing a free The language of this agreement is some of the most pro-Ukrainian language that has come out under the Trump administration.
00:22:50.000That is a positive shift that is necessary.
00:22:53.000If you want Russia to come to the table, the United States can't be threatening to walk away from Ukraine.
00:23:00.000According to the White House's fact sheet, quote, President Trump envisioned this partnership between the Americans and the Ukrainians to show both sides' commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine.
00:23:11.000So, and by the way, no state company or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine, including in participation in projects supported by fund resources.
00:23:21.000So good for Ukraine, good for the United States, good for President Trump.
00:23:24.000Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham is apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, Forging ahead on a plan to impose new sanctions on Russia and steep tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, gas, and uranium.
00:23:36.000If you want Russia to come to the table, the only way they are going to do that is through more leverage.
00:23:40.000And the Trump administration is, in fact, responding to the reality, which is, as I've said, President Trump is a reality-based president.
00:23:47.000When something goes wrong, he shifts and he moves.
00:23:49.000And so the idea that he could just pressure Ukraine to the table and Russia would magically come to the table, that didn't materialize.
00:23:55.000And so President Trump is now shifting and moving.
00:23:58.000The South Carolina Republican said in an interview, support for his bill crossed the critical threshold of 60 co-sponsors on Wednesday, meaning it has enough votes to overcome a Senate filibuster.
00:24:06.000By the end of the week, according to Graham, the bill will have at least 67 co-sponsors, which is enough to even override a potential presidential veto.
00:24:14.000That list of co-sponsors is evenly divided across the aisle.
00:24:17.000It includes the Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
00:24:18.000It also includes members of the Senate Republican leadership team.
00:24:23.000So, unclear if it makes a floor vote, if President Trump were to oppose it, the White House is not commenting on it.
00:24:28.000But again, more leverage against Russia is the thing that is going to get them to the table, not sort of the carrots and massages approaches that has been retailed by Steve Witkoff so far.
00:24:37.000In other good moves from the Trump administration, President Trump has now signed an executive order to terminate federal funding for NPR as well as PBS.
00:24:58.000In the private sector, we take no government money.
00:25:00.000NPR certainly has the capacity to do the same.
00:25:03.000President Trump wrote in the order, government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary, but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.
00:25:11.000Trump has directed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end indirect funding for NPR and PBS, including by ensuring licensees and permittees of public radio and TV stations, as well as any other recipients of CBB funds, do not use federal funds for NPR and PBS.
00:25:26.000This is a great move by President Trump.
00:25:28.000It is something that has long overdue.
00:25:29.000NPR has been, again, a left-wing Democratic agiprop outlet for as long as I have been alive.
00:25:34.000So that is a very positive move by President Trump.
00:25:37.000So, again, a lot of good things happened yesterday.
00:25:39.000Ranging from that Ukraine rare earth minerals deal to the Trump EO.
00:25:43.000And we'll still have to see the fallout inside the national security establishment because things remain up in the air.
00:25:49.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
00:25:50.000First, let's talk about that car that you own but you don't use.
00:25:52.000You know, the one in your front yard, the one that you're paying to keep it registered, insured.
00:26:06.000They will come to you as soon as the next day.
00:26:08.000Take that car off your hands at no cost to you.
00:26:10.000Even better, they'll turn that car into funds to help kids.
00:26:13.000They take care of all the paperwork and logistics and you walk away with a tax-deductible receipt for the sale price of the car, a vacation voucher, and space in your driveway for your new car.
00:26:56.000Their network of clinics provides love, support, and hope to pregnant women who are feeling scared, alone, pressured about their pregnancy decisions.
00:27:02.000These choices can affect not just their baby's life, but their own emotional well-being as well.
00:27:06.000When a woman walks into a preborn clinic, she's welcomed with compassion, offered a free ultrasound so she can see and hear the little life growing inside her.
00:27:43.000And meanwhile, with regard to illegal immigration, every day that goes by, the Chris Van Hollen, senator from Maryland, moron, decision to go down to El Salvador and hang out with a suspected MS-13 member looks worse and worse.
00:27:56.000The newest breaking news on that front.
00:28:01.000It turns out that she actually called the cops back in 2020, and there's audio of her doing so, pleading with a judge for protection from her husband in 2020.
00:28:14.000Seems like a delightful person to have in the country.
00:28:48.000I have pictures of the evidence, like, all the bruises.
00:28:51.000Because even on Wednesday, he hit me, like, around, like, 3 in the morning.
00:28:55.000He would just wake up and, like, hit me.
00:28:57.000And then last Saturday for my daughter's birthday party, before I went to my daughter's birthday party...
00:29:02.000He slapped me three times, and then last week I did call the police.
00:29:06.000My sister called the police because he hit me in front of my sister.
00:29:11.000Okay, so he sounds like a delightful person.
00:29:13.000So I'm glad that Democrats have decided to resonate to him.
00:29:16.000That apparently includes Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, who is one of the impeachment leaders, you will recall, who says that actually Joe Biden was great at removing people who shouldn't be here, which is weird because this guy was still here.
00:29:28.000He also adds that Abrego Garcia's knuckles did not show that he was Tren d 'Aragua, that he was MS-13.
00:29:35.000I don't understand the necessity for this from Democrats.
00:29:37.000If you want this guy, this person who seems really like a terrible person, to have due process, that is an argument that I think people across the aisle should agree with.
00:29:47.000Due process is, in fact, a necessary prerequisite of our functioning of law.
00:29:51.000If you want to make the case that he's actually like a decent fellow and that everybody's misinterpreting it, this is where Democrats can't help themselves.
00:29:57.000Why do you always have to say the stupidest version of the argument?
00:30:53.000Meanwhile, another federal judge, individual federal judges across the country signing into chat, another federal judge, a U.S. District Judge named Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in the Southern District of Texas, is ruling against President Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to detain and deport alleged members of a foreign gang.
00:31:10.000He says, quote, This judge, by the way, was in fact nominated by President Trump during his first term.
00:31:25.000So the question here as to whether the Alien Enemies Act could in fact be invoked in order to deport Venezuelan illegal immigrants because the act gives the president I mean,
00:31:58.000But this gives him more plenary power to sort of do so with presumably fewer layers.
00:32:08.000So, you know, we'll have to see how that plays out at the Supreme Court level.
00:32:11.000Again, you can hold all of these thoughts in your head at the same time, that due process according to legal standards ought to be applied, and also that the people that Trump is trying to deport are pretty much all people who should not be in the United States.
00:32:23.000And meanwhile, the President of the United States continues to push back against the DEI regime put in place by Joe Biden and Team Caroline Lovett at the White House yesterday, attacked at DEI.
00:32:36.000President Trump stood up for the Constitution's promise of colorblind equality before the law, so he terminated radical DEI preferencing and federal contracting and directed federal agencies to relentlessly combat private sector discrimination.
00:32:51.000DEI seeks to divide and pit Americans against each other based on immutable characteristics.
00:33:00.000Individual dignity, hard work, and excellence are the only things that will determine if you get ahead.
00:33:05.000And that obviously should be the standard.
00:33:08.000Stephen Miller also stopped by the White House press room in order to explain the destruction of the DEI policies that were being pushed by the Biden administration.
00:33:15.000One of the most significant crises that President Trump inherited upon taking office was the wave of racial discrimination, so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies that have taken over both public sector
00:33:30.000Well, again, he is right about that as well.
00:33:37.000Now, with all this important work happening, the biggest thing, I keep saying it over and over, the biggest thing is that if you want President Trump to continue to unleash successes, you need Republicans not to make stupid mistakes.
00:33:47.000We'll get to the trade war in a moment and what the latest is there.
00:33:50.000But the latest stupid mistake that is possibly on the table here is the possibility of Marjorie Taylor Greene running for Georgia Senate.
00:34:17.000Marjorie Taylor Greene is fine where she is.
00:34:19.000If she's going to be in her district, she's popular in the district, that's fine.
00:34:22.000The idea is she's going to win a statewide race in Georgia over John Ossoff.
00:34:26.000And that Republicans are going to blow another winnable Senate seat because they've decided to nominate a sort of passionate defender, the most passionate defender of Trump.
00:34:36.000How about we get a Georgia senator who is in line with President Trump's agenda and actually can sit in the Senate?
00:34:42.000So right now, there's been a lot of talk about the possibility of Brian Kemp running for Senate in Georgia.
00:34:47.000If he were to run for Senate, he would defeat John Ossoff, according to that very same poll.
00:34:51.000It turns out that candidate equality makes an awfully big difference.
00:34:55.000Cutting off your nose to spite your face for Republican primary voters is a terrible strategy.
00:35:00.000There's a reason why Georgia, which went for President Trump pretty easily in the last election cycle, has two Democratic senators.
00:35:06.000And the reason is, number one, because President Trump decided back in 2021 that he was going to intervene in the senatorial election for no apparent reason.
00:35:15.000And then number two, Republicans nominated some pretty bad candidates in places like Arizona and in Georgia.
00:35:20.000How about nominate better candidates and take the Senate seats?
00:35:22.000That seems to be a much more necessary precondition to the success of President Trump.
00:35:27.000Meanwhile, in other news that's sort of fascinating, apparently Alberta, which is the province of Canada, is now deciding whether or not they want to remain political.
00:35:35.000So, how exactly does the process work in Canada?
00:35:38.000I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity what exactly happens under the Canadian Constitution.
00:35:43.000According to Perplexity, the Canadian Constitution does not grant provinces a unilateral right to secede.
00:35:49.000The Supreme Court of Canada, in a landmark 1998, Quebec secession reference.
00:35:53.000Clarified secession would require a constitutional amendment, which in turn necessitates negotiations involving the federal government and all the provinces.
00:36:00.000So basically, you have to have a referendum on whether a province wishes to secede with a clear majority, not clear exactly how much a clear majority is.
00:36:08.000Then there are constitutional negotiations between the federal government and the provinces.
00:36:13.000And Alberta has been considering all of this.
00:36:16.000Apparently, Premier Danielle Smith is introducing legislation to make it easier to initiate a referendum.
00:36:21.000On separation, again, this is a piece of leverage to be used by Alberta in negotiations with the federal government of Canada.
00:36:27.000So Danielle Smith is a very conservative leader.
00:36:32.000I've met Premier Smith, very conservative along a wide variety of lines, obviously very pro-Canada, very opposed to the tariff regime that President Trump is hitting Canada with, but very, very opposed to the left-wing policy promoted by the Liberal Party of Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney.
00:36:47.000She says, as Premier, I will not permit the status quo to continue.
00:36:50.000Albertans are proud Canadians that want this nation to be strong, prosperous, and united, but we will no longer tolerate having our industries threatened and our resources landlocked by Ottawa.
00:36:59.000So she is pushing for concessions from the national government.
00:37:03.000Mark Carney is promising some changes.
00:37:06.000There is the possibility of what is called Wexit.
00:37:09.000So that was something that was pushed back in 2019, where there was a serious move to take Alberta completely out of Canada.
00:37:18.000So it'll be fascinating to see how that plays out for Mark Carney.
00:37:21.000Again, the fact that he won the election is a referendum, I think, on the fact that Canadians hated Justin Trudeau, but also a backlash to President Trump and his trade war and comments about Canada.
00:37:32.000It didn't solve all of Mark Carney's problems by any stretch of the imagination.
00:37:35.000Speaking of which, when it comes to the tariffs, again, the statistics from a couple of days ago show that the GDP actually shrank, and that is almost entirely due to the tariff war.
00:37:44.000According to the Wall Street Journal, gross domestic product shrank 0.3% in the first estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
00:37:50.000Most of the damage came from soaring imports.
00:37:53.000Imported goods and services rose 41.3% in the quarter, goods alone by almost 51%.
00:37:59.000Imports subtracted a startling 5.03% from GDP.
00:38:06.000A tax increase in production shock as large as Mr. Trump's tariff were bound to do economic harm, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
00:38:41.000$2 trillion of debt, the highest peacetime deficits in American history, a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, which fundamentally means we're not making enough of our own stuff.
00:38:51.000And the president came in and he said this is not always going to be easy.
00:38:55.000It would have been very easy for Donald Trump to do what administrations past have done, which is borrow a lot of money and continue fueling the national debt.
00:39:46.000Right now, the weekly jobless claims have surged to $241,000.
00:39:51.000That is an increase of about $18,000 from the prior period, higher than the Dow Jones estimate for $225,000, according to the Labor Department.
00:39:59.000GM, as we've mentioned, faces up to a $5 billion tariff bill in 2025.
00:40:07.000They had a profit margin that they were projecting that was going to be between $11 billion and $12.5 billion.
00:40:13.000They've now moved that down to about $8 billion.
00:40:16.000It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
00:40:18.000McDonald's is starting to see a decline in spending, which is pretty fascinating because, again, that's kind of cheap staple food.
00:40:24.000I mean, unfortunately, but it is for a lot of people.
00:40:26.000The burger giant posted a 3% drop in revenue in the first quarter.
00:40:29.000Same-store sales in the U.S. dropped 3.6% from the prior year, the steepest decline since 2020.
00:40:36.000So some of that is, you know, maybe people becoming a little more health conscious, but a lot of that is just a decline in spending generally.
00:40:44.000The oil industry is taking a beating right now.
00:40:46.000The reason the oil industry is taking a beating is because of the trade war.
00:40:51.000Less demand means the price goes down.
00:40:52.000Prices going down means that there is less development of oil and natural gas, which runs directly up against some of the stuff that Secretary Doug Burgum is trying to do over Department of the Interior.
00:41:02.000He's been trying to unleash U.S. energy dominance through deregulation.
00:41:05.000But if the price of oil drops too low, there's no real reason for people to drill more.
00:41:09.000There's no real reason for people to develop new energy if there appears to be a glut of supply.
00:41:15.000Doug Burgum, we actually had reporters who went with Secretary Burgum out into the field over on Morning Wire, which, by the way, you guys should go check that out.
00:41:23.000It's a great show, Morning Wire, and is now available on video.
00:41:26.000Totally worth the watch over at Daily Wire.
00:41:37.000So, you know, what exactly is going to be the next step here?
00:41:40.000Well, China may be starting to waver a little bit.
00:41:44.000According to the Wall Street Journal, China said it was weighing starting talks with the United States, but only if Washington shows sincerity through concrete measures, such as by canceling the tariffs against Beijing.
00:41:53.000The ministry spokesperson said, China's position is consistent.
00:41:57.000If you want to talk, our door is wide open.
00:41:59.000If the U.S. wants to talk, it should show sincerity and be prepared to act in correcting its erroneous actions and canceling unilateral tariffs.
00:42:06.000So China wants some signal from Trump that he's backing down.
00:42:09.000President Trump obviously doesn't want to give that signal, so it may be that this tariff war lasts a little longer than people are currently expecting, including the markets.
00:42:17.000Axios says that China is not backing down in the game of chicken with President Trump.
00:42:22.000China says it sent around 15% of its exports worth $525 billion to the U.S. Last year, about three times what flowed in the opposite direction.
00:42:30.000New export orders are already falling sharply, pretending empty shelves and price hikes in the United States.
00:42:37.000China, of course, does have the unique ability to simply cram it down on its own constituents.
00:42:41.000I mean, the people who live in China, I mean, it's an unfortunate reality, but it turns out that China is a pretty terrible place and they don't care very much about their citizens.
00:42:50.000So, China's being hurt by the trade war, but can they take more pain than the U.S.?
00:42:53.000I mean, typically speaking, yes, because tyrannies can take more pain, at least on a policy level, than democracies can.
00:43:00.000Already, folks, it's a Friday, and that means it's time to do a little bit of nonsense with regard to the culture.
00:43:04.000So, my friend Matt Walsh, he did a review, apparently, of Revenge of the Sith.
00:43:10.000I know it's a little weird, because Revenge of the Sith originally came out in 2005, but the 20th anniversary means that it was re-released in theaters recently.
00:43:20.000He took his kids to see it, and he did not like the movie.
00:43:23.000Now, my own opinion on Revenge of the Sith is that the first half has some flaws, and the second half of Revenge of the Sith is actually quite great.
00:43:29.000There's some rough dialogue, for sure, but basically everything from the execution of Order 66 on in Revenge of the Sith is really good canon.
00:43:44.000Whether through some sort of genetic anomaly or more likely through pro-Star Wars brainwashing from their mother, who my kids are now Star Wars fans, and they really wanted to see the third film in the prequel series in theaters, which has just been re-released,
00:44:17.000I remember it as a boring, miserable film, but I guess I had blocked out many of the details subconsciously attempting to save myself from reliving the trauma.
00:44:26.000This movie is outrageously, offensively bad.
00:44:30.000You could, and I'm not, I don't just, I'm not saying this for effect, you could make a case that it's like the worst film ever made.
00:44:37.000And, sad to say, it's competing with more than one other Star Wars title for the top of that list.
00:44:45.000First of all, there are way worse Star Wars films, namely the entire last trilogy that they did, the entire Rise of Skywalker trilogy, not good at all.
00:45:22.000Anyway, here is Matt going off on the dialogue.
00:45:24.000And again, I'm going to agree with some of these critiques, I will admit.
00:45:26.000First of all, as many people have pointed out over the years, but I must reiterate, the dialogue is atrocious.
00:45:33.000George Lucas, it would seem, has never heard humans speak.
00:45:37.000He writes dialogue like I imagine an alien would write dialogue if the only thing he knew about the human race he learned by watching daytime soap operas.
00:45:46.000There is not one moment where the script reaches even like a C grade.
00:45:51.000It is the worst dialogue I've ever heard in a mainstream Hollywood film.
00:45:57.000Last summer, my kids used one of our phones to make a movie, as they called it, where they pretended to be pirates or something.
00:46:05.000And the dialogue in their three-minute pirate movie was better than anything George Lucas came up with.
00:46:13.000So just to give one infamous example, in a scene early in the film, Anakin, played with the charisma of a metal folding chair by Hayden Christensen, goes up to Padme, played by Natalie Portman, and says, You're so beautiful.
00:46:27.000And then Padme responds, That's because I'm so in love.
00:47:04.000And actually, that's not even the worst dialogue in the film.
00:47:05.000The single worst piece of dialogue in the film, there are multiple nominees.
00:47:09.000There's the part where Anakin and Obi-Wan are arguing, and he's talking about how only a Sith deals in absolutes, which is, in fact, an absolute.
00:47:20.000So, I mean, there's all sorts of problems.
00:47:22.000I think my favorite bad line is when Yoda, who obviously has some sort of syntax problem because he's constantly putting his verbs where they should not be.
00:47:31.000There's one point where Yoda, He's trying to convince Obi-Wan not to look at the security tapes of Anakin murdering a bunch of children.
00:47:37.000And he says, if into the security recordings you go, only pain will you find.
00:47:51.000And to make matters worse, the acting is uniformly bad, in some cases grotesquely bad.
00:47:56.000Now, granted, the actors were given the impossible task of delivering George Lucas dialogue, which is the modern film industry equivalent of, like, pulling the sword from the stone.
00:48:04.000There may be some actor out there in the world who can make this crap sound good, but he's never stepped forward.
00:48:14.000But I do know that Hayden Christensen can't.
00:48:16.000Neither can Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson, who are all terrible in this film.
00:48:21.000Even R2-D2's performance fell flat and uninspired.
00:48:26.000Reportedly, I read this, that George Lucas wanted to cast Tupac in the role that ultimately went to Samuel L. Jackson, which makes Tupac's death perhaps a blessing in disguise.
00:48:36.000At least he was saved from the embarrassment of being in this movie.
00:48:40.000Okay, so the acting is not uniformly bad.
00:48:43.000Natalie Portman is quite terrible in the whole series.
00:48:45.000And Hayden Christensen, who actually turns out to be a pretty good actor in some other stuff.
00:48:49.000Like, if you ever watch Hayden Christensen in a movie called Shattered Glass, he's actually pretty great.
00:48:53.000There's no question that George Lucas has some problems with actors.
00:48:57.000He doesn't get the greatest performance.
00:48:59.000But, but, the general plotline of what leads to the takeover of the galaxy by the Empire is definitely, it's interesting.
00:49:08.000Now, he rips on the choreography of some of the fight scenes, and here he's just, I'm sorry, like, no, he's just wrong on this.
00:49:16.000This movie doesn't have good action scenes.
00:49:18.000The action scenes are long and busy and lots of things happen in them, but they are not good.
00:49:23.000I mean, the fight choreography is terrible.
00:49:26.000It's clumsy and nonsensical and uninspired.
00:49:29.000Many of the Jedi's who are supposed to be intergalactic ninjas, like the Karate Kids of the Cosmos or whatever, have shockingly bad reflexes.
00:49:37.000I mean, Revenge of the Sith features some of the slowest fight scenes I've ever seen.
00:49:43.000There's a scene where Emperor Ovaltine, or whatever his name is, who I guess is not an Emperor yet in this, but he fights off a group of Jedi's who came to...
00:49:53.000And the actor who played Ovaltine was in his mid-60s, and he moves like it.
00:49:58.000And yet, despite swinging the lightsaber with all the speed and vigor of a retiree playing softball, he still easily dispatches multiple Jedi warriors who are supposed to be the greatest warriors in the universe.
00:50:11.000And just with a casual flick of the lightsaber, they're dead.
00:50:18.000And the fight scenes are also funny because they use stunt doubles or CGI to have the Jedi's do flips and random like mid-air 360 corkscrews like Simone Biles for no obvious strategic reason.
00:50:29.000But for the rest of the time, they have the actual actors, I guess, doing the moves.
00:50:32.000So we're treated to the spectacle of fighters who can jump and flip like Olympic gymnasts.
00:50:38.000But when they're not jumping, they move like these clumsy old dudes.
00:51:43.000Because, unfortunately, this ship hit multiple massive narrative icebergs so that by the end of the thing, the end of the thing was so riddled with holes that it could just barely stay afloat.
00:51:55.000So let me give you just two examples, both from the end of the movie.
00:51:59.000In the climactic battle sequence between Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi...
00:52:04.000Which takes place on a lava planet for some reason.
00:52:06.000I don't remember why they went to a lava planet.
00:52:39.000Well, he's evil, so he must like lava.
00:52:42.000Anyway, so they were on the lava planet fighting, and they were leaping from one piece of floating debris to the next, because that's how it works, right?
00:52:48.000Never mind the fact that if you jumped onto a piece of metal that was floating in lava, you would quickly burn to death.
00:53:04.000The fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi is slightly elevated over Anakin is supposed to somehow mean that he automatically wins the fight?
00:53:11.000Except that Anakin, just five seconds earlier, had leapt like 30 feet in the air with effortless ease.
00:53:17.000So even if the higher ground is decisive, he could easily just jump higher than Obi-Wan Kenobi was standing.
00:53:23.000I mean, that last point about the higher ground is true.
00:53:26.000As far as why they're on Mustafar, the answer is the Sephiroth's leaders were in Mustafar and they were in this crappy planet as a hiding place.
00:53:33.000That's the actual reason why they end up on Mustafar.
00:53:35.000And also, yeah, because Anakin turns evil and lava's cool.
00:53:38.000I mean, is it okay just for lava to be cool?