Trump delivers a prime-time address on affordability, but did it make a dent? Plus, a debate breaking out on the right about whether the president s speech was good or bad for the economy and the economy's impact on the middle class.
00:00:00.000President Trump delivers a prime-time address on affordability, but did it make a dent.
00:00:04.000Plus, heritage Americans or Creedal Americans, it's a debate breaking out on the right.
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00:00:57.000Well, President Trump last night attempted a reset of the first year of his presidency.
00:01:02.000Not really a reset in the sense that he's not actually sort of redoing his policy, but a narrative reset, an attempt to seize the narrative away from a left, which keeps saying the word affordability after the victory of Zorhan Mamdani in that New York mayoral election.
00:01:16.000He's trying to seize back the narrative.
00:01:18.000And last night, he successfully did that in one sense and unsuccessfully in another sense.
00:01:24.000Yes, Americans are now talking about affordability.
00:01:26.000Yes, the president of the United States did address that head on in the speech.
00:02:14.000The reality is the president can now speak to the entire nation whenever he pleases.
00:02:18.000He could go live on the White House page anytime he wants.
00:02:22.000We no longer exist in the era of three networks in which the president declares a national address, all three networks go to him, and then everybody in America watches it.
00:02:31.000So the ratings on these sorts of addresses just are not what they used to be.
00:02:35.000If the president wishes to get attention, he's a master at it.
00:02:38.000He doesn't have to do a national address.
00:02:39.000And so when someone does a national address, people sort of expect that there will be something groundbreaking happening.
00:02:45.000And there were some outlandish predictions by podcasters who are generally inaccurate in the information they provide their audiences.
00:02:53.000Those predictions were taken quite seriously by many people in the online space, predictions that Trump was calling a national address in order to announce that we're invading Venezuela or something.
00:03:14.000President Reagan used to do this back in the 80s.
00:03:16.000He would do a national address and he would take out actual charts and try to educate the American people about what was happening.
00:03:22.000And President Trump did that last night.
00:03:24.000So, for example, he showed Joe Biden's price increases and Trump's price decreases in a wide variety of areas, ranging from hotel rates up 37.4% under Joe Biden, down 5.1% under Donald Trump, to propane rates, 24.9%, up under Biden, down 4.2% under Trump.
00:03:45.000Gasoline, up nearly 31% under Joe Biden, down 7% under Trump.
00:03:49.000Sporting events, up nearly 50% under Joe Biden, down almost 10% under Trump.
00:03:56.000Those are all good things to show the American people.
00:03:58.000Now, there is one problem with that, which is that when you look at a chart like that, you think that the baseline price, the baseline price has gone down from where it was before Joe Biden.
00:04:11.000If the price rises 40% under Joe Biden and then comes down 10% under Donald Trump, well, it's still way higher than it was before Joe Biden took office.
00:04:19.000And that's the embedded part of the economy that President Trump is not really going to be able to wipe away.
00:04:26.000Years of inflation cannot be wiped away absent some sort of economic downturn.
00:04:31.000But the president is right to point out wage increases, real wage increases under his tenure, wage decreases under Joe Biden.
00:04:40.000The private sector wage growth averaged $1,048 since he returned to the White House versus losses of almost $3,000 under Joe Biden.
00:04:49.000The president showed the new yearly mortgage cost increase under Joe Biden up almost $15,000 versus Trump's new yearly mortgage cost decrease down almost $3,000.
00:05:01.000And when he points out Obamacare, he says it's not the Republicans' fault.
00:05:20.000One, obviously, is that Americans' expectations of what's going to happen with the amounts they pay is that it's going to actively go markedly down, not just from where it was last year, but from where it was three or four years ago.
00:05:33.000Because if you radically inflate prices and then you decrease them marginally, people are still going to feel pretty pressed.
00:05:41.000Number two, many of the items the president is citing as having dropped in price are not the items that Americans most commonly buy.
00:05:48.000The number one complaint you will hear from Americans right now about pricing is in the grocery markets.
00:05:54.000Supermarkets where people feel pressed.
00:05:56.000If you're going and you are shopping for a family of four for a week of food, you're now paying in some cases 30, 40% more than you were just three or four years ago.
00:06:07.000And if the places that you most often shop are the places where you feel the most inflation and the most unaffordability, that's what's going to stick in your mind.
00:06:16.000So yes, mortgage rates might be down, but how many people are actually taking out a new mortgage this year in the United States?
00:06:25.000So I asked our friends, our sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity, what are the items Americans shop for most frequently?
00:06:31.000Because this is a great way of trying to determine how Americans are feeling.
00:06:35.000If the thing you buy most frequently is up in price, you're going to feel pressed.
00:06:39.000If the thing you buy once every 20 years is down in price, you're not going to feel that quite as much because your last comp wasn't last year.
00:06:48.000Your last comp was probably 10 years ago or 15 or 20 years ago.
00:06:51.000If your last mortgage was taken out at 2.5% under the George W. Bush administration and your new mortgage is being taken out at 5.75% under the Trump administration, you're going to feel like things are more expensive, even though the mortgage rates are down from where they were a year or two ago.
00:07:08.000So ask in Comet, what are the items Americans shop for most frequently?
00:07:12.000Americans most frequently shop for everyday staples like groceries, basic household supplies, personal care items, and clothing, both in-store and online.
00:07:22.000Not coincidentally, those are the areas where you have seen an elevation in prices with groceries and particularly with clothing.
00:07:30.000When you take a look at mortgages, the question is, because the president cited mortgage rates coming down, which is true, what percentage of Americans take out a mortgage every year?
00:07:40.000There's no official statistic for what percentage of Americans take out a mortgage each year, according to our friends over at Comet, but available data imply that only a small single-digit share of adults do so in a typical year.
00:07:52.000Using recent mortgage origination counts and population figures, a reasonable ballpark is roughly two to three percent of the U.S. population every year.
00:08:02.000So if you're citing as an example of costs going down, mortgage rates going down, only a small percentage of Americans are actually going to feel that in the moment.
00:08:10.000And even the ones who are feeling it are not comparing the mortgage rates they could have gotten last year to this year.
00:08:16.000The mortgage rate that they took out 10 years ago to the one they're getting this year, and it's higher this year than it was 10 years ago.
00:08:22.000That's why Americans are feeling pressed.
00:08:24.000With that said, it is good for the president to get specific.
00:08:27.000I've been urging the president to get specific.
00:08:42.000You can't go around to people and ask them, are things affordable and expect them to say yes.
00:08:47.000Virtually no one who is not quite wealthy and doesn't think about costs thinks of things as affordable.
00:08:53.000For most of my life, everything felt unaffordable.
00:08:57.000And then at a certain point, we achieved a certain level of income where everything felt affordable.
00:09:02.000But you kind of have to move way up in the income ladder in order for things to feel affordable, generally speaking, where you're not really thinking about it.
00:09:11.000Because when you think about whether things are affordable or not, what you mean is, am I thinking about the price of the thing that I am buying?
00:09:17.000There are certain areas of your life where you're not thinking about the price of the thing that you're buying.
00:10:40.000Also, this episode is sponsored by Pure Talk.
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00:11:47.00011 months ago, I inherited a mess, and I'm fixing it.
00:11:52.000When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country, which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans.
00:12:07.000This happened during a Democrat administration, and it's when we first began hearing the word affordability.
00:12:16.000Our border was open, and because of this, our country was being invaded by an army of 25 million people.
00:12:24.000And President Trump then went on to go after the left.
00:12:30.000For the last four years, the United States was ruled by politicians who fought only for insiders, illegal aliens, career criminals, corporate lobbyists, prisoners, terrorists, and above all, foreign nations, which took advantage of us at levels never seen before.
00:12:49.000They flooded your cities and towns with illegal aliens.
00:12:53.000They decimated your hard-earned savings.
00:12:55.000They indoctrinated your children with hate for America.
00:13:00.000Really, I mean, they just released a level of violent felons that we had never seen to prey on innocent.
00:13:55.000And one of the things you realize in watching President Trump is that President Trump is fine with giving a mediocre performance as long as the spotlight is on him.
00:14:03.000And so bringing the spotlight back to him to talk about things he wants to talk about, even if you don't like the performance, is a way of redirecting the attention to a topic that he wants to talk about, which is what he did successfully last night.
00:14:14.000So President Trump started talking about his tax cuts, which of course are an economic victory.
00:14:19.000Next year, you will also see the results of the largest tax cuts in American history that were really accomplished through our great, big, beautiful bill, perhaps the most sweeping legislation ever passed in Congress.
00:14:34.000We wrapped 12 different bills up into one beautiful bill.
00:14:38.000That includes no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors.
00:14:47.000Under these cuts, many families will be saving between $11,000 and $20,000 a year.
00:14:55.000And next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time.
00:15:01.000He also went on to discuss bringing the economy back by bringing prices down, which is the thing most people are concerned about right now.
00:15:09.000Here at home, we're bringing our economy back from the brink of ruin.
00:15:13.000The last administration and their allies in Congress looted our treasury for trillions of dollars, driving up prices and everything at levels never seen before.
00:15:23.000I am bringing those high prices down and bringing them down very fast.
00:15:30.000So again, this was an attempt to shift the conversation.
00:15:33.000And I think that it will be the beginning of a sustained campaign to do precisely that.
00:15:38.000Now, of course, all of that relies on the economy continuing to hold up, the economy continuing to be good.
00:15:46.000It relies on a continued flattening of the cost curve when it comes to inflation.
00:15:52.000Right now, a lot of Republicans in Purple Districts, quite worried because they're looking at the polls and they can see themselves losing their seats.
00:15:58.000And this resulted yesterday in four vulnerable House Republicans rebelling against Speaker Mike Johnson and backing a Democratic effort to force a vote on extending ACA subsidies.
00:16:08.000That'd be Obamacare, exposing GOP fractures over surging health care costs headed into next year's midterm elections.
00:16:13.000This is according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:16:15.000And of course, when we talk about surging costs, what we mean is that Joe Biden put into place subsidies that expired.
00:16:22.000Those subsidies, in expiring, jack up costs, but the subsidies never should have been in place in the first place.
00:16:28.000The subsidies were actually part of the jacking up of the cost.
00:16:31.000Because when you subsidize a thing, what you get typically is a higher price.
00:16:36.000This is true anywhere and everywhere that the government pours money on a fire.
00:16:42.000Representative Mike Lawler of New York joined three Republicans from Pennsylvania swing districts in signing a petition led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries that would force a vote on a three-year extension of enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
00:16:54.000The lawmakers acted after GOP leaders blocked votes on compromise measures aimed at extending and trimming the subsidies, saying the needs of their voters were urgent.
00:17:01.000And again, the reason for that presumably is these Purple District Republicans need to go back home and say, listen, I worked in bipartisan fashion to try to avoid that spike in your Obamacare premiums.
00:17:12.000And if we didn't get it done, that's not my fault.
00:17:16.000Now, it's not going to matter because it'll go to the Senate and it will presumably die in the Senate.
00:17:20.000There are not 60 votes to push forward the Obamacare subsidies, but it will be added impetus for some sort of compromise deal, which is the most likely outcome of what happens here, is some sort of compromise deal with an extension of the Obamacare subsidies for not three years, but maybe a year or two years, while other measures pushed by Republicans start to eat away at the costs.
00:17:45.000There's been an attempt to say that this is a blow to Mike Johnson's leadership, but again, I'm not sure exactly what you expect from the speaker.
00:17:52.000Speaker Johnson, I think, has done an extraordinary job in navigating an incredibly fractious and tough caucus.
00:17:58.000He has a majority essentially of one vote.
00:18:01.000And so it's not a shock that a few people are going to defect and move over to the Democrats in order to preserve their own districts.
00:18:07.000Johnson had said he would not hold any vote on subsidies this week, citing widespread objections from Republicans who call Obamacare a failed program that has done nothing to rein in health care costs.
00:18:16.000In a TV appearance early on Wednesday, Speaker Johnson warned colleagues against trying to bypass leadership, and he said the party would tackle broader health care policy changes in the new year.
00:18:26.000But if you're one of these four Republicans, again, the goal presumably is to be able to go back to your district and say, listen, I did my best.
00:18:34.000Now, Democrats, you have to admire the gall.
00:18:38.000Their basic move here was do nothing, obstruct, don't come to a compromise.
00:18:51.000By following that simple strategy, Jeffries got everything he wanted, a House vote on a three-year extension of the subsidies without income caps or cost offsets.
00:19:02.000Now, Jeffries was pressed by several of his centrist members to throw his support behind one or two-year extensions, as we were talking about.
00:19:10.000But instead, he held firm and Republicans came to him.
00:19:13.000In the end, there will be some sort of compromise deal that gets cut, which is, again, not a shock.
00:19:19.000The Wall Street Journal editorial page is very critical of these four Republicans.
00:19:24.000They say, quote, they did so even though Mr. Johnson suggested they could have a vote on an amendment to his bill if they could find spending cuts to offset the cost of the extension.
00:19:32.000This would have required proposing other reforms, and the Republican renegades said no.
00:19:36.000Their sole aim is to protect themselves from Democratic attacks, but signing the petition is unlikely to provide much insulation.
00:19:41.000It will instead give Democrats more confidence.
00:19:43.000They have Republicans on the run and Chuck Schumer more leverage to scare GOP senators to revolt as well.
00:19:49.000Now, one of the problems here is that in Congress, there's always a temptation to push things off until the crisis moment.
00:19:56.000Republicans should have been figuring this out six months ago.
00:19:59.000Republicans should have been attempting to push some sort of compromise solution six months ago so that they could say Democrats are the ones who are allowing the subsidies to expire.
00:20:10.000And presumably, the Republicans will spend the next month doing that, coming up with some sort of compromise solution that they propose and the Democrats keep voting down over and over and over.
00:20:21.000But for the moment, again, all this goes to is the reality for a lot of Republicans in purple states, in purple districts, that if they continue to kind of double down as opposed to making moves to win their districts, they are likely to lose to lose their seats.
00:20:36.000President Trump's coattails are not endless and President Trump's approval ratings are not that high.
00:20:40.000And so a lot of these people are thinking, how do I preserve my job?
00:20:43.000And that is absolutely normal in the world of electoral politics.
00:20:47.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
00:20:48.000First, if you owe the IRS more than $5,000 in back taxes, I'm going to tell you about our sponsor, Priority Tax Relief.
00:20:58.000You had to pull from your 401k or you just had a rough patch.
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00:21:41.000Just go to prioritytaxrelief.com slash Ben.
00:21:44.000That's prioritytaxrelief.com slash Ben and see how they can help you get this resolved.
00:21:49.000Also, as an advocate for truth, you know that women shouldn't have to share locker rooms with men.
00:21:54.000Women shouldn't have to compete against male athletes and they shouldn't be punished for speaking the truth.
00:21:59.000But across America, that is exactly what has been happening.
00:22:01.000Men are being allowed to compete in women's sports, robbing girls of scholarships, medals, titles, and safety.
00:22:06.000Now, for the first time in history, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases, West Virginia versus BPJ and Little versus Heacocks on January 13th, that could decide the future of women's sports nationwide.
00:22:17.000It could be a watershed moment in the fight to protect biological reality and fairness.
00:22:21.000Alliance Defending Freedom needs your voice today.
00:22:23.000Visit joinadf.com slash Ben or text Ben to 83848 to add your name to their declaration inside with truth and fairness.
00:22:31.000That's joinadf.com slash Ben or text Ben to 83848.
00:22:35.000What starts in women's sports spreads to schools, medicine, and parental rights.
00:22:51.000Meanwhile, a shock poll is out showing Alexander Ocasio-Cortez defeating JD Vance in a presidential race, 2028 presidential race, 51 to 49.
00:23:03.000Now, that is inside the margin of error, but that in and of itself should scare the hell out of Republicans if the poll is in any way accurate.
00:23:09.000Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, of course, I've said, is being underrated as a candidate.
00:23:14.000She also happens to be the most radical Democrat in the possible field.
00:23:19.000The fact that she is even in spinning distance of the Vice President of the United States suggests either that Republicans are in for a rough ride generally in 2028 or that there needs to be some course correction politically for Vice President Vance's incipient campaign.
00:23:35.000AOC was asked directly about this, and she said, of course, I would stomp him, which, of course, you would expect her to say.
00:23:40.000Do you think that you'll beat that you could beat JD Vance in a head-to-head race for president as polling suggests in 2028?
00:23:46.000Listen, these polls like three years out are, you know, they are what they are, but let the record show I will stomp him.
00:23:57.000Okay, now, of course, she's sort of half joking.
00:24:00.000With that said, she is not the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination right now by the polling data.
00:24:04.000She is clocking in in the real clear politics polling average.
00:24:07.000And of course, it is very early right now.
00:24:09.000She is clocking in in the real clear politics polling average and in most of the polls in fourth place in the Democratic primary general vote.
00:24:17.000Gavin Newsom right now is the heavy favorite.
00:24:20.000Kamala Harris is still polling high, but that's for a hot moment because she was the last nominee.
00:24:24.000She is not going to end up as the Democratic nominee.
00:24:26.000The California governor has been running very obviously for president for at least a couple of years now.
00:24:32.000Pete Buttigieg is holding down that third place slot, but he has a ceiling.
00:24:37.000He's probably not going any higher than where he currently is.
00:24:39.000Ocasio-Cortez could theoretically pick up more of the Bernie Sanders vote, which is kind of sitting outside and waiting to see who runs at this point.
00:24:48.000With that said, if the Democrats are that competitive with the Republicans already, that, of course, is a very bad sign and it shows the necessity for a sort of political change.
00:25:00.000And this does mean, this does mean that on the right side of the aisle, there needs to be some reckoning with the idea that the era of Donald Trump running at the top of the ticket is now over.
00:25:10.000He is not going to be on the ballot in 2026 and he will not be on the ballot in 2028, despite the most fond wishes of some people who I generally like, like Alan Dershowitz.
00:26:36.000None of these races could be considered blowouts.
00:26:38.000Republicans can't afford to drop even two percentage points and win national elections.
00:26:45.000And so that means that Vice President Vance is going to have to look at his own coalition building skills and figure out what coalition he believes he will be able to bring to the ballot box.
00:26:55.000And that is why I think a lot of the very online chatter that's been happening right now on the right, the sort of triumphalist attempt to transform the nature of how Americans think about Americanism, it is politically inept.
00:27:08.000What I mean by this is there's a big conversation that's currently happening on the right about what is an American?
00:27:13.000Now, traditionally, when I was growing up, and I think for most modern conservative history, the answer to what is an American is a person who lives in America, was born here traditionally, or immigrates to the United States, imbibes from the well of and assimilates to the values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
00:27:34.000That would be sort of the very short synopsis of what is an American.
00:27:38.000There's been an attempt because people are rebelling now against the sort of creedal notion of Americanism that ideas have anything to do with being an American.
00:27:47.000And I think that is a response to the fact that the left basically said that what is an American?
00:27:53.000And so what members of the right are now saying is it's, no, it's not anyone who's here.
00:27:57.000It's people who historically are from here.
00:28:00.000But neither of those answers is correct.
00:28:02.000The actual answer is people who wish to join the American experiment and then assimilate to Anglo-American traditions and Judeo-Christian values.
00:28:13.000Those are traditionally the people who become Americans.
00:28:15.000And the history of America is which people can come here and do that.
00:28:20.000And that is why the genetic heritage of the United States is quite diverse.
00:28:24.000It's why only a very small percentage of Americans can trace their ancestry all the way back to the Mayflower.
00:28:30.000Well, this is all coming to a head because there are a lot of Republicans, again, who are starting to push the idea that that creedal idea, Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States, Anglo-American values in terms of legality, property rights, general religious tenor, that all of that ought to be pushed to the side in favor of some sort of quote-unquote heritage Americanism.
00:28:53.000And again, that's pretty ill-defined because it's difficult to explain why, because your great, grandfather got here.
00:29:00.000That is somehow better than someone else's great, grandfather getting here.
00:29:06.000As though the more greats you have in the grandfather, the more American you are.
00:29:10.000To a certain extent, that's kind of stolen valor because you're not the one who got here.
00:29:14.000It was one of your ancestors who got here.
00:29:16.000But the reality is that that is a losing political proposition.
00:29:20.000Forget about the morality of it or even the ideology of it.
00:29:23.000That is a losing political proposition that radically shrinks your base.
00:29:28.000President Trump won a historic number of Hispanic votes for a Republican in the last election cycle.
00:29:33.000Many of the Hispanic voters that he's winning are first generation or second generation Americans.
00:29:38.000If you say that the longer you're in the country, the more American you are, you are alienating your potential voters.
00:29:45.000Because it turns out a lot of people in the United States got here in the course of the last 150 years.
00:29:54.000Again, it is a mistake to do the routine that you are now seeing on a political level.
00:29:58.000And the more you talk about it, the more you're alienating people.
00:30:01.000And if JD Vance loses Latino votes from President Trump, if he loses black votes from President Trump, if he loses female votes from President Trump, if he loses blue-collar votes from President Trump, he needs to make all this up somewhere.
00:30:14.000Vivek Ramaswamy, who's running for governor of Ohio, has what I think is a truly good piece at the New York Times titled, What is an American?
00:30:21.000And he says there are two competing visions now emerging on the American right, and they're incompatible.
00:30:25.000One vision of American identity is based on lineage, blood, and soil.
00:30:31.000The purest form of an American is a so-called heritage American, one whose ancestry traces back to the founding of the United States or earlier.
00:30:38.000This view is now popularized by the Groyper Reich, a rapidly ascendant online movement that argues for the creation of a white-centric identity.
00:30:45.000This is a predictable response, one that I anticipated in my 2022 book, Nation of Victims, to anti-white discrimination over the last half decade.
00:30:52.000And it is no longer just a fringe viewpoint.
00:30:54.000The alternative, and says Vivek Ramaswamy, in my view, correct vision of American identity is based on ideals.
00:31:00.000Americanness isn't a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry.
00:31:05.000Either you're an American or you're not.
00:31:07.000You're an American if you believe in the rule of law in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression and colorblind meritocracy in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation.
00:31:18.000As Ronald Reagan quipped, you can go live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman.
00:31:22.000But anyone from any corner of the world can come to live in the United States and become an American.
00:31:26.000Now, what Vivek is saying here is correct.
00:31:28.000The attack on so-called creedal Americanism has been the idea that you can't shut the door based on creed.
00:31:36.000That's why it matters where immigrants are coming from.
00:31:38.000It's why I am very much a fan of creedal Americanism because America is exceptional and different.
00:31:44.000When I say American exceptionalism, I don't mean like Barack Obama, that Americans believe in American exceptionalism like Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism or Japanese believe in Japanese exceptionalism.
00:32:13.000We now tend to obliterate all those differences because they seem minor in comparison to the sort of ethnic diversity of the United States, but there's some pretty significant conflict between, say, Scotch-Irish immigrants to the United States at the founding and English immigrants to the United States at the founding or Dutch immigrants to the United States at the founding for that matter.
00:32:31.000New York was originally New Amsterdam, of course.
00:32:35.000But of course, creedal Americanism can serve as a litmus test as to whether someone ought to become an American.
00:32:41.000And we can measure that and we can bar people who are unlikely to assimilate.
00:32:46.000Vivek says, no matter your ancestry, if you wait your turn and obtain citizenship, you're every bit as American as a Mayflower descendant, as long as you subscribe to the creed of the American founding and the culture that was born of it.
00:32:56.000This is what makes American exceptionalism possible.
00:33:09.000We can become the world center of commerce and the world center of small art republicanism.
00:33:15.000We can do all those things because we can be a magnet for those things.
00:33:21.000The divide between these two views, says Ramaswamy, is more foundational than policy divides between Republicans and Democrats.
00:33:27.000Older Republicans who may doubt the rising prevalence of the blood and soil view should think again.
00:33:30.000My social media feeds are littered with hundreds of slurs, most from accounts that I don't recognize about the Pajites and street bleepers and calls to deport me back to India.
00:33:39.000I was born and raised in Cincinnati and have never resided outside the United States.
00:33:44.000This new online right movement doesn't represent the views of most real world Republican voters, take it from the son of Indian immigrants who's dominating polling in Ohio's GOP primary for governor.
00:33:53.000But as one of the most vocal opponents of left-wing identity politics, I now feel real reluctance from my former anti-woke peers to criticize the new identity politics on the right.
00:34:02.000And good for Vivek for writing this because this is exactly right.
00:34:05.000He says this pattern eerily mirrors the hesitance of prominent Democrats to criticize woke excess in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
00:34:14.000So what's the solution? says Ramaswamy.
00:34:18.000We need to imagine a new American dream that delivers economic empowerment while also filling the next generation's hunger for purpose and belonging.
00:34:24.000To achieve that vision, four conditions must be met.
00:34:26.000First, conservative leaders should condemn without hedging Groitberg transgressions.
00:34:36.000States can deliver quick wins, drive down home prices by eliminating local land use restrictions to increase housing supply, reduce property tax burdens, et cetera, et cetera.
00:34:44.000Third, create broad-based participation in wealth generation from stock market gains, meaning we should have what are now being called the Trump accounts.
00:34:54.000And fourth, provide America the shared national project we badly need.
00:34:58.000America has a greater purpose in the world than what we have embodied thus far in the 21st century.
00:35:03.000Americans of all stripes long to be reminded of it through a modern day equivalent of the Apollo mission.
00:35:08.000Now, again, I think that there's truth to this, that building big things tends to inspire the imagination.
00:35:15.000Now, I don't think that that is a pre-rec.
00:35:17.000I think that an inspired vision for Americans is the dream, the dream.
00:35:22.000The American dream is the inspiring thing.
00:35:25.000If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
00:35:27.000And let's be real about young Americans.
00:35:29.000The opportunity is, in fact, in your hands.
00:35:32.000There are people out there who are going to lie to you.
00:35:33.000They're going to tell you you can't succeed in the United States.
00:35:35.000They're going to tell you that because it makes them stronger and then more powerful and then richer.
00:35:40.000But it's going to make your life worse and poorer.
00:35:44.000You've been handed the opportunity, an opportunity that hundreds of millions, billions of people worldwide would kill to get.
00:35:51.000That is an opportunity that you were born into in the United States or immigrated to.
00:35:56.000And to pretend that this system is what is holding you down, absent a specific policy that you would like to change, and then we can all get on board.
00:36:04.000But a generalized grievance is not going to make your life better.
00:36:07.000And people who pander to you by telling you that failure is a result of generalized grievance without a solution.
00:36:14.000They are making your life actively worse.
00:36:17.000They're destroying your opportunity and they're destroying the American spirit.
00:36:20.000We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
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00:38:48.000Last night, the president of the United States, there were people online again, who were predicting that he was going to declare war with Venezuela or something that, of course, turned out to be untrue, as are many of their predictions.
00:38:58.000It is true, however, that the president is creating more of a blockade on Venezuela.
00:39:04.000The president is basically trying to stop the shipping of so-called ghost ships out of Venezuela that are loaded with oil for illegal climbs in violation of international law.
00:39:19.000President Trump is very much focused on the oil in Venezuela, which, by the way, is correct.
00:39:23.000I know there are people who are uptight about this.
00:39:26.000Venezuela was reliant largely on American companies to build their oil industry, and then they nationalized their oil industry and ran their country directly into the ground.
00:39:36.000And President Trump says, you know, we built it and you took it and you've destroyed your country in the process.
00:40:02.000The president then put out a statement on truth social quote.
00:40:04.000Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America.
00:40:09.000It will only get bigger and the shock to them will be like nothing they've ever seen before.
00:40:12.000He added he is ordering a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela.
00:40:18.000And he argued that Maduro's government is using oil revenue to finance illicit operations, including drug terrorism.
00:40:24.000The United States has already sanctioned three of Maduro's nephews, according to NBC News, and repeatedly conducted deadly military strikes against boats from the Caribbean that it alleges are carrying drugs.
00:40:34.000Venezuela responded by accusing Trump of violating international law, free trade, and the principle of free navigation.
00:40:48.000It added on his social media, he assumes that Venezuela's oil, land, and mineral wealth are his property.
00:40:52.000No, actually, he assumes that if we drilled for the oil and helped your industry and then you nationalized it and stole it on behalf of your communist dictatorship, that that's a bad thing.
00:41:03.000Maduro's government plans to denounce the situation before the United Nations.
00:41:18.000Representative Jason Crowe, Democrat of Colorado, is saying that.
00:41:21.000As the president has talked about U.S. involvement in land, is it clear to you what that would look like to you, U.S. involvement in a land war in Venezuela, how that would play out?
00:41:35.000We've spent the last 25 years, trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Americans wounded with stress and invisible and visible scars of these battles.
00:41:47.000Hundreds of thousands of people died around the world in these conflicts.
00:41:51.000And most of these conflicts ended poorly, right?
00:42:01.000The United States needs to get out of the regime change business.
00:42:07.000Actually, I don't think the United States needs to get out of the regime change business.
00:42:10.000If by that he means that we should not root for certain regimes to change.
00:42:15.000We certainly should not invade Venezuela with hundreds of thousands of troops, if that's what he's talking about.
00:42:19.000But I really don't think that President Trump is going for that.
00:42:22.000Why are you guys standing for the Venezuelan regime?
00:42:25.000And what President Trump is pretty obviously doing is cutting off the lifeblood of the Venezuelan economy and creating internal pressures inside the country for some sort of military coup or for a popular uprising to depose the dictator.
00:43:28.000But economic pressure on Venezuela, I really don't see the problem, to be quite honest with you.
00:43:33.000Meanwhile, Democrats continue to focus like a laser beam on the fact that Pete Hegseth's Department of Defense launched a second strike at a drug boat in international waters.
00:43:43.000Representative Benny Thompson, who was last seen claiming that the shooting of a couple of National Guard members was a sort of bizarre accident.
00:43:53.000Well, now he's back and he's claiming that Trump's boat bombings are illegal.
00:44:10.000Further, the administration has failed to provide Congress with basic information, even as Trump directs a massive buildup of U.S. forces and threatens war.
00:44:24.000And I might add, Mr. Speaker, those of us who've been in so-called classified briefings still have not received any additional information beyond what's already in the eyes of the public and on TV.
00:44:41.000It's our duty as a Congress to reign in the lawless administration and prevent an illegal war.
00:44:50.000Also, meanwhile, Chuck Schumer is claiming that the video of the boat strike turned his stomach.
00:45:46.000So I assume that at some point the footage will come out, and then we'll find out whether, in fact, the people on the boat were signaling others to be picked up.
00:45:55.000That's sort of the question at issue, legally speaking, is somebody considered ordered to combat when their boat gets wrecked, or could they get back in the fight by getting on another boat, calling somebody, is the boat still salvageable, and whatnot.
00:46:06.000By the way, the original accusation, which was that Pete Hegseth said, kill everyone and then stood there while they nuked these people, is false.
00:46:14.000And that was already reported by the New York Times.
00:46:16.000So the original report from the Washington Post made a claim that has already been specifically debunked by the New York Times.
00:46:22.000Okay, meanwhile, in other Trump administration news, Dan Bongino says he will step down from the FBI in January, according to the New York Times.
00:46:29.000He said on Wednesday he would step down next month, bringing an end to his brief but tumultuous stint at the Bureau.
00:46:35.000He wrote on social media, I will be leaving my position with the FBI in January.
00:46:41.000He said, I want to thank President Trump, A.G. Bondi, and Director Patel for the opportunity to serve with purpose.
00:46:46.000Most importantly, I want to thank you, my fellow Americans, for the privilege to serve you.
00:46:49.000God bless America and all those who defend her.
00:46:52.000Now, again, I think that Dan deserves extraordinary praise for what he's done over the course of the last year.
00:47:00.000He gave up legitimately tens of millions of dollars to go into public service for no reason other than his own patriotism.
00:47:06.000You can't name a reason why he would do it other than he wanted to help the country.
00:47:10.000He certainly didn't do it for the money.
00:47:11.000He certainly didn't do it for the love.
00:47:15.000And Dan has taken some real hits from dishonest people claiming that he abandoned his position as a person who wants to get to the truth.
00:47:23.000And by the way, full credit to Dan for telling the truth, even when it was not in his political interest to do so.
00:47:29.000I mean, Dan had been one of the lead purveyors of much of the questioning surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, but it was Dan who had to do that investigation and look into all the evidence and then tell the truth to the American people.
00:47:40.000Telling the truth to the American people is a much more difficult job, as it turns out, than lying to them and telling them what they want to hear, particularly if they're in your base.
00:47:47.000Dan deserves enormous credit for that.
00:47:49.000Dan deserves huge credit for being instrumental in the arrest of the January 6th pipette bomber.
00:47:57.000Again, the ire that you see for Dan online, I think a lot of it is sort of competitive hatred for Dan.
00:48:02.000It's coming from other people who are afraid he's going to come back to his podcast and do really well.
00:48:06.000I hope he comes back to his podcast, and I hope he does do really well because Dan is a very talented guy.
00:48:12.000But again, what Dan deserves most of all is thanks for having put aside his own personal interests on behalf of the country, even if it was for a year.
00:48:21.000Most people don't do that, and that is not an easy decision to make.
00:48:26.000Well, in other news, Zorhan Mamdani's tenure is going exactly how you thought it would.
00:48:31.000According to the New York Post, Mamdani has now tapped a controversial lawyer who defended an al-Qaeda terrorist and a radical anti-Israel campus leader at Columbia for a high-ranking position at City Hall.
00:48:43.000Ramzi Qasem, who is also a law professor at City University of New York and a member of Mamdani's transition team for legal affairs, is the top candidate for chief counsel, the most important advisory role in the mayor's office.
00:48:58.000In addition to defending Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University protest leader who was also engaged in trespass and violation of law, Qasem helped to defend terrorist Ahmed Al-Darby, an al-Qaeda member who was convicted in 2017 of bombing a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen in 2002.
00:49:16.000All this, of course, follows a pattern for Zorhan Mamdani.
00:49:30.000And he declared that free buses are going to lower crime.
00:49:33.000Okay, Charlie, we'll see how that works out for you.
00:49:36.000When we made those bus routes free after a year, assaults on bus drivers dropped by 38.9% on the bus driver.
00:49:43.000On the bus drivers, because unlike the train, the act of fare collection on the bus happens on the bus, it's there.
00:49:51.000And bus drivers and unions have shared anecdotally that about 50% of assaults happen around the fare box.
00:50:01.000So when you eliminate the fare box, you make for a safer experience for the bus driver, for everyone on the bus.
00:50:09.000It's going to be so safe when nobody has to worry about the fares and when people are just riding around the buses and using them as homeless encampments.
00:50:16.000If there's one thing that Zorn Mamdani is going to bring, it's going to be safety to New York City.
00:50:20.000Man, you guys, you voted for this and now you're going to get it good and hard.
00:50:23.000That's the theory of democracy in a nutshell.
00:50:25.000He also described, to Trevor Noah, what socialism means.
00:50:27.000You'll notice that he doesn't actually define what socialism means.
00:50:30.000This is a favorite habit of socialists is to say things like, if socialism means that everybody lives a better life and is richer, then I'm a socialist.
00:50:37.000It's like, well, no, that's not what socialism means.
00:51:12.000You should not be priced out of being able to have a home to call your own, of being able to send your kid to school, being able to ride the bus.
00:51:20.000And I've found actually that when you're speaking to New Yorkers one-to-one, they've actually had far fewer questions of how I describe my politics and far more of does my politics include them?
00:51:36.000And I've found that there are many people who might describe themselves in a different way, but when I speak about what this would mean for New York City, they start to see themselves in that vision.
00:51:44.000And that's, I think, the key of this is how is this a politics that actually reflects the struggles of working people?
00:51:52.000The irritation of people like Mamdani.
00:51:54.000I mean, Mamdani and Sanders, they all do this routine.
00:51:56.000The routine is, here's something I wish everybody had.
00:51:58.000And if I believe that everybody should have it, then they should have it.
00:52:01.000Now, they never tell you how they're going to get from point A to point B, because what socialists actually believe is if everyone deserves a house, then what that means is we should seize the means of production and we should either tax the living hell out of people and then build houses and just give them to people, which was called the affordable housing projects of the 1960s and 70s, gigantic failure.
00:52:20.000Or we should seize current housing stock and just put people in those houses.
00:52:26.000And these programs invariably end with failure.
00:52:30.000And the way that you get more people in more houses is with additional supply.
00:52:33.000And you know what's a great way to create better houses, additional houses, houses with more amenities, houses that aren't the crap boxes that your grandparents owned in the middle of Peoria in 1952, which were just brick structures with no internal air conditioning and half the time no toilet.
00:52:47.000You know what's the best way to do that?