Tape emerges of the presumed kidnappers and the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping. We ll go through all the details with Lyndon Blake. We also have breaking economic news, a shooting in Canada that appears to be trans, and airspace was closed in El Paso, supposedly for 10 days. A lot going on!
00:00:21.000First, tonight, we're going live with an all-new friendly fire.
00:00:24.000If you've never watched Friendly Fire before, here's the deal: it's the only time and place you're going to get me, Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Clavin, all in the same place for a full hour, and we're going to say exactly what we think, as you might imagine.
00:00:34.000We take the biggest stories in the headlines, we discuss them, debate them, and we probably disagree on them just a little bit.
00:00:39.000And yes, the live chat will be open for members, so you can jump in and be part of the conversation with us.
00:00:45.000Watch it at dailywire.com or on the Dailywire Plus app.
00:00:49.000Well, we do have some breaking news in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping case.
00:00:54.000Some of it is good news in the sense that we now have more information.
00:00:57.000Some of it is a little bit squirrely in the sense that somebody was suspected and then picked up and then released over the course of the last 24 hours.
00:01:05.000So, according to the New York Post, the FBI finally released the first images of Nancy Guthrie's suspected abductor.
00:01:11.000It was 10 days after she vanished from her Arizona home.
00:01:15.000The delay was caused by a couple of obstacles.
00:01:18.000And two, she did not actually subscribe to the camera's backup storage plan.
00:01:24.000She was not paying for a Google Home subscription, which would have stored her nest feed, even if the physical camera was removed.
00:01:30.000But Google apparently was capable of still drawing up that data.
00:01:35.000So it took them 10 days to find that data.
00:01:38.000Investigators apparently could have gotten the video from Google in a few different ways.
00:01:41.000They could have gotten a search warrant to issue to Google, or the family could have authorized them to conduct a search, or Google could have voluntarily opted to track it down.
00:01:49.000Bottom line is that they are retaining an enormous amount of data, obviously.
00:01:53.000Here is what some of the video looks like.
00:01:59.000You can see a person who is masked and who appears to be carrying a pistol in his waistband, but kind of in an awkward place.
00:02:06.000There's been suspicion that this person was an amateur, specifically because of how he is carrying the pistol.
00:02:12.000He is carrying it directly in front of his crotch, which is a very dumb place to carry a weapon.
00:02:16.000That is not typically where you're going to holster a firearm.
00:02:19.000The person walks up to the camera, appears to be messing with the camera, and then goes over to the front of the house and picks up an object.
00:02:30.000And then we have another angle of the person attempting to obstruct the object with leaves, trying to obstruct the camera with leaves.
00:02:38.000There is some suspicion that perhaps there's a hole in the glove, which may have led to the leaving of some DNA evidence.
00:02:42.000Of course, that is just suspicion at this point.
00:02:47.000Unclear at this point, the status of Nancy Guthrie.
00:02:49.000There has been no proof of life that has actually been put out thus far.
00:02:53.000At the same time, TMZ founder Harvey Levin told CNN that the Bitcoin account that was attached to the first ransom note for Nancy Guthrie actually saw some activity late on Tuesday.
00:03:29.000Now, let me just ask one more question and you'll share with me what you can.
00:03:32.000But when you say activity, is that that you can see money is going into the account, or are you able to tell whether it's money going in or going out?
00:03:41.000Well, it would only show, as I understand this, money going in.
00:03:46.000And the only thing you would see is money.
00:03:53.000So, not a lot more information, but obviously it suggests there's somebody on the other end of the Bitcoin account who's drawing down the money.
00:04:01.000Late yesterday, there was some news that a person had been detained for questioning.
00:04:04.000That person has apparently now been released, according to the New York Times.
00:04:07.000In an interview early on Wednesday, the man said he had not heard about Nancy Guthrie, but hopes she's found safe.
00:04:11.000He said, I hope they got the suspect because I'm not it.
00:04:14.000The FBI and Pima County, Arizona Sheriff's Department on Tuesday had carried out a court-authorized search related to the investigation in a place called Rio Rico, Arizona, which is an hour's drive south of Tucson.
00:04:25.000As of 1.20 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the department had not yet confirmed it had released the person it had detained for questioning, but apparently they had completed their search of a property in Rio Rico.
00:04:36.000Joining us online to give us all the updates is the host of Finding Nancy Guthrie, our ongoing true crime podcast.
00:04:41.000Again, if you want all the updates on this case, you should be a Daily Wire subscriber so you can hear Lyndon Blake report on this stuff as it happens.
00:04:52.000Of course, a lot has happened over the last several hours, 12 hours, I would say, Ben.
00:04:58.000Yeah, so why don't you give us the brief update on what exactly is going on and whether the investigation is progressing or whether wheels are just sort of spinning?
00:05:06.000Well, I would say a lot has picked up since that FBI footage or since the FBI released that footage of the armed masked person from Nancy Guthrie's front doorbell cam.
00:05:39.000He said he was a delivery driver in the Tucson area.
00:05:42.000And he said when he was detained by the authorities, they showed him the picture of the masked armed person.
00:05:49.000And Carlos said that authorities thought they had similar eyes, but he said he didn't know who Nancy Guthrie was, doesn't know who Savannah Guthrie is, and all that.
00:05:58.000So that was the lead last night that was unfolding in real time, pretty late into the night.
00:06:03.000And you were thinking that, okay, this footage was released.
00:06:07.000Someone recognized this person and maybe this could have been him.
00:06:10.000And now we know that it wasn't, but it's normal to bring people in for questioning and then they're gone.
00:06:17.000Like I wouldn't call this like, oh, we're back at square one.
00:06:38.000People have already started to identify the windbreaker in this footage.
00:06:43.000I mean, these are how these things are solved.
00:06:44.000You look at what type of shoes that was wearing.
00:06:47.000And if you think about other crime cases, you don't always get such a clear footage or picture.
00:06:53.000And here you have 30 seconds of video of this guy kind of messing around because for someone that walked up to Nancy Guthrie's house with a backpack full to the rim of things he obviously came prepared to do with, he was not ready to cover up a camera.
00:07:12.000And then that's what you see in the video.
00:07:13.000He tried to go off and get some grass bush, something, and then went back to the camera to try to cover it up.
00:07:22.000So just a treasure chest of things to uncover there.
00:07:27.000Now no one is in any type of custody or is being detained.
00:07:31.000The one person last night, his name was Carlos.
00:07:33.000He lived in Rio Rico and he was released about 1 a.m. Arizona time.
00:07:40.000So Lyndon, one of the other pieces of information that was put out by Harvey Levin over at TMZ is that there was action in the Bitcoin account to which the Guthrie family had sent a bunch of money.
00:07:49.000He did not really reveal much about what was going on with that.
00:07:52.000You would assume that just means somebody was drawing the money down.
00:07:55.000Yeah, well, that was interesting because Harvey, and he did say Harvey Levin, TMZ founder, who has laid eyes on this ransom note, he said he did not feel comfortable revealing the amount that was in there.
00:08:07.000He was very cautious about the wording when even talking about the Bitcoin activity in the ransom note.
00:08:13.000But KGUN, a local station in Tucson, that also got the note, they said it was less than $300.
00:08:20.000And I think that's huge too, because the more we're learning about this new digital age that we're in and doing all this investigative work in this new era, like people, you know, at first, like, oh, how can you track this?
00:08:33.000This physical Bitcoin address, like, it will be able to be tracked.
00:08:38.000So we don't know if that payment came from the FBI or someone putting in a little amount to see if the person would react.
00:08:45.000We don't know if it was the Guthrie family doing a test.
00:08:49.000I mean, that's not revealed, but what is the facts is there was activity in that Bitcoin account that was related to the ransom note.
00:08:57.000Again, we still don't know if that was authenticated, if the person that was doing the ransom notes or people is the person that is on that doorbell footage that we now have.
00:09:08.000I mean, you could be working the same spider web of things.
00:09:11.000You could be working two separate things: someone or some group that was completely just trying to take advantage of the situation with this ransom ordeal, and then someone who was clearly at the door to commit the crime.
00:09:24.000And we don't know if those intersect yet.
00:09:27.000But again, very interesting how both sectors kind of started developing after that footage was released.
00:09:34.000And I will say that FBI Director Kash Patel did kind of hint, and he could have misspoke.
00:09:39.000You know, you're doing these interviews, you're talking, and things come out, but he acted like they were continuing to look for persons of interest.
00:09:48.000And we saw the one person on that doorbell camera, but it leads me to believe we know there were multiple cameras at the home.
00:09:58.000But right now, with what authorities have given to the public and what authorities have gotten themselves, and I was also told that authorities got that video Tuesday as well.
00:10:10.000They saw it for the first time, then released it.
00:10:13.000So there may be more that comes out, but bravo to them for working with Google and Google for working with the FBI to get this recovered footage because this is how these things get solved.
00:10:27.000Lyndon, one of the things that still has not been provided, so far as I'm aware, is any proof of life whatsoever.
00:10:32.000So we are now 11 days into this ordeal, and the Guthrie family has been waiting for proof of life this entire time.
00:10:38.000We know that they didn't bring the medication because Savannah Guthrie mentioned that they had not brought the medication.
00:10:42.000We know that she had a life-threatening situation if she did not obtain medication.
00:10:46.000And you would imagine that her kidnappers are not exactly going to head on over to the CVS and pick up the medication because that would be the number one red flag for attempting to track these people down.
00:10:57.000And so there's every possibility at this point that, God forbid, something has happened to Nancy Guthrie and she actually is no longer alive.
00:11:04.000Yeah, I mean, that's like the human part of this all.
00:11:07.000And it just makes you so sad is that there is this 80, there's all this stuff happening with at the end of the day.
00:11:15.000There's this 84-year-old woman who is dependent on medication and help from people to survive right now.
00:11:24.000But what gives me hope is that something, and it could just be Savannah again, leaning on her faith, but she is saying, even after that footage was released on Tuesday, that she believes her mother is still alive.
00:11:36.000And that was a strong statement in response to the video that went out Saturday night, where everybody could read into the words where Savannah said, bring, you know, bring her back to us.
00:11:48.000That's the only way we'll have peace so we can celebrate with her.
00:11:51.000People looked at that video and they're like, okay, does the family now think that Nancy's no longer with us?
00:12:00.000But then you get the two posts on Instagram from Savannah on Tuesday where clearly she is like, someone knows this person.
00:12:41.000You can launch a business as well with our sponsor, Shopify.
00:12:44.000Shopify is the e-commerce platform powering millions of businesses all around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including our very own Daily Wire shop.
00:12:54.000With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, you can build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style.
00:12:59.000Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography so you can accelerate your efficiency, whether you're uploading new products or improving existing ones.
00:13:09.000Maybe you already know you have a good product, but you need help getting the word out.
00:13:12.000Shopify helps you find your customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns, making it feel like you have a marketing team behind you.
00:13:18.000You can tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics without juggling multiple websites or platforms.
00:13:25.000For small CPG teams or launching products, Shopify is indispensable.
00:13:28.000If you ever get stuck, Shopify's award-winning 24-7 customer support is always around to help.
00:13:33.000Plus, that iconic purple Shop Pay button and just recognizable, it is the best converting checkout on planet Earth, and that means more sales for you.
00:13:39.000It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today.
00:13:43.000Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/slash Shapiro.
00:13:47.000Head on over to shopify.com/slash Shapiro.
00:13:52.000In other criminal justice news, up in Canada, one of the worst shootings in recent memory, according to the New York Times, Canada was reeling on Wednesday, a day after a shooter killed nine people and injured 25 others in a remote town in northeastern British Columbia, the third deadliest shooting in the country's entire history.
00:14:07.000Seven people were found dead in Tumblr Ridge Secondary School, including a person believed to be the shooter who apparently committed suicide.
00:14:13.000Two other people were found dead in a local residence people believed was connected to the shooting.
00:14:18.000Another person died while being transported from the school to the hospital.
00:14:21.00025 people suffered injuries that were not life-threatening.
00:14:26.000This was the second deadly incident in British Columbia in less than a year because back in April, a man drove a car into a crowd.
00:14:32.000Now, the gun laws in Canada are incredibly strict.
00:14:36.000Gun ownership is allowed with a license in Canada, but they've had a number of gun buybacks.
00:14:43.000In the aftermath of shootings a couple of years ago, Canada tightened its laws even more.
00:14:48.000And so Canada should be sort of case in point of how gun control works, except for obviously in this case, it did not work.
00:14:55.000Now, just as importantly, there are reports that are filtering out.
00:14:59.000The police know exactly who did this, and they say they know exactly who did this.
00:15:02.000But as per our usual arrangement, if the suspect is not somebody who matches up with the profile of a straight white man of right-wing orientation, that means it's time for the police to obscure who the shooter allegedly was.
00:15:14.000Staff Sergeant Chris Clark was asked about all of this, and he says that he's not going to name the shooter and then proceeds to call the person a gun person, which is a word I did not know existed.
00:15:25.000That includes the deceased gun person.
00:15:28.000And then separately, do you know the gun person's relationship to?
00:15:35.000Okay, apparently the gun person, the reason that this term is being used, he says because it would impede the investigation and for privacy reasons.
00:15:42.000And I'm less than concerned about the privacy of people who go and shoot school children.
00:15:46.000I don't really care very much about their privacy, to be honest with you.
00:15:50.000I think that they should be blasted out over the news so long as it's not encouraging further shooters.
00:15:55.000Here is the police saying that they're not going to say anything about who the shooter was.
00:15:59.000Usually that's not about preventing future crime.
00:16:04.000We believe we've been able to identify the shooter, but for privacy reasons and obviously for the conducting investigation, we're not releasing that information at that time until we're assured that we've connected with the appropriate people.
00:16:18.000Well, the internet quickly went to work and it appears that the person who did the shooting was trans.
00:16:25.000That is at least the information that is filtering out.
00:16:28.000There are questions about this person's recent move toward identifying as female.
00:16:35.000The entire media have identified this person as female, which is malpractice.
00:16:41.000If this person is a biological male who is masquerading as a female, a biological male with gender dysphoria, a biological male insisting that he be called a woman, that does not make him a female.
00:16:50.000And it is a slander against women to artificially increase their homicide rate against children by calling a male a female.
00:16:58.000If suddenly, statistically, there's just an uptick in women winning boxing matches against men and being able to dunk and also committing murder, it seems to me that that is a slander against women because if you're just calling men women now, then you've got a problem.
00:17:14.000It is also a perverse incentive that the only way you earn respect from the mainstream media and in life is to do harm to other people, at which point the media will call you by your preferred pronoun.
00:17:27.000And all this information is filtering out right now.
00:17:32.000But once again, societies that tend to mainstream delusion and treat them as though they are normal and then blame the gun, blame the instrument rather than the mainstreaming of mental illness, especially mental illness that has an extraordinarily high crossover with suicidality and depression.
00:18:11.000That obviously has changed, and the media and governmental policy have a lot to do with it.
00:18:16.000Joining us online is Lior Sapires, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who covers topics related to pediatric gender medicine, education policy, and culture.
00:18:23.000We, of course, at the Daily Wire have been covering this stuff extensively for years up to and including a bunch of breaking news about the AMA's treatment, absurd treatment of trans medicine.
00:18:32.000That was a story that we broke last year.
00:18:34.000It made a lot of the rounds, and I think it made a significant shift in the culture surrounding the cult of trans medicine.
00:18:40.000He has a piece out recently talking about the lack of consensus among medical groups on what they are calling gender-affirming care for minors.
00:18:53.000So why don't we begin with sort of the news of the day?
00:18:55.000So it is now being reported that the shooter up in Tumblr Ridge in Canada is a person who identified as trans.
00:19:04.000This has become an alarming pattern in which people who identify as trans have been engaged in acts of violence.
00:19:11.000This, of course, is not totally surprising given the fact that people who identify as trans have a very, very high rate of suicidality, of depression.
00:19:20.000And, you know, again, the media continue to treat this as though this is of no consequence.
00:19:26.000They're referring to the prospective shooter up in Tumblr Ridge as a she, even though pretty clear this is a biological he.
00:19:32.000And this goes to kind of our entire society's willingness to say things that are biologically false, supposedly in pursuit of sympathy for people who are suffering from a mental disorder.
00:19:42.000And that, of course, is not backed by medicine, which is the thing that you're writing about.
00:19:49.000And so these are very troubled, young, usually young adolescent boys, young men who have a wide range of mental health problems and usually very troubled histories.
00:20:01.000And they're not getting the care that they need.
00:20:03.000They're not getting the societal response that they deserve.
00:20:08.000And instead, they're being led down a path where they believe that things like transition will be a cure for all their problems when we just know that that's not the case.
00:20:19.000So it's unfortunate that we've gotten to this point, but hopefully there will be a wake-up moment in the near future.
00:20:27.000So speaking of that, it's been pretty amazing how over the course of the last couple of weeks, major medical groups have now come out and completely reversed themselves on what they were saying on quote-unquote gender affirming care for years.
00:20:39.000So for years, it was DeRegore in the medical community to proclaim that hormone treatment, that social transition, that actual surgery was the solution for people suffering from gender dysphoria, particularly minors, because the idea was that if you didn't arrest puberty when a kid was 11 years old, that that person will look more like their biological sex than they otherwise would.
00:21:00.000And so you're doing them a grave harm.
00:21:02.000Now, after a few lawsuits and after it turns out that the science doesn't reflect any of this, we're suddenly getting the slow and soft walk back of, oh, well, actually, we don't have any evidence to show this worked in the first place.
00:21:12.000So we've had thousands, presumably, of children who've been surgically or hormonally mutilated.
00:21:20.000What was the actual driving factor in them suddenly changing their tune?
00:21:24.000Well, I guess the first thing I would say is this was never a wide and deep consensus of the medical profession.
00:21:30.000This was always a consensus brought about by a very small number of medical organizations and one activist organization that claims to be a medical group.
00:21:38.000That's the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
00:21:42.000And once you start looking into how the consensus came about, you start to realize that it was the result of activists, usually in key committees within these organizations, capturing the decision-making mechanisms.
00:21:55.000And then the rest of the medical community remaining silent or saying, look, we're just going to trust our colleagues because they're experts in this area.
00:22:02.000And we always trust, we always defer to our expert colleagues in medicine.
00:22:07.000So I think that's really important just to start there, that this was never a wide and deep consensus.
00:22:14.000We've had last week, we saw the first major medical group come out and say at least surgeries should be deferred until minimum age 19.
00:22:25.000And I should point out that the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, that's the organization that published this statement, is the largest organization of its kind.
00:22:33.000It represents 11,000 plastic surgeons in the United States and Canada, which is over 90% of the field.
00:22:39.000So this is a major, major medical group.
00:22:41.000And the American Medical Association, the following day, issued its own statement to the New York Times and National Review, basically saying, agreeing with their colleagues, their surgeon colleagues, but they added the word generally.
00:22:55.000They said surgeries should generally be deferred until age 19 or above.
00:22:59.000And so if you know anything about the field and how it operates, that is a massive loophole.
00:23:04.000So it remains to be seen what exactly the AMA's position on this is.
00:23:08.000But the fact that the ASPS issued this statement, and it's an extremely good statement, and we can talk about it, but it's a very, very important moment.
00:23:19.000Now, do you think that was driven by medical liability claims?
00:23:22.000Because obviously there had been a major lawsuit that was won by a quote-unquote detransitioner, a person who had surgeries who then realized that that was a huge mistake.
00:23:29.000And she sued her plastic surgeon and won a couple million dollars.
00:23:32.000And so this is a real liability issue now for surgeons.
00:23:35.000Certainly the science didn't change between now and then.
00:23:39.000Well, I can say one thing with confidence, and that is that this statement was not issued in response to that particular lawsuit.
00:23:47.000And we can know that because it's a very carefully written statement, and it came out within, I think, 48 hours after the lawsuit was announced.
00:23:54.000And the lawsuit was not being reported until the jury actually reached the verdict.
00:23:58.000So there's virtually zero chance that the ASPS managed to draft this very careful statement and get it through all of its approval process within 48 hours.
00:24:07.000So I think that's important because if you read the statement, you see that they are taking very seriously all of the knowledge that has emerged in the last five or six years as scientific scrutiny of the field began in earnest, I think, in Scandinavia in 2019.
00:24:26.000And so the ASPS cites all of the systematic reviews.
00:24:31.000It cites the HHS review, of which I was a co-author.
00:24:35.000And these are, you know, these are massive systematic reviews of the literature, which is the most reliable method in evidence-based medicine to evaluate medical evidence.
00:24:47.000I think it's important also that the ASPS includes some considerations about ethics, decision-making for minors, because one of the arguments, as I'm sure you know, Ben, as somebody who's followed this debate, one of the key arguments now being made by Democrats, by LGBT organizations, by gender clinicians in particular, they have conceded over the last few years that the evidence is very weak.
00:25:09.000What they argue is that in the face of weak evidence, decisions about whether to treat and how to treat should be between parents who consent on behalf of their kids and doctors, meaning what should matter is the autonomy of the patient and the, let's call it the proxy autonomy of the parents to decide.
00:25:28.000Well, ASPS comes out and basically says, you know, autonomy is the right to refuse treatments that are appropriately offered to patients.
00:25:36.000It is not a right to obtain any intervention you want from a doctor.
00:25:41.000And that distinction between those two understandings of autonomy is the distinction between medicine and consumerism.
00:25:48.000And it's very important, I think, that ASPS, of all organizations, the plastic surgeons came out and said, you know, we cannot allow medicine to devolve into consumerism.
00:25:57.000We have to protect the sacred principle of autonomy.
00:26:00.000And it's been misunderstood and misapplied in this area.
00:26:05.000And this is, I think, why the statement is really fascinating is because of where they set the age limit, right?
00:26:10.000They said that it's about whether somebody is a minor or whether somebody is a major, which is a legal issue.
00:26:14.000It is not as though, you know, your medical issue changes between the time you're 18 and 19 or 17 and 19.
00:26:21.000The real issue here is that if you don't want to get sued, and if you want to be able to quote unquote consent to a surgery, you have to be of a particular age.
00:26:28.000And so what that really suggests is that these surgeries are not, they have no evidence they're therapeutic.
00:26:32.000And it totally undercuts the argument of the sort of trans grift medicine industry, which is that the reason that people are getting these things is not because it's a nose job, but because it's going to save your life and prevent somebody from committing suicide.
00:26:44.000And so that has always been the argument in the gender-based trans community.
00:26:49.000And the evidence for that is so scanty that they're now basically reducing this to the question of whether somebody should be able to get a nose job once they're above age or not.
00:27:01.000I would say that when gender clinicians and their allies are speaking to the public, in particular to the skeptical public, so lawmakers and legislative hearings, to news reporters and mainstream media outlets, and even to parents who kind of have concerns about their kids and want to know what to do, then yes, they frame these interventions as a mental health intervention.
00:27:22.000They make claims about reduction in depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and so forth.
00:27:28.000When they talk amongst themselves, and you can see this when you look at their videos from conferences, When you see how you watch video calls which were somehow leaked to the public, you see that they actually offer different rationales.
00:27:46.000They say that this is about helping kids who are or helping people in general who are otherwise healthy achieve their embodiment goals, achieve their cosmetic goals for how they want their body to look in light of their internal sense of gender.
00:28:00.000So these are two rationales that have been offered for these interventions, and they kind of hop back and forth between them depending on who they're talking to and what it is that they're trying to persuade.
00:28:20.000In other bizarre news, the FAA had announced there would be a 10-day closure over the El Paso airport.
00:28:27.000Apparently, the reason why the airspace had been closed, not sure why there was a 10-day period that was attached, but apparently, according to Jennifer Jacobs reporting for CBS News, the decision to close the El Paso International Airport to all flights for 10 days was triggered by Mexican cartel drones breaching U.S. airspace.
00:28:45.000And apparently the Defense Department took action to disable the drones, which we assume it means that they are shooting down the drones.
00:28:51.000Now, I've seen those drones personally.
00:28:53.000If you go check out Behind the Paywall, our series about the divided states of Biden, one of the things we did is went down to the Arizona border.
00:29:01.000And there was a point where we literally saw cartel drones overflying American territory along the Arizona border.
00:29:09.000They fly these drones so as to monitor American law enforcement so they can smuggle drugs across the border.
00:29:15.000And so it is not a surprise at all that Mexican cartel drones were breaching U.S. airspace.
00:29:19.000They've been doing this on a routine basis, good for the Trump administration for finally shooting them down.
00:29:24.000Actually, I remember when I was at the border, I asked Border Patrol, we were doing a ride-along, I asked Border Patrol why they weren't just shooting the drones down.
00:29:32.000And they said they would have had to have sign-off from Alejandro Mayorcas, then the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
00:29:38.000So presumably the Trump administration has now decided to activate with regard to these drones and shoot them down routinely.
00:29:45.000Still not sure why that meant a 10-day announcement as opposed to a temporary announcement.
00:29:50.000Maybe they're expecting that more drones were coming and now they're not.
00:29:53.000Whatever the case may be, that is the right decision by the Trump administration.
00:29:56.000We should not have foreign overflights of American territory.
00:29:59.000Well, speaking of stories, upon which we are still finding out the whole story, as more Epstein files drip into view, as more pages drip out, as redactions are undone, new questions emerge.
00:30:17.000Jon Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, he says that obviously, if your name is in the Epstein files, you're going to end up answering some questions.
00:30:24.000This applies presumably to Howard Luttnick, the commerce secretary, whose name was brought into public view yesterday.
00:30:31.000Well, look, I think it's going to be ultimately what happens there is probably going to be up to the American people.
00:30:36.000And what I've been for, and I've been very clear about this from the outset, is full disclosure, get the information out there.
00:30:47.000And so, you know, for people whose names appear or in some context might be in the Epstein files, they're going to have to answer the questions around that.
00:30:56.000And I think the American people are going to have to make judgments about whether or not they think those answers are sufficient.
00:31:02.000Now, there are conflicting stories coming out about President Trump.
00:31:05.000Obviously, President Trump's enemies want to claim that he was deeply embedded with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:31:10.000So far, we actually know the names of the people who are very much in bed with Jeffrey Epstein, as we talked about at length on yesterday's show.
00:31:15.000Steve Bannon was one of those people, but obviously Peter Mandelson, who is a member of the UK government, was another one of those people and their various business people, including, of course, Les Wexner, who were deeply in bed with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:31:28.000Some new details are coming out about that.
00:31:30.000There was apparently an FBI file that listed him, Lex Wexner, the Victoria's secret founder, as a secondary co-conspirator with Epstein.
00:31:38.000He was never charged as such, but a lot of money passing from Wexner to Epstein and vice versa, mostly from Wexner to Epstein and not the other way around.
00:31:48.000Yesterday, I suggested that if Rocana and Thomas Massey wanted to actually forward the case, what they should do is just use their congressional immunity to read the names of people who had been redacted into the congressional record, which you can do without fear of liability.
00:32:06.000I think now he should actually show evidence that the people he's mentioning did something nefarious.
00:32:11.000Just naming names without kind of explaining what they did seems like not amazing practice.
00:32:16.000Some of these people have already been mentioned publicly.
00:32:19.000Here's Rokana doing this, California congressperson yesterday.
00:32:24.000Congressman Massey and I went to the Department of Justice to read the unredacted Epstein files.
00:32:30.000We spent about two hours there, and we learned that 70 to 80 percent of the files are still redacted.
00:32:40.000In fact, there were six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason.
00:32:48.000When Congressman Massey and I pointed this out to the Department of Justice, they acknowledged their mistake, and now they have revealed the identity of these six powerful men.
00:33:00.000These men are Salvatore Navora, Zorab Micheladz, Leopig Leonor, Nikola Caputa, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulyam, CEO of Dubai Ports World, and billionaire businessman Leslie Wexner.
00:33:20.000Okay, so again, some of those names we already know.
00:33:23.000We already knew about Leslie Wexner, obviously.
00:33:25.000Literally tens of millions of dollars passing hands from Wexner to Epstein.
00:33:30.000And what the files show is that, again, an FBI document apparently listed him at one point as a secondary co-conspirator, but he was never charged as such.
00:33:37.000Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayim is the chairman and CEO of Dubai-based logistics giant, and he was linked to a 2009 email that read, quote, I loved the torture video.
00:33:46.000And apparently he was discussing sexual incidents with Epstein in 2015.
00:33:53.000Nicola Caputo, it is unconfirmed exactly who that is, but there is an Italian politician who served as a member of European Parliament whose name was redacted and then unredacted, which is how obviously Rokana saw it.
00:34:06.000It is unclear what the allegations against him are.
00:34:08.000And this is sort of one of the problems with the entire release of the Epstein files.
00:34:14.000When you just sort of dump millions of pages into the public view without any sort of contextual explanation of what people are looking at, it becomes very, very easy to make allegations that are unevident.
00:34:24.000So I don't know even what the allegations are against Nikola Caputo.
00:34:27.000I just know that his name got mentioned yesterday by Rokana.
00:34:46.000They brought those names out in public.
00:34:48.000And again, I think that that is good for transparency if there's no reason for those names to be redacted.
00:34:53.000I will say that if people's lives are ruined on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that doesn't seem to be a wonderful, wonderful thing.
00:35:01.000As far as President Trump, apparently, according to the New York Times, one of the first calls the Palm Beach police received was from Donald Trump, according to a local police chief at the time.
00:35:11.000He told the FBI that more than a decade later.
00:35:14.000That was after it became known that Epstein was under investigation in the 2000s.
00:35:17.000Trump reportedly told the chief, one Michael Ryder, thank goodness you're stopping him.
00:35:21.000Everyone has known he's been doing this.
00:35:24.000Trump apparently said it was known in New York circles Epstein was disgusting.
00:35:28.000And he also suggested the police focus their investigation on Epstein's associate, Glene Maxwell.
00:35:32.000So that is precisely the reverse of what some people are trying to claim about Trump, which is that he was deeply in bed with all of this.
00:35:38.000That, at the very least, does not seem to be the case.
00:35:41.000It seems to be that Trump was one of the people who called the cops on Epstein as soon as the investigation was initiated.
00:35:46.000Now, one person who has been caught up in this scandal inside the administration is Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick.
00:35:53.000Luttnick had said that he had cut off ties with Jeffrey Epstein years before he visited Epstein's private island in 2012 with his wife and his kids.
00:36:03.000So Luttnick described his contact with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:36:06.000He was being questioned by Senator Chris Van Hollen yesterday in the Senate.
00:36:10.000I think you understand the root of concern here.
00:36:13.000It's the way you described very emphatically your first encounter with him in his apartment, said you were disgusted, would never have any contact with him again.
00:36:26.000Did you, in fact, make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island?
00:36:32.000I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation.
00:36:38.000My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies.
00:36:43.000I had another couple with they were there as well with their children, and we had lunch on the island.
00:36:51.000That is true for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies, and my wife all together.
00:37:11.000So obviously, this has driven a lot of ire.
00:37:14.000Records released by the Justice Department appear to show Luttnick emailing with Epstein, arranging calls and being scheduled for a drink in 2011, and that yacht trip that he just mentioned.
00:37:24.000In subsequent emails, Lutnick confirmed lunch plans with Epstein on the island.
00:37:29.000In 2017, apparently Epstein contributed some $50,000 to a dinner honoring Lutnick and another investor, which was put on by the Jewish philanthropic organization UJA Federation of New York.
00:37:40.000Epstein was offered a table and 10 seats to attend the event, but declined, writing in an email to tell Luttnick he can film them.
00:37:46.000Were those associations criminal in nature?
00:37:48.000Doesn't appear to be evidence of that.
00:37:50.000Doesn't really appear to be evidence of that.
00:37:53.000But again, association with people who have been convicted or pled guilty to child sex trafficking or sex trafficking of a minor, that is a stain for sure.
00:38:02.000Caroline Levitt over at the White House defended Lutnick.
00:38:06.000So does the White House stand behind Secretary Luttnick right now?
00:38:10.000Or given what he has said today, has there been any shift in how the White House is viewing Secretary Lutnick's performance?
00:38:17.000No, Secretary Luttnick remains a very important member of President Trump's team, and the president fully supports the Secretary.
00:38:26.000Now, again, I think that it's important not to conflate all issues together.
00:38:29.000The evidence in the emails and in the text and everything else shows that Luttnick knew Epstein and was friendly with Epstein.
00:38:36.000That is not quite the same thing as, for example, Peter Mandelson actually passing government secrets to Jeffrey Epstein or Steve Bannon planning a PR comeback with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:38:51.000And so I think it's important to keep those two strains apart for the sake of accuracy, if nothing else.
00:38:58.000On the congressional side, the Democrats, once again, look to be staring down the barrel of another partial shutdown.
00:39:04.000There's an immigration shutdown that they're going to attempt to pursue.
00:39:08.000According to Axios, Senate Democrats are drawing a preemptive red line on ICE reforms, telling Axios any sanctuary city crackdown is now dead on arrival.
00:39:16.000Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's rank and file are in no mood to let Republicans turn a debate about ICE's use of force into a conversation over sanctuary cities.
00:39:26.000Senator Chris Van Holland told the Axios, I know they're trying to change the conversation.
00:39:32.000Of course, these issues are absolutely linked.
00:39:34.000ICE is being forced to take measures they never would have to take in a non-sanctuary city.
00:39:40.000The Democrats, of course, have been threatening a partial government shutdown, meaning not funding of DHS for the long term.
00:39:46.000Senator Thun moved Tuesday evening to set up a Thursday vote on a House-passed DHS bill.
00:39:52.000He might instead do another short-term CR.
00:39:55.000Chuck Schumer might go for that because, again, they feel like the longer they push this issue, the better it is for them politically.
00:40:03.000President Trump, for his part, continues to maintain nobody's coming through our borders.
00:40:06.000It's interesting that the Trump administration is, in fact, making the case, and it's the best possible PR case, that they have shut the border, which is true.
00:40:47.000The administration has been trying to shift its focus from this idea that they're going to deport all illegal immigrants to that they are focusing at least primarily on criminal illegal immigrants.
00:40:56.000There's a story that came out from CBS News yesterday that said that less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses, according to an internal DHS document obtained by CBS News.
00:41:11.000So that appears to conflict with the argument being made by the Trump administration that they're not focusing on Abuela, who's been here for 20 years, that they're really focusing in on people who have committed crimes other than illegal immigration.
00:41:23.000Caroline Lovitt, however, pushed back on the statistic from the White House yesterday.
00:41:27.000Nearly 60% of ICE arrestees over the past year had criminal charges or convictions.
00:41:34.000And among that population, the majority of the criminal charges or convictions are for nonviolent crimes.
00:41:40.000Oh, well, what are nonviolent crimes, you ask?
00:41:42.000This has coincided with what DHS has been saying all along, that approximately 70% of illegal aliens arrested under President Trump have pending criminal charges and or prior convictions.
00:41:53.000And these so-called nonviolent crimes, drug trafficking, distribution of child burglary, fraud, DUI, embezzlement, solicitation of a minor, and human smuggling, just to name a few.
00:42:07.000So just because a crime is not violent in nature doesn't mean that crime is victimless.
00:42:13.000Okay, and this, of course, is exactly right.
00:42:15.000The Trump administration has not claimed they are going to arrest only violent criminal illegal immigrants.
00:42:19.000They said criminal illegal immigrants, a huge amount of crime is nonviolent.
00:42:25.000Democrats, by the way, continue to be as radical as they want to be.
00:42:28.000Yesterday, Todd Lyons, who's the acting immigration and customs enforcement director, was in front of the House Homeland Security Committee.
00:42:35.000And Democrats went at him and he said, listen, I'm not going to unmask my agents.
00:42:44.000Will you commit, yes or no, to immediately unmasking every agent conducting immigration enforcement and requiring them to wear standard uniforms with identifiable badges?
00:43:24.000Representative Lamonica R. MacIver of the New Jersey 10th, she's one of the people who was briefly arrested for protesting outside an ICE facility and obstructing law enforcement in the process.
00:43:34.000She asked Todd Lyons if he's going to hell.
00:43:38.000Again, if their claim is that non-enforcement of the law is superior to enforcement of the law, that is a radical proposal Americans do not like.
00:43:47.000Well, let me ask you some questions that you may be able to answer.
00:43:51.000Mr. Lyons, do you consider yourself a religious man?
00:45:12.000No country in the world does what we do.
00:45:18.000And so, again, he is not wrong about this.
00:45:21.000Joining us online to discuss Democrats' activities in the Senate, obstructing the Save Act, obstructing DHS funding, is Senator Rick Scott of Florida.
00:45:46.000Speaking of which, it seems like the Democrats are now looking at yet another partial government shutdown, this time over the Department of Homeland Security.
00:45:52.000Can you give us the latest on what exactly they are demanding?
00:45:54.000Because we've heard sort of vague reports about what it is that they want, but some of the things that they seem to be asking for essentially look like they would end law enforcement with regard to illegal immigration in the country.
00:46:52.000And by the way, you realize that we don't have any of these problems in Florida because our sheriff's department, police departments, they work with ICE.
00:46:59.000So we don't have these problems that they're having in these sanctuary cities where there's a criminal in jail and they know that he's illegal and they turn they'll turn him over to ICE and then ICE has to go into the neighborhood with protesters and try to arrest him.
00:47:14.000So we don't have any of those problems in Florida.
00:47:15.000It's all driven by local mayors and governors.
00:47:19.000So, Senator Scott, one of the things that we've been hearing is the possibility the Democrats are going to try to push for the use of judicial rather than administrative warrants by ICE when they're performing arrests.
00:48:32.000Either government will get shut down Friday night or we'll do another continuing resolution for a couple of weeks to see if there's some deal.
00:48:40.000But look, the Democrats, they don't care about the public safety.
00:48:47.000And I think the only thing they must be is they think it's the only way they can win elections.
00:48:54.000Well, meanwhile, the Republicans in the House have already passed the Save America Act, and that has moved on to the Senate as well.
00:49:00.000Democrats are treating this as anathema.
00:49:03.000Why don't you first of all tell us what exactly is in the Save Act?
00:49:05.000Because what we have been told by Chuck Schumer is that this is Jim Crow 2.0, which again, that line is getting a little old since I've heard it applied to probably a dozen bills over the course of the last 10 years or so.
00:49:15.000But this is their latest bugaboo is voter ID in the States.
00:49:48.000The president's come out in favor of it.
00:49:51.000So now we've got to get it done in the Senate any way we can.
00:49:54.000We might have to do it through the talking filibuster, which is probably the only way we'll get it done because the Democrats are all opposed to it.
00:50:04.000Because we've heard some conflicting reports about whether Senator Thune is going to use the talking filibuster, meaning for those who don't follow Senate procedure, there has been a basic deal between both sides that if you don't have 60 votes to shut down debate, that you don't actually have to get up and talk.
00:50:19.000Everybody tends to think of Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
00:50:22.000You actually stand up there and you talk for a really long time.
00:50:24.000That's what a filibuster is, but that's almost never done.
00:50:26.000And so forcing people to actually do a talking filibuster means that somebody gets up there and rans for 25 hours or however long their catheter holds out.
00:50:35.000What is the possibility that Senator Thune is actually going to force a talking filibuster on this?
00:50:39.000Well, the positive is Thune has committed that we're going to have a vote on the SAVE Act.
00:50:46.000Now, I think the only way we're going to get passed is we've got to go.
00:50:50.000We've got to work through to see if we can do it through a talking filibuster because we don't have enough Democrats who are going to support us.
00:50:56.000So if you remember, the filibuster was simply you didn't have to have 60 votes to pass something.
00:51:02.000You had to have six, you know, you have to say, we're going to stop debate at some point.
00:51:36.000Number two is then we've got to say, can we get it done through a talking filibuster?
00:51:41.000I mean, the problem we've got is the Democrats are blocking everything.
00:51:44.000So ultimately, what they're going to force us to do is actually, I think, get rid of the filibuster.
00:51:48.000I think the right way of doing it is, okay, let's have a talking filibuster.
00:51:51.000If you want to talk about something, talk about it, but let's vote at the end.
00:51:57.000So meanwhile, bipartisanship is not totally dead.
00:52:00.000One of the bills that you are promoting, along with some Democrats, is something called the Clear Labels Act, which is designed to make sure that everybody knows where their medicines are coming from, which presumably would help reshore a lot of the manufacturing process because a lot of people don't trust medications that are going to be produced in China, for example.
00:52:15.000Why don't you explain where that is and what's the possibility of that being brought to a floor vote?
00:52:20.000Well, I've got the support of the ranking member on the agent committee.
00:52:23.000I'm the chairman of that committee, Christine Gillibrand.
00:52:42.000So I'm optimistic that we'll get that bill to get that done, whether it's a standalone vote or whether we get it through another package like the National Defense Authorization Act.
00:52:52.000But we should not be dependent on communist China in India for our medicines.
00:52:58.000The FDA is not doing inspections like they do in the United States of medicines, the manufacturing medicines.
00:53:03.000On top of that, there's been studies that say that you have a much higher chance of death and hospitalization if you take a generic drug made in China or in India.
00:53:27.000Meanwhile, for the Trump administration, excellent economic news.
00:53:30.000A good jobs report came out in January.
00:53:33.000There's some upside, there's some downside.
00:53:34.000The upside is a very good jobs report in January.
00:53:37.000Apparently, 170,000 private sector jobs, 130,000 jobs added overall because some government jobs were done away with.
00:53:44.000That is much stronger than economists expected.
00:53:47.000They were expecting 70,000 jobs in January.
00:53:49.000The unemployment rate has ticked down to 4.3%, which is historically quite good.
00:53:54.000The downside is that the BLS in revisions shaved down 400,000 jobs from the 2025 employment gain, meaning that for all of 2025, there are about 181,000 new jobs created, which is presumably one of the reasons why people are still feeling dyspeptic about the economy.
00:54:10.000The reality is the Trump economy right now is quite strong.
00:54:13.000There's a very good piece by Ramesh Panuru over at the Washington Post talking about the status of the economy.
00:54:20.000And as he points out, right now, even though economic confidence is low, like 21%, the unemployment rate is only 4.3%.
00:54:28.000There's a relatively low misery index, which is unemployment plus inflation.
00:54:33.000And the inflation-adjusted wages have been rising pretty precipitously over the course of the last year or so.
00:54:42.000The biggest problem in Panuru's estimation as to why there's a disconnect between what Americans are feeling about the economy and how the economy is actually performing is because they expected that inflation going down meant actual deflation.
00:54:54.000This is something I've talked about on the show a lot.
00:54:57.000The way politicians talk about bringing down inflation, they don't explain that the prices are basically going to remain the same.
00:55:03.000You're not going to see a real deflation in prices.
00:55:06.000And so even if you've seen wage increases, those still have to eat away and chip away at a time when inflation far outpaced inflation-adjusted wages.
00:55:17.000This is a point that Ramesh Penuro is making.
00:55:19.000He says, even though real wages have risen since 2022, their decline during the previous two years has not been undone.
00:55:24.000People can remember when they were making more.
00:55:26.000The current wage trend may have to continue for a while for Americans to be satisfied.
00:55:31.000Also, it doesn't really help that the president is constantly talking about tariffs.
00:55:34.000Most Americans don't feel that is a big win for them.
00:55:37.000It's one of his more unpopular economic views.
00:55:40.000But overall, what this does suggest is that as the Trump economy continues to churn, maybe the sentiment with regard to the economy starts to rise along with the economic strength of the country.
00:55:53.000All righty, coming up, the New York Times has finally, finally decided that, hey, wait, you know, pot, not great for you.
00:55:59.000Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
00:56:01.000If you're not a member, become a member.