Why did Donald Trump win re-election? Is it because Americans are dumb or is it because the Democratic Party is dumb too? Or are they just idiots? And why is it so hard to have an intellectual debate about it?
00:00:25.000You decided that all of the auspices of American government had to be brought to pressure Americans into your version of virtue, complete with signaling, like pronoun signaling and all the rest of this.
00:00:36.000And yet you seem absolutely puzzled as to why Americans aren't buying what you're selling.
00:00:41.000I'm not sure I've seen a better example of the sort of continued scorn that Democrats have for everyday Americans than what was exhibited last night on Mehdi Hassan's show.
00:00:49.000Mehdi Hassan, for those who don't remember him, was...
00:00:54.000And then before that, he was an Al Jazeera host where he was a mouthpiece of Qatar.
00:00:58.000And he was joined on the air by the execrable congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, terror sympathizer extraordinaire.
00:01:04.000And there, she, with her vocal grind, decided to lay into the American people who have given her aid and sustenance.
00:01:13.000And remember, she was originally a refugee to this country and was elected to Congress on the basis of yelling at Americans about how terrible they are.
00:01:20.000Here she is explaining that Americans are just stupid.
00:01:35.000I really, you know, I'm at the point where it's become really hard to have an intellectual debate with any of these people because the level of stupidity that they are displaying every single day is frankly embarrassing.
00:01:48.000not just in Congress, but as Americans.
00:01:52.000And the fact that these people are allowed to say just the most ridiculous things tells you that the dumbing of the United States has arrived because how else do we get a Trump presidency again?
00:02:08.000It can't be that you guys chose every wrong position as possible to take in American politics, and now the American people have rejected you.
00:02:17.000Now, the perfect example of this came out yesterday courtesy of our friend Chris Ruffo, who's going to join the show in a moment and break some more news on this particular story.
00:02:25.000So, the job of the National Security Agency is to collect, analyze, and share intelligence to protect the United States from foreign enemies.
00:02:33.000That is the job of the intelligence community.
00:02:35.000As it turns out, it, like many other institutions in American government and American public life, has been honeycombed with leftist nonsense.
00:03:42.000is that weirdos who think that it's some sort of turn-on to cut off their genitals can talk to one another.
00:03:46.000That is the biggest, that is the most important thing at our institutions.
00:03:50.000Understand that, for the left, our institutions are about reshaping the human beings who go into them and then using those reshaped human beings to reshape the United States of America.
00:03:59.000They are not about actually fulfilling the delegated functions of those institutions.
00:04:03.000The Department of Education is not about educating children.
00:04:06.000The Department of Education is about creating pipelines to left-wing interest groups that then reshape the nature of the American body politic.
00:04:13.000And apparently the NSA is about providing a safe space for people to discuss having their buttholes zapped with lasers.
00:04:20.000And then presumably being able to use their access to foreign intelligence and apparently domestic intelligence in order to target political enemies.
00:04:30.000According to Chris, one popular chat topic is, was male-to-female transgender surgery, which involves surgically removing the penis and turning it into an artificial vagina.
00:04:39.000Quote, Mine is everything, said one male who claimed to have had gender reconstruction surgery.
00:04:45.000Never liked it before GRS, but all the rest is just as important as well.
00:04:48.000Another intel official boasted that genital surgery allowed him to, quote, wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff under it.
00:04:55.000These employees discussed hair removal, estrogen injections, and the experience of sexual pleasure post-castration.
00:05:00.000Quote, getting my butthole zapped by a laser was shocking, said one trans-identifying intel employee who spent thousands on hair removal.
00:05:07.000Look, I just enjoy helping other people experience boobs, said another about estrogen treatment.
00:05:12.000One of the weirdest things that gives me euphoria is when I pee, I don't have to push anything down to make sure it aims right, said a defense intelligence agency employee.
00:05:38.000Apparently, according to the sources, the stats were legitimized as part of the NSA's commitment to, quote, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
00:05:44.000Activists within the agency used LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign employee resource groups to turn their and pathologies into official work duties.
00:05:52.000According to the current NSA employee, these groups, quote, spent all day recruiting activists and holding meetings with titles such as privilege, ally awareness, pride, and transgender community inclusion.
00:06:02.000And the NSA leadership supported every aspect of this, declaring the DEI was, quote, not only mission critical, but mission imperative.
00:06:09.000Yes, the mission of the NSA, monitoring foreign terror threats.
00:06:13.000That mission would have been endangered if we did not have intel-linked chats between various agents discussing The pleasures of polyamory.
00:06:23.000Quote, last January, chatroom members discussed their practice of polyamory or ethical non-monogamy.
00:06:28.000One employee explained a polycule is a polyamorous group.
00:06:31.000A is my girlfriend and BG are her partners.
00:06:34.000And B and C are dating, but not C and D, nor E, F, or G with any of the others, though there are several MWB, metas with benefits, connections.
00:06:42.000Another employee claimed to be part of a nine-member polycule, adding, quote, some of our friends are practically polymers with all the connected compounds.
00:06:49.000Many of the conversations became particularly explicit.
00:06:53.000One former NSA source recalled being disgusted by a particularly shocking thread discussing a weekend, quote, Very exciting stuff happening inside the federal government.
00:07:06.000Alrighty, in just one second, we're going to get to my interview with Chris Ruffo himself.
00:07:09.000He's giving our listeners an exclusive on this insane NSA story.
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00:09:24.000Well, joining us on the line to discuss is Chris Rufo, the predominant activist journalist of our time, also senior fellow and director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute for more breaking news.
00:09:35.000So, Chris, you keep coming up with these scoops week after week, which suggests both you're very good at your job and also there's an enormous amount of trash happening at the federal governmental level.
00:09:44.000We've been talking about the NSA and these horrifying secret chats in which they've been engaged, but we talked about that.
00:09:51.000I want to talk about a couple of new things that you're uncovering today with regard to Talk at the NSA, which again is an agency designed specifically to target foreign enemies about apparently domestic enemies and yours truly comes up apparently.
00:10:06.000I mean, these are intelligence officials that should, in theory, be focused on foreign adversaries, but they are very concerned about domestic politics.
00:10:14.000And so it's not just about their hormones, their genital surgeries.
00:10:18.000They have vitriolic feelings towards conservatives in particular.
00:10:22.000Two names that came up, of course, were Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok fame and the one and only Ben Shapiro.
00:10:47.000So the CIA has already come out and said that they're going to look into this.
00:10:53.000What do you expect the outcome of this is going to be?
00:10:54.000I mean, the NSA has incredible powers to look into all sorts of information, foreign as well as domestic.
00:11:00.000We've had a bunch of scandals involving the NSA, actually targeting people domestically.
00:11:04.000What do you think is going to be the outcome of all of this?
00:11:07.000Well, the Trump administration is very concerned about this.
00:11:10.000And just in the last few hours, I can tell you that I've had phone calls and signal messages from not only the NSA, but the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence staff.
00:11:21.000And so they want to get to the bottom of this.
00:11:23.000I'm told that they're going to be taking significant action.
00:11:27.000And in my view, the standard should be quite simple.
00:11:30.000If you were at any private corporation, if you worked at Microsoft or you worked at Boeing or ExxonMobil, If you were doing this in the work chat, you would be packed up and gone within hours.
00:11:41.000The same standard should be applied here, and in fact, it should be even a more stringent standard, because revealing these personal details, these gory situations, not only is inappropriate at work, but it creates a counterintelligence vulnerability that we know China, Russia, Iran, and other countries would love to exploit.
00:12:04.000So, Chris, one of the things that I think we need to focus in here on is the fact that this is, in fact, a reflection of bad policy.
00:12:11.000It's easy to go, well, yes, bad apples who have gotten involved in various chats with their anger at various conservatives.
00:12:18.000But there really is something else going on here, and that is that throughout our federal government, when Joe Biden said that equity was going to dictate all policy throughout these federal agencies, he was not joking.
00:12:27.000And that is reflected in this kind of insanity at the staffing level.
00:12:33.000And all of these chats that were extremely graphic in nature were legitimized and considered part of the DEI programs.
00:12:42.000And so the left wants to play this Mott and Bailey game, this hard debate, easy debate game where they say, you know, you have to protect people's identity.
00:12:50.000They just want to have trans people have the right to exist.
00:12:53.000All of these euphemisms that they use.
00:12:56.000But under the surface, this is what's happening in practice.
00:12:59.000And the Biden administration officials were either complicit or they were too afraid to actually shut this down.
00:13:05.000I'm told that under Tulsi Gabbard, these chats have been shut down.
00:13:09.000They aren't going to occur moving forward.
00:13:12.000But the problem is quite deep because between the Obama administration and then the Biden administration, you have a huge sweep of time in which left-wing gender activists seemingly have hijacked not just Department of Education or Department of Environmental Protection, But in fact, the core agencies of our national security apparatus, this should be a five alarm fire for policymakers.
00:13:37.000It creates a huge vulnerability in addition to the simple ideological problems that are obvious to all.
00:13:43.000I mean, it also includes the fact that when you have all of these radicals who are motivated to actually go after their enemies and they have the tools to go after their enemies, the possibility of actual malfeasance using the tools of law enforcement starts to grow pretty exponentially.
00:14:19.000And so I think that it is not beyond concern to fear that some of these tools could be deployed against domestic enemies.
00:14:29.000This is something that we should be on guard for.
00:14:32.000And certainly the new director of national intelligence has a lot of work ahead to clean up the agencies, to focus them back on mission, and frankly, to terminate the employment of people who are not advancing the national security, but seek to really use government resources to advance partisan politics.
00:14:50.000Well, folks, Chris Rufo doing amazing work each and every week.
00:14:54.000He You can check him out over at ChristopherRuffo.com or you can follow him over at RealChrisRuffo at X.com as well.
00:15:00.000Chris, really appreciate the time as well as the breaking news.
00:16:06.000And we just had a poll come out, I guess the Harvard poll, saying that it's massively popular what we're doing.
00:16:13.000And of course it is massively popular because Americans do not like this sort of crap.
00:16:18.000They understand that their taxpayer dollars, the things that they work hard all day to earn, are now being used to subsidize trans discussions at the NSA. They are not into this.
00:16:43.000And they cannot believe that Americans are rejecting their entire worldview.
00:16:47.000That is what lies at the root of all of this.
00:16:49.000Not even differences on spending or government programs themselves.
00:16:52.000What lies behind all of this is a belief by Americans correctly.
00:16:57.000That the value system of the left, which is defined by Los Angeles and San Francisco and New York, that that value system is at odds with the value system held by most Americans, the vast majority of Americans.
00:17:08.000In fact, it's why so much of what President Trump is doing right now sounds simply commonsensical, and yet he's being opposed every step of the way by radicals on the left.
00:17:18.000Perfect example is what's happening up in Maine.
00:17:21.000So up in Maine, the governor, Janet Mills, 77 years old.
00:17:27.000She has challenged President Trump's executive order relating to keeping men out of women's sports.
00:17:35.000Maine's Principal Association Executive Director Mike Burnham declared on February 7th that they would not comply in any way, shape, or form with the executive order from the White House that said men are not allowed in female sports.
00:17:46.000Instead, he said Maine would follow the Maine Human Rights Act when it comes to gender identity.
00:17:52.000And then, President Trump On February 20th, he was speaking to the Republican Governors Association meeting, and he said, Maine, I hate to tell you this, they're not going to get any federal money.
00:18:01.000If they want men in women's sports, they're just not going to get the cash.
00:18:04.000On February 21st, he had a gathering of all the governors, and he directly tore into Governor Mills in Maine.
00:18:12.000The NCAA has complied immediately, by the way.
00:18:30.000You better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't.
00:18:33.000And by the way, your population, even though it's somewhat liberal, although I did very well there, your population doesn't want men playing in women's sports.
00:18:41.000So you better comply because otherwise you're not getting any federal funding.
00:19:15.000Well, then Ilhan Omar will label Americans stupid.
00:19:17.000Well, President Trump is not going along with this, so the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has now launched a Title IX investigation in Maine.
00:19:25.000And again, there are a bunch of these other investigations that are currently going on.
00:19:28.000And the governor of Maine refuses to back down.
00:19:31.000Quote, I've spent my career standing up for the rule of law in Maine and America.
00:19:34.000To me, that is fundamentally what is at stake here, the rule of law in our country.
00:19:37.000No president can withhold federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by main taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will.
00:19:45.000It is a violation of our Constitution and of our laws, which it took an oath to uphold.
00:19:50.000Okay, so this is going to go to court, presumably.
00:19:52.000But the idea that strings are attached to federal funding, that has a long, storied record in American politics going all the way back to federal dollars being attached with strings to, for example, raising the driving age in particular states.
00:20:07.000We're getting rid of drunk driving in particular states.
00:20:11.000But again, all this is just commonsensical, and the left opposes every bit of it.
00:20:15.000The same thing is true when it comes to illegal immigration.
00:20:18.000The truth is that there is, in the United States, a sort of wide consensus on illegal immigration.
00:20:25.000It's a consensus that I have been preaching for my entire political career, as far as I'm aware, which is, shut the border, figure out what to do with the people here.
00:22:12.000So, Colony Ridge is a 60-square-mile development that is set to reach a population of a quarter million people.
00:22:18.000That's larger than Scottsdale, Arizona, Knoxville, Tennessee, or Boise, Idaho.
00:22:23.000And the marketing and financial schemes at Colony Ridge are specifically designed to attract illegal aliens.
00:22:29.000We've seen illegal alien drug runners, suspected murderers, and cartel members.
00:22:33.000Just last night, there were these raids at Colony Ridge, and it resulted in a manhunt for a confirmed MS-13 member who'd been deported from the United States on seven different occasions.
00:22:45.000These are the types of criminal illegal aliens that this financial and marketing scheme from Colony Ridge has rolled out the red carpet for.
00:22:53.000And it's forced an American community to deal with the consequences of higher crime, a flood of drugs, and an unrecognizable community, while the developers John and Trey Harris have pocketed millions upon millions of dollars.
00:23:06.000So, Spencer, as the Daily Wire has reported, the Colony Ridge website is called Terrenos Houston, which advertises no credit needed, various payment options, access to water, electricity, and sewage.
00:23:18.000And it's been financed with legal loans where the homebuyer doesn't actually need a social security number.
00:23:22.000So when we're talking about means that are used in order to attract illegal immigrants, I mean, this was all ready to go, basically.
00:23:29.000There's a reason why so many of the illegal aliens caught at Colony Ridge have been previously deported.
00:23:33.000It's because they don't want to be deported again, and they've come under the understanding that Colony Ridge is a place where they can evade law enforcement.
00:23:41.000It's a place where illegal aliens have the red carpet rolled out for them again.
00:23:45.000And what we've seen, actually, is that we had a recent Daily Wire investigation where a different Texas developer in a leaked email that we obtained defended Colony Ridge and said that these businesses...
00:23:56.000Colony Ridge and others like it would go under.
00:23:58.000They'd go out of business if they were forced to examine the creditworthiness of buyers and if they had to check for social security numbers of these buyers.
00:24:06.000So this is a business model that is built on selling out American land parcel by parcel, plat by plat, property by property, to illegal aliens.
00:24:16.000So, Spencer, what exactly changed here?
00:24:18.000Because obviously we've been covering this for a year and a half over at Daily Wire, and the state of Texas really didn't do a whole hell of a lot about it.
00:24:25.000At one point, the Texas state attorney general, Ken Paxton, sued Colony Ridge, but there certainly weren't anything like the kinds of raids that we're now seeing under Governor Abbott.
00:24:59.000The Trump administration entered office and just seven days afterwards...
00:25:03.000There were some deportation raids in Colony Ridge and then of course we've seen what we saw yesterday where these deportation raids have been ramped up.
00:25:13.000So there is finally some action taken on this, but the reality is that for far too long there has been an unholy alliance between the corporate interests that profit off of mass immigration and politicians that, when they don't have the spotlight on them, have been willing to look the other way.
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00:28:13.000Meanwhile, chaos continues to reign in the media.
00:28:18.000Hilarious to watch MSNBC have a full-scale meltdown over Joy Reid's departure.
00:28:22.000So MSNBC announced that Joy Reid, the least joyful person ever to be named Joy, would be ousted at MSNBC because her show was terrible and had no ratings.
00:28:29.000The readout had like two viewers and probably one of them was just from our show.
00:28:34.000Meaning that the right used the readout as more of a source than the American people used the readout.
00:29:26.000And gratitude not just because people would take the time to get on a call like this or to take care of me, but also that my show had value.
00:30:00.000It is a wonderful moment because she, of course, was a terrible host and a terrible person who believes terrible things and foments the ideas and actions of other terrible people.
00:30:10.000But what's hilarious about this is it has now led to a full-scale insurrection.
00:30:14.000Over at MSNBC, where the other DEI-aiming left-wing hosts came out from the woodwork to explain that they were very sad that Joy Reid was going.
00:30:23.000This included, of course, Rachel Maddow, who isn't sad enough to give up her $30 million a year salary at MSNBC or anything, but a little sad, you know?
00:30:31.000In all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid.
00:30:45.000I have so much more to learn from her.
00:30:47.000I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door.
00:30:54.000It is not my call, and I understand that, but that's what I think.
00:30:59.000I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two, count them, two non-white hosts in primetime, Both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on the weekend.
00:31:15.000And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them.
00:32:47.000I think that it's really, really good.
00:32:49.000And meanwhile, the Trump administration is going up against the Associated Press.
00:32:54.000So the Associated Press has now sued the Trump administration because the administration said that they can't come on Air Force One.
00:33:01.000And the reason for that is because the Trump administration is mad at the AP. For not renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America.
00:33:08.000So they've barred AP reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other official White House events.
00:33:12.000And now the AP is filing a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against Trump administration officials, including the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Taylor Budowich, the White House Press Secretary, Caroline Levitt, and the White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles.
00:33:26.000The complaint objects to the White House ordering the wire service to use specific words in its reporting.
00:33:32.000Now, the reality is that if the White House said the reason that you're ousted is because you won't say the things we want you to say, probably the White House loses in court on that because that would presumably be a First Amendment violation.
00:33:49.000What they actually should just say is, listen, we're not even going to give you a reason.
00:33:54.000The White House under Joe Biden didn't include any of the alternative media at all.
00:33:59.000And we're going to treat all media equally, which means the AP does not get a leg up on, say, the Daily Wire or Breitbart or Daily Caller or anybody else in the online media.
00:34:09.000However, if you want to lose the sort of momentum that Trump has, and this is, again, I'm concerned with this because I want to see President Trump victorious.
00:34:19.000Yesterday, Edward Martin was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
00:34:22.000He put that out as like a full-on graphic statement.
00:34:33.000That is just conceding the actual legal case.
00:34:36.000Because if the case that you are making is that the media have to reflect the perspective of the President of the United States to be given access, you're going to lose in court.
00:34:43.000Also, it sounds rather tyrannical and stupid.
00:34:45.000There is no reason to do that sort of stuff.
00:34:48.000The important thing is to continue pushing forward where common sense This is the mandate.
00:34:56.000The mandate is to stand against the Ilhan Omars and the insane employees at the NSA and the nut job, whack jobs over at MSNBC. That's the mandate.
00:35:05.000And any time the Trump administration strays from that mandate, they will get less popular.
00:35:09.000And any time they fulfill that mandate, they will get more popular.
00:36:08.000The question is, what are the awesome new inventions that are going to drive prices down and drive productivity up?
00:36:13.000Those are the things we ought to be focused on.
00:36:15.000It is also worthwhile noting that America's national debt is reliant on the continued usage of the American dollar as the currency for nearly all foreign trade and used in international denomination.
00:36:26.000That is the thing that allows us to continue selling our debt into the markets that people want the U.S. dollar and use the U.S. dollar.
00:36:33.000One way to drive that down is, for example, giant trade wars.
00:36:36.000Giant trade wars lead people to invest away from the American dollar and instead try to form their own trade coalitions.
00:36:42.000This is why the economic policy of the United States right now must be focused on deregulation, It must be focused on cutting taxes, and it must be focused on actually exacerbating and increasing trade with our allies.
00:36:52.000I'm very much in favor of tariffing China.
00:36:57.000That is going to have an economic impact on the United States, and that's going to have to be offset by increased trade with other parts of the globe.
00:37:05.000President Trump right now seems to be pursuing more tariff policy.
00:37:08.000Again, if Trump is using tariff policy as a lever, I'm totally fine with it.
00:37:11.000If he's using it to force other countries to make concessions in particular areas that then leads us to re-lower our tariffs, that's good.
00:37:19.000If the idea is that tariffs are in and of themselves of benefit to the United States consumers and investors, that isn't true.
00:37:25.000Here's President Trump yesterday on tariffs.
00:37:27.000We're on time with the tariffs, and it seems like that's moving along very rapidly.
00:37:33.000We've been mistreated very badly by many countries, not just Canada and Mexico.
00:37:41.000We were led by, in some cases, fools, because anybody that would sign documents like they signed, where they were able to take advantage of the American people, like has happened over the last long period of time, except for a little four-year period that took place four years ago.
00:37:57.000But anybody that would agree to allow this to happen to our country should be ashamed of themselves.
00:38:11.000Okay, well, I mean, again, I'm hoping that this is a leverage play rather than a principled play in favor of tariff policy.
00:38:17.000Tariff policy is an excellent way of undermining the credibility of the American dollar on foreign markets, and it is also an excellent way of increasing prices in the middle of an inflationary spiral that has been several years long at this point.
00:38:30.000President Trump's number one threat, the threat to Trump right now, is some sort of economic recession.
00:39:36.000The UN General Assembly puts out a wide variety of such condemnatory measures, and none of them ever have any impact because the UN is a terrible organization that should be burned down and the ground salted.
00:39:46.000The UN, the United States should just withdraw from the UN. It's trash.
00:39:52.000It invests the international community with a moral credibility it has never had.
00:39:57.000But it is leading a lot of people to be very upset with the Trump administration because the Trump administration The U.S. sided against this resolution, instead siding with Moscow and other non-democratic countries like North Korea, Belarus, and Sudan.
00:40:20.000Now, to be real, the actual breakdown is that 65 member states, including both China and Iran, abstained from the vote.
00:40:27.00093 member states voted in favor, including much of the EU. 18 countries voted against the resolution.
00:40:35.000This also controversially included Israel.
00:40:37.000And people are like, why is Israel voting against a resolution condemning Russia?
00:40:49.000And two, it turns out that Israel actually has to deal with Russian presence in the Middle East.
00:40:54.000And this is the thing about the UN. It's all virtue signaling crap.
00:40:57.000The UN is constantly passing resolutions that virtue signal, and very often virtue signal in the wrong direction, condemning the United States or condemning Israel or condemning European allies, condemning whatever a majority of the General Assembly wishes to condemn.
00:41:11.000Does any of this foment actual peace in Ukraine?
00:41:13.000Does a UN General Assembly resolution where the United States votes in favor of the idea that Russia was bad, does that make peace more likely?
00:43:07.000I think probably a lot more lives than people are talking about.
00:43:09.000It's been a rough war, but I think we're close to getting it solved.
00:43:15.000So there's Trump basically saying, I'm not going to rhetorically get into a fight over...
00:43:18.000Labeling Vladimir Putin a dictator or anything like that because what's the point of that?
00:43:22.000Now, again, I wish you'd not label Vladimir Zelensky a dictator because it's hard to say I take these terms very seriously after labeling Zelensky a dictator but not Putin.
00:43:29.000That removes all meaning from the word dictator, obviously.
00:43:33.000But Trump's entire approach here is I'm not really going to get into these sort of rhetorical games calling Russia names because it doesn't actually drive forward the process.
00:43:41.000Trump said he would be meeting with Vladimir Zelensky in the near future.
00:44:01.000It'll be a deal with rare earths and various other things.
00:44:06.000He would like to come, as I understand it, here to sign it, and that would be great with me.
00:44:10.000I think they then have to get it approved by their council or whoever might approve it, but I'm sure that will happen.
00:44:18.000Okay, President Trump also talked up his partnership with France.
00:44:21.000Macron was sitting here kind of awkwardly during the entire process.
00:44:23.000'cause there's one picture that went rather viral in Europe actually of Trump sitting at the Resolute Desk and JD Vance was sitting to one side, Trump was sitting in the center and Macron was kind of like bunched up in the corner of the Resolute Desk.
00:44:33.000And this is something President Trump likes to do imagistically.
00:44:36.000But here he was talking of the partnership with France. - France is America's oldest ally, Our cherished partnership has been a force for freedom, prosperity, and peace from the very beginning.
00:44:47.000We're now working on some very interesting developments.
00:44:51.000One in particular, as you know, the war between Russia and Ukraine.
00:44:55.000In the American Revolution, French support helped us to seize our destiny as an independent nation.
00:45:01.000In the First and Second World Wars, our citizens shed blood together on the battlefields of Europe.
00:45:08.000And I'll never forget joining President Macron six years ago on the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
00:45:45.000Your words of condemnation are much less useful than actual activity.
00:45:50.000And so Macron is now coming to the table and he's saying we know we need to do more.
00:45:54.000We are also well aware that Europeans need to do more for security in Europe, for defense in Europe, and to more fairly share the security burden that your country's been carrying for so many years.
00:46:11.000Mr. President, you know how much friendship I show towards you and I have towards you since your first term.
00:46:23.000We know what we need to do as Europeans, given the threats surrounding us and the responsibilities that we must shoulder.
00:46:31.000Macron reiterated that Ukraine is not going to come to the table unless they get some sort of serious security guarantees, which, of course, is absolutely true.
00:46:40.000Now, the Russians are taking the absolutely untenable position.
00:46:43.000There can be no European peacekeepers on the border, and so they want like Brazilians or Chinese.
00:46:55.000We had lengthy discussions with the president, and we spoke about our desire – To bring an end to conflicts, to have a truce that is measurable, verifiable, and that enables negotiation of a lasting peace, what we will discuss not only Ukraine's reconstruction, its territories, but also the security guarantees, meaning maintaining peace over the long term.
00:47:24.000As I said to the president, we've experienced peace accords that were only ceasefires without ensuring security guarantees, Minsk 1 and 2.
00:47:34.000And we want to make sure this doesn't happen again.
00:47:37.000Macron also had a bit of a tete-a-tete moment with President Trump Trump.
00:47:43.000Trump was claiming, falsely, that the EU is being reimbursed for all of its spending in Ukraine while the United States is somehow not being reimbursed for all of its spending in Ukraine.
00:48:43.000Despite all of the talk and the loose talk and many things that are said that I disagree with, obviously, from the Trump administration.
00:48:49.000Things are moving toward an actual settlement in Ukraine.
00:48:52.000According to the New York Times, Ukraine and the United States are closing in on an agreement that would grant Washington a share of accused revenues from natural resources, according to both President Trump and a Ukrainian government official.
00:49:01.000Trump said Zelensky would come to the White House to sign the agreement.
00:49:05.000Earlier in the day, Ukraine's deputy prime minister, a person named Oha Stefanyshia, Now, of course, this is something that President Trump is very big on, is the idea that if we spend in another country, we ought to get something back.
00:49:20.000It would always so be good for Ukraine, for the United States, to actually be involved in the raw minerals deal with Ukraine, the rare earths minerals that we're talking about here.
00:49:30.000According to a draft obtained by Axios, The US and Ukraine are closing in on a minerals agreement worth hundreds of billions of dollars, under which the United States would express its desire to keep Ukraine free, sovereign, and secure, according to a draft obtained by Axios.
00:49:44.000So, again, it appears that Trump's approach is going to actually bear fruit here.
00:49:50.000And meanwhile, Europe is going to stand up on its own two feet.
00:49:53.000In fact, in Germany, the future German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who just won the last election in Germany, He came in first place with about 29% of the vote.
00:50:01.000The AFD, which is the so-called far-right party, came in with about 21% of the vote.
00:50:06.000And the Social Democrats dropped down to like 14% of the vote.
00:50:09.000Mares said that his goal was to do, quote, everything in my power to conserve this good transatlantic relationship with the United States.
00:50:17.000But he says signals make clear that Washington's interest in engaging with Europe is dwindling and suggested that it was time for Germany to take a front row seat with regard to steering policy in Europe.
00:50:28.000Which, of course, is something that President Trump agrees with.
00:50:31.000So it seems that President Trump's goals are, in fact, coming to pass.
00:50:36.000These are all things that are happening that President Trump is pushing.
00:50:38.000And so whether you like his rhetorical approach, whether you don't like his rhetorical approach, the proof is going to be in the pudding.
00:50:44.000And if the actual endgame here is a Rare Earths Minerals deal with the United States, in which the United States is basically providing security guarantees to Ukraine, along with our European partners, who are the ones actually putting soldiers on the ground, In just a moment,
00:51:09.000we're going to get to other news, including Vivek Ramaswamy announcing for Ohio Governor Kathleen Kennedy is going to be out, apparently, in the Star Wars universe.
00:51:17.000It's only, like, years and years and years beyond time.
00:51:21.000First, you actually have to become a member over at DW, and, of course, we have all sorts of our own.
00:51:25.000Wonderful content, ranging from our amazing documentaries to all access with me to all of the other behind-the-scenes content that we do.