The Daily Wire breaks down the details of the proposed hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, and why it's a bad deal. Plus, a look at why President Trump is the key to making this deal happen in the first place.
00:01:05.000Hamas apparently is attempting last-minute changes.
00:01:07.000They do this all the time in an attempt to pry additional concessions out of deals.
00:01:11.000They are dishonest players, obviously.
00:01:13.000Right now in Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu has delayed an internal cabinet vote on the deal because of all these sort of late-breaking manipulations from Hamas.
00:01:30.000Israel made clear from the very beginning that it wanted the hostages back, and that was one of the dual goals.
00:01:35.000One of the goals was winning the war against Hamas, making sure Hamas could no longer rule the Gaza Strip and present a threat to the state of Israel.
00:01:41.000The other was getting back the hundreds of hostages that Hamas had taken in the first place.
00:01:47.000And as soon as it became a goal of Israel to get back the hostages, And they started making deals.
00:01:52.000The only question was going to be, what sort of concessions did Israel have to make in order to secure the release of some of those hostages?
00:02:00.000Well, the Biden administration had been pressuring Israel very strongly to take a deal with Hamas that would have basically achieved Hamas's goals in the war.
00:02:08.000So to understand whether this is a better than awful deal or whether it's just an awful deal, you first have to understand what the goals of the various sides were in this particular deal.
00:02:19.000Then we'll go through the content of the deal.
00:02:20.000And then we will explain why Trump made the big difference in making this deal happen in the first place.
00:02:28.000So, Hamas had always said, since taking 250 Israelis hostage, and some of those are killed, we know they're dead, some of their bodies have been found, some of them were released in the first tranche of hostage negotiations way back in October and November of 2023. Right now, there are approximately 100 hostages.
00:02:48.000Many dead, some alive, still being held by Hamas.
00:03:12.000This is not two good-faith sides negotiating.
00:03:14.000This is a hostage taking evil entity that has kept its own people in a state of complete failure for literally decades and then initiated the destruction of its own territory against an Israeli government that is attempting to secure the freedom of people who have been kept for over a year in captivity in the worst possible conditions or the bodies of innocent people who are taken by not only members of Hamas, but Gazan civilians and slain.
00:03:42.000And that is what this negotiation is, just to get the moral clarity right up front.
00:03:45.000So, what were Hamas' goals in these negotiations?
00:03:48.000Hamas knew that Israel has a long record of making awful deals with regard to securing hostages.
00:03:54.000The most famous awful deal, of course, being the release of the soldier Gilad Shalit, who'd been taken captive by Hamas in return for over a thousand Palestinian terrorists, including Yahya Senwar, who had been held by Israel in prison for being a terrorist and cured of his brain cancer by Israel before he was released back into the wild where he would then...
00:04:13.000Become the leader of Hamas and initiate October 7th.
00:04:16.000So Hamas knows that Israel is willing to do an enormous amount to get its hostages back, even the bodies of people.
00:04:23.000Israel is willing to do an enormous amount to get those people back.
00:04:26.000So Hamas, what it wanted out of these negotiations originally, and for months, this has been its stated point of view, it wanted a total and final ceasefire, meaning no more war in the Gaza Strip.
00:04:37.000Because that would achieve goal number two.
00:04:39.000Which would be leaving Hamas in power in the Gaza Strip.
00:04:42.000If there was a total and final ceasefire, Hamas could declare victory and then suggest that its own survival in the Gaza Strip was a mode of victory.
00:04:50.000That led to goal number three, which was complete withdrawal of the Israeli defense forces from the Strip.
00:04:54.000This is what Hamas would have wanted out of any deal.
00:04:57.000That means Israel would have had to withdraw from the Nintarim Corridor, which is sort of a lane that bisects the Gaza Strip east-west into a northern and southern component.
00:05:07.000And it's very important because It prevents terrorists from traveling all up and down the Strip, gathering weapons and firing into Israel and organizing future terror attacks.
00:05:15.000Also, Hamas wanted Israel to withdraw completely from the Philadelphia corridor, which is the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, which had been used as a massive smuggling thoroughfare by Egypt and by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
00:05:28.000So they wanted, again, Hamas to remain in control.
00:05:31.000They wanted a total and final ceasefire that would have maintained that.
00:05:34.000They wanted a complete withdrawal of the IDF from the Strip.
00:05:37.000They wanted a return of all of the displaced to their homes, meaning they wanted free traffic in the Gaza Strip.
00:05:42.000They don't care whether civilians go to their homes.
00:05:44.000Those civilians largely don't have homes anymore, thanks to Hamas hiding weapons in homes and tunnels under homes.
00:05:49.000So they don't care one good damn about the Palestinian people who have been victims in all of this.
00:06:08.000They mean that they want an enormous amount of aid to pour into the Gaza Strip so they can steal it again and then reconstitute their terror network.
00:06:14.000So those are the five goals of Hamas going into the hostage negotiations.
00:06:17.000Declaring total and final ceasefire, Hamas remaining in control, complete withdrawal of the IDF from the Strip, return of all the displaced to their homes, and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
00:06:26.000Those were the five things that Hamas wanted out of the negotiation.
00:06:29.000On the other side, what Israel wanted was pretty simple.
00:06:32.000Return of as many hostages as humanly possible.
00:07:09.000Okay, so what is actually in the deal?
00:07:11.000What's actually in the deal, according to the first phase of the deal, is not amazing.
00:07:18.000The first phase of the Gaza deal has Israel releasing, over the course of phase one, some 1,000 terrorists, including something like 200 convicted murderers.
00:07:31.000It also has a six-week phased-in session.
00:07:35.000So it's not as though all the hostages are going to be released at once.
00:07:38.00033 hostages are apparently going to be released.
00:08:01.000It will be women, children, the wounded, the elderly, and probably American citizens first.
00:08:06.000Hamas will keep as a bargaining chip, presumably, members of the Israeli Defense Forces who are held hostage since October 7th.
00:08:16.000The initial phase of the deal will also allow in something like 600 trucks worth of aid per day, much of which Hamas will immediately hijack, of course.
00:08:26.000There will be gradually a return of people from the south to the north.
00:08:30.000Supposedly the Netarim Corridor, which again is that corridor that bisects the Gaza Strip, is going to be policed by Qatar and Egypt, which means effectively there won't be a lot of policing.
00:08:40.000But does this mean a permanent end of the war?
00:08:55.000That means that Hamas does not achieve all of its goals or even remotely close to all of its goals with this quote-unquote ceasefire hostage deal.
00:09:48.000The National Security Advisor, Mike Walls, Made that clear on Fox News when he said literally yesterday that if Israel has to go in yesterday, we're 100% behind them.
00:09:57.000If Israel has to go in and knock out Hamas again, we'll 100% support that.
00:10:02.000And so, there is no total and complete ceasefire.
00:10:18.000There is no idea that Hamas is going to remain in control of the Gaza Strip.
00:10:23.000There is nothing in this deal, particularly in Phase 1, that suggests a complete withdrawal of the IDF from the Strip, particularly the Philadelphia Corridor.
00:10:30.000The IDF will not be leaving the Philadelphia Corridor, which is, again, the biggest, most important border, because that's the one that all the smuggling was happening via.
00:10:37.000That's how all the weapons and money were getting into Hamas.
00:10:42.000As far as the return of the displaced to their homes, That is going to happen slowly over the course of a few weeks.
00:10:47.000That is a concession to Hamas, but that was going to be in the Biden deal.
00:10:50.000And as far as reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, the question was always going to be, who administers that reconstruction?
00:11:01.000Because in order to get the deal done, from the Israeli side, the Israelis had to trust the Trump administration enough to know that they were not going to call on Israel to leave Hamas in place in the Gaza Strip.
00:11:11.000That is the difference between Trump's approach to this conflict.
00:11:30.000This is the best deal you're going to get.
00:11:31.000You better take it right now or it's going to get worse from here.
00:11:34.000Well, when it comes to negotiations with terrorists, you can't trust the people on the other side of the table, but there are so many people in life that you really can't trust.
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00:13:42.000Okay, so those were the two things that Team Trump brought to the table.
00:13:46.000One, Assurances, presumably to the Israelis, that if they have to go back in and do the thing, that America is not going to stand in their way.
00:13:53.000They're not going to arms embargo them.
00:13:54.000They're going to understand exactly what Hamas is.
00:13:57.000And two, the Trump administration making clear to Hamas, this is the best deal you're going to get.
00:14:05.000Biden couldn't guarantee either of those.
00:14:06.000Biden was willing to make a better deal with Hamas every single day, which is why Hamas was holding out in the first place.
00:14:11.000Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, basically acknowledged as much publicly.
00:14:16.000The Biden administration was never going to be able to sell the Israelis on the idea that if they signed on to a phase one ceasefire, that the Biden administration was going to back Israel if it had to go back in.
00:14:28.000And by the way, you can see that in the varying statements between President Trump and Joe Biden about the deal.
00:14:35.000So President Trump put out the following statement about the deal.
00:14:39.000Quote, this epic ceasefire agreement could only have happened as a result of our historic victory in November.
00:14:44.000As it signaled to the entire world that my administration would seek peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans and our allies, I am thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home to be reunited with their families and loved ones.
00:14:54.000With this deal in place, my national security team, through the efforts of Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Whitcoff, will continue to work closely with Israelis and our allies to make sure Gaza never again becomes a terrorist safe haven.
00:15:15.000That is a guarantee to Israel that if Hamas is a threat to take control again, Israel can go back in.
00:15:20.000And the thing that I think is very clear from this agreement, there's phase one and there's phase two.
00:15:24.000And basically, if Hamas continues to give the hostages out and allow the hostages out, and if they don't violate the agreement in any way, and if further negotiations allow for a phase two, here's the thing about international agreements.
00:15:36.000There has never been, as far as I'm aware, a phased international agreement that has ever hit phase two.
00:15:42.000Phase 1 is the actual part that will be implemented.
00:15:45.000There will be no Phase 2, in my opinion, because I have yet to see an international agreement that actually reaches Phase 2. It always breaks down in Phase 1. So that's how Donald
00:16:16.000And it's important to see how Joe Biden reads the deal because you can see why Israel got sold on the deal.
00:16:21.000And why Hamas got sold on the deal by Trump and not Biden.
00:16:24.000Here was Biden's statement, quote, Today, after many months of intensive diplomacy by the United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire and hostage deal.
00:16:32.000This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much-needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity.
00:16:41.000First of all, note the ordering of that sentence.
00:16:43.000His top priority was not freeing the hostages.
00:16:46.000It was to, quote-unquote, halt the fighting in Gaza, right?
00:16:51.000That if they made some sort of temporary ceasefire deal to get hostages out, that Biden wouldn't shortchange them and cut them off at the knees by depriving them of the weaponry necessary to knock out Hamas again.
00:17:01.000I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31st, 2024, after which was endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council.
00:17:08.000It is the result not only of extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran, but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy.
00:17:18.000My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done.
00:17:23.000Even as we welcome this news, we remember all the families whose loved ones were killed in Hamas' October 7th attack and the many innocent people killed in the war that followed.
00:17:30.000It is long past time for the fighting to end and the work of building peace and security to begin.
00:17:35.000I'm also thinking of the American families, three of whom have living hostages in Gaza, and four, awaiting return of remains after what has been the most horrible ordeal imaginable.
00:17:43.000Under this deal, we are determined to bring all of them home.
00:18:11.000But you know what Hamas just said yes to?
00:18:14.000A deal where Israel can go back in, where Hamas will not remain in control, presumably, where Israel will not withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
00:18:21.000Okay, that is what they actually said yes to in phase one.
00:18:24.000Everybody's talking about there won't be a phase two.
00:18:26.000I'm just telling you, it's not going to hit phase two.
00:18:27.000The reason it's not going to hit phase two is because Israel cannot leave Hamas in charge of a new Gaza stand.
00:18:44.000That's what happens when you're trying to force a deal, which is what President Trump was trying to do here, presumably before the inauguration.
00:18:49.000However, the real reason the deal got done is because, at this time, it might have been the best bad alternative.
00:18:57.000Again, it's possible, theoretically, that there could have been a bigger push from the Trump administration where they'd gone to Qatar and said, listen, Your airbase goes away unless all the hostages come out.
00:19:08.000But how much control does Qatar actually have over Hamas?
00:19:28.000The weaknesses in the deal are Biden's because he has been awful for the last year and a half.
00:19:34.000Really, since about December of 2023, the upsides of the deal that made it even palatable for Israel to consider the deal are brought about by the presence of Donald Trump in the White House.
00:19:47.000So, Joe Biden promptly went out and took credit, of course, for a deal that, again, it took the team of Trump to close.
00:19:53.000Antony Blinken's been trying to force this on Israel for a year, and Israel just kept saying no because the deal that Blinken and Biden and Kamala Harris wanted basically allowed Hamas to retain control of the Gaza Strip.
00:20:49.000But there is no win for anyone in Hamas retaining control of the Gaza Strip.
00:20:54.000Yesterday, footage started emerging from the Gaza Strip of children chanting in support of Hamas.
00:20:58.000The Gaza Strip is still populated by enormous numbers of people.
00:21:01.000Who love terrorism, who hate Jews, who are willing to commit new genocides every day.
00:21:06.000By the way, I will note that all the people, all the exact same people who said that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza are now declaring that Hamas won.
00:21:13.000I'm not sure how you win a genocide, supposedly, but it demonstrates what liars these folks are.
00:21:18.000In any case, here were children in Gaza celebrating, shouting, by the way, about liberating Jerusalem and about Mohammed Daif, who was the military leader of Hamas, who was killed by Israel.
00:21:30.000Those are small children chanting about Mohammed Daif.
00:22:05.000Just to be clear-eyed about what this deal is and what this deal isn't and where it could have been better and where it certainly could have been worse.
00:22:11.000It's important to be clear-eyed on this, among many other issues.
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00:24:29.000But on his way out, he decided that he was going to give an Eisenhower-like warning.
00:24:34.000Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his farewell address, famously invade against the military-industrial complex.
00:24:40.000I happen to be a believer that this is one of the dumber things that Dwight D. Eisenhower ever said, that the military-industrial complex theory, which was pushed by a sociologist named C. Wright Mills with Marxist leanings, that that basic theory, which was that effectively the defense industry drove America toward war, is a fool's way of explaining how foreign policy actually works.
00:25:08.000The only reason that Joe Biden became president in 2020, at least one of the only reasons, was because of the tech oligarchy working with his people, shutting down, for example, the Hunter Biden laptop story so he could win.
00:25:20.000It turns out that billionaires disproportionately support, wait for it, wait for it, Joe Biden and his party.
00:25:25.000But according to Joe Biden, he's going to...
00:25:28.000Weigh in about these supposed tech, this new oligarchy of people who run.
00:25:34.000What Joe Biden means here is that people he wants to run the country are career bureaucrats and politicians who have never run a popsicle stand.
00:25:43.000Either the people who are going to be left to their own devices to actually hire people, build businesses, and do things are going to be able to run their own lives or Joe Biden will run their lives.
00:26:20.000And he's invading against the oligarchy that he has been a...
00:26:24.000He cog in for literally his entire adult life.
00:26:29.000Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.
00:26:45.000We see the consequences all across America, and we've seen it before, more than a century ago.
00:26:53.000But the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts.
00:27:01.000They just made the wealthy pay by the rules everybody else had to.
00:27:05.000Workers want rights to earn their fair share.
00:27:09.000You know, they were dealt into the deal and helped put us on a path to building the largest middle class and most prosperous century any nation in the world has ever seen.
00:27:25.000But beyond that, his idiotic notion that we have to break the modern robber barons, that it's Elon Musk who's really the problem, and it's the tech bros who are really the problem.
00:27:34.000Who do you think is creating the productivity, the innovation, and the jobs that Americans have?
00:27:42.000This is the key conflict of vision between people like Joe Biden and those of us who actually like free markets and free enterprise and freedom generally.
00:27:51.000Joe Biden believes that by freedom, we mean the government should allocate to you a particular role in life.
00:27:59.000Those of us on the other side believe that by freedom, we mean that we should all be able to rise and fall on our own merits and that that generates positive externalities for everyone.
00:28:08.000Listening to Joe Biden whine about the oligarchy, well, he has never produced a positive thing in his entire life.
00:28:16.000In his life, he has never produced a positive thing.
00:28:18.000And then he invades against people who actually do the producing.
00:29:30.000So while America too often prioritized the global order above our core national interest, other nations continued to act the way nations have always acted and always will in what they perceive to be their best interest.
00:29:43.000And instead of folding into the post-Cold War global order, They have manipulated it to serve their interests at the expense of ours.
00:29:52.000We welcome the Chinese Communist Party into the global order, and they took advantage of all of its benefits, and they ignored all of its obligations and responsibilities.
00:30:02.000Instead, they have repressed and lied and cheated and hacked and stolen their way into global superpower status, and they have done so at our expense and at the expense of the people of their own country.
00:30:17.000He is totally correct about all of this.
00:30:19.000And then he makes some statements about the post-Soviet Union consensus of a liberal world war.
00:30:24.000He says, listen, this stuff has been used as a weapon against the United States.
00:30:31.000This notion that the UN ought to rule the roost and the United States ought to be the functioning military arm of the UN is ridiculous and stupid and wrong.
00:30:40.000The idea that it's in the interest of the United States to allow others to dictate our foreign policy is wrong and stupid.
00:30:46.000Here is Marco Rubio, Secretary of State nominee.
00:30:50.000Out of the triumphalism of the end of the long Cold War emerged a bipartisan consensus.
00:30:55.000And this consensus was that we had reached the end of history, that all of the nations of the world would now become members of the democratic Western-led community, that a foreign policy that served the national interest could now be replaced by one that served the liberal world order, and that all mankind was now destined to abandon national sovereignty and national identity.
00:31:15.000And would instead become one human family and citizens of the world.
00:31:23.000We now know it was a dangerous delusion.
00:31:26.000Here in America and in many of the advanced economies across the world, an almost religious commitment to free and unfettered trade at the expense of our national economy shrunk the middle class, left the working class in crisis, collapsed our industrial capacity, and has pushed critical supply chains collapsed our industrial capacity, and has pushed critical supply chains into the hands of adversaries and of rivals.
00:31:46.000Again, the point that he's making here is not even really an economic one, it's a security Meaning, when you decide to usher China into the world community of nations and pretend that they're a good actor, you're going to screw yourself security-wise and in terms of foreign policy.
00:32:01.000He made this point again later on while being questioned.
00:32:04.000He said we need to stop being reliant on China.
00:32:05.000China has basically made us reliant on so much of our supply chain.
00:32:11.000If we stay on the road we're on right now, in less than 10 years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it or not.
00:32:20.000Everything from the blood pressure medicine we take to what movies we get to watch, and everything in between, we will depend on China for it.
00:32:27.000They have come to dominate the critical mineral supplies throughout the world.
00:32:32.000Everywhere in the world they've now established critical mineral rights.
00:32:35.000Even those who want to see more electric cars, no matter where you make them, those batteries are almost entirely dependent on the ability of the Chinese and the willingness of the Chinese Communist Party to produce it and export it to you.
00:32:46.000So if we don't change course, we are going to live in a world where much of what matters to us on a daily basis, from our security to our health, will be dependent on whether the Chinese allow us to have it or not.
00:33:01.000He also spoke at length about the situation in the Middle East.
00:33:03.000And he said, listen, if you're talking about Iran, we need to make a distinction.
00:33:07.000There's the regime and there's the people and they're not the same thing.
00:33:09.000This is very important because, again, the United States and its position vis-a-vis Iran must recognize that the Iranian regime is actually quite tenuous right now.
00:33:19.000The Iranian regime is not a strong regime.
00:33:21.000They are a weak horse, as the saying goes in the Middle East.
00:33:25.000Two points I want to make about Iran, and it's really important.
00:33:28.000When we talk about Iran, I'm talking about the radical Shia clerics and not the people.
00:33:32.000The people of Iran are people of an ancient civilization, an ancient culture with tremendous pride and advances.
00:33:38.000And I don't know who take great pride in their Persian heritage and identity.
00:33:42.000And I don't know of any nation on earth in which there is a bigger difference between the people and those who govern them than what exists in Iran.
00:33:49.000And that's a fact that needs to be made repeatedly.
00:33:51.000In no way is the clerics who run that country representative of the people of that country and of its history and of contributions it's made to humanity.
00:34:00.000And it's a point I wish we would continue to make.
00:34:12.000Middle East security begins with Israel security because Israel is, in fact, our best ally in the region and the most powerful military force in the region.
00:34:18.000The only possible competitor is Turkey, which is going to become a rising problem for the United States and our allies in the Middle East in very short order.
00:34:25.000But here is Rubio talking about Israel in the Middle East.
00:34:28.000We should not underestimate the potential opportunities that now exist, and it'll take some time to fully understand what those are, that perhaps open the door to things that were not open in the future.
00:34:38.000But from the Israeli perspective, which I fully understand, it begins with their existence.
00:34:42.000Because you cannot coexist with armed elements at your border who seek your destruction and evisceration as a state.
00:35:29.000That was the initial goal for Gaza when the Israelis withdrew from there and they turned it over and they turned it over with greenhouses and they turned it over with all kinds of economic development.
00:35:48.000You can't turn it over to people who seek your destruction.
00:35:51.000And so I do think this is a very complex issue, and I think that's understating it.
00:35:56.000He then suggested, hey, listen, if you support Hamas, if you're here on a visa and you support Hamas, you shouldn't be in the country.
00:36:03.000And he's going to make an excellent Secretary of State.
00:36:05.000The Trump team is going to be very different from Team Biden.
00:36:09.000As Secretary of State, of course, you'll be responsible for overseeing the issuance of visas.
00:36:15.000How will you enforce our laws to ensure that we remove supporters of terrorist groups from our country?
00:36:22.000Listen, my view on this is one of common sense.
00:36:25.000If you apply for a visa to come into the United States, and in the process of being looked at, it comes to light that you're a supporter of Hamas.
00:37:25.000Plus, we're including a free $20 gift as a thank you for joining the fight.
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00:37:56.000I mean, Pete Hexat did a fabulous job.
00:37:58.000Senator Rubio did a fabulous job, and Pam Bondi yesterday did a fabulous job.
00:38:01.000Here is Senator Ted Cruz with Pam Bondi, the Attorney General nominee.
00:38:06.000The Biden-Harris White House came along, and in the last four years, we've seen Donald Trump indicted and prosecuted not once, not twice, not three times, but four separate times.
00:38:17.000And to assassination attempts, Senator.
00:38:20.000I have to say Javert from Les Mis would be chagrined at the efforts of Democrats to do anything possible to take him down.
00:38:30.000And I believe the real target in this was not President Trump, but it was the American people, that these prosecutions were brought because partisan prosecutors were terrified.
00:38:43.000That the American people would do exactly what they did in November of 2024 and vote to re-elect Donald J. Trump.
00:40:12.000I've been a state AG. I look forward to even giving your remarks today, working with you and the people of California if I am confirmed as the 87th Attorney General of the United States of America.
00:40:25.000I didn't take your homework assignment.
00:41:06.000I mean, this was basically just a WWE event in which she went around like The Undertaker, just off the top rope all day long on Democratic Senators.
00:41:15.000No one has asked me to investigate Liz.
00:41:18.000We're also worried about Liz Cheney, Senator.
00:41:20.000You know what we should be worried about?
00:41:22.000The crime rate in California right now is the way of the roof.
00:41:27.000Your robberies are 87% higher than the national average.
00:41:32.000That's what I want to be focused on, Senator, if I'm confirmed as Attorney General.
00:41:37.000Okay, again, just going after Schiff about the criminality in his own state and asking.
00:41:42.000Why are you so focused on bizarre questions about Trump circa 2021 as opposed to the problems in the United States circa 2025?
00:43:00.000Let me give you a really good example of a bad lawyer within the Justice Department, a guy named Klein Smith, who altered a FISA warrant, one of the most important things we can do in this country.
00:43:12.000So will everyone be held to an equal, fair system of justice?
00:43:19.000If I am the next attorney general, absolutely.
00:43:29.000She, too, will be confirmed with probably north of 60 votes in the Senate.
00:43:33.000Again, there were many nominees who had their hearings yesterday.
00:43:35.000John Ratcliffe is the nominee to lead the CIA. He, too, did a great job against the angry Democrat senators.
00:43:43.000So, first of all, he says, I'm not going to politicize the spy agency.
00:43:46.000It is actually my job to ensure America's national security.
00:43:49.000It's absolutely essential that the CIA's leader be apolitical.
00:43:57.000As you know that when you walk in the building at the CIA inscribed on the wall is the quote, and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
00:44:10.000That's a reminder to CIA officers when they walk in about the truth, collecting the truth, intelligence, critical information, so that American people can be free.
00:44:23.000Their freedom and liberty are dependent on the CIA doing that job and doing it in an apolitical way.
00:44:29.000And so I am very much committed to that and look forward to that if confirmed.
00:44:36.000Adam Schiff was called out in the middle of all of this for all of his Russiagate nonsense.
00:44:39.000Here is John Ratcliffe going after Adam Schiff, the senator from California.
00:44:43.000In 2020, when a chairman of an intelligence committee misrepresented that a laptop owned by then candidate Biden's son was somehow a Russian intelligence operation.
00:44:59.000And 51 former intelligence officials used the imprimatur of IC authority to go along with that.
00:45:38.000He made clear that he actually is going to expand America's investment in our energy resources, which is precisely what the Secretary of Energy is supposed to do.
00:46:22.000What he has to sell is total government control of as much of your life as possible in the name of overthrowing, quote-unquote, the oligarchy, by which he means just anyone who starts a business in the country and hires people, and those people are not under his tutelage.
00:47:08.000So first of all, what's the situation like on the ground in and around Los Angeles?
00:47:12.000You know, it's really difficult to explain the devastation of this area until you're there on the ground.
00:47:17.000A lot of the pictures and the videos, they help capture it, but it's completely another thing to see it in person.
00:47:23.000I went up and down the Pacific Coast Highway and up into some of the areas in the Palisades, and this is an area that is near and dear to me.
00:47:30.000I went to school right in that area, and you see certain landmarks.
00:47:34.000Certain homes, certain buildings that you typically recognize and use to mark your path as you drive north or south on the Pacific Coast Highway.
00:47:41.000And you'll see homes that are still there completely intact and others that frankly look like they're part of a war zone.
00:47:48.000And these are in areas that you wouldn't necessarily think would be the most prone to fires.
00:47:53.000You could toss a baseball and land it in the Pacific Ocean.
00:47:55.000And there's homes there where there's nothing that remains other than the cement studs in the sand there on the beach.
00:48:02.000So, Spencer, when you're driving around, what kind of stories were you hearing on the road from some of the people whose houses have been burned?
00:48:10.000You know, so on the road itself, really right now the National Guard and other authorities at the state level aren't allowing residents back into their homes.
00:48:18.000And this, of course, is because of potentially downed power lines or open gas lines, other chemical issues.
00:48:23.000So there aren't people there at their homes right now.
00:48:26.000And that, of course, is a frustration and a concern for many of the homeowners.
00:48:29.000I did speak with a man by the name of Russell who'd lost his business in the Eaton Fire in the Altadena area.
00:48:35.000And he's trying to navigate this complex web of insurance policies and various other different procedural and managerial aspects that come along with this type of tragedy.
00:48:47.000But right now, he's just reeling from the loss.
00:48:49.000And we actually met him at a volunteer center where he was helping provide relief to people who had lost their homes.
00:48:54.000So that's kind of how he was getting over the issue and how he was handling it there in the moment.
00:48:58.000He was trying to be there for his community.
00:49:01.000So, Spencer, when you're driving around talking to people, Who exactly are people blaming?
00:49:06.000I know that Gavin Newsom is trying to blame President Trump.
00:49:08.000People are trying to blame climate change.
00:49:09.000Where is all of the anger being directed?
00:49:12.000I think it's dizzying for a lot of people because there's this complex web of factors.
00:49:16.000You've got the ecological factors like these high-powered winds that are coming through the Santa Ana winds.
00:49:21.000You've got this DEI mismanagement at the fire department.
00:49:24.000And now we're finding that there's actually an illegal alien who's been named a person of interest in the Kenneth Fire.
00:49:30.000That's a fire in the Calabasas area that thankfully was put out relatively quickly, but it did cover about 1,000 acres.
00:49:37.000And we're finding out now that because of California's sanctuary state policies, This illegal alien might not be able to be taken into ICE custody and might not be able to be deported, despite being a person of interest in a massive wildfire.
00:49:50.000So there's a number of different factors, and I think people right now on the ground are really at a loss trying to figure out how exactly this happened and how it was able to go so far out of control.
00:50:01.000So, Spencer, obviously the fallout is going to be devastating for years to come.
00:50:05.000Was there anything that surprised you in covering all of this?
00:50:11.000You know, one of the things that we're hearing from the residents there is that they're really just struggling to find out what to do next.
00:50:20.000They're trying to figure out what the next steps are.
00:50:23.000Something that I found that was rather concerning, really, is at this relief center where I spoke to this individual who had lost his home.
00:50:30.000And I was rather shocked to find out that as we went around and talked to people, asked them about if they had lost their homes, their businesses in the fire, that people at this relief center, by and large, hadn't actually lost anything.
00:50:42.000They just found that this was an opportunity to find free goods that were being given away.
00:50:47.000And we were utterly shocked to find that a lot of the people there hadn't actually lost their homes, hadn't lost their businesses.
00:50:54.000And unfortunately, there was a significant number of people who saw that this was just an opportunity to take advantage of the generosity of people.
00:51:02.000And I find it rather ironic that the person that we spoke to who had lost something was a volunteer at this relief center.
00:51:08.000So, of course, there's so many people who are trying to rebuild, so many people who are operating in good faith.