Drones have been sighted over residential neighborhoods, restricted sites, and critical infrastructure on the East Coast. What are they up to? And why are they flying near military bases in Virginia and New Jersey? To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsors
00:00:00.000Alright folks, so apparently there are a lot of weird drones that are flying around America, particularly the East Coast and particularly military bases.
00:00:07.000We keep hearing from the government that it's not a big deal.
00:00:15.000Perhaps 15 years ago, I would have believed the government, honestly.
00:00:18.000Perhaps 15 years ago, I would have been more apt to think, hey, they know what they're doing because no way in hell this government would allow, say, foreign drones or even domestic drones to simply hover around military facilities en masse for weeks on end.
00:00:36.000And then Joe Biden was president and Joe Biden allowed a Chinese spy balloon to cross the entire continental United States without shooting it down.
00:00:42.000And only after he got called on it did he then proceed to shoot down a bunch of weather balloons with Hellfire missiles.
00:01:00.000The thing is, I don't actually trust the members of our government to tell us the truth, even if they knew the truth, because they have not in the past.
00:01:06.000According to CNN.com, mysterious flying objects overhead, concern and confusion and calls for military intervention.
00:01:13.000This isn't the plot of War of the Worlds, but rather the result of numerous unidentified possible drone sightings on the East Coast in recent weeks.
00:01:19.000The possible drones have been spotted over residential neighborhoods, restricted sites, and critical infrastructure.
00:01:24.000Now again, if they're floating above residential sites, I tend to think that probably these are simply domestic drones.
00:01:30.000People who are hobbyists or something.
00:01:32.000But, again, when you have large swarms of drones that are apparently flying near, for example, military bases in Virginia or New Jersey, I start to have some questions.
00:01:41.000A reported drone activity prompted at least one airport, New York's Stewart International Airport, to temporarily close its runways for about an hour on Friday night.
00:01:49.000Apparently, New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Saturday said, quote, this has gone too far and she has directed the New York State Intelligence Center to actively investigate drone sightings and coordinate with federal law enforcement to address the issue.
00:02:00.000Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he's now asking the Department of Homeland Security to deploy special detection systems that use 360-degree technology to detect the drones.
00:02:09.000He said if this technology exists for a drone to make it up in the sky, there certainly is technology that can track the craft with precision and determine what the heck is going on.
00:02:16.000Now, the reality is it's actually quite difficult to track drones in the same way that you would track, say, a missile.
00:02:21.000This has been a problem in Israel, for example, where the Houthis have launched several drones.
00:02:26.000Hezbollah did as well because the drones don't travel highly above the speed of, for example, birds.
00:02:31.000And so they create sort of a noisy signal on radar.
00:02:39.000Had a sufficient response to this as of yet.
00:02:42.000Alejandro Mayorkas, thank God the outgoing Department of Homeland Security secretary, he says the drone sightings are in fact real.
00:02:50.000There's no question that people are seeing drones.
00:02:53.000And I want to assure the American public that we, in the federal government, have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology, to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.
00:03:07.000Some of those drone sightings are, in fact, drones.
00:03:10.000Some are manned aircraft that are commonly mistaken for drones.
00:03:17.000But there's no question that drones are being sighted.
00:03:20.000Drone sightings apparently have been reported in at least six states, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, as well as Virginia.
00:03:26.000The sightings began November 18th near Morris County, New Jersey, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
00:03:38.000In fact, you can see a drone on the southern border if you go and you take a look at our series over at Daily Wire Plus, Divided States of Biden.
00:04:22.000I then asked Border Patrol, by the way, why they didn't just shoot down the drone.
00:04:25.000And they said they would need explicit permission from Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
00:04:32.000Mayorkas, for his part, says we have no information on foreign involvement with these drones.
00:04:37.000We have not seen any foreign, we know of no, foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the Northeast.
00:04:45.000And we are vigilant in investigating this matter, the Department of Homeland Security, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the lead.
00:04:53.000According to CNN.com, concerns escalated after drones were spotted near Picatinny Arsenal, a U.S. military research facility, and also over President-elect Trump's golf course in Bedminster.
00:05:03.000According to both military officials and state lawmakers, the sightings prompted the FAA to issue temporary flight restrictions over the properties.
00:05:10.000Apparently, there were also reports of drones above the Naval Weapons Station Earl, a U.S. Navy base south of Middleton, although no direct threats were identified.
00:05:19.000And it's coming from both sides of the aisle, by the way.
00:05:23.000Democratic Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey posted videos to his X account showing what appeared to be a cluster of drones over the Round Valley Reservoir on Thursday night.
00:05:31.000On Saturday, he posted on X that most of the aircraft he initially thought were drones were almost certainly planes.
00:05:35.000So again, it is possible that people are over-citing, they're over-attributing things to drones that actually are planes, or they have camera error.
00:05:56.000He said Friday evening he directed the Pennsylvania State Police to further investigate the sightings and police will be flying helicopters to try to determine where these drones are originating from and what the purpose of the drones are.
00:06:07.000The same thing is happening in Massachusetts, where Governor Maura Healey posted on X about the growing number of drone sightings in her state and said that state police were working alongside local and federal partners, urging drone operators to adhere to regulations.
00:06:20.000Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin also made a statement.
00:06:22.000He said that the state police and the Department of Emergency Management were coordinating closely with numerous federal partners to respond to drone reports.
00:06:29.000He emphasized a significant number of national security and critical infrastructure sites in Virginia.
00:06:35.000Now again, FBI and DHS, they're saying this is mostly mistaken identity.
00:06:38.000Some of these may be commercial drones.
00:06:41.000We don't know, as of yet, from where they'd arrive.
00:06:44.000There are a bunch of explanations that are more plausible than the idea that these are, for example, Iranian drones.
00:06:48.000In fact, I think the possibility they're Chinese drones is much more likely, given the fact that we know that China has been attempting to surveil American military sites.
00:06:57.000So, this does raise the question, why don't we just shoot them down?
00:07:02.000Alejandro Mayorkas, whose job it is to clear this, he says, well, you know, it's the FAA. The FAA says we're not allowed to shoot them down.
00:07:06.000Well, then just change the regulations and the procedures of the FAA. This one is not tough.
00:07:13.000We are aware of the drone sightings, as I've said.
00:07:16.000I think there are more than 8,000 drones flown every day in the United States.
00:07:21.000With respect to the ability to incapacitate those drones, we are limited in our authorities.
00:07:27.000We have certain agencies within the Department of Homeland Security that can do that and outside our department.
00:07:34.000But we need those authorities expanded as well.
00:08:58.000At this point, New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith, he says that some of the elusive maneuverings suggest military sophistication.
00:09:06.000The elusive maneuvering of these drones, I would suggest, suggests a major military power sophistication that begs the question whether they have been deployed to test our defense capabilities or worse, by violent dictatorships, perhaps maybe Russia or China or Iran or North Korea.
00:09:25.000I mean, they have the capability and they certainly have the motive.
00:09:30.000Now, again, that's a lot of speculation right there.
00:09:32.000But the problem is, do you believe anything Joe Biden tells you about this?
00:09:36.000Or any of his designated people, considering that he himself is now probably comatose.
00:09:44.000New Jersey State Senator John Bramnick, he says something very similar, says the feds clearly don't want to talk about all of this.
00:09:51.000Whatever these drones are doing, the government really doesn't want us to know.
00:09:56.000What that must mean is they're more concerned with us getting knowledge and being afraid of that information than having no knowledge and having all these questions.
00:10:08.000It must be something going on that they can't tell us because they are so fearful of what the public's going to do when they hear what the drones are doing.
00:10:19.000Apparently, the government doesn't know what they are.
00:10:21.000Certainly, I do not believe members of the Biden administration when they say that they are giving the American people all of the information.
00:10:27.000I don't trust the Biden administration for a whole wide variety of reasons, including, of course, the fact that they are extraordinarily pro-abortion.
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00:12:37.000Okay, meanwhile, President Trump had himself a hell of a weekend.
00:12:40.000He went to the Army-Navy game along with Vice President Vance as well as Daniel Penny.
00:12:45.000Daniel Penny, of course, has been released now that he's been acquitted by a jury in New York.
00:12:50.000Good for Trump and Vance for inviting Penny.
00:12:52.000Penny is in fact an American hero because the difference between, say, Daniel Penny and, say, the shooter of the UnitedHealthcare CEO is that Daniel Penny is not in fact a murderer.
00:13:00.000He was defending other people from incipient violence.
00:13:08.000And Trump and Vance hosted Daniel Penny.
00:13:10.000No Democrats, by the way, showed up at the Army-Navy game.
00:13:12.000No prominent Democrats, which is kind of amazing.
00:13:15.000Normally, the President of the United States shows up, but as we all know, the President of the United States is no longer the President of the United States, even if he is.
00:13:23.000J.D. Vance, the vice president, he tweeted, Daniel's a good guy.
00:13:26.000New York's mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone.
00:13:29.000I'm grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he's able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.
00:13:35.000Others who attended the game, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
00:13:40.000Also, there are other members of the political class, including Representative Mike Walz, who is the National Security Advisor choice by President Trump.
00:13:48.000As well as Pete Hegseth, the presumptive Secretary of Defense, President Trump's pick, and Tulsi Gabbard, the pick for Director of National Intelligence.
00:14:01.000The enthusiasm was high because, let's face it, the American people are in a pretty good mood about President Trump taking over.
00:14:07.000It is not just Republicans acknowledging that simple fact, by the way.
00:14:10.000Democratic National Committee official Lindy Lee says it's pretty obvious at this point that Trump actually has momentum for the first time maybe in his political career having been elected.
00:14:19.000I think, unfortunately, a Democratic Party has a stench of loser written all over the party.
00:14:40.000Even in the last couple of weeks, Americans are celebrating the prosperity.
00:14:43.000Trump's approval rating is incredibly high.
00:14:45.000People are in support of his transition.
00:14:47.000The momentum is just tremendous and I'm speaking as a Democrat and I'm feeling it as well.
00:14:52.000She is right about all that, and you can see it and you can feel it.
00:14:55.000Just adding to the momentum for President Trump is this hilarious story.
00:14:59.000ABC News has now been forced to pay $15 million to a presidential foundation and museum, the Trump Presidential Museum, which probably will be somewhere in Florida, might be over at Mar-a-Lago.
00:15:19.000Well, because the settlement, which was filed publicly on Saturday, reveals the network will also pay $1 million in Trump's attorney's fees and will issue an apology.
00:15:26.000That is because, back on March 10th, 2024, ABC News and George Stephanopoulos made statements regarding President Trump in an interview with Representative Nancy Mace.
00:15:37.000So Trump filed the lawsuit in Florida federal court earlier this year, arguing with Stephanopoulos and ABC News defamed him when Stephanopoulos said 10 times during an interview with Mace that a jury found that Trump had raped E.G. and Carroll, which of course is not true.
00:15:50.000In 2023, a jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll, sufficient to hold him liable for battery, but it did not find that Carroll proved that he raped her at all.
00:16:01.000A judge concluded in August 2023, when dismissing Trump's countersuit against Carroll, that the claim that the Trump rights Carroll was substantially true.
00:16:07.000The judge wrote the Trump rights in the broader sense of the word, as people generally understand it, but not as it is narrowly defined by New York state law.
00:16:16.000So, it simply was not true that the jury found that Trump had, quote-unquote, E. Jean Carroll.
00:16:21.000Stephanopoulos went on the air and said it over and over and over and over.
00:16:34.000Like, that sort of stuff happens all the time.
00:16:35.000And very often, if the amount that you would pay to the attorneys is larger than the amount you would pay in the settlement, you just pay the settlement just to get rid of it, get it off the books.
00:16:44.000That happens all the time in the business world.
00:16:48.000And thanks to our ridiculous torrent system in which the loser doesn't have to pay, which is something that I would hope would change sometime in the near future, that if you sue somebody and you lose it, you should have to pay.
00:17:25.000Why did they pay out $15 million to President Trump?
00:17:28.000It's not to settle the nuisance of it.
00:17:30.000They did it specifically because they were afraid that Trump would win and they would have to sign a gigantic defamation check to President Trump.
00:17:38.000So instead, they're forestalling that with a $15 million payment, which is absolutely hilarious.
00:17:43.000Some Democrats are fighting mad about all this.
00:17:45.000One of them, Mark Elias, who of course is a lawyer for a wide variety of Democrats, He tweeted out, knee bent, ring kissed.
00:18:35.000Some people are taking this as ABC News, trying to get it off the book, specifically because they don't want to be at odds with President Trump.
00:18:41.000We've seen a wide variety of corporate leaders who are pretty antipathetic to President Trump now descending on Mar-a-Lago in order to have conversations with President Trump.
00:18:51.000That ranges from Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook to Jeff Bezos over at Amazon and the Washington Post.
00:18:58.000With that said, that is a recognition of the reality, which is that President Trump, in fact, does have the momentum.
00:19:04.000President Trump's economic momentum is undeniable.
00:19:07.000Some of the things he's considering doing, by the way, he's considering apparently privatizing the U.S. Postal Service, which, I mean, it's about damn time.
00:19:14.000The U.S. Postal Service is one of the biggest losers in the American government in terms of just losing the American taxpayer cash.
00:19:20.000For years and years and years, for decades, it was suggested that without the U.S. Postal Service, the mail would not be delivered.
00:19:27.000And then a wide variety of other parcel services came along.
00:19:30.000And it turns out that actually you can run a for-profit business that delivers the packages much faster and with better reliability than the U.S. Postal Service.
00:19:41.000Told of the mail agency's annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization.
00:19:48.000So again, that would make a lot of sense.
00:19:51.000The Postal Service just bleeds money every single year.
00:19:56.000They lost $5.5 billion in 2014. They lost almost $10 billion in 2020. They lost almost $10 billion last year.
00:20:05.000In fact, it was back in 2022 that Congress had to just sign a $56 billion check to shore up the U.S. Postal Service's finances.
00:20:12.000So privatizing that, that would be a big win for the American people.
00:20:15.000President Trump is going to pursue a wide variety of wins in his second term.
00:20:19.000But Democrats are still struggling for a path of resistance.
00:20:22.000One of those paths of resistance may be lawfare.
00:20:24.000Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of the state of Minnesota, he says that he wants to file more lawsuits against President Trump.
00:20:31.000Because after all, this is how they tried to stop President Trump the first time around.
00:20:36.000When he was the president last time, we had to bring lawsuits against him over 100 times.
00:20:41.000And we were able to successfully block him about 70% of the time.
00:20:47.000But we do anticipate that he'll be more prepared this time, he'll be more aggressive, and he has a playbook.
00:20:58.000And then, you know, he's already introduced some executive orders last time, which we anticipate he'll try to introduce again.
00:21:06.000So it's not like we have to guess about what he wants to do, although I'm sure that he has some new tricks up his sleeves as well.
00:21:14.000Well, we'll see how the law fair goes, considering a lot of the appellate courts have a lot of Trump nominees on them.
00:21:20.000Meanwhile, a bunch of congressional Democrats have said they are not going to attend the inauguration, as though President Trump cares at all.
00:21:26.000House Democrats, who will skip the inauguration, include Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, Adam Smith of Washington, Deborah Ross of North Carolina, Donald Bayer, Now, This is a stupid path for Democrats, honestly.
00:21:49.000One of the reasons is the American people would like to see Democrats work with President Trump where appropriate.
00:21:55.000While Democrats are resisting President Trump, one of the things presumably they will be resisting is President Trump's attempt at tax cuts.
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00:24:11.000It is a foolhardy plan to simply preemptively fight President Trump.
00:24:17.000One of the people who knows this is apparently the only Democrat with a brain at this point, John Fetterman, the senator from Pennsylvania.
00:24:24.000According to Axios, Fetterman is on an island as he reaches out to MAGA. Quote, As the vast majority of Democrats on Capitol Hill fume over many of Donald Trump's cabinet picks, and his for a second term, Fetterman is showing a rare willingness to engage with parts of MAGA world.
00:24:48.000It's easy to think Fetterman could be a new version of Democrat-turned-independent Joe Manchin.
00:24:52.000He's a reliable Democratic vote, but he's emerging as an independent voice within his party simply by emphasizing the need to talk more with the other side.
00:24:59.000So, for example, he met with Pete Hegseth, where he's going to meet with Pete Hegseth this week, President Trump's pick for SecDef.
00:25:06.000He also met, for example, with Elise Stefanik, President Trump's pick for UN ambassador, and he's already said that he's going to vote for her.
00:26:50.000Here is Tim Walls failing to understand the American people.
00:26:53.000How in the world did we lose to a billionaire or a venture capitalist when we were making the case of a county attorney and a high school teacher?
00:27:04.000And we were focusing on cost of groceries, cost of health care.
00:27:09.000Those types of issues that should have really resonated, we need to figure out, and whoever does it at the party level as we build out, how do we reach those groups that we lost in?
00:27:23.000Losing Puerto Ricans in Allentown after Donald Trump's at a rally where they talk about Puerto Rico being garbage.
00:27:30.000And I think for whatever reason, there was a distrust that people really – that the Democratic Party stood with that group of working people.
00:27:43.000So again, your argument is that they should have solidarity with you because you were poor.
00:27:50.000Now remember, Tim Walls actually ran on this.
00:27:52.000He ran on the idea that you should have solidarity with him because he had no real estate holdings and no stocks.
00:27:57.000Which, by the way, is a terrible way to invest.
00:27:58.000That's how you end up at 60 years old with no money.
00:28:24.000Buy real estate when you have the opportunity to do so and just hold.
00:28:27.000Buy and hold for long periods of time.
00:28:29.000But again, this is the same guy who went out on the campaign trail and suggested that J.D. Vance was a sellout for having risen from relatively impoverished background with a horrifying family background.
00:28:40.000To become a Yale Law graduate after having served in the military and then running for vice president after being a senator.
00:28:58.000Social media radically exacerbates the disconnect between the American people and the elites who write for the media and who are on social media.
00:30:12.000However, polling tends to show that Americans don't despise their own health care.
00:30:17.000In fact, they don't want to lose their doctor.
00:30:18.000They don't want to lose their health care.
00:30:20.000Here's Harry Enten from CNN explaining.
00:30:23.000Sometimes we talk about approval of Congress versus approval of your own congressman.
00:30:27.000People don't like Congress, but they like their own congressman.
00:30:29.000Something similar is going on here when you talk about the nation's health care system or the health care in the nation versus your own health care.
00:30:52.000You wonder why the health care system in this country stays the same.
00:30:55.000It's because people don't like health care in sort of the abstract, but when it comes to their own health care, a lot of Americans actually are pretty gosh darn satisfied.
00:31:05.000Again, that's what the poll statistics actually show.
00:31:08.000Again, there's a second poll that was done from the Center for Strategic Politics at UHC. And what they found is that 61% of Americans had a negative view of Luigi Mangione, the alleged shooter.
00:31:44.000What Luigi Mangione did is a terrorist attack.
00:31:48.000It is a terrorist attack when you kill someone in order to quote-unquote raise the issue.
00:31:51.000If you kill somebody in order to raise the issue, that is the nature of terrorism.
00:31:55.000You're seeking to bring attention to the issue by doing murder.
00:31:58.000And what the American body politics should do, and what everybody should basically do, is if a terrorist wants you to talk about the problems with the healthcare system, you shouldn't give them what they want, or you're incentivizing people to kill people.
00:32:09.000Now, we should absolutely have long-form conversations about the healthcare system in the United States.
00:32:15.000When I say long-form, I mean informed conversations, because let's be real about this.
00:32:19.000People don't know bleep about the healthcare systems of the United States.
00:33:20.000Okay, Whoopi Goldberg there is suggesting the way insurance, when you don't, if you pay into your car insurance company and you don't take any money out because you don't get into a car crash, do you get your money back?
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00:34:37.000Bernie Sanders is a perfect example of this.
00:34:39.000So Bernie Sanders, over the weekend, he pulled a full Elizabeth Warren.
00:34:43.000He suggested that while shooting someone in the back is irresponsible, but this does raise a longstanding concern he's had about the profit-driven healthcare system.
00:34:55.000Look, Elizabeth Warren obviously understands killing and murder and shooting somebody in the back is totally unacceptable.
00:35:05.000But what I think has happened in the last few months is that What you have seen rising up is people's anger at a health insurance industry which denies people the healthcare that they desperately need while they make billions and billions of dollars in profit.
00:35:27.000Again, this idea that when you remove profit from a system, somehow the system gets more efficient with better products belies everything you know about everything in your life except for healthcare for some odd reason.
00:35:37.000And it's not just Bernie Sanders who's doing this routine, by the way.
00:35:40.000The shooter provides us a great leaping off point to talk about healthcare.
00:35:45.000Chris Murphy, the idiot senator from Connecticut, he's doing the same routine.
00:35:53.000I've spent my entire life fighting gun violence because I know that the devastation is enormous, that it leaves behind.
00:36:01.000What I see happening in this country, though, It is a real visceral anger that the outrage at Brian Thompson's death or the outrage at the death of any powerful person isn't matched by the anger over the thousands of people who die often anonymous deaths every single day in this country at the hands of a healthcare industry that mostly doesn't give a shit about people and only cares about profits.
00:36:30.000Ordinary people in this country are not indifferent to the loss of life.
00:37:07.000There are massive problems in our healthcare system.
00:37:09.000Again, health insurance doesn't truly act as health insurance in the United States in any real way because they're not insuring against a possible risk for the future except sort of at the margins.
00:37:17.000What they really are doing is providing quote-unquote healthcare coverage that is heavily regulated and also heavily subsidized by the federal government and the state governments, by the way.
00:37:25.000But this kind of disgusting notion that is being dumped out there that the reason people die due to lack of healthcare is because those mean, cruel health insurance executives are trying their best to harm people First of all, even if you would assume that was true, assume that was true for just one second, don't you think there would be a competitor?
00:39:00.000The disconnect is not just with regard to healthcare, for example.
00:39:03.000It's with regard to a wide variety of issues.
00:39:05.000Whether it is the sort of glory of being poor that Tim Walz is talking about, whether it is the supposed hatred of our entire healthcare system, which again, people have their problems with the healthcare system.
00:39:14.000That doesn't mean they want the National Health Service or think that United Healthcare CEO should be shot in the back on the streets of New York.
00:39:20.000There's also a wild disconnect on issues of race, obviously, between the elites in our society and a huge percentage of the rest of the population.
00:39:28.000And it's permeated those elite circles.
00:39:30.000So one of the bizarre controversies of the last week is Caitlin Clark, who is the WNBA's only nameable star.
00:39:37.000The vast majority of the general public has no idea of any players other than Caitlin Clark because, of course, she was this giant college star and then she went to the WNBA. So Caitlin Clark, she did an interview in which she talked about her white privilege at length and then Megyn Kelly called her on it and then she spoke some more about her white privilege.
00:39:58.000Like I've said I feel like I've earned every single thing that's happened to me over the course of my career but also I grew up a fan of this league from a very young age like my favorite player was Maya Moore like I know what this league was about and like I said like it's only been around 25 plus years so I know there's been so many amazing black women that have been in this league and continuing to uplift them I think is very important and that's something I'm very aware of and like I said like I try to just be real and authentic and You know, share my truth.
00:40:50.000Here, for example, is WNBA team owner Sheila Johnson ripping Kaitlyn Clark as the co-owner of the Washington Mystics.
00:40:56.000I know you didn't know that there was a team called the Washington Mystics because, hell, no one knows there's a team called the Washington Mystics.
00:41:03.000Here she is ripping Kaitlyn Clark and the fan base for liking Kaitlyn Clark, saying it's only because Kaitlyn Clark is white.
00:41:11.000Why couldn't they have put the whole WNBA on that cover?
00:41:15.000And said the WNBA is the league of the year because of all the talent that we have.
00:41:26.000Because when you just keep singling out one player, it creates hard feelings.
00:41:31.000And so now you're starting to hear stories of racism within the WNBA. And I don't want to hear that.
00:41:37.000We have got to operate and become stronger as a league And respect everybody that's playing and their talents.
00:41:48.000Hey, you're not putting the entire WNBA on the cover because not everybody can fit and nobody knows who any of those people are.
00:41:52.000By the way, 31% apparently of the entire Washington Mystics ticket sales this year came in two games.
00:41:59.000I will give you a guess as to which player was featured in those two games.
00:42:36.000Now Vice President Harris, she apparently wants to run for governor of California, God love her, or run for president again because she did such an amazing job this time.
00:42:44.000What she's been saying to people over the last couple weeks, donors, other supporters that she's been talking with, is, you haven't seen the last of me, I'm not going quietly into the night.
00:42:53.000Advisors, people close to her, are debating about what that means.
00:42:56.000They do not want her final official act ever to be essentially certifying Donald Trump's win over her, especially four years after January 6th.
00:43:06.000And so they look at this governor's race in California in 2026, and it seems to them like a layup, essentially, that she would probably clear the field or mostly clear the field, and she would get to be governor of California.
00:43:27.000Because frankly, if they wish to disdain reality, the elections will not go their way for a long time to come.
00:43:34.000So God bless them and may they continue to prosper in their insane dereliction of duty with regard to having any relationship at all with reality.
00:43:45.000Meanwhile, with President Trump coming into office, Russia is attempting to up the ante.
00:43:49.000They believe that if they continue to press, then presumably NATO will collapse before them.
00:43:54.000I don't think that's what's going to happen here.
00:43:55.000I think that what's pretty clearly going to happen...
00:43:58.000Because that President Trump is going to call on the Europeans to do their part, and the Europeans will do their part, or they'll get eaten.
00:44:04.000And they don't wish to be eaten, and so it will be up to them to up the ante.
00:44:07.000I think that President Trump is not in the business of abandoning American allies to the predations of our enemies.
00:44:12.000He just wants our allies to do exactly what they're supposed to do, namely defend themselves and spend the money and materiel to defend their friends.
00:44:20.000Which makes a lot of sense, since Europe is actually quite large, and Europe has a lot of money, actually.
00:44:25.000While the Russians, in anticipation of Trump entering, I think they're miscalculating, they're getting more aggressive, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:44:31.000The Mercury Missile Corvette, one of Russia's most advanced naval assets, was escorting an oil tanker in the Baltic Sea when a German warship approached.
00:44:38.000The German frigate F-223 had followed the two Russian ships up to a spot near the Danish island of Bornholm before it dispatched its Sea Links helicopter armed with a powerful surveillance equipment to have a closer look after a series of incidents in the area had put security forces on edge.
00:44:52.000The Russian Corvette responded by shooting flares at the aircraft, forcing the pilot to turn back.
00:44:56.000This incident on November 26th, the details of which had not been previously reported, was part of an increasingly heated standoff between Russia and NATO in Europe, with the Baltic region emerging as a key flashpoint in a confrontation unseen since the height of the Cold War.
00:45:08.000Beyond military signaling, Russia has escalated an often violent campaign of sabotage and subterfuge.
00:45:15.000Apparently, Russian warships have been firing warning shots at NATO vessels.
00:45:18.000Powerful Russian jamming systems have disrupted air traffic.
00:45:21.000Russian jet fighters have conducted dangerous maneuvers, including dumping fuel on Allied spy planes in the skies over the Baltics, according to multiple Western officials.
00:45:28.000Critical infrastructure, like data cables and pipelines, have been attacked by commercial ships Western security officials say were used by Russian intelligence.
00:45:35.000Clandestine Russian operators used Lithuania, a Baltic nation, as a springboard for a terror operation involving shipping incendiary devices on commercial aircraft using services like DHL, according to Western intelligence and law enforcement officials.
00:45:47.000In Britain, a man admitted to carrying out an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned property in London on behalf of Russia.
00:45:53.000In Poland, a shopping mall was torched with authorities suspecting Russia to be behind the incident.
00:45:57.000Jan Stoltenberg, former two-time NATO Secretary General, said during his tenure, which ended in October, Russia expanded the range of its targets, including destructive sabotage, cyberattacks, and interfering in elections in EU nations that belong to the Security Alliance.
00:46:11.000Russia's onslaught in Ukraine prompted Sweden and Finland to join NATO. Now eight of the nine nations that enclose the Baltic Sea are members of the alliance, prompting jubilant commentary from Allied leaders to become a NATO lake.
00:46:20.000Russia has significantly boosted its military presence in the region, escalating its aggressive posture toward the neighbors in a way unseen since the Cold War, according to Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister.
00:46:31.000So, again, what is the solution to this?
00:46:33.000Well, one of the solutions here would be for all of these nations in Europe to up their game.
00:46:38.000President Trump is going to up the American game.
00:46:40.000We're going to spend more on our military.
00:46:41.000We are going to put in place a secretary of defense and a procurement procedure that allows us to modernize and everybody else should as well.
00:46:50.000With that said, Russia keeps saying they want to deal.
00:46:54.000The Ukrainian ambassador, Oksana Markarova, she says that Russia is lying when they say they want to deal.
00:47:02.000Do you see a chance for a Christmas ceasefire and prisoner exchange?
00:47:07.000This is a very difficult winter, after Russia destroyed a lot of our energy infrastructure, and after, you know, we are going through these difficult fights, both on the front line, but also civilians suffering from the deadly missile attacks.
00:47:51.000He does not like being on the short end of the deal.
00:47:54.000And that's going to be true for Russia as well.
00:47:56.000All right, coming up, we'll get into Chris Rock on SNL. He said something quite awful about the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. If you're not a member, become a member.