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00:00:43.000Well, folks, at long last, over well over a month, it appears that we are now nearing the end of the beginning of the end of the government shutdown because last night, Democrats in the Senate caved.
00:00:54.000They gave their approval, 60-40 vote to moving forward with a procedural vote, which would move toward the end of the government shutdown.
00:01:09.000The win that they got was by showing that they are resistant to President Trump's agenda.
00:01:13.000They did better than they might otherwise have in places like Virginia or Georgia or Mississippi or New Jersey or even in New York.
00:01:21.000In other words, there is a very rabid base of Democrats who are very interested in resisting President Trump.
00:01:28.000But the reason that the Democratic dam is breaking regarding the government shutdown is because Democrats who are in purple states recognize that if they continue to aimlessly pound their heads against the Trumpian wall, they are going to lose their Senate seats.
00:01:41.000That's what actually happened last night.
00:01:43.000So, according to Axios, which first reported what was going on yesterday, shutdown fatigue triumphed over anger among moderate Democrats in the Senate, which took a crucial procedural step late last night toward ending the country's longest government shutdown, now in day 41.
00:01:56.000The crucial Democrats folded on the party's biggest shutdown demand.
00:02:00.000They wanted a one-year extension on those Affordable Care Act tax credits, which you will recall: Obamacare already provides heavy subsidies to people living in states all across the country.
00:02:10.000The Biden administration during COVID radically increased those subsidies, just as they did with SNAP.
00:02:16.000And then Republicans were going to let those things expire because the idea is we cannot forever continue to pay additional subsidies.
00:02:23.000And Democrats lost back on the one big beautiful bill, which did, in fact, cut back those subsidies or allow them to expire.
00:02:30.000Democrats were attempting to use the fiscal cliff here.
00:02:33.000They were attempting to use the non-funding of the government as a way to pry open the coffers again to continue those Obamacare subsidies, which, of course, is worth asking at this point.
00:02:43.000Why Obamacare, which we were told is going to make healthcare cheaper for the federal government, that it was going to make healthcare ever so much more efficient.
00:02:51.000Why is it that now Democrats are claiming there is a crisis when Obamacare is fully funded, but just doesn't have supplemental funding added on in the COVID era?
00:03:00.000So it appears that federal workers will get paid, food assistance will flow, and flights should resume normal schedules in time for Thanksgiving.
00:03:06.000According to Axios, after final passage by the Senate, the bill, which advanced last night on a 60-40 vote, will go to the House where it's expected to pass and then be sent to President Trump for his signature.
00:03:16.000So what exactly did Democrats get out of this?
00:03:19.000Well, they got some sort of guarantee that people who were fired during the government shutdown would come back to work.
00:03:25.000The government will remain funded until late January, and it promises a future vote, but not a guarantee on extending that Obamacare subsidy.
00:03:32.000Now, again, that's something that Senator Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, had promised weeks ago.
00:03:36.000That was one of his early offers: okay, here's the deal: you extend the CR, and then we will, in three weeks, have a vote, like an open vote, on whether to extend the Obamacare subsidies.
00:03:46.000You guys will probably lose because you don't have a majority, and then we'll move on with our lives.
00:03:49.000Democrats rejected that because they were using the shutdown as leverage to apparently get Republicans to restore funding for these Obamacare supplemental subsidies.
00:04:00.000Four former governors, Senators Gene Shaheen and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, which is a state that is very, very purplish.
00:04:06.000Independent Senator Angus King of Maine, again, a purplish state.
00:04:09.000And Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, which has a bunch of civilian federal workers, right?
00:04:13.000Tim Kaine is vulnerable because the more he votes for a government shutdown, the easier it is for his opponents to claim that he is keeping his constituents out of work.
00:04:20.000They broke the six-week stalemate joining people like Senator John Fetterman, as well as Nevada senators Catherine Cortez-Masto and Jackie Rosen.
00:04:29.000And the thing that you notice is that all of these people are from purple states.
00:04:32.000So it's very easy for Senator Chuck Schumer from New York, not a purple state, to vote no on opening the government.
00:04:38.000Very, very easy for Senator Alex Padilla from California to vote no on opening the government.
00:04:43.000It's a blue state, or for Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts to do so.
00:04:48.000But if you're a Democrat and you are looking at the possibility of losing your seat because you're in a purple state, then it was not in your interest for this government shutdown to continue.
00:05:01.000Republicans made it clear they weren't going to discuss the health care issue, the Affordable Care Act tax credits, until the shutdown was over.
00:05:08.000Gene Shaheen said, when I talk to my constituents in New Hampshire, you know what they say to me?
00:05:11.000They say, why can't y'all just work together to address the problems that are facing the country?
00:05:16.000Minority whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, who's the number two Senate Democrat, joined six centrist Democrats and one independent to vote with the 52 Republicans, which, of course, Dick Durbin is in a very blue state, but he understands that he has to provide enough cover for these purple state Democrats to maintain their seats.
00:05:31.000Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, he did what he always does, which is he basically gave permission for the vote to happen, and then he voted against it.
00:06:00.000Instead, I assume that this whole process will be dragged out and then the House will take up the package.
00:06:07.000The GOP leadership in the House is saying that Congress people should be on notice that within 48 hours, 36 hours, perhaps, they need to be back at the Capitol in order to vote on all of this.
00:06:17.000Already coming up, the Democrats are super duper angry with the other Democrats, you know, like the sane ones.
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00:08:28.000Democrats are very, very angry, sort of typical Democrats are very, very angry at this because, of course, they had staked their political stance on the idea that under no circumstances would they reopen the government unless they got what they wanted.
00:08:41.000So just before the shutdown, for example, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said, we're going to keep it going.
00:08:46.000This is literally right before the Senate voted in order to shut down the shutdown.
00:08:52.000Well, we need to end the Trump Republican shutdown, the longest shutdown, of course, in American history.
00:08:58.000And as Democrats, we've repeatedly maintained that we will sit down anytime, any place with anyone in order to reopen the government to find a bipartisan path forward to enacting a spending agreement that actually meets the needs of the American people,
00:09:13.000which means trying to drive down the high cost of living because America under Donald Trump and Republican policies has become far too expensive, while at the same time dealing with the Republican health care crisis that threatens to drive up premiums, co-pays, and deductibles to levels that will be unaffordable for working class Americans because of the Republican refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
00:09:39.000I love that this is somehow a Republican health care crisis when Obamacare was created purely by Democrats.
00:09:45.000It was subsidized increasingly by Democrats.
00:09:47.000And so basically, it's a Republican crisis if Democrats can't get the cost curve down.
00:09:52.000It's a Democratic crisis because Obamacare is a gigantic fail.
00:10:23.000And we've seen an impact on the economy from day one, but it's getting worse and worse.
00:10:29.000We had a fantastic economy under President Trump the past two quarters.
00:10:33.000And now there are estimates that the economy, economic growth for this quarter could be cut by as much as half if the shutdown continues.
00:10:45.000And this is something that the American people were getting very, very tired of.
00:10:48.000It was beginning to hit home for people who are not government employees.
00:10:51.000People are having their flights delayed.
00:10:52.000For example, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, he said that even if the shutdown ends, it's going to take a while for these kinks to work themselves through the system.
00:11:01.000I think the number is going to be substantial.
00:11:04.000Again, you look at the trend line, Jake, and it's only gotten worse as we've gone through the shutdown.
00:11:22.000And the controllers that I've talked to said, a lot of them, we can miss one paycheck.
00:11:25.000They told me that virtually none of them can miss two paychecks.
00:11:29.000And so they're going to be confronted with the idea of, as you mentioned, going to get a side job, a second job, to make ends meet, to put food on the table, put gas in the car, to pay their rent.
00:11:39.000And a lot of these controllers who are young, Jake, They don't make a lot of money.
00:11:44.000They're just getting into the business of being an air traffic controller.
00:11:47.000So they make less than $100,000 and they live in a really expensive place.
00:11:50.000They're the single income earner and they have a kid or two at home.
00:11:58.000Okay, so again, he's not wrong about this.
00:12:01.000And this is what Purple State Democrats were feeling.
00:12:02.000Now, the problem for Democrats is that we have been highlighting for a while the split in the Democratic Party.
00:12:07.000And it is a very real split in the Democratic Party between people who actually want to get things done and people who do not want to get things done, between the so-called moderate Democrats, people like presumably Abigail Spanberger in Virginia or John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, and the increasingly progressive, wild-eyed Democrats.
00:12:25.000And so a lot of these Democrats who broke ranks here are coming under significant fire.
00:12:31.000According to Fox News, John Fetterman put out a statement saying, after 40 days as a consistent voice against shutting our government down, I voted yes for the 15th time to reopen.
00:12:41.000I'm sorry to our military snap recipients, government workers and capital police who haven't been paid in weeks.
00:12:47.000Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada, she said, I've consistently voted against shutting down the government because I know the pain it's causing working families from TSA agents to government contractors.
00:12:56.000We must extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits, but that can't come at the expense of millions of Americans across our country impacted by the shutdown.
00:13:06.000She said, with the government open, we can focus on passing a full bipartisan budget for 2026.
00:13:11.000Similar sentiments from Senator Jackie Rosen of Nevada, who narrowly, like very narrowly retained her seat, as you recall, over Sam Brown in Nevada.
00:13:22.000The concession we've been able to extract to get closer to extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits is a vote on a bill drafted and negotiated by Senate Democrats.
00:13:29.000Let me be clear: I will keep fighting like hell to ensure we force Republicans to get this done.
00:13:32.000But here's the thing: this was a misbegotten strategy from the very beginning.
00:13:36.000The only thing it got them was a political win because, again, it got Democrats out to the ballot box.
00:13:46.000They did better than they might otherwise have been expected to be in, say, the Virginia House of Delegates.
00:13:50.000But they were willing to take the American people hostage, politically speaking, in order to get what they wanted here.
00:13:55.000And this is the first government shutdown that I can remember, that I can recall, in which the government was shut down not in order to exact concessions to lower spending, but in order to exact concessions to increase spending.
00:14:09.000Saying, I'm not going to fund the government so I can get more funding for the government is a pretty insane proposition.
00:14:14.000And that's what Democrats were doing here.
00:14:17.000Senator Gene Shaheen, she said, with the government reopened, it's time to move quickly to ensure we keep health care premiums from skyrocketing.
00:14:27.000The legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay.
00:14:35.000Now, again, as I say, Democrats are very, very upset.
00:14:40.000So Democrats are trying to pretend there's no crack within the coalition.
00:14:42.000Senator Adam Schiff, one of the worst senators in the United States Senate from California, just this Sunday, he was saying there are no cracks in the Democratic coalition.
00:15:16.000You see cracks, I think, even within the White House as the president acknowledges that their lack of focus on bringing down costs, the shutdown and all its economic impacts are affecting him.
00:15:30.000Okay, so again, this is week T because as you can see, Democrats are very, very, very upset.
00:15:39.000Immediately upon the announcement that enough Democrats had voted to end the shutdown, that the shutdown will, in fact, come to an end, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, who has her eye on 2028, put out a statement.
00:15:49.000The average monthly SNAP benefit is $177 a person.
00:15:53.000The average ACA benefit is up to $550 a person per month.
00:15:57.000By the way, we should note at this point that that's actually a fair bit of money.
00:16:00.000I mean, you're talking about 42 million Americans who are on SNAP, and you are talking about tens of millions of Americans who are on ACA.
00:16:08.000So when you're talking about increasing the federal debt and the deficit, this would be your giant driver right here.
00:16:14.000People want us to hold the line for a reason, says AOC.
00:16:16.000This is not a matter of appealing to a base.
00:16:19.000Working people want leaders whose word means something.
00:16:21.000So apparently what working people want is for Democrats to run headlong at a wall repeatedly in order to demonstrate their fealty to the principal.
00:16:28.000This, by the way, seems to be the common sort of perspective on government shutdowns.
00:16:32.000The enthusiastic members of the base constantly want members of their party to run headlong at walls to achieve, in the end, very little.
00:16:41.000Government shutdowns typically just don't work.
00:16:43.000They don't tend to work for the party that is out of power.
00:16:46.000But they do provide an excellent way for politicians to pretend to be uber committed to the cause.
00:16:53.000So for example, Chris Murphy, who again, I have no idea why Chris Murphy thinks that he is a thing.
00:16:57.000You're not going to make fetch a thing, my dude.
00:17:00.000And, you know, as a person with pretty weak facial hair game, I got to say, Chris Murphy makes me look like Matt Walsh.
00:17:07.000Here's Chris Murphy trying to explain that it's just terrible that they ended the government shutdown.
00:17:13.000After the elections on Tuesday, it just became absolutely clear that the American people do not want Democrats to be bullied into submission.
00:17:22.000They want Democrats to fight for their health care.
00:17:24.000They want Democrats to fight Trump's illegality.
00:17:27.000Bullies gain power when righteous people yield in the face of their wrongdoing.
00:17:54.000But unfortunately, I don't think there is a way to save this country, to save our democracy, without there being some difficult, hard moments along the way.
00:18:09.000Okay, so, you know, again, that is an angle.
00:18:24.000So here it was, old man ranting at Moon, talking about how it's very bad that Republicans and Democrats will work together to fund the government.
00:18:32.000We need the government to be unfunded so that it will be even more funded forever.
00:18:39.000Tonight, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to allow them to go forward on this continuing resolution.
00:18:47.000And to my mind, this was a very, very bad vote.
00:18:53.000What it does, first of all, is it raises health care premiums for over 20 million Americans by doubling, and in some cases, tripling or quadrupling.
00:19:04.000People can't afford that when we are already paying the highest prices in the world for health care.
00:19:09.000Number two, it paves the way for 15 million people to be thrown off of Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act study show that will mean that some 50,000 Americans will die every year unnecessarily.
00:19:22.000And all of that was done to give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1%.
00:19:30.000Okay, so as per his usual arrangement, all this is nonsense.
00:19:32.000The idea that 50,000 Americans will die because you didn't vote the way Bernie Sanders wanted you to vote is totally specious.
00:19:38.000There is no evidence to support this proposition.
00:19:41.000But in the end, for Sanders, again, it's always about looking for some sort of dragon to slay that never quite gets slain.
00:19:47.000But if you give him enough power, then maybe the dragon will get slain.
00:19:50.000Here's Bernie Sanders saying, America wants us to fight against Trump.
00:19:54.000What the thing else is for us to just say, trump, come, trump, and then fight and then lose and then fight tomorrow.
00:20:01.000As everybody knows, just on Tuesday, we had an election all over this country.
00:20:06.000And what the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to Trumpism, to his war against working class people, to his authoritarianism.
00:20:16.000That is what the American people wanted.
00:20:18.000But tonight, that is not what happened.
00:20:22.000So we've got to go forward, do the best that we can to try to protect working class people, to make sure that the United States not only does not throw people off of health care, but ends the absurdity of being the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee healthcare to all people.
00:20:49.000Okay, but it was a good night for him because now he gets to divide the Democratic Party even further.
00:20:54.000Alrighty, coming up, Gavin Newsom, Sounds Off, Zarn Mamdani, AOC, the entire left wing of the Democratic Party up in arms over, you know, people actually going back to work first.
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00:23:05.000Again, I did this for my parents, and now they can see what they were like as children with their parents.
00:23:34.000The more that you yell at your own party, the more that you are perceived as authentic by the segment of the base that wants you to be president, I guess.
00:23:42.000Bottom line is: the president of the United States canceled a meeting with the two leaders because of public pressure before the government shutdown.
00:23:52.000He didn't invite you and others in, which for Donald Trump in and of itself is remarkable.
00:23:56.000He just instead sent out a true social with Trump 2028 hats.
00:24:00.000And then he went golfing that weekend before the shutdown, shortly thereafter.
00:24:05.000He had no interest or energy into avoiding this government shutdown.
00:24:09.000He has no interest or energy to end it today.
00:24:12.000He's the president of the United States.
00:24:14.000As someone who's an executive chief executive of a state larger than 21 state populations combined, the fourth large economy, you have a responsibility in that role to convene to bring people together.
00:24:25.000That's why there's a government shutdown, period.
00:24:28.000What the Democrats, though, have done, and I give Jeffries and Schumer tremendous credit, is they've galvanized people of all political stripes, rural, urban, suburban.
00:24:42.000So, again, this is Gavin Newsom running for president.
00:24:46.000As much as these so-called moderate Democrats are voting with Republicans to end the government shutdown, the reality is their base is captured by this brand of crazy.
00:24:54.000And this brand of crazy is probably going to decide their next presidential candidate, which is why, again, while Democrats keep saying that Abigail Spanberger is the future of the party, I have some doubts.
00:25:04.000I think that Zorin Mondani is far likelier to be the future of the Democratic Party because I've yet to see a moderate movement, a truly moderate movement arise from the Democratic Party anytime in my lifetime.
00:25:16.000Every time you think they're going to moderate, they move even further to the left.
00:25:19.000Even when they elect somebody like Joe Biden, who's supposed to be a moderating anti-Bernie influence, he then adopts Bernie's exact plan and starts implementing those at scale.
00:25:29.000Zorhan Mamdani, by the way, the mask is coming off for Zorn Mamdani.
00:25:31.000It was all fun and games when he was just talking about affordability.
00:25:35.000But now, as the Washington Post is pointing out, of all places, by the way, got to point out, the Washington Post op-ed page seems to have changed their orientation pretty significantly since Jeff Bezos made some changes over there.
00:25:45.000It makes it one of the more interesting reads now.
00:25:48.000According to the Washington Post editorial board, a new era of class warfare has begun in New York, and no one is more excited than General Lissimo Zorin Mondani.
00:25:56.000Witnessed the mayor-elect's change of character since his Tuesday election victory.
00:25:59.000Momdani ran an upbeat campaign with a nice guy demeanor and perpetual smile, papering over a long history of divisive and demagogic statements.
00:26:06.000New Yorkers periodically checking in on politics could understandably believe he simply wanted to bring the city together and make it more affordable.
00:26:12.000That interpretation became much harder after his victory speech.
00:26:15.000Across 23 angry minutes laced with identity politics and seething with resentment, Momdani abandoned his cool disposition and made clear his view of politics isn't about unity.
00:26:24.000It isn't about letting people build better lives for themselves.
00:26:26.000It's about identifying class enemies, from landlords who take advantage of tenants to the bosses who exploit workers and then crushing them.
00:26:33.000His goal is not to increase wealth, but to dole it out to favored groups.
00:26:36.000The word growth didn't appear in the speech, but President Donald Trump garnered eight mentions.
00:26:41.000In the days since winning, Mamdani's favorite word has become mandate.
00:26:44.000He won decisively and now he wants to pursue his agenda.
00:26:46.000From the rent freeze to free child care and buses, yet as mayor of New York, his control over taxes and transportation is limited.
00:26:51.000He needs approval from the state to raise taxes.
00:26:53.000His transition team includes several New York political insiders who understand how to pull the levers of power.
00:27:00.000So it'll be interesting to see whether Mamdani gets away with it.
00:27:05.000Mamdani's first move was to go to Puerto Rico as mayor of New York, where he promptly went to a mosque and people chanted Allahu Akbar for him.
00:27:30.000And the guy standing next to him is wearing some sort of garment that has on it the word Palestine with the Palestinian flag.
00:27:39.000I mean, Mamdani was running for mayor because that is his number one issue.
00:27:42.000It always was his number one issue from the time that he was young.
00:27:45.000Yeah, the fact is that everything else is sort of slathering over the Students for Justice in Palestine politics with a Marxist patina.
00:27:52.000Meanwhile, the biggest problem for Mamdani and for the Democratic Party is which way does the state of New York go?
00:27:57.000So it'll be fascinating because the state of New York is now a microcosm of Democratic politics.
00:28:02.000Which way does the state of New York go?
00:28:04.000Toward Mamdani or toward Kathy Hochul.
00:28:07.000So Kathy Hochl is the governor of the state.
00:28:09.000She is running a very, very tight race right now with the newly announced Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who's now the newly announced Republican candidate for the governorship in New York.
00:28:19.000And she has to, on the one hand, fend off Stefanik, who's critical of her, and on the other hand, fend off Zorhan Mamdani, who wants to radically increase taxes in the state.
00:28:27.000And here she was saying, well, no, we're not going to do what Momdani wants.
00:28:30.000We'll see how long that lasts, because if she loses that Democratic base, it's quite possible she loses the election as well.
00:28:37.000I cannot set forth a plan right now that takes money out of a system that relies on the fares of the buses and the subways.
00:28:46.000But can we find a path to make it more affordable for people who need help?
00:29:09.000She's stuck in a rock in a hard place.
00:29:10.000Meanwhile, Mamdani's hypocrisy knows no bounds.
00:29:13.000So Zar Mamdani, of course, is reliant on other people's money, which presumably is why his victory party in New York City, according to the New York Post, was charging $22 for espresso martini coolers, $15 for glasses of Riesling white wine, and for water, for water, like $13 a pop, $10 or $12 a pop for hot dogs.
00:29:34.000I mean, like, again, the socialism, it costs a lot of money, it turns out.
00:29:38.000Joining us online is Senator Rick Scott.
00:29:40.000He, of course, was elected to the Senate in 2018 from my great state of Florida.
00:29:44.000And he has been all over this story broken by the New York Post originally about the Zar Mamdani mayoral campaign and how it was powered, at least in part, by foreign influences.
00:29:54.000Senator Scott, thanks so much for taking the time.
00:30:35.000Now, after the election, they're sending the money back.
00:30:38.000But the other thing we have to look at is we have to look at these.
00:30:40.000I think we need to really look at these foreign organizations that went to get out the vote and things like that and look at the legality of that is also.
00:30:48.000Because it's not just money into your campaign, it's these groups that come in that are foreign, foreign-backed, or trying to influence our elections.
00:30:56.000They should not be able to influence our elections.
00:31:00.000So, Senator Scott, you know, I assume here we're talking about the nonprofit DESIS rising up and moving, call itself drum, and its political arm drum beats.
00:31:08.000What apparently, according to the New York Post, they've built the most effective field operation in city politics in recent memory.
00:31:14.000So, they describe themselves as essentially a domestic program that, sure, it's filled with South Asian and Indo-Caribbean immigrants, but it's essentially an American organization.
00:31:24.000You seem to suggest, and the New York Post seems to suggest that there is some untruth to that.
00:31:44.000And, you know, Ben, the other thing, the other thing when you're in politics, what you don't want to do is do things that look bad.
00:31:50.000So if you have nothing to hide, put the information out there and let people make a good decision.
00:31:56.000So obviously there's been a lot of suspicion also about the gaming of algorithms surrounding Zara Mamdani.
00:32:01.000I know that there's been a lot of concern that particularly on TikTok and also on X, that there is foreign bot-driven influence regarding Mamdani.
00:32:25.000They're using every influence they can.
00:32:27.000So the problem with TikTok is if you look at, if you, if you, you can do all the analysis you want, if you look at TikTok versus Instagram and look at how they treat the Tinnerman Square, how they treat, you know, Trump, how they, you know, how they do all this stuff, it's clearly anti-American values.
00:32:45.000And Daily Wire reports, quote, independent analyses show that networks manipulated engagements to summon foreign audiences to Mamdani on Instagram.
00:32:51.000By the end of his campaign, fewer than 50% of his online engagements from viral posts came from American users, which is a complete reversal from the clear domestic majority at the start on TikTok, content favorable to Momdani and hostile to Andrew Cuomo search, 55% beyond organic reach.
00:33:07.000And apparently, again, as we mentioned, on the ground, the patterns seem to be identical, that there are foreign political movements that apparently have been, at the very least, they appear to have been influencing operations inside the United States.
00:33:56.000One of the problems here is just for the American body politic, because one of the things that we have seen here, look, I'm pointing out the problems inside the Democratic Party.
00:34:03.000Obviously, we've spent a lot of time talking about the problems inside the Republican Party.
00:34:07.000But the American people are deeply unhappy with our politics right now, like truly unhappy with our politics.
00:34:13.000And I think there is a reason for that.
00:34:14.000And the reason is everyone is lying to them and they are buying the lies.
00:34:18.000And then it turns out the consequences of those lies do not result in people awakening.
00:34:22.000They just result in people turning to the next grifter who walks up the block.
00:34:27.000I point this out because there's an interesting Wall Street Journal piece today looking at the polling data, quote, U.S. elections are sending a consistent message.
00:34:35.000Americans are deeply frustrated with their government's inability to solve problems.
00:34:39.000The latest example arrived Tuesday in a rebuke of President Trump as voters rallied to Democrats in hopes they can better address affordability and other major challenges.
00:34:46.000That pushback was delivered just 12 months after the president swept all seven of the top battleground states in a show of Republican dominance.
00:34:53.000The rapid-fire swing in fortunes for both parties is the result of a narrowly divided nation quick to throw out elected officials seen as slow to improve their lives.
00:35:00.000To many Americans, government is literally not working, as evidenced by a federal shutdown that has now stretched into the longest in U.S. history.
00:35:08.000So if you look at the last couple of decades, control of Congress in the White House has seesawed between the parties significantly more frequently, with the Senate, House, and White House all changing hands four times.
00:35:18.000Propelling the shift is the fact that many voters want bigger changes from Washington.
00:35:23.000Nationwide in the 2024 election, according to the journal, roughly three in 10 voters said they wanted total upheaval in how the country is run.
00:35:32.000Now, there is a fascinating graphic that I want to show you about public trust in government, which is now near its historic lows.
00:35:46.000Back in the mid-1960s, early 1960s, trust in government was very, very high, like up near 80%.
00:35:54.000And then, as government radically grew over the course of the great society programs from LBJ and in the era that followed, the Nixon and Carter era, it absolutely nosedived all the way from almost 80% all the way down to below 30%.
00:36:11.000It's as the government became quote unquote more helpful to your lives, as the government intervened more and more and spent more and more.
00:37:30.000And the trust in government continued to decline until finally it seemed to crater out around 2010 in the aftermath of the Great Recession at around 20%.
00:37:41.000And it has been there basically ever since.
00:37:44.000So for people who are big proponents of big government, I have a question.
00:37:48.000Why is it that there seems to be an inverse relationship between the size and growth of government and trust in government?
00:37:53.000If government is so amazing at everything, if government is so great at everything, why is it that in the eras where government is cut, trust goes up?
00:37:59.000And in the era where government grows, trust goes down.
00:38:05.000This is a deeply important point, really important, because you have politicians on both sides who are fully incapable of just saying the truth.
00:38:13.000They're afraid the American people will get angry at them if they say the truth.
00:38:15.000The truth is, the vast majority of problems in the lives of Americans are not solvable by the government.
00:38:23.000There are many problems created by the government, skewing of markets.
00:38:27.000If you look at a chart of the products in American life that have grown more expensive over the course of the last 30 years and the products that have grown less expensive, significantly less expensive over the course of the last 30 years, something shocking occurs.
00:38:39.000The products that have grown more expensive are all subsidized by the government.
00:38:44.000Education, college education, healthcare, health insurance, right?
00:38:49.000All these things have continued to go up because they are subsidized by the government and the government skews the markets.
00:38:55.000And then there are the everyday products you use, like your TV, like your phone, right?
00:39:32.000The party in power is going to be blamed for lack of affordability.
00:39:36.000The party out of power is going to claim that if you gave them power, they will solve the affordability problem by having more power.
00:39:43.000This is a race to the bottom in terms of centralized government control.
00:39:46.000But here's the thing: it doesn't get better.
00:39:47.000It doesn't get better because if each party pledges that they will expand government in ways and times of their own choosing, and then they fail, and then the other party just does the same thing, then trusting government is going to continue to crater.
00:40:13.000The best thing that I can do is get out of your way, deregulation, lower taxes, less government interventionism in your life.
00:40:21.000Now, again, this doesn't mean getting rid of the benefits immediately that people need to live on because they've been made dependent on the government.
00:40:29.000But yes, transitional plans away from those things would be a good thing because otherwise they will eat our federal budget, as indeed they already have.
00:40:35.000If you wonder how we got to a $38 trillion debt, that is how we got to a $38 trillion debt.
00:40:41.000The convenient thing is to blame discretionary spending.
00:40:43.000It is not, in fact, discretionary spending in the main.
00:40:46.000It is the fact that people constantly come in and say they're going to solve all your problems if you just give them more money and more power and more centralized control.
00:40:53.000And then people, this is why people are ping-ponging between the parties, because Republicans say that and then they don't fix it.
00:40:58.000And then Democrats say it and they don't fix it.
00:41:00.000And then Republicans say it and they don't fix it.
00:41:03.000Well, at some point, the American people are going to have to get wise to this political grift.
00:41:07.000Now, Peter Thiel, he did an interview at the Free Press, pretty interesting, in which he was talking about capitalism in ways I didn't particularly like.
00:41:14.000But one thing he said is that we are in what he called a political boom market.
00:41:17.000And I think that's right because we now live in a time where people so little trust themselves and risk-taking and the free markets that they're willing to toss their power at any demagogue who will tell them that he can solve their problems.
00:41:49.000You know what makes your world more affordable?
00:41:51.000People being left alone to produce and trade and live the free lives that they were guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
00:41:58.000That's what makes things better and more affordable.
00:41:59.000It's why America is the envy of the world.
00:42:01.000Every other country on earth tries this centralized government policy junk and has been trying it for legitimately centuries, going all the way back to mercantilism.
00:42:08.000The notion that if we just try it hard enough this time, it's going to fix it.
00:42:11.000I see zero evidence that that is in fact the case.
00:42:14.000All righty, in a moment, we'll get to the state of the economy.
00:42:17.000Can the Trump administration really lower the prices?
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00:43:41.000Now, the reason I'm talking here about the sort of model of politics that has broken into the mainstream and now seems to be rising on both sides is because it's not going to fix our problems.
00:43:52.000If you actually want to bring down prices, if you actually want affordability, we know the things that make affordability happen here on planet Earth.
00:44:05.000Now, that's not going to affect everybody equally beneficially.
00:44:08.000Some people are going to do a lot better than others.
00:44:10.000Some people, presumably, will be the victims of what Joseph Schumpeter, the economist, called creative destruction.
00:44:17.000Every time you have a new industry or a more competitive business that comes up, somebody loses in that particular zero-sum game.
00:44:23.000But the thing about the market is that it has many iterations.
00:44:26.000And so even if you lose in that particular game, you then get to come back and do it again and become even more competitive.
00:44:33.000That is why free markets always drive prices down.
00:44:35.000It's why when there are people out there who are critical of quote-unquote luxury products, we have to understand that everything that you now consider to be a necessity, a staple of your life, was once a luxury product.
00:44:46.000The food that you eat at your table is significantly more diverse than the food that your great-grandparents ate.
00:45:04.000Literally every product that you use was once a luxury product.
00:45:08.000It's why when you go back, we go back and watch the old movie Wall Street and you see Gordon Gekka walking around with a cell phone, everybody's like, ooh, and it looks like a shoebox that he's holding to his head.
00:45:16.000And now every single person, including the poorest American, has a cell phone.
00:45:21.000But it seems that no one is even willing to argue for free markets these days anymore.
00:45:27.000And then why are we surprised when we disappoint?
00:45:30.000Because if you keep using a screwdriver to try and knock in the nail, you're unlikely to be successful.
00:45:37.000So there's a lot of angst on the Republican side of the aisle about the state of the economy and also about the Trump affordability issues.
00:45:45.000Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessett, who of course understands capitalism better than I do.
00:45:49.000Scott Bessett, he says that we are going to bring prices down over the next years and months.
00:45:53.000I can tell you, what we're not going to do is what happened under the Biden administration, where the administration and the media gaslit everyone and said, oh, you know, there's a vibe session.
00:46:06.000You don't understand how good you have it.
00:46:09.000And what happened then was we had the worst inflation 40 or 50 years, 22, 23%, but the basket of goods and services for working Americans was up more than 30%.
00:46:21.000And what we're seeing is we had to stop the increase first.
00:46:26.000Now we are starting to see prices level off, come down.
00:46:49.000I think one of the ways that prices probably come down is if sometime next year, when the Supreme Court rules on tariffs and probably strikes down a lot of the tariffs, the markets open up again, which would be very, very good.
00:46:59.000But I'll tell you what's not going to bring prices down is things like proposing 50-year mortgages.
00:47:03.000So President Trump over the weekend decided that he was going to promote what he called 50-year mortgages.
00:47:09.000That President FDR had promoted the 30-year mortgage.
00:47:13.000And under President Trump, there would be a 50-year mortgage.
00:47:16.000Okay, the problem, of course, of the 50-year mortgage is that it skews the risk incentive cycle.
00:47:20.000What a 50-year mortgage actually will do is create a bubble in real estate as more and more people take out a 50-year mortgage on which they will presumably pay tons and tons and tons of interest.
00:47:31.000And then don't worry, 20 years down the road, everybody will complain about the interest payments that they are making and how much more they are paying than the actual principal.
00:47:37.000And then we'll have a 75-year mortgage.
00:47:39.000And meanwhile, the prices will continue to go up.
00:47:41.000That doesn't generate actual lowering of prices.
00:47:45.000What generates actual, again, when you have a supply-demand problem, increasing the demand without increasing the supply does not actually lower the price.
00:47:54.000If you want to increase the supply and lower the demand, or just increase the supply and maintain the same demand, or even increase supply faster than demand, you will get lowered prices.
00:48:05.000For the same reason, when President Trump says that he is going to push out a $2,000 tariff dividend to Americans, that the amount of money the federal government has received in via the tariffs allows for the payment of $2,000 to every American family.
00:48:20.000It's a stimulus check that is going to increase prices because that's just helicopter money.
00:48:24.000Helicopter money means that everyone has more money in their pocket, and then they take that money and they spend that money, and then the prices temporarily go up.
00:50:07.000Please explain how, unless what you're talking about is so thoroughly screwing the economy that you end up with a deflationary cycle like the 1930s.
00:50:16.000You could really screw up the economy so badly that demand drops off a cliff, and then you have people burning their grain in their backyard to artificially inflate the prices.
00:50:27.000Scott Besson was trying to explain President Trump's tariffs on Sunday as well.
00:50:30.000He said the goal is to rebalance trade.
00:50:32.000It's completely consistent that the revenues come in at the beginning, then as we rebalance, which is the goal of this, bring back high-paid manufacturing jobs to the U.S., then it will then morph into domestic tax revenues.
00:50:47.000You know, President Trump has consistently fought for the American worker, and we are seeing trillions of investments in the U.S. that would not have occurred without the tariffs.
00:51:02.000Well, you know, again, I have doubts, and we'll find out if the American people feel the same way.
00:51:07.000It turns out that the classical economic thoughts about tariffs, in my view, tend to be correct.
00:51:21.000And I mean, this is really an amazing thing.
00:51:23.000Apparently, the director general of the BBC resigned on Sunday amid scandal after the British state broadcaster shared doctored footage of President Trump speaking on January 6th.
00:51:32.000This is according to the New York Post.
00:51:33.000Tim Davey, who's headed up the BBC for five years, said he was taking ultimate responsibility for recent mistakes made in a statement that was published by the BBC.
00:51:43.000Apparently, that came after it was revealed that their flagship news program, Panorama, spliced together two separate clips of President Trump talking on January 6th, 2021, implying he had directly told his supporters to storm the Capitol, which, of course, is not true.
00:51:58.000The program, which was aired one week before the 2024 presidential election, completely misled viewers by showing Trump telling supporters he was going to walk with them to the Capitol and fight like hell.
00:52:07.000But his full quote was that he would walk with supporters to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
00:52:12.000But then the BBC cut out the part that was relevant to make it sound like he was going to lead them in storming the Capitol.
00:52:19.000Apparently, senior executives at the BBC ignored and dismissed a series of serious internal complaints, according to a 19-page memo.
00:52:26.000And now the head of the BBC is gone, which is perfectly appropriate, but it demonstrates the lengths to which the media tried to go in 2024 in order to prop up the ailing candidacy of Kamala Harris.
00:53:06.000The Christmas Ring, we didn't reinvent the wheel.
00:53:08.000Karen Kingsbury has written a lovely, lovely tale about redemption, forgiveness, love, looking for love, loss, a bit of grief, and you throw in some Christmas miracle stuff and the idea that we are children of God.
00:53:22.000We're all children of God and we all look for the blessings of Christmas.
00:53:26.000You know, the redemption story and love is what defines it all.
00:54:23.000I mean, my own family, my granddad served in World War II, and he would have been 122 right now instead of 102, but he was quite a guy and their lives were defined by service.
00:54:42.000It does seem as though there is a revival that's happening right now in Hollywood, or at least outside of Hollywood, in terms of material that actually is friendly to conservatives, that isn't looking down at conservatives, and that actually is quality-driven as opposed to sort of just pandering.
00:55:02.000I look on it as a kind of a, it's about time groundswell of A rebirth of a sense of faith and the sort of the consistent interweaving of both conservative principles, which is basically to save what's good about us and faith, which is also that saves what's good about us.
00:55:22.000And I think those two things are twinned in the new movement.
00:55:27.000And I do think there is a sense of entertainment.
00:55:29.000People finally caught on that these people have money too, and that they'd like to see some entertainment that's geared toward them at the same time.
00:55:40.000Well, Kelsey, I would be remiss if I didn't ask.
00:55:42.000As per one of my producers, he's very excited also, just as a side note, that you are going to be in Adventures Doomsday.
00:55:47.000So that's very exciting news as well for a lot of folks.
00:55:52.000It was very exciting news for me because, you know, 20 years ago, I did it and we premiered the film in Cannes.
00:55:58.000And all the producers came up to me and said, we've just cracked this whole new idea for the ongoing series.
00:56:03.000And I thought, I finally, in a big franchise, I've made it.
00:56:06.000And they said, we're going younger, and you guys are all gone.
00:56:11.000So I thought, oh, well, that's sort of a bit crestfallen after that.
00:56:15.000But it was a fun kind of, you know, a dish best served cold when they came back 20 years later.
00:56:55.000Coming up, we're going to jump into a little bit of foreign policy and a shocking story about apparently discriminatory hiring at Coca-Cola.
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