00:00:50.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:25.000Yeah, so just for those who don't remember, along with all of the affirmative action stuff the Supreme Court did a couple weeks ago, they also did a ruling on President Biden's big student loan forgiveness plan.
00:01:38.000He basically came out and said, we can use this piece of post-9-11 law that we passed for national emergencies to say that the COVID national emergency lets us forgive, I think it was about like $440 billion in student loans, just whoosh.
00:01:54.000And the Supreme Court said, that's going too far.
00:02:11.000They're clearly like trying to find every angle they can.
00:02:14.000So the announcement they made today is they found a way to forgive $39 billion worth of loans for 804,000 different borrowers, which if you do the math, I think it's like $40,000 a person or something.
00:02:30.000And they found that for it's under like their student loan forgiveness plans that you can sign up for, where if you make payments for 20 years and you're doing public service or whatever, they will forgive it.
00:02:43.000Now, the way they extended this is they took people who actually had not been making payments, like if they missed payments or they did only partial payments, they just essentially said, oh, actually, we're just going to count those and still give you the amnesty.
00:02:57.000So no rewards for playing by the rules.
00:03:28.000You know, 30 billion here, 30 billion there, and soon you're talking about real money.
00:03:32.000And you're gradually transitioning us to a new system where what we're going to get is we're just going to have a de facto bonus four years of school that everyone's going to get.
00:03:42.000And all the money is going to go to these universities.
00:03:49.000And they'll basically be dependent on public money.
00:03:52.000And The plan going forward is a system that will be so generous towards such a large share of the borrowers that what we're really doing is we're going to be announcing we're going to give $50,000 or $100,000 to every university that can get someone to attend it.
00:04:08.000And only a small slice of those people will ever be meaningfully expected to repay all of their loans.
00:04:14.000Yeah, and I mean, it's a mechanism of control because they're not even forgiving all the loans.
00:04:18.000It's just enough to keep you coming back to vote for more.
00:04:21.000Yeah, it's enough that you still have to worry about it getting taken away.
00:04:25.000And it's also what really stands out to me is that we'll be funneling all of this money to these schools, and they basically just get it.
00:04:38.000They have endowments, but not every school has an endowment, but it's just that these schools are basically wholly dependent on the federal government for their funds because so many of these couldn't make it without these subsidized loans.
00:04:48.000And then they don't really have to hit any requirements to keep getting them.
00:04:52.000Like in theory, the government could say you have to meet these thresholds to keep receiving loans.
00:04:57.000Like your people have to make enough money or they have to pay back their loans at a certain high rate.
00:05:02.000But we haven't really done any of that.
00:05:04.000And I don't see them doing that going forward because the Biden administration has really talked about how great HBCUs are.
00:05:10.000And HBCUs have terrible loan repayment rates compared to a lot of schools.
00:05:15.000And sadly, on the Republican side of things, we're often really allied to for-profit colleges, and those also have pretty bad numbers.
00:05:22.000And I feel like no one is talking about the obvious way to fix this problem, which is, I think, the system you want is one where you can do student loans, but the college has to co-sign it.
00:05:36.000Yeah, like essentially change the system from we're giving the money to the student who then takes it wherever.
00:05:42.000We're thinking of the student is actoring in collaboration with the university.
00:05:46.000The university, we have expectations for you.
00:05:48.000And if this student who you say is deserving of all this money doesn't, isn't able to pay it back, they'll be the first one to pay it back.
00:05:55.000But if they're not able to do it, the school is on the hook for it.
00:05:58.000And if the school, then that removes so much of the moral hazard that exists right now, where it's just get them in, trick them whatever way you can, get the money.
00:06:05.000To now, if this doesn't work out for this person and for society, they don't get the money.
00:06:10.000The graduation rate, 41% of people that enter drop out.
00:06:24.000And or even just a lot of other things that are superficially serious and technical that we still just don't need.
00:06:31.000And then the fact that we treat all of these programs very equally, like there's no, you don't get a lower interest rate if you're going to study mechanical engineering.
00:07:10.000I think the new college remake strategy is not something you'd want for every single school.
00:07:16.000I don't think you necessarily want the University of Texas to be exactly like Hillsdale because it's just, it serves a much bigger purpose.
00:07:23.000It has, you know, a med school, a law school, does all these extra things that Hillsdale doesn't do.
00:07:28.000But what it does show is you have to treat these schools as what they are, which is they are state-backed, essentially political entities.
00:07:38.000And there's a lot of conservatives who I think are sentimental about colleges, and they get easily bamboozled by a certain image of colleges that's not accurate anymore.
00:07:49.000And my opinion is you should look at any college trustee position as the equivalent of like appointing someone to a Supreme Court or any other lifelong appointment.
00:08:01.000Not necessarily lifelong, but that it is a political appointment.
00:08:05.000It's not something that you just give to a donor the way like we hand out ambassadorships to people, which is often what is the case.
00:08:12.000You have to look at it as this is a super important, heavily political position that involves an institution with thousands of employees and tens of thousands of students.
00:08:20.000And if we approach it that way, we can get better outcomes because we should just approach it from first principles.
00:08:27.000What would we want a university to do?
00:08:29.000Why doesn't the university look like that?
00:08:30.000What do we change to make it like that?
00:08:32.000And that might mean abolish a ton of programs, abolish how it's run, change how its classes are done, and yeah, change what we're willing to pay for.
00:08:41.000Yeah, and also just, I mean, you said have the colleges be on the hook.
00:08:44.000And do you think it's time to tax the endowments?
00:09:52.000Whereas a ton of schools, hundreds of schools, basically have minimal endowments and they get by entirely on the fact that they're eligible for federal loans.
00:10:02.000And those schools, if you change endowments, yeah, they'll scream about it, but they're not existentially concerned with that nearly as much as how we do our loans, how they're paid back, what we expect schools to do with them.
00:10:14.000And the same goes for most public schools.
00:10:16.000Like your big flagships have a ton of money, but a lot of the lesser ones are more just dependent on what the state gives them every single year.
00:10:23.000And those schools are going to be far more responsive to the incentives we create for them.
00:11:48.000I think it is technically readable in the sense that, you know, a human being who has been trained in phonics can like place their finger on the text and if they're paying attention, they can deduce what was meant by it.
00:11:59.000But it is very, you know, as the, as the Hitchens.
00:12:04.000So let's just remind people: I said that Michelle Obama, Joy Reed, and Katanji Brown Jackson stole a spot that an otherwise applicant, qualified applicant would have said, would have had.
00:12:16.000I should have said not just white person, but white or Asian or otherwise qualified applicant, but it's live on radio.
00:12:26.000And by the way, all of them self-acknowledge and admit Michelle Obama's high school counselor said she didn't have good enough grades to get into Princeton if it wasn't for affirmative action.
00:12:54.000I direct your attention to Mrs. Obama's 1985 thesis at Princeton University.
00:12:58.000Its title, rather limited in scope, given the author and the campus, is Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community.
00:13:06.000To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake.
00:13:10.000The thesis cannot be read at all in the strict sense of the verb.
00:13:14.000This is because it wasn't written in any known language.
00:13:18.000And having read chunks of it, like what it does is it has a lot of, you know, you have to use that sick thing several times in it where they, there's like some typos and misspellings and grammatical flubs that they probably ideally would have caught.
00:13:31.000But, you know, you don't have spell check.
00:13:34.000But what really stands out about it is just, you know, she's been given this incredible opportunity to, you know, without having the proper test scores, attend this top five world university at Princeton.
00:13:46.000And, you know, she can study anything she wants.
00:13:49.000And what she does is she writes a thesis on like being black at Princeton, like an autoethnography thing.
00:13:55.000You know, you could have at least studied some other group coming to Princeton.
00:13:59.000You might have like expanded your horizon a bit.
00:14:20.000You know, they learn all these other languages and learn all these other cultures because they want to spread their faith all over the world.
00:14:25.000And then on the flip side, you just have Michelle Obama who's like, the world needs to know more about what it's like being me at the school that I attended.
00:14:34.000Yeah, I mean, Brian, you speak like Cantonese or something, right?
00:15:41.000Reconsider my public policy positions on affirmative action because of the outright brilliance of Michelle Obama to change the brown jacket.
00:15:59.000But I rise today as a clear recipient of affirmative action, and particularly in higher education.
00:16:07.000I may have been admitted on affirmative action, both in terms of being a woman and a woman of color, but I can declare that I did not graduate on affirmative action.
00:18:06.000Mike Pence and Tucker Carlson sit down.
00:18:09.000Blake, you have to help me understand why are they afraid to come to turning point, but they're like excited to sit down with Tucker Carlson.
00:18:15.000Maybe they're thinking like, well, in 2017, I went on Tucker.
00:18:19.000Like, it was a fun time at Fox and was really friendly.
00:18:21.000There's no way they haven't thought deeply about this.
00:18:23.000No, it's entirely possible they haven't thought deeply about this.
00:18:26.000They have professional GOP consultant staff, and those people frequently don't think at all, let alone deeply.
00:18:31.000But they don't want to come to turning point because of something.
00:18:33.000The whole thing's really bizarre and strange to me.
00:18:36.000Yeah, I mean, it'd be really funny if Tucker was just like, who wants to fly to Florida with me?
00:19:26.000Public filth and disorder and crime have exponentially increased.
00:19:31.000And yet, your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can't find on a map, who've received tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars, don't have enough tanks.
00:20:32.000The Republican Party always has a vulnerability, especially like 2000 to 2012 of like find man who looks like very rectangular shaped in a suit.
00:20:42.000He could play a president on like one of those Fox shows about the war on terror.
00:20:46.000You know, he can stand up and be like, America is firm in its resolve and its resolution against the irresolute in Rezolushistan.
00:20:54.000And, you know, he could be good at that sort of thing.
00:20:56.000So that's enough to become governor, house member, whatever circuit of offices that he had, all the way up to vice president.
00:21:03.000But now he wants to become president and he hasn't updated and we're not going to be as merciful on strange gaffes like this.
00:21:12.000No, but he said it twice, just so we're clear.
00:22:59.000So, Blake, I went on the Patrick Bett David podcast.
00:23:01.000And as you know, I'm a serious Christian.
00:23:03.000And Patrick Bett David, who grew up in Iran, I think he's a Christian.
00:23:08.000I don't think he's a Muslim, but he has a lot of Muslim friends, obviously.
00:23:11.000Yeah, he's Christian, but he definitely has a lot of friends that are Muslim.
00:23:15.000He put me on the spot and asked me, he said, Charlie, is it time for the Republican Party to go and embrace Muslims because they're not in the trans thing and they're pro-life?
00:23:27.000And my answer was maybe, because I have some huge theological differences with Muslims, and I also think that there's evidence that radical Islam and radical, you know, kind of where Muslims are is inconsistent with some tenets of Western society and culture.
00:23:42.000But I also said that I would much rather work with Muslim groups than work with the LGBTQ mafia on anything.
00:24:03.000I think it's difficult because it does require some humility in acknowledging America has fundamentally changed.
00:24:10.000It's less Christian than it was before.
00:24:12.000It is difficult to get wins without making alliances that we would have previously considered really strange.
00:24:19.000But I don't think it's unthinkable simply in the fact that any alliance, any alliance between different groups is we get into this because we both have a shared interest.
00:24:29.000And if American Muslims have the interest of we don't want our kids taught insane LGBT stuff in school, we don't want our kids to be trans by their doctors while we're looking away.
00:24:48.000Now, if this becomes some sort of broad political coalition deal where, you know, oh, we should embrace like having a million people move here from the Middle East every year as part of this deal, then I would probably say, no, that's not in America's interests and it's not in conservatives' interests and it's not in Christian conservatives' interests.
00:25:10.000But to say like, oh, we have a burden to like tell them to buzz off and keep voting Democrats.
00:25:31.000Keep in mind, Muslims are also religiously diverse, as it were.
00:25:35.000You have Sunnis, you have Shias, you have people who are really serious about it, you have people who are not very serious about it.
00:25:40.000And it's the same thing with Christianity, where obviously we have to try to campaign towards both very serious Christians and cultural Christians who are still relatively on our side.
00:25:52.000And it's probably a similar thing with a lot of Muslim people.
00:25:57.000I certainly don't think we should concede and say that female genital mutilation is a great idea because some very true noble communities like that.
00:26:07.000I also believe that there are some fruits of modernity that Islamic countries reject that are beautiful, like freedom of dialogue and interest and entrepreneurialism and private property rights and separation of powers.
00:26:24.000Okay, well, I mean, the Bible, we sometimes have to read vaguely into the Bible to get clear condemnations of abortion, but we don't have to read very far to find clear condemnations of lending at interest.
00:26:34.000Technically, it's supposed to be a ban just between fellow Jews is what the law was supposed to be written as.
00:26:40.000Well, yes, but like, so traditionally, that was that Christians believed that they inherited that same obligation.
00:26:45.000No, of course, only amongst those in your own belief, though, right?
00:26:48.000So like the way that, without getting too far down the rabbit hole of, you know, rabbinical law, it's in the book of Exodus, is that Jews shall not charge interest to other Jews.
00:26:57.000That if it's a non-Jew, then it's fine.
00:26:59.000But, you know, but yeah, but the tradition of the church is that like the church, the Christian church is Israel today, so to speak.
00:27:06.000Yeah, so but do you think interest has been a good thing for Western economies?
00:27:10.000I think you can engage with that question of like, well, actually, you know, a 2% or 3% rate of interest that matches inflation is not extortionate.
00:27:20.000I think interest is great when, I mean, personally, if I want to get a home loan, like I think it's good that a home wants, a bank wants to bet on that, right?
00:27:29.000I think we can, you know, we can confront the fact that when the Bible condemns lending at interest, their problem is not this like 6% like Aquinas will write that this is unjust because it causes a good to be created out of nothing without the labor input into it.
00:27:43.000When it's really that the problem is that historically debt would enslave people.
00:27:47.000And so that's also why you put out the tradition of debt.
00:28:20.000So bottom line then, Blake, so is it we should have some openness?
00:28:25.000I mean, so, for example, we have the LGBTQ mafia on the card, you know, they're the rainbow guard.
00:28:30.000I mean, we make alliances with appalling nations that believe that how should we think about alliances?
00:28:38.000I think, it's like I said, we have to be clear on what is our interest that we are trying to pursue.
00:28:44.000And the alliance can last as long as that shared interest exists.
00:28:50.000And you don't need to be, you just don't over-sentimentalize these things and you don't concede more than actually is wise for you to give up.
00:28:58.000And like, that's kind of why NATO has gotten so bad for us, is that like NATO existed, where all of these countries that support free market capitalism and religious liberty and all these things, we oppose communism.
00:29:08.000We need a military alliance to oppose communism.
00:29:11.000Communism went away, and we're like, well, now NATO just has to keep existing because it has existed.
00:29:32.000Social issues are one of the main reasons why this Ukrainian-Russian war is ongoing, which is hilarious why Mike Pence is so enthusiastic behind your craze.
00:29:43.000There's just so many people who are like these strange, it's like in the movie GoldenEye, the Bond movie, Judy Dench calls Bond a relic of the Cold War.
00:29:51.000We have too many relics of the Cold War sitting around.
00:29:53.000But we have also too many people that are still parroting the muscle memory of the Cold War.
00:30:39.000If you were like team Pence to defend Pence of what he was trying to say, I think what he was trying to say is that Tucker's caricature of him is not actually the concern.
00:31:20.000Public filth and disorder and crime have exponentially increased.
00:31:25.000And yet, your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can't find on a map, who've received tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars, don't have enough tanks.
00:32:30.000I mean, my bias is always that to be relatively charitable towards people.
00:32:35.000And I don't think, you know, even if we have a lot of problems with Mike Pence, I don't think he decided to spend this decades-long career and then go on stage and say, you know what, America?
00:32:44.000And then flip the bird, two birds to the entire crowd.
00:33:38.000We're going to get this economy moving again.
00:33:40.000And we're going to make sure that we have men and women on our courts at every level that will stand for the right to life and defend all the God-given liberties enshrined in our Constitution.
00:33:51.000Anybody that says that we can't be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on earth.
00:34:03.000If you listen to that, he says he's kind of making, I'm going to be president of America, but then he says, we're also going to be leader of the free world and we can do both.
00:34:10.000And it's like, so Ukraine is your concern, man.
00:34:14.000I mean, that is what you say is, but I don't think Pence was saying, like, I don't care about all those American things.
00:34:21.000But here's how Pence should have answered.