00:00:17.000And then Mike Rowe joins the program, one of my favorite people about something we've been talking about for quite some time.
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00:01:39.000The Wall Street Journal attempted a terrible drive-by, as the great Rush Lumbaugh would say it, as I'm wearing my Rush Was Right t-shirt, of our phenomenal president.
00:01:49.000I mean, this goes, as soon as I read the story, I said, this is the dumbest, obviously fakest thing.
00:01:56.000Apparently, it was some sort of like a pseudo-love letter.
00:02:00.000The bombshell story was some kind of birthday card album assembled for Epstein by Ghelane Maxwell in 2003.
00:02:10.000There's no photo of the letter in question or the birthday cards supposedly sent by other people.
00:02:16.000It only described by the Wall Street Journal, which also cites people familiar with them, so they clearly didn't see the whole thing.
00:02:22.000The card is some sort of a hand-drawn illustration of a naked woman, Don and Marker, and then Donald Trump's signature over her midsection to apparently imitate pubic hair.
00:02:33.000It's just like so for Epstein's 50th birthday.
00:02:37.000The implication is that Trump might have made this illustration himself, which just sounds so bizarre.
00:02:41.000When has he ever done anything like this?
00:02:43.000Look, I have several handwritten notes from President Trump.
00:03:11.000You have watched him for over a decade do MAGA rallies ever since he went down the golden escalator.
00:03:16.000Does quote enigmas never age, quote, may every day be a wonderful secret?
00:03:21.000Does that sound like President Donald Trump?
00:03:25.000Trump never said, says Trump says this was all a hoax and says, as far as he's concerned, it sounds like it.
00:03:30.000Nothing sounds remotely like Trump, like he would write up on his own.
00:03:33.000And so the Wall Street Journal releases this last night.
00:03:36.000Now, I quickly, and we quickly came to the president's defense because this thing was obviously a hit job, obviously a drive-by shooting trying to go after President Trump, trying to tie some of the Epstein news to President Trump to try to bring down his approval ratings and try to weaken him.
00:03:54.000Right after that, though, was a like literally within an hour, President Donald Trump announced a bombshell development, massive, where President Donald Trump announced that he is authorizing Pam Bondi to move to unseal the grand jury testimony in the Ghana Maxwell case.
00:04:13.000We discussed this a couple times throughout the week.
00:04:17.000This is something that needs to be focused on.
00:04:20.000For any of you that care about the Epstein story, what's likely to be in the transcripts?
00:04:24.000Well, testimony of Epstein and Maxwell victims and witnesses, in particular their actions, their associations, locations, and timelines.
00:04:32.000Discussions of physical and documentary evidence is likely to be in there.
00:04:36.000Maxwell's phone wiretap records, logbooks, private island, and photographic evidence.
00:04:41.000We don't know for sure if that's going to be in there, but any references to any of that stuff very well might be in the grand jury documents.
00:04:48.000However, certain experts note that these transcripts may be limited in scope.
00:04:52.000They will focus on Epstein and Maxwell, not on the broader allegations among other high-profile individuals.
00:04:59.000But still, this is a phenomenal development.
00:05:01.000And thank you, President Trump, and thank you to this Trump administration.
00:05:04.000So the team decided to play, you know, I get along with the help of my friends is a little bit kind of as a light-hearted joke and a little bit of a wink and a nod.
00:05:12.000You see, I went viral this week because I said, look, a lot of people that I know in the administration, my friends and the White House staff and throughout the government, they were working on this, that your voices were heard over the weekend at the Student Action Summit.
00:05:34.000Well, it turns out it's, well, it looks like they were, and they deserve great credit for it.
00:05:39.000For all the White House staff, for everyone that was involved in this, and especially, of course, the president.
00:05:44.000This is a massive move and one that is met with celebration and one that is met with gratitude.
00:05:49.000And one that honestly shows that President Trump is moving in a transparent way that Joe Biden never moved.
00:05:55.000Joe Biden very well could have moved to unseal the grand jury documents.
00:06:00.000Many of these things have been in the works.
00:06:03.000And I didn't know how long any of this was going to take, obviously.
00:06:06.000And look, this show is full of, at times, little Easter eggs and tidbits.
00:06:11.000And instead of assuming the worst, perhaps I want everyone to see things more clearly.
00:06:16.000And again, has President Trump not earned our trust at this time?
00:06:19.000That's what I was trying to say back on Monday.
00:06:21.000And maybe I said it a little imprecisely after a sleepless weekend and a high adrenaline event.
00:06:27.000What I was trying to get at is after the tariffs, after the Iran, after the Iran situation, after all the successes, President Donald Trump is worthy of our confidence.
00:06:37.000We should have a full confidence vote in President Donald Trump.
00:06:41.000And throughout the entire week, I know that there was a lot of question of, hey, what's going on here?
00:06:49.000Number one, he gets attacked just relentlessly by the Wall Street Journal in such an uncalled-for way.
00:06:54.000And we have his back 100% against this smearing and this slandering.
00:06:59.000And then number two, President Donald Trump has authorized Pam Bondi in a historic way to show a commitment to transparency and what he has said this entire week.
00:07:10.000And he has always had an ace in the hole to play.
00:07:22.000You know, if it's credible, we should get it out.
00:07:24.000And the grand jury documentation largely is credible and should be received as such.
00:07:28.000And also, let's just be honest, everybody.
00:07:31.000We do not want what has happened this last week to slow down the momentum of this great administration.
00:07:36.000We're not going to let that happen on this program.
00:07:37.000That is why we're going to cover this in just one segment.
00:07:40.000We have Mike Rowe later this week, later this hour.
00:07:43.000And then I'm going to talk about amnesty the next segment.
00:07:45.000This is very important, and the president deserves thanks.
00:07:48.000So, for any of you in the audience that were a little uneasy, that were a little anxious, I think it's morally incumbent on you to say, thank you, President Trump.
00:07:57.000Thank you for stepping up and for doing this.
00:07:59.000Thank you, President Trump, for fulfilling what you said you were going to do because he does deserve credit.
00:08:05.000And the entire White House administration deserves credit because they've been dealing with 900 different things.
00:08:11.000And I know that patience in the time of social media is a virtue that is lost.
00:09:19.000A lot of people were coming to the president's defense after the Pam Bondi news, but it was very telling that a lot of people did not defend the president there.
00:12:06.000She's in a very Cuban district, which is unusual why she's so pro-amnesty, being from a Cuban Venezuelan district, because there's not a lot of illegals in the Cuban demographic.
00:12:19.000Many of them have come here legally or they came under legitimate asylum or refugee status.
00:13:31.000They are illegals or undocumented, but they have been here for more than five years, contributing to the economy.
00:13:37.000Those people, someone gave them a job, and they are needed because we need hands in order to continue being the number one economy in the world.
00:13:44.000So why don't we do something solomonic and let's break the baby into two.
00:15:37.000I'm not even going to get into the merits of how bad her idea is.
00:15:40.000I'm getting down to the technical enforcement problem of what Maria Alvares Salazar, the amnesty czar of Congress, is saying.
00:15:47.000What she is saying here basically is that all of a sudden we go get hands on someone that has been here for two years under the threshold, what she considers to be there.
00:15:56.000And all they have to do, they have to say the magic words.
00:15:59.000Remember, the hocus pocus words to get into America under Biden was asylum, asylum, asylum, asylum.
00:16:05.000Those were the hocus-pocus words to be able to get to your travel agent from expedia.com, which Board of Patrol was.
00:16:11.000Now the average words is all they have to say is two things in Spanish.
00:17:09.000And she's trying to prey on the best intentions of MAGA.
00:17:12.000Because a lot of MAGA says, yeah, I guess if you've been here for seven years, it's not about the seven years or eight years, even though that's wrong and they should all go.
00:17:19.000It's about what it will do practically.
00:18:23.000We did not have the rallies and millions of people vote in first-time numbers so we could have the ICE agents who are getting dox and having their lives put in danger not be able to do their job.
00:18:34.000I want to just play one more piece of tape here from Maria Elvira Sarazar.
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00:21:36.000They're not coming for the steam fitters or the pipe fitters or the HVAC.
00:21:41.000They're not coming for the electricians.
00:21:43.000You know, that ideas festival I was telling you about in Aspen, I sat there and listened to Larry Fink say, we need 500,000 electricians in the next couple of years.
00:22:14.000Yeah, one of the craziest events I've ever attended simply because of its import and I think the lack of coverage that it's gotten.
00:22:26.000This was the Energy and AI Summit convened in Pittsburgh a couple days ago by both sitting senators of that state.
00:22:36.000This was primarily David McCormick's event.
00:22:40.000He's the Republican, but John Fetterman was there, the Democrat, along with hundreds of people and 30 or 40 of the CEOs of the biggest companies in the country.
00:22:54.000I was on the stage with the president and 30 CEOs as they pledged $92 billion to create a bunch of jobs in the energy sector, specifically in Pennsylvania for the purposes of building data centers, which are basically AI factories, as we know.
00:23:22.000And I think I got invited to sort of remind the crowd that creating jobs is different than creating enthusiasm for jobs.
00:23:35.000And, you know, I'm kind of a Debbie downer in a situation like that because I think a lot of people still cling to this idea that the way to get people back to work is to create jobs or create more opportunity.
00:23:49.000But that kind of collapses under its own weight when you look at 7.6 million open jobs at the moment, including 500,000 open jobs in manufacturing.
00:24:00.000So in general, Charlie, my message was, look, I was rooting for Obama in 2009 when he promised 3 million shovel-ready jobs in his Highway Infrastructure Act.
00:24:12.000But I said at the time, very publicly, you're going to have a tough time selling 3 million shovel-ready jobs to a country that is not all that enthused about picking up a shovel.
00:24:22.000And I worry too today with this president, if he succeeds, and I'm rooting for him too, I want to see reshoring.
00:24:30.000I want to see this reindustrialization in this country, this manufacturing renaissance.
00:24:36.000But he's going to create a couple million jobs if he pulls this off.
00:24:40.000And we're living in a world and in a moment where we got 500,000 jobs in manufacturing right now that we can't fill.
00:24:48.000So that's kind of why I was there in the only suit and tie that I actually own testifying.
00:24:55.000I was shocked to see you dressed like a banker, Mike Rowe.
00:25:00.000I wasn't even sure what to think of it.
00:25:34.000I represent a lot of blue-collar workers who are fans of our show because I try to give a voice to that portion of the country.
00:25:43.000But part of the problem, and we call them the muscular class on the show, as you know, Mike, part of the problem are parents around the country would rather have their kid go into debt to study sociology at Wellesley than to go work construction.
00:26:10.000They should encourage it because they actually might have better character, a better financial balance sheet, less debt, and greater job opportunities than studying communications at University of Illinois.
00:26:41.000They're desperate for an instruction manual.
00:26:45.000But we fall into this cookie cutter world where politicians in particular, but lots of other people too, speak very broadly and paint with a real broad brush.
00:26:56.000And so a lot of parents who really don't know any better have been told from the get-go that the best path for the most people is the most expensive path and that their kids are screwed if they don't take that path.
00:27:08.000Therefore, surprise, surprise, universities have been able to charge whatever they want, essentially, because the feds have opened up a bottomless pile of free money.
00:27:18.000And we have collectively encouraged a whole generation to borrow whatever it takes to fulfill their dreams.
00:27:25.000So it's not one person doing a really foolish thing.
00:27:29.000It's a lot of people standing by watching a lot of dumb things happen, including, and perhaps especially the removal of shop class from high school.
00:27:40.000That really put us, that put us on a road, Charlie, a bad road.
00:27:45.000And, you know, it didn't just impact the widening skills gap.
00:27:51.000It removed from view any optical proof that a regular kid could have that these muscular jobs exist, walking from English to math class and sticking your head in the metal shop and seeing that image right there.
00:28:07.000At least you could get a look at something that resembled work.
00:28:13.000We just arbitraged it right out of the whole process.
00:28:17.000And so parents were left with this idea that there was really only one path for their kid.
00:28:24.000And if their kid couldn't take that path, everything else, including that guy welding two pipes together, was some sort of vocational consolation prize.
00:28:35.000Well, the chickens have come home to roost.
00:28:37.000AI, as I said in that clip, is coming for the coders.
00:29:39.000But I want to just, in the three and a half minutes we have in this segment, because it's the most important thing.
00:29:42.000We could talk about the vibes and the cultural stuff forever.
00:29:45.000Can you go through the numbers, Micro?
00:29:47.000How many of these muscular jobs are going to be necessary?
00:29:50.000How many AI jobs are going to be lost?
00:29:53.000And how many job openings are there right now in America that pay a decent wage that require a little bit of skill, a little bit of training, and a lot of hard work?
00:30:02.000What is the current economic number showing us?
00:30:23.000Within that cohort, we've got another 482,000 jobs that are open in manufacturing right now.
00:30:31.000I can't tell you definitively what they pay and what kind of path you're going to get on if you jump into that end of the pool, because state by state, it varies.
00:31:18.000And here's what I'll leave you with, because I know you got to go to a break.
00:31:22.000People talk about welders and electricians and steam fitters and pipe fitters as workers, period.
00:31:29.000The vast majority of small businesses we have in this country were formed by men and women, but mostly men, who mastered a skill that was in demand and then went on to buy a couple of vans and hire their buddy, maybe a plumber, maybe a couple HVAC guys, maybe some electricians.
00:31:48.000And now they have a mechanical contracting company and they're doing a few million bucks a year.
00:31:52.000Those stories need to be told as well.
00:31:56.000Because even though that event I was just at, that was all about the macro economy.
00:32:05.000And I don't want to lose sight of the individual.
00:32:08.000I don't want to lose sight of the fact that mastering a skill that's in demand can still take the right person with a modicum of entrepreneurial spirit and a little bit of ambition.
00:32:21.000It'll put that person on a road, and that road leads to someplace that looks an awful lot like prosperity.
00:32:58.000I could see you want to chime in there because let's talk about that because there is like this, there's this beacon being sent out by corporate America.
00:34:41.000You wanted to chime in about we don't need more sociology degrees.
00:34:45.000Well, I want to agree with you, but make one other point vis-a-vis macro and micro.
00:34:50.000On a macro works level, you're 100% right.
00:34:54.000The country is not reeling or freaking out over a lack of sociologists or philosophers.
00:35:01.000But the individual message is and always will be a bit more nuanced.
00:35:05.000And you just reminded me of that line from Marco Rubio when he was running for office back in 2015, I guess it was.
00:35:13.000And he said, our country needs more welders and fewer philosophers.
00:35:17.000And of course, he's right, but he's not correct.
00:35:21.000What we need, I believe, on an individual level, are more welders who can talk intelligently about Nietzsche and Descartes, right?
00:35:31.000I mean, you didn't go to college, but you're educated, Charlie, and you're curious, and you've got a better liberal arts background than really most liberal arts students that I've ever met.
00:35:44.000But it's equally true as well that we'd be better off as a people with more philosophers who could run an even bead and have a conversation, right, about the muscular trades.
00:35:57.000So I don't want to be the guy who paints with too broad a brush, but I certainly agree with you.
00:36:03.000When you talk, when you hear from a billionaire like Larry Fink freaking out over 500,000 empty slots and electricians, you start to get it.
00:36:14.000And if you're me, not a week goes by where I don't hear from the American industrial base or the maritime base.
00:36:21.000They need 140,000 welders for our submarines and the automotive industry who needs 80,000 people in collision repair and energy, who's 600,0700,000.
00:37:16.000There's only one thing I've seen that actually moves the needle, both with parents, guidance counselors, which are also important, and of course, the kids themselves, which is the most important cohort.
00:37:27.000And that is honest, authentic conversations with people who look like them and talk like them and who have mastered a skill that's in demand and who are prospering as a result.
00:37:44.000At Microworks, I spend most of my time now trying to find people that we assisted five, six years ago and then Zoom with them, just like we're doing right now, or meet with them in person and get their stories.
00:37:58.000What I said to the crowd in Pittsburgh was, look, guys, you just committed $92 billion with a B.
00:38:09.000For the love of God, carve off a fraction of a percentage of that and allocate it to tell the stories of the people in the industries you hope to reinvigorate.
00:39:39.000I think his voice is more important than ever.
00:39:41.000There are millions of young people, primarily young men, that are looking for purpose and they don't know what to do other than just go get good grades.