Sen. Rick Scott (R-GA) joins us to talk about the reconciliation, the budget, and Alcatraz. Recorded in Los Angeles, CA! The Charlie Kirk Show is a weekly podcast hosted by the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, where he talks about what it means to be a free thinker and advocate for freedom in the 21st century.
00:00:58.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:05.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:01:45.000Usually, I take a very serious Sabbath, a Shabbat, but this week was a wartime weekend where we hosted well over 375 of our top Turning Point USA donors and supporters in beautiful San Diego.
00:01:59.000That was, of course, after we did University of California, San Diego.
00:02:34.000And Ross Ulbricht is now free from prison with a full pardon thanks to President Donald Trump, something that I advocated for fiercely and forcefully for quite some time.
00:03:29.000This was one where they're kind of just talking about current events, artificial intelligence, all that.
00:03:33.000I'm not going to tell you what it was or all that, because there's all these confidentiality agreements.
00:03:36.000But here's the important point, is that at one point, somebody asked the groom, raise your hand if you are bullish on the economy and the state of America for the next six months.
00:04:37.000I actually think I'm more bullish for the short-term economy than they are, but that's not worth debating.
00:04:41.000What was telling, though, is that they believe that long-term Trump is going to be long-term great for America.
00:04:49.000And that was the kicker, is that when the money is on the line, There is a long-term bullish perspective on this country.
00:04:58.000That there might be dips and there might be little speed bumps and there might be corrections, but there is an even private agreement amongst people who hate President Donald Trump.
00:05:10.000They believe that this long-term economic realignment will work and that it is necessary.
00:05:17.000And that, I think, is lost in all of the coverage.
00:05:20.000And finally, we have a president that is rejecting the temptation to indulge and engage in immediate gratification.
00:05:29.000It's easy to just get the hands in the room about the next six months.
00:05:33.000What is difficult, but what is necessary, is what is the economy you're building for the next three years, the next 10 years, and the next 30 years?
00:05:43.000And President Trump wants a real legacy.
00:05:44.000And of all the things that President Trump will be reminded for, will be honored for, is cutting us off from the instant gratification of the lords of easy money, of getting high on low interest rates while we are barreling towards a financial and fiscal apocalypse, and then also making the provocative and yet so necessary truth claim That if you don't make stuff in your country, you're not actually a country.
00:06:14.000And finally, he has awoken the United States to what could be called the New Cold War.
00:06:21.000Whether we like it or not, we are involved in some form of a conflict with the Chinese Communist Party.
00:06:28.000And let me just say it right here, there's going to be a testing time.
00:06:32.000The Chinese Communist Party very well might go and play their Taiwan card in this presidency.
00:06:39.000And what that looks like, we don't know.
00:06:41.000And if they're able to get TSMC, which is the Taiwan Semiconductor Plant, which is the backbone of the semiconductor chips for the entire industrialized world, billions of them every year.
00:06:53.000Now, TSMC is investing in America in Arizona, but they do not have the highest grade plant.
00:06:59.000They have what is a three out of four plant, and only a four out of four plant is actually able to make the semiconductor chips that are necessary for the latest iPhones and the latest...
00:07:08.000Devices that power the entire world economy.
00:07:12.000We hardly ever talk about Taiwan and we talk about Israel and Ukraine a lot.
00:07:17.000There's a lot of interesting elements here.
00:07:21.000But I found this to be an incredibly optimistic take.
00:09:58.000And it's going to take some maturity to now look two or three years down the horizon.
00:10:04.000But I could tell you that even those in the ruling class that don't like Trump, even those in the ruling class that have disdain for him and might have a lot of skepticism for the short term, they all believe deep down that President Trump will be able to unleash and unshackle the American economy to greater heights, to be stronger than ever before.
00:11:36.000And only for this because When you make decisions, when you're panicking, and when you are fearful, they're, of course, not the most rational decision.
00:11:44.000By the way, we're here at the Bitcoin.com mobile studio.
00:11:46.000Phenomenal people, Bitcoin.com mobile studio.
00:11:51.000But a month ago was Liberation Day, April 2nd.
00:11:55.000President Trump announces the reciprocal tariffs on all these countries, and the market dips day after day after day, and people are worrying that there will be a run on the bonds.
00:12:04.000Now, mind you, privately, I was getting a lot of messages.
00:12:08.000I think I was a lot more calm than a lot of people I was getting messages from.
00:12:13.000The language and the anger was just out of control.
00:12:19.000I think that it's very deceiving because markets can be manipulated by cheap money and quantitative easing and just high overvaluation of stocks.
00:12:28.000And so I don't love just market watching.
00:13:01.000I know a lot of people that sold millions of dollars of stock, which ended up being like the dumbest thing.
00:13:06.000If they just would have waited a month, the stock market has already recovered, and it looks like it's going to go even higher.
00:13:13.000I know a lot of people that bought the dip, and they've done very, very well.
00:13:17.000And Trump is also often a rollercoaster ride.
00:13:21.000And this is where it connects the dots.
00:13:23.000And it goes back to Trump's economic plan, goes back to this whole thesis here.
00:13:29.000If you were willing to sell during the panicking, or as Trump says, the panicking, then you yourself are a short-term gratification investor.
00:13:42.000America was built on long-term gratification, delayed gratification.
00:14:07.000Because there is so much to be bullish about.
00:14:10.000Where America is on the cutting edge of quantum computing, on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence breakthroughs, on the cutting edge of liquefied natural gas, we are an energy superpower.
00:14:20.000We have entrepreneurs that are the envy of the world.
00:14:22.000And when you have a semblance of a free market liberty economy...
00:14:26.000We are going to be able to compete against China.
00:14:28.000China has so many advantages against us.
00:15:02.000But when you have a free society and you don't have 700 million cameras like China does, constantly monitoring your thoughts and your actions, your body movements, your words, and you live in a legitimately Orwellian society, I actually think that we're going to beat them because of that.
00:15:19.000When you don't have a free society and it's pure totalitarian, long term, I think we're going to have better ideas.
00:15:30.000In the short term, China has an advantage.
00:15:34.000They have over a billion people, about 400 million of them, which is more than the population of America, are extremely driven to get more money and get more stuff.
00:18:15.000There's been so much news here, but there hasn't been enough coverage, in my opinion, about President Trump releasing the fiscal year 26 discretionary budget request to Congress.
00:18:45.000This is the only part of the budget he's ultimately going to put out, but he's got a great team that's focused on how do we get rid of this wasteful spending.
00:18:54.000He's done it with what Elon Musk is doing with Doge.
00:18:57.000He's been cutting spending, and I think they're going to continue to do that.
00:19:01.000They're finding ridiculous waste of money.
00:19:03.000But what he's done with his blueprint is to show there's so much waste, and he's going to do everything he can to get this budget balanced.
00:19:12.000Now, it's our job in the House and the Senate to work with the president to get the spending under control so we can get inflation under control and we can get interest rates down.
00:19:21.000So this is the beginning of controlling the spending, but we're gonna do it through our budget process and through the reconciliation.
00:19:28.000Well, what the president wants to do is actually balance the budget.
00:19:47.000He's got a short-term plan to balance the budget.
00:19:52.000It doesn't make any sense because your family doesn't do it this way, but we have things that are mandatory that we don't even review, like Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, and that we have discretionary things like defense spending and NPR, PBS, things like that, that we focus on every year.
00:20:09.000Now, what we should be doing is look at all parts of the budget.
00:20:12.000In the reconciliation process, we're going to be going through the mandatory parts of the budget.
00:20:17.000And in the budget process, which we have to have done by September 30, we'll be going through the discretionary part.
00:20:24.000So as I talk to Russ Vogt, who runs the Office of Management and Budget for the President, and I'll be meeting with this week, is their goal is to very quickly balance the budget.
00:20:33.000But they know they have to work with the House and the Senate.
00:20:35.000So hopefully, here's where we need to get down to.
00:20:38.000My opinion, this year, we need to get down to about a $6.5 billion total spend, discretionary and mandatory.
00:20:45.000That will get us down to hopefully less than a trillion-dollar deficit with the goal that over three years we balance the budget.
00:21:18.000And stop growing the budget and just grew the budget, like, let's say, since Barack Obama left or since Bill Clinton left, just based on population and inflation, we would have a balanced budget right now.
00:21:31.000I mean, the Democrats have just thrown money like crazy, and they've taken money and made it mandatory, which means we don't even review it every year.
00:21:38.000So it's going to be a lot of work, but I know the president's committed to this.
00:21:42.000So hopefully we'll get down to less than $3 million this year, deficit, and with a balanced budget within three years.
00:21:49.000So let me ask you a question, Senator, and this is just me representing a lot of the questions of the audience.
00:22:15.000To be honest, I'm a little bit, let's just say I need to be won over on this because I think that there's a lot of waste in the Department of Defense.
00:22:24.000It's nothing against our veterans or our military, the greatest military ever.
00:22:27.000What would be your argument, if you agree with it, I mean, I'm not sure if you do, of why we need to increase defense spending right now?
00:22:34.000What we ought to be doing, Charlie, is doing exactly what you do with your family budget.
00:22:40.000So we should be going through line by line through the defense budget, like we do every other budget, and say, is that a must-have or is that a nice-to-have?
00:22:48.000We also need to see how can we get things done less expensively.
00:22:52.000So I was just over in Denmark, Finland, and Estonia two weeks ago, and one of the things I did was I met with shipbuilders over there to say, okay, so...
00:23:00.000Can you do it less expensively than what we do here?
00:23:33.000The best argument, again, I'm still a little bit skeptical because I'm such a fiscal hawk.
00:23:37.000The best argument would be that it's a signal to the world that the dollar is safe because the dollar is largely backed by the supremacy and the superiority of the United States military.
00:23:48.000People feel safe because they know that if anything were to happen, the United States military can intervene and do so better than any other.
00:23:59.000And so, from what I understand, what Speaker Johnson put forward was to try to remove the cap limit where you have to spend a certain amount of money on Medicaid in a certain state to then trigger the federal money to come in and basically do block grants.
00:24:15.000This is being met with a lot of advertising against Republicans want to cut Medicaid and a lot of misinformation.
00:24:23.000Can you please educate the audience on what is the ideal plan for Medicaid and where you stand on this issue?
00:24:30.000Okay, so I used to run the largest hospital company in the country, right?
00:24:35.000There are so many ways to deliver health care less expensive than we do it.
00:24:41.000So here's some of the things we're doing wrong, in my opinion.
00:24:45.000Number one, we shouldn't be covering people that don't want to even look for a job.
00:24:50.000If you don't want to even look for a job, Then why are we giving you free public housing, food stamps, health care, any of that?
00:25:01.000Number two, it's supposed to be a match program.
00:25:03.000But what's actually happened is states have taken advantage of the program.
00:25:07.000And now it's become most of it is all the growth is in federal spending because they've used provider taxes to dramatically increase the federal spending, but not the state spending.
00:25:21.000The match between the states is tied to the income levels of the state.
00:25:25.000Well, places like California and New York, they're guaranteed 50% match when their average income is way higher than a state like Mississippi or Alabama or things like that.
00:25:38.000So we should do it based on real income levels.
00:25:42.000The other thing you have to do is you have to fix the delivery system.
00:25:50.000You shouldn't say, oh, for the exact same procedure, I'll pay you more in an inpatient setting than an outpatient setting.
00:25:57.000So there are so many ways to reduce the cost.
00:26:00.000Now, we clearly shouldn't be covered, people here, illegally.
00:26:04.000So you've got to have a work requirement.
00:26:40.000That I have to comply with that cause the cost of Medicaid to go up.
00:26:45.000And so if you got rid of those rules, I could drive down the cost of Medicaid for the state and also for the federal government.
00:26:51.000So about a minute remaining here, Senator, and thank you for taking the time here.
00:26:55.000Do Republicans have the backbone and the spine to fix Medicaid, as you have suggested, and improve it?
00:27:02.000Despite all the media lies and the Democrats' misleading framing of what Republicans are trying to do, do your colleagues have the capacity to get this done?
00:28:01.000But it will all be for nothing if we are posting two or three trillion dollar deficits.
00:28:06.000So please just know with conviction, and we are empowering you here on this program, to go back to your colleagues and say, guys, the people want spending cuts.
00:28:15.000We need to live within our means and shrink the size of government.
00:29:37.000Our borders are closed and Alcatraz is open.
00:29:41.000For too long, America's been plagued by vicious and violent and repeat criminal offenders, the dregs of society who will never contribute anything other than misery and suffering.
00:29:48.000When we are a more serious nation in times past, we don't hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals and keep them far away from anyone they could harm.
00:31:10.000Where did you get the idea for reopening Alcatraz?
00:31:13.000Just an idea I've had, and I guess because the judges, so many of these radicalized judges, they want to have trials for every single thing of it.
00:31:23.000Every single person that's in our country illegally, that came in illegally, that would mean millions of trials, and it's just so ridiculous what's happening.
00:31:32.000And it's long been a symbol, Alcatraz, of whatever it is.
00:31:37.000I mean, it's a sad symbol, but it's a symbol of law and order.
00:31:43.000And, you know, it's got quite a history, frankly.
00:31:46.000So I think we're going to do that, and we're looking at it right now.
00:31:49.000Where did you get the idea for reopening Alcatraz?
00:31:52.000Here's where President Trump is right.
00:31:54.000Now, reopening, it will cost millions of dollars, so it will be an extra expenditure.
00:31:59.000I can make the argument, though, from a public relations standpoint, it shows that we're not going to put up with the looting and the crime.
00:32:07.000Well, actually, we need to build more prisons because we need more people in jail in this country, not less.
00:32:10.000But the TV images alone are going to be worth it.
00:32:12.000President Trump will be able to fly to Alcatraz at the reopening.
00:32:15.000Imagine, President Trump will be able to give a hallmark speech in front of Alcatraz at the reopening and say that this once housed Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Robert Stroud, which was known as the Birdman of Alcatraz.