After President Trump's triumphant speech in Saudi Arabia, Mark Halperin joins the program to talk about the Middle East, raising taxes on the wealthy, and the historical significance of what President Trump is accomplishing in the region.
00:00:00.000Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.
00:00:04.000President Trump's triumphant speech in Saudi Arabia.
00:00:07.000We explain what's really going on in the Middle East in a very unique, exclusive take, so make sure you listen to it.
00:00:13.000Then we have Mark Halperin, who joins the program, and we have a great conversation with Mark Halperin about the Middle East, about raising taxes on the wealthy, and the historical significance of what President Trump is accomplishing.
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00:01:46.000I am We are so blessed to be here in Phoenix, Arizona while President Trump is barnstorming the Middle East because I can analyze and watch everything that's happening here.
00:01:56.000I can look at it and think about it because President Donald Trump is on quite a pace right now.
00:02:01.000Understand, President Donald Trump flew all the way...
00:02:04.000Through the night, he flew from Washington, D.C. to Saudi Arabia.
00:02:08.000He rested for 90 minutes at the local Ritz Hotel, got back into the motorcade, went to the Saudi palace, met with officials, world leaders.
00:02:18.000Every CEO on the planet is there in Saudi Arabia.
00:02:22.000And then President Trump had to go give a long speech in front of all these people and then go do a royal dinner.
00:02:58.000President Donald Trump is recalibrating the world geopolitical order for the better.
00:03:05.000He's recalibrating the Middle East to look to the West.
00:03:09.000As we mentioned yesterday, those three countries, UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, like them or not like them, understand Saudi Arabia was involved, many of them 9-11 hijackers.
00:03:19.000Qatar, a lot of people are upset with what they may or may not be doing with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
00:03:29.000Which way do we want these increasingly wealthy and powerful kingdoms to point?
00:03:37.000Do we want them to point towards America and our value system?
00:03:40.000Or do we want them to point towards the Chinese Communist Party?
00:03:43.000And understand, Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, he is being very smart in how he's sophisticating the finances of Saudi Arabia.
00:04:26.000President Trump, by the way, just finished an amazing day in Qatar, in Doha, where they announced they're going to go buy nearly 200 Boeing planes.
00:04:55.000To go reorganize the Middle East to our liking.
00:04:58.000Now look, we've been very clear on this program.
00:04:59.000We're not a fan of Mohammedism at all.
00:05:02.000We stand, for example, with Israel against the barbarians that oppose civilization.
00:05:10.000But we also know as a country, we have limitations.
00:05:14.000We must have the prudence to know that our own country has immediate concerns and that going to the Middle East and shaming Saudi Arabia Would do us no good.
00:05:26.000Now, ironically, this is what's so delicious about all this, is that we are going to Europe and shaming them, but we're not going to the Middle East and shaming their customs.
00:05:37.000And I actually think it's very smart, because Europe is not living up to their own standard.
00:05:42.000Europe is not living up to the standard of free speech and democracy and the rule of law.
00:05:46.000They're raiding people's homes for bad social media posts.
00:05:49.000A gentler touch, a more friendly touch in the Middle East with these actors will make the next Abraham Accords more likely, will allow us to ice out the malicious actors of Iran and Hamas in the Middle East, and will then turn that capital towards markets that we favor.
00:06:06.000And President Trump, he was in rare form yesterday, giving a morally clear speech about how we want the Middle East To be about technology, not terrorism.
00:06:19.000We want the Middle East to be about investment and purpose.
00:06:25.000For years, our leaders put America last.
00:06:29.000And in the process, they caused untold destruction in the Middle East.
00:06:33.000Just ask the people of Iraq or Syria or Libya what America last meant for their countries.
00:06:43.000After so many decades of conflict, finally it is within our grasp to reach the future that generations before us could only dream about a land of peace, safety, harmony, opportunity, innovation, and achievement right here in the Middle East.
00:06:59.000And let me also tell you the brilliance of what President Trump is doing.
00:07:02.000This is a long-term American partnership.
00:07:05.000Look, you might say the lefties, they're so short-sighted.
00:07:08.000Oh, Saudi Arabia is going to be irrelevant because we're transitioning away from...
00:07:40.000The Middle East is going to be more important as to LNG, petroleum-based, quick, high-combustible energy for the AI renaissance that we're going to be entering, but a level deeper than that.
00:07:51.000One of the most important things, and President Trump knows this, is he's investing in the future, is that with the Saudis and the Qataris and the Emiratis, so you have the Emir of Qatar, you got Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, and you got Mohammed bin Zayed in the United Arab Emirates.
00:09:26.000$800 billion stimulus and we're going to build bridges and we're going to build roads and we're going to build solar panels.
00:09:32.000President Donald Trump is coming back with a foreign stimulus in America without an act of Congress, without going into debt, without borrowing, without having to mortgage future generations.
00:09:46.000In addition to purchases of $142 billion of American-made military equipment by our great Saudi partners, the largest ever, this week there are multi-billion dollar commercial deals with Amazon, Oracle, AMD, they're all here, Uber, Qualcomm, Johnson& Johnson, and many, many more.
00:10:10.000And I'm going to build this out further because I know a lot of people in Saudi Arabia right now.
00:10:14.000I know I'm in Riyadh and I know the deals that are happening and I'm getting kind of text messages about kind of what's happening.
00:10:19.000And without going into some of those details, because it's not that private, but what's really awesome is what President Trump has done is he's created almost a mini Olympics vibe.
00:10:48.000What you are seeing is an optimistic economic Olympics of where all the power brokers of the economy are being soft social pressured into investing in America.
00:11:02.000With all the talk about tariffs, high prices, and the stock market, most people are feeling the financial pinch.
00:11:08.000If that's you, don't liquidate stocks and take a loss before calling my friends Andrew Del Rey and Todd Avakian at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.
00:11:16.000They can look at helping you reduce your mortgage payments, consolidate those high interest credit cards, pay student loan debt or whatever you need by tapping into your home's equity.
00:11:25.000They're one of the rare banks in America that hasn't changed their name or their values in nearly four decades.
00:12:42.000But I know a lot of people right on the front lines, they say, Charlie, the business flow and the velocity towards America is unlike anything we've ever seen.
00:12:49.000So what's happening in Saudi Arabia, President Trump is the power center of the planet.
00:12:54.000So President Trump goes to Saudi Arabia, and all of a sudden people fly in from Rome, from France.
00:13:00.000From Bangkok, from Kuala Lumpur, from Singapore, from the Philippines.
00:13:33.000Someone's overall vibe, their energy, or their cool factor, which President Trump has, is essentially a compliment, signifying that someone is perceived as effortlessly stylish, confident, and suave.
00:14:14.000And President Trump intentionally and sometimes unintentionally just brings these people together.
00:14:19.000For example, if you saw him with Mohammed bin Salman yesterday on the B-roll camera, President Trump was talking to Patrick Soon-Shiong, who actually we're going to have on the program in June, who's a multi-billionaire, medical innovator.
00:15:05.000The untold secret that none of the financial elite here, and I'm reading all these ridiculous newspapers, is that deep down every one of these business leaders prefers to do business in a free society versus the Chinese Communist Party.
00:15:18.000And they've been wanting an excuse to invest in this country.
00:15:22.000President Donald Trump's gravitational force is undeniable.
00:15:26.000They all want to be in President Trump's orbit.
00:15:30.000And so there will be now trillions of dollars of stimulus funding coming to America, but it's more than that.
00:15:35.000Understand the goodwill that President Trump is building.
00:15:38.000Do you understand the enormity of how seriously they take as a compliment for President Trump early in his term to visit Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia?
00:15:48.000That makes them as leaders look very, very good.
00:15:52.000That makes them as the emir look honored.
00:16:28.000Too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it's our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice.
00:16:40.000For their sins, it is God's job to sit in judgment, my job to defend America, and to promote the fundamental interest of stability, prosperity, and peace.
00:16:51.000The Trump Doctrine, and by the way, I did write the book The MAGA Doctrine.
00:16:55.000People, I don't forget it, but it was five years ago.
00:18:41.000I believe I'm coming on your show tomorrow, so...
00:18:45.000I'm glad to be here and grateful to you for coming on.
00:18:47.000Bill Clinton used to joke that when he grew up in Arkansas, the only way people could make money was by taking each other's wash and do everybody's laundry.
00:18:56.000I like a world where I'm on your show and you're on mine.
00:19:03.000You had a really powerful newsletter this morning.
00:19:06.000I want to read from it because I thought it was beautifully written.
00:19:09.000Trump's Tuesday speech in Saudi Arabia, you wrote in your newsletter, which shockingly gets almost zero coverage in the American media, was one for the ages, with some observers not unreasonably calling it extraordinary and some supporters saying it was one of the best and most important addresses by a U.S. president of many years.
00:19:23.000It warrants your time to watch it in full if you have not to understand Trump's unusual and distinctive worldview.
00:19:29.000Mark, why was it so unusual, distinctive, and arguably extraordinary?
00:19:34.000President Trump has a different attitude about national security, foreign policy, and America's role in the world than the establishment presidents who preceded him.
00:19:42.000There are bits of it that are Reagan-esque in terms of his philosophy, bits that may be like Bush 41 or Bush 43, maybe a little even like, dare say, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton.
00:19:52.000But it's distinctive, and it matches the aspirations of his movement, which is what propelled him into office.
00:20:00.000I think that I call it, as a bumper sticker, I call it speak loudly and carry a small stick, but a stick that you'll use effectively.
00:20:09.000He doesn't want foreign entanglements, and unlike his predecessors and his successor, he did not put American troops on the ground in mass numbers in a way that not just imperiled the lives and treasures of Americans, but America's credibility around the world.
00:20:25.000I think he has a pretty keen understanding of what's possible.
00:20:28.000And the MAGA movement, they want America to be feared, respected.
00:20:33.000They want America to be ready to defend our national interests.
00:20:36.000But they don't want extended ground wars.
00:20:39.000They don't want entry to unwinnable conflicts.
00:20:43.000And they want to partner with people in a way that makes the lives of Americans and other countries better.
00:20:49.000I looked at the speech yesterday as kind of the Middle East equivalent of the landmark speech Vice President Vance gave in Europe, saying to these countries, like, Forget the past.
00:21:56.000So we get all caught up in the photo ops and who's in the room.
00:21:59.000I thought that the photo op of the receiving line that the president did with the Saudi leader was one of the most interesting pieces of television I've seen.
00:22:44.000It was filled with insight into how President Trump sees the world.
00:22:47.000And I think for some news organizations, that's just a little too subtle.
00:22:51.000So, yeah, but there's something more macro going on here, where President Trump is trying to recalibrate how America operates in this region.
00:23:02.000Qualms about criticizing and critiquing the foreign Republican orthodoxy, which goes to the second element of your wonderful newsletter that I want to highlight, that all within a span of like 48 hours, President Donald Trump criticizes neoconservatism, which is just like reckless warmongering, while also domestically signing a favored nations clause for prescription drugs.
00:23:27.000This is not a Republican like we've ever seen before.
00:23:30.000Kind of get us into the psychology of the people around Trump, what's driving some of these decisions, the worldview behind it, and just also if the media even cared to just cover the profundity of it all.
00:23:44.000We've never seen anything like this before.
00:23:48.000You know, I think the main way to think about it is if you said to Donald Trump, it's never been done like that before, or Republicans have never done this before, he'll say, great, not...
00:23:59.000Not the way some of these advisors mean it, like, well, we've not done this before.
00:24:03.000I'll say it was true in the Clinton White House, too.
00:24:05.000They had the same, when they came in originally, they had the same outsider attitude.
00:24:09.000And people in the establishment White House press corps, and I was new to the White House press corps, they'd say to the Clinton folks, well, it's never been done like this.
00:24:16.000And the Clinton people would say, good, good.
00:24:18.000And that's the attitude this administration has, maybe even more so than in the first term, because they know more and they know the sands of the hourglass are going by fast.
00:24:28.000This is arguably the biggest mistake the media makes about covering Donald Trump, because they're constantly characterizing the things he's for as red meat for the extreme megabase.
00:24:38.000He's generally for popular things, and there's nothing wrong with that.
00:24:42.000In fact, you could argue that's what presidents and people in public office should be.
00:24:46.000Presidents in the past have known that American people think...
00:24:50.000They pay way too much for prescription drugs, sometimes a shocking price tag, but always higher than people pay in other countries.
00:24:57.000And so President Trump, again, the details are not fleshed out.
00:26:01.000And he and his people, they don't care if the press theater criticisms that and says, oh my God, what a disaster this is.
00:26:11.000The trip will continue then through Qatar to the United Arab Emirates.
00:26:15.000You said something very smart where Trump has things baked in and wins that were ready to go.
00:26:20.000Based on your reporting and your sourcing, have we seen the entirety of the baked-in wins?
00:26:25.000And what are you hearing about a potential detour to Istanbul?
00:26:31.000Every president, when you plan a foreign trip, you have what are called deliverables, which are negotiated by the staff in advance because you don't want to make it up on the fly.
00:26:39.000And you want to be able to say it was worth the taxpayers' money, it was worth the president's time to go on this trip because we've got these things.
00:26:47.000Most of the deliverables we know are coming, and some have already come from Saudi, are investment commitments.
00:26:52.000Now, they're a little nebulous to say what counts as an investment.
00:26:55.000And we've seen in the past, particularly from this region, I would be surprised if there weren't some additional deliverable that is...
00:27:25.000That is out of the blue because Donald Trump is a showman and he knows he needs to feed the beast every day with something interesting.
00:27:33.000And we've seen that so far in the first day in Saudi.
00:27:36.000In terms of going to Turkey, if Putin really goes, and I don't think he will, and we're 24 hours away here or less, but if Putin went, I think the president would be tempted to go and the Secret Service would find it crazy and nuts, but I think he'd be tempted to go.
00:28:00.000It does, whether Putin goes or not, the drift of this of the last 10 days has been Putin is the obstacle more than Zelensky.
00:28:08.000And so the president's going to have to figure out if Putin doesn't go, with Zelensky saying he'd go, and the president's urging the talks to take place, even though...
00:28:17.000To get that, they had to drop the precondition of a ceasefire before talks, which is what Zelensky has wanted, the U.S. and Europe have been supportive of.
00:28:26.000I think we're going to finally reach, maybe not the last moment of truth, but a pretty significant one, where the president's going to have to say, Putin doesn't really seem to want to actually end the war.
00:28:37.000Okay, if that's the case, if we've reached that conclusion, what are our options?
00:28:48.000And just one minute remaining, Mark, and thank you for your time on this, which is, I think Putin is playing the domestic American political card, because I think he knows that the appetite for more American funding for the war is at zero.
00:29:01.000So I think that's his ace in the hole.
00:29:13.000But it's going to be a moment of truth.
00:29:15.000Now, as you know, in the last couple of weeks, the U.S. has sent some additional military capability to Ukraine.
00:29:21.000The Europeans might step in, and Putin might be surprised that if Americans won't do it, the Europeans will.
00:29:26.000So I think it's complicated, but sanctions seem like a possibility, and maybe a combination of sanctions and European military aid might be used to try to create a different condition.
00:29:38.000But there's no doubt that the thing about Putin...
00:29:40.000And she and Netanyahu, and Netanyahu's in a different category, but for the purpose of my, what I'm about to say, they're the same.
00:29:47.000They understand American politics really well.
00:29:50.000And they know how to leverage the limits on any president, including this one, of public opinion for what they can do to try to deal with a thorny international problem.
00:31:25.000Well, this is another thing that would be brilliant politics, I think.
00:31:28.000Steve Bannon thinks it would be brilliant politics.
00:31:30.000He tried to get Trump to do this in the first term.
00:31:32.000Newt Gingrich, who's also very smart and very influential with the president, thinks it's a horrible idea, and most Republicans in Congress do.
00:31:40.000You know, my view as an analyst, I'm not advocating either way, but as an analyst, there's nothing magical about what the top rate should be, right?
00:31:48.000What anybody's rate should be, whatever income bracket you're in.
00:31:51.000So I get that Republicans kind of have a biblical opposition to anybody's taxes ever going up, but there's two strong arguments for it.
00:31:59.000One is it takes away the Democrats' main argument, which polls suggest has some effectiveness, that Republicans are trying to cut taxes for the wealthiest to pay for cutting social programs to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest.
00:32:18.000It makes the math add up a lot easier for Republicans to come in under the necessary budget restraints to try to do some deficit and debt reduction.
00:32:25.000So I think the stronger argument on the politics and the substance is to let the top rate for the wealthiest rise.
00:32:32.000But there's a lot of opposition to it.
00:32:55.000What the president has now put forward, his official budget request, there's going to be all sorts of reconciliation meetings.
00:33:02.000What is a timeline you think we can expect?
00:33:04.000And what are one or two elements of this reconciliation debate that you think the media is missing that you have your eye on?
00:33:11.000Well, you know, this is boring to most people.
00:33:14.000It does affect everybody's taxes and what the government will spend money on, so it's important.
00:33:17.000But the process of it is not that great.
00:33:19.000I will say, as an aside, one of the, I think, undercover...
00:33:23.000Brilliant Trump branding things is calling it one big, beautiful bill.
00:33:26.000Because I think for most people, that seems more understandable than reconciliation.
00:33:31.000So I'd say to delve a little bit into the process, Congress never acts unless it absolutely has to, and sometimes not even then.
00:33:38.000They need what's called a forcing mechanism.
00:33:40.000And we're still waiting to find out exactly when the government will run out of money, where the debt ceiling has to be raised, another boring process thing, but one that's super powerful.
00:33:48.000And I think an undercovered portion is...
00:33:51.000The president and the speaker and the Senate leader have gotten their members of Congress to agree.
00:33:56.000Republicans are going to raise the debt ceiling without getting Democratic votes, because Democrats won't vote for this big, beautiful bill, this reconciliation bill.
00:34:02.000So that's one thing is, when is that deadline?
00:34:05.000Because until we have that deadline, everybody's going to want to continue to negotiate and bargain.
00:34:09.000And then second is, you have to please everybody.
00:34:12.000And there's some people, like people who want the so-called SALT, state and local tax deduction, changed.
00:34:18.000Who say they're absolutely not going to vote for it unless they get exactly what they want.
00:34:22.000At some point, the Speaker, the President, and the Senate leader need to get in a room with these folks or on the phone with them and say, this is as good as it gets.
00:34:29.000We have slim majorities in both chambers.
00:34:32.000So I think the question is, who are the holdouts who aren't going to listen at what they want to be the final moment to that argument and really are willing to take the country and the party over a cliff?
00:34:46.000And we just don't know who those are yet.
00:34:47.000So those are the two things I'm watching is when's the actual deadline and which people amongst the 30 or so in both chambers who say there are holdouts unless they get exactly what they want, which ones actually have, pardon the metaphor, suicide vests strapped to their bodies and are willing to pull the cord if they don't get what they want.
00:35:06.000In closing here, about a minute remaining, you are constantly looking to see if the political gravity will apply to President Trump.
00:35:13.000What one or two things are you keeping your eye on that might, let's just say, make this anti-gravity machine known as the Trump decade-long political movement come back down to earth?
00:35:25.000Well, next year would be the midterms, and whether he can keep the majorities, probably can keep the Senate.
00:35:30.000And I'm more bullish on the House than a lot of people, including some people in the White House.
00:35:37.000I think in the shorter term, before November of 26, two things I'm watching.
00:35:48.000Can he not be hampered by the Supreme Court?
00:35:51.000We still don't have any decisive decisions, but a lot of the stuff he's doing now, very dramatic, very change-oriented, the Supreme Court could strike it down, and that could be any range of things.
00:36:01.000And the other courts, too, but mostly the Supreme Court.