Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Pat Gray, Brian Riedl & Jeffy Fisher ｜ 7⧸29⧸19
Episode Stats
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Summary
When you talk about a city, you are a racist. That's the way it's supposed to work now. We'll get into that and all the media hypocrisy surrounding it. We also dive into the budget, first starting with how the Tea Party is dead and does not care anymore, and then we end it with a little piece of candy as we talk about how much worse it will be if someone like Kamala Harris or Bernie Sanders gets elected.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey, it's Stu in for Glenn Beck, and today we dive into the latest controversy with Donald Trump.
00:00:07.820
Apparently, that's the way it's supposed to work now.
00:00:09.880
When you talk about Baltimore, you are a racist.
00:00:11.900
We'll get into that and all the media hypocrisy surrounding it.
00:00:16.160
We will also dive into the budget, first starting with how it seems like the Tea Party's kind of dead and does not care.
00:00:23.780
It seems like nobody cares about budgets anymore.
00:00:25.500
And then we end it with a little piece of candy as we talk about how much worse it will be if someone like Kamala Harris or Bernie Sanders get elected.
00:00:34.700
I believe in Brian Riedel's word from the Manhattan Institute, it's almost incalculable how large the numbers get.
00:00:42.780
We have Pat Gray who stops by, Jeff Fisher who stops by, and we tell you an incredible story about a model who was critical of transgendered people.
00:00:54.020
got fired, and it only gets weirder from there.
00:01:06.020
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:01:17.940
I try not to ask for too much in life because it's hard.
00:01:21.800
But today, I think I have what I at least imagine is a simple request for the media.
00:01:34.500
But I would like you to at least try to explain why Trump's Baltimore comments were racist.
00:01:46.900
I'm not asking you to come up with an airtight case.
00:01:51.840
I'm not asking you to produce tapes that show Donald Trump talking about Baltimore in some racist way.
00:02:00.380
I'm not asking you for pictures of Donald Trump in a hood.
00:02:03.720
I'm not asking you for him burning a cross on somebody's lawn.
00:02:07.640
I'm asking you to at least attempt to explain why these comments are racist.
00:02:14.800
Not just put it in the story and say Trump's racist tweets about Baltimore.
00:02:18.480
I mean an actual attempt at explaining one time why these tweets and comments were racist.
00:02:30.460
Because that has not even been attempted from what I've seen from the media this weekend.
00:02:36.360
We're talking about an accusation of racism here.
00:02:42.780
It's one of the most serious accusations you can make about another person, right?
00:02:45.960
It's like the most serious thing you can say about someone, this side of child molester.
00:02:54.540
When you say that, you should probably have at least some sort of justification as to why.
00:03:00.180
The nearest I can take from the media right now is, number one, Trump's comments were about Elijah Cummings.
00:03:17.680
It's not 100% of black people live in Baltimore.
00:03:21.840
But there are some black people who live in Baltimore.
00:03:24.880
So the fact that they have a black representative and there are some black people who live in Baltimore,
00:03:29.660
apparently enough to conclude that Donald Trump is a racist.
00:03:34.020
It's enough for us to conclude that this guy is one of the worst things we can all possibly imagine.
00:03:41.780
In case you missed the tweets that came from, you know, late this weekend,
00:03:47.060
Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully shouting and screaming at the great men and women of Border Patrol
00:03:53.740
When actually, his Baltimore district is far worse and more dangerous.
00:03:58.200
His district is considered the worst in the USA.
00:04:00.900
Trump went on to say his Cummings district is a disgusting rat and rodent infested mess.
00:04:10.420
If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous and filthy place.
00:04:18.840
If you're going to accuse someone of racism, it is on you to give the evidence as to why it's racist.
00:04:25.720
It's not on Trump to have to disprove your claim of racism.
00:04:30.900
When you accuse someone of what is essentially a crime in today's society,
00:04:34.960
you have to be able to back it up with some level of evidence.
00:04:40.720
So we're going to come back and go through these comments step by step.
00:04:45.940
I want to know, will the media even take the time to attempt to explain it?
00:04:52.160
Because right now, they're just putting it in the headlines.
00:05:19.660
It's Stu in for Glenn, who's on vacation this week.
00:05:28.380
Number one, I guess it's that Elijah Cummings is black.
00:05:33.580
And whenever Trump criticizes someone who isn't white, the motivation is always assumed to be race.
00:05:42.700
He can't criticize anyone else without racism being the sort of core of it.
00:05:51.020
And what's fascinating about that is we're essentially creating a standard in which a black congressperson cannot be criticized.
00:06:06.120
That is something that every congressperson could use.
00:06:10.280
If you're a congressman and you can say whatever you want, you can do as good or as bad a job as you want.
00:06:19.000
But if you happen to be black, the president of the United States can't say anything bad about you because it's automatically race.
00:06:32.020
If you read the tweets, you go back and look at it.
00:06:34.920
Donald Trump doesn't even allude to race in any of them.
00:06:40.200
You are not only assuming his intent to be race, but also inserting race into the conversation where it didn't exist.
00:06:55.340
Is it racist simply because he used the word Baltimore?
00:07:05.200
I know it was racist if you brought up Chicago when Barack Obama was president.
00:07:13.740
The country you live in is accepting that as a standard?
00:07:27.880
Is it racist because some of the residents of Baltimore are black?
00:07:45.560
The media has come to this place where they have built this long-form sort of case over multiple years that Donald Trump is a racist.
00:07:55.500
So therefore, they are now free to apply it to any story.
00:08:01.080
They are free to say he is motivated by racism whenever they want.
00:08:06.860
Of course, to engage in this sort of nonsense, you have to ignore something that everyone in America knows.
00:08:20.340
Everyone who lives here knows the truth about what we're looking at here with Donald Trump and his tweets.
00:08:27.540
Which is, Donald Trump says bad things about people who say bad things about him.
00:08:40.160
This is not a freaking sixth sense type of plot twist.
00:08:44.580
The guy, when he gets pissed off at you, says bad things about you.
00:08:52.020
So if you are going to say something is racism, it is on you to explain why every time he has someone say something bad about him, he attacks them regardless of their race.
00:09:09.660
It is up to you to explain and whittle this one out for us as to why when he attacks a person of color, you assume every single time it's race.
00:09:19.860
Every time he does it to a white person, you just assign his motives to something else.
00:09:25.280
But every time it's not a white person, you say it's race.
00:09:28.740
That is not analysis, and it's certainly not journalism.
00:09:33.280
I mean, it's one thing for a Rachel Maddow to go on television and say, well, Donald Trump's a racist, and I think he's a racist because Baltimore has black people who live in it.
00:09:41.520
I mean, that's not good analysis, but at least it's someone giving an opinion.
00:09:45.240
We're talking about journalists who are going on television and saying you are not a good journalist if you don't say it's racist without any qualifiers.
00:09:55.000
You can't say that there's racial tension around the comments.
00:10:07.220
You have somehow been able to dive into this guy's brain, and despite the fact that he didn't reference race in any way...
00:10:15.240
You are able to decipher that he is motivated solely by race.
00:10:25.320
Some of these places that are saying this have very clear information to know that it's not true.
00:10:33.980
For example, the New York Times has an actual running list of all of the people Donald Trump has insulted since he kind of got back into the swing of politics here in the past few years.
00:10:48.940
598 individuals and organizations which Donald Trump has insulted in some cases dozens of times each.
00:11:02.700
This guy is the crappiest racist I've ever seen.
00:11:06.780
He can't even figure out how to only insult black people.
00:11:17.420
They've all said bad things about Donald Trump.
00:11:19.300
When you say something bad about Donald Trump, Donald Trump responds, and he says bad things about you.
00:11:30.540
I'm pretty sure he was white when Donald Trump called him crazy.
00:11:37.360
Pretty sure he was white when Donald Trump said he failed badly.
00:11:43.120
Pretty sure he was white when he called him a waste.
00:11:49.280
Pretty sure he was white when he called him a total loser.
00:11:57.320
He called her totally unqualified because she was black.
00:12:34.980
How about Danny O'Connor, who was, I think, running for Congress?
00:12:40.140
Was he white when he called him weak and a puppet?
00:12:47.440
Was he white when Donald Trump called him a fool, dopey, and one of the dumber people on television?
00:13:07.940
Not because she's been out there calling him terrible names and accusing him of all sorts of terrible things for years.
00:13:33.980
Donald Trump, when you're a jerk to Donald Trump, he's a jerk to you.
00:13:37.280
When you're nice to Donald Trump, he's nice to you.
00:13:44.120
The guy, you know what would happen if Elijah Cummings came out tomorrow and said, you know what?
00:13:49.140
Donald Trump should be the next head on Mount Rushmore because he's the greatest president that has ever lived.
00:13:59.300
He would say great things about Elijah Cummings starting tomorrow if Elijah Cummings started saying nice things about him and he thought they were legitimate.
00:14:09.380
He thought they—I don't even know if you need to say.
00:14:12.020
You don't even know if they have to be believable.
00:14:14.580
Elijah Cummings, if he reversed himself today, Donald Trump would reverse himself tomorrow.
00:14:19.320
Guys, the guy—the guy did this with Kim Jong-un.
00:14:26.060
He is saying currently nice things about a North Korean dictator.
00:14:39.040
When he says something bad about you, it's likely because you said something bad about him.
00:14:51.920
And if you're going to say, like, you look at the actual comments he made that don't have anything to do with race, you have to ask yourself, can the criticism be applied to, let's say, a white person?
00:15:07.220
You know, if he says, oh, well, this is—what did he say?
00:15:16.540
I mean, can that be applied—can filthy be applied to a white person?
00:15:19.480
First of all, I give you Pigpen, who absolutely was white and was filthy.
00:15:26.820
His name indicates it, unless you're a pig, and then it's—it's insulting to pigs.
00:15:34.920
But would Trump use filthy to describe a white person?
00:15:55.480
And it's a restaurant that Sarah Huckabee Sanders went to.
00:16:01.260
And this white person doesn't like Donald Trump.
00:16:05.020
And apparently some of the patrons there didn't like Donald Trump.
00:16:08.420
And so when they saw Sarah Huckabee Sanders sitting down for some, you know,
00:16:12.300
I don't know, pancakes or hummus or whatever the heck they were serving there,
00:16:19.000
It was kind of a minor controversy a few months ago.
00:16:22.520
all right, fine, I don't want to eat here if you don't want to serve me.
00:16:27.840
He said the Red Hen was a filthy establishment.
00:16:31.380
It's owned by a white person, but it was still filthy.
00:16:34.820
Because Donald Trump felt that would be the best insult at that moment.
00:16:44.640
He just doesn't like the people because they don't like him.
00:17:00.580
But I just love how deep the media has to go to go after Trump in these situations.
00:17:06.240
We'll go more into it here in about 60 seconds.
00:17:09.520
We're talking about the accusations of racism against Donald Trump when it comes to these tweets about Elijah Cummings in Baltimore.
00:17:19.700
And a lot of the things you'll see is he's criticizing a majority black district.
00:17:30.820
So, yes, technically it's a majority black district.
00:17:37.420
There's people of all sorts in this particular district.
00:17:45.740
Somehow, Trump has actually found a way to get in trouble for criticizing minorities, though, when they're actually the majority in the district, which is kind of an interesting gymnastics trick there.
00:18:00.060
He's not criticizing the people of the district.
00:18:02.440
He's criticizing the incredibly crappy job its representative has done representing it.
00:18:08.220
And we should point out with Elijah Cummings, it's not his district.
00:18:16.820
This is governmental supremacy that is all in our heads for some reason.
00:18:34.180
But we keep turning politicians into kings, and we need to stop that.
00:18:44.000
I know he used to see him on the whole, you know, the reality shows and stuff.
00:18:48.860
He's not just some old white guy that you don't like.
00:18:53.420
I mean, it's just as much Donald Trump's district as it is Elijah Cummings' district.
00:18:59.080
Donald Trump has responsibilities for the outcomes and the way it's run just like Elijah Cummings does.
00:19:06.280
But, I mean, Donald Trump has talked a lot about changing things in the inner cities.
00:19:10.400
And he's had some really good results to argue there.
00:19:13.900
I mean, we can talk about the economy and the way it's affected with minority unemployment rates, which are at all-time lows.
00:19:21.880
We can talk about things like criminal justice reform, which were high priorities for many of these communities.
00:19:26.720
But I don't think this is an argument that Elijah Cummings wants.
00:19:33.080
Things have not gone well in those two decades.
00:19:35.900
What is clear is that what Elijah Cummings is doing in this district is not helping.
00:19:44.960
And honestly, what the voters of the district are doing isn't helping either because they keep sending this guy back over and over and over again despite zero results.
00:19:56.020
If you want to criticize voters for their decision-making process, that's a good place to start.
00:20:00.920
You know, it's Sideshow Bob walking around in a field of rakes.
00:20:03.640
Every place you step, another rake comes up and bashes you in the face.
00:20:09.020
And they keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.
00:20:12.900
Of course, the part of this story, which is always fascinating to me about how, despite the fact that pretty much everyone acknowledges, at least acknowledged until this weekend, that Baltimore had a real problem,
00:20:25.440
they just continue to keep voting people like Elijah Cummings in.
00:20:28.900
And, you know, our system does allow for people to continually vote for their own destruction.
00:20:39.940
And it's the reason why we have a constitutional republic that is not completely dominated by democracy,
00:20:45.500
because we are susceptible to making incredibly stupid decisions sometimes.
00:20:51.540
And that's something that we all have to think about and probably solve.
00:20:56.000
But many of these cities, if you look at the records, who's been running them and the results they've been coming out with,
00:21:02.620
the cities really need to be thinking about this and should examine their voting patterns.
00:21:07.360
Pat Gray joins me from Pat Gray Unleashed, the incredible program on Blaze Radio, television, and, of course, podcast.
00:21:14.460
Immediately precedes this one, as a matter of fact.
00:21:18.960
Anyway, the most racist-y racist who's ever raced is in office right now, and he must be stopped.
00:21:32.620
I find it incredible that they just dropped any form of journalistic integrity by calling it just flat-out racist.
00:21:41.380
When there's not a racist thing in his tweet, show me what is blatantly racist that you can absolutely just flat-out call racist.
00:21:53.300
So they're not even using alleged, assumed, supposed, none of those words apply.
00:21:58.820
I do think that's the most fascinating part of this to me.
00:22:02.480
In that, you know, because, again, this isn't Lawrence O'Donnell.
00:22:11.460
They're actually, like, saying you're not a good journalist if you say racially tinged or alleged racism.
00:22:23.060
If you can't funnel a beer, you're not going to be in this fraternity.
00:22:28.700
It's like if you don't call him racist with no qualifiers, you're not in our fraternity anymore.
00:22:39.840
And it's not like he hasn't tweeted about white people.
00:22:46.420
And it's, you know, how many times has he called out others who were, you know, losers or dummies or whatever?
00:23:00.460
They have, as of, I think the last time they updated it was last month, 598 individuals and organizations in which he's insulted.
00:23:12.700
And I did not count all 598 because I have a little bit of a life.
00:23:17.720
But, I mean, to me, it seems like the overwhelming majority are white people.
00:23:23.680
You know, again, so it's the same thing in the country.
00:23:27.700
And he's almost exclusively tweeting about people who don't like him.
00:23:33.500
Did you see the Victor Blackwell from CNN comments?
00:23:45.060
And I guess he's got a show on CNN on the weekends.
00:23:51.040
The president says about Congressman Cummings' district.
00:24:10.840
From the day I was brought home from the hospital to the day I left for college.
00:24:15.000
Wait, you didn't have any choice when you were brought home from me.
00:24:20.720
But now that he has a choice, now he has a choice, he's gone.
00:24:32.720
They love their children who pledge allegiance to the flag.
00:24:35.800
Just like people who live in districts of congressmen who support you, sir.
00:24:43.360
The guy left that utopia, the very second it was his choice.
00:24:50.980
As soon as he's out of high school, he gets the hell out of Baltimore and doesn't look back.
00:25:05.780
And, like, you know, to the point of they're, like, now saying basically Baltimore is Disneyland.
00:25:12.820
In fact, it's actually better than Disneyland because they have a lot more mice.
00:25:20.300
Glenn and I lived and worked there in 89 through 92.
00:25:25.840
When we first got to town, the station set us down to do these publicity photos.
00:25:43.000
And on every post is a sign that says, warning, rat infestation.
00:25:50.960
Which you already knew because you see all the squished rats on the pavement.
00:26:05.360
At the time, they estimated rats outnumbered people in the inner Baltimore area.
00:26:12.260
There were 20 million rats to 2 million people.
00:26:23.380
Did you also see that on the blaze, they posted a woman who lives in the area.
00:26:27.740
And she went through the neighborhood showing you some of the garbage.
00:26:31.520
Some of these neighborhoods are subject to dumping.
00:26:35.280
And people just drive in and dump their garbage there.
00:26:38.360
And, you know, there's mattresses and washing machines.
00:26:41.660
And, I don't know, all manner of trash in everybody's yards and fields.
00:26:46.640
And abandoned row house buildings where there's been a tree growing inside of it that is now taller than the building.
00:26:53.420
So this isn't something that happened overnight.
00:27:00.380
It also has the highest murder rate in the country of large cities.
00:27:05.560
Second only to the mean streets of Helena, Montana, of course.
00:27:13.240
I mean, it's 56 deaths, murders per 100,000 people.
00:27:23.740
In fact, you know, the part when you say you were there 89 to 92, after that, it went through a little bit of a rebirth.
00:27:31.020
And kind of came back and has gone, unfortunately, has slipped back down the other way.
00:27:35.540
Well, they've been trying for a long time to make Baltimore nice.
00:27:38.340
That's why they built the Inner Harbor and I think spent, I don't know, $1 or $2 billion on it.
00:27:50.200
But we all know there are parts of Baltimore you do not want to visit, let alone live in.
00:28:02.300
But we are all 100%, you know, deep in the knowledge of the problems of Baltimore.
00:28:10.940
And yet Trump is so far in the heads of the media that they will actually come out and defend Baltimore like it's paradise.
00:28:18.560
Like it's basically a sandals, an all-inclusive place to just go and you swim up bar on every corner.
00:28:31.020
The Blue Jays are going to lose 100 games this year and still finish 10 games ahead of the Orioles.
00:28:39.480
I may be going to sports just because I know football is around the corner.
00:28:49.940
You're the only person I know who's actually excited.
00:28:54.820
I'm more excited about that than I am rats in Baltimore.
00:28:59.120
And again, what's the Oriole to rat numbers in Baltimore?
00:29:42.020
Trying to get him for Monday Night Football this year.
00:29:47.800
Here's the question, though, as the column reads.
00:29:49.880
In a culture that seems hell-bent on savaging its icons, how long can it last?
00:29:56.400
Nobody gets to skate on I was young and stupid or those are my beliefs.
00:30:00.840
Fair or not, and we all think of a reputation shattering overreach, even if we can't all agree
00:30:05.080
exactly which reputations were unfairly shattered, that's the way the world is now.
00:30:09.660
This isn't limited to either political party or ideology.
00:30:12.140
Both sides want to claim their stars and demonize the other side.
00:30:15.500
Manning has thrived because he has kept his beliefs tucked close.
00:30:21.840
Still, we can rough out the edges of his ideology.
00:30:29.160
Number one, he's a frequent visitor to and possible member of Augusta National.
00:30:44.980
Now, I thought, the way that reads it, you think he's going to say, the KKK is going to
00:31:01.920
Including the recent presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.
00:31:11.160
More recently, he's played golf with Donald Trump and spoken at Republican events.
00:31:20.820
Now, to say, this is an observation, folks, not criticism.
00:31:23.680
He's not, I don't think he's even trying to make the case that this should happen to
00:31:28.460
There's nothing wrong with Manning or anything else, or anyone else voting the way they wish
00:31:32.240
and associating with whomever they wish, of course.
00:31:34.220
But you don't have to work hard to see how Manning, like everyone else who believes in
00:31:37.340
something more than kicking back and watching Netflix, could end up in the middle of the
00:31:41.360
us versus them kickball team picking that America has become.
00:31:46.000
Returning to the public eye means surrendering control of your image, and Manning guards
00:31:49.760
and nurtures his image as closely as any athlete ever has.
00:31:52.840
If he steps back into the live spotlight, he'll make sure to do it in a way that keeps everyone
00:31:58.040
Otherwise, he'll just keep doing what he's done for the past few years, showing us exactly
00:32:04.220
It's fascinating because they go into, you know, the accusations from his time in college
00:32:09.660
where one woman said that he made sexually sort of suggestive jokes and gestures and may
00:32:19.940
And basically they're saying like, if he comes out and he starts, if he turns into an out
00:32:24.960
Republican where he may be running for office, he will then be, is it me too'd or whatever.
00:32:32.460
And all of a sudden those things will become serious.
00:32:35.800
Like we are at a time now where even when you go your entire life trying to avoid being
00:32:41.180
a figure in these sort of culture wars, they will suck you in sort of against your will.
00:32:50.280
And that is a weird world to live in, isn't it?
00:32:52.520
Especially for somebody so beloved as Peyton Manning.
00:33:07.400
And the reason he didn't take the Monday Night Football gig was because he didn't want to
00:33:20.400
Especially since he's a Republican, apparently.
00:33:24.940
Do you think Peyton wants his Jeb Bush money back, though?
00:33:30.860
I mean, he's thrown some bad interception in his life, but that's one you definitely want
00:33:39.040
And you're going to be joining me this week, too, right?
00:33:41.160
We're going to be doing some Pat and Stu here for Glenn for the rest of the week.
00:33:46.540
Get the podcast at Pat Gray Unleashed and follow him on Twitter at Pat Unleashed.
00:34:07.000
And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.
00:34:10.980
His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.
00:34:31.840
And I want to tell you about something that you should either end your day with or start
00:34:40.560
If you like this show, you're going to love the news and why it matters.
00:34:44.220
It's a bunch of us that all get together at the end of the day and just talk about the
00:34:51.580
Look for it now wherever you download your favorite podcast.
00:34:54.640
Brian Riedel is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and he joins us now.
00:35:00.460
New Budget Deal puts the final nail in the Tea Party coffin, which made me have a wonderful
00:35:11.360
We've completely given up as a, I guess, as a conservative movement.
00:35:15.760
We just seem to no longer care about debt or deficit.
00:35:22.060
You know, I've lived in Washington 18 years, forgive me.
00:35:25.420
Um, and, uh, I, I've worked in the Senate for six years recently, and so I, I, I talked
00:35:31.220
to a lot of lawmakers and I know them very well.
00:35:34.700
And the conventional wisdom in Washington is that you, the voters, the conservatives no
00:35:41.840
And so why should they say, why should we put up with the angry media and the, the angry
00:35:48.280
liberals when conservatives don't really care as evidence that conservatives don't care?
00:35:54.000
A lot of them generally cite, frankly, the election of Donald Trump.
00:35:58.680
Uh, he, President Trump called himself the King of Debt.
00:36:01.560
He said he will not touch social security and Medicare.
00:36:05.620
And in doing so, he defeated people like Ted Cruz who ran on issues like less spending.
00:36:12.000
So the lesson that was taken by lawmakers is, all right, if you guys don't care about, if
00:36:17.700
you voters don't really care about spending and deficits, then we don't either.
00:36:22.500
And I, I think that is, I think they're reading that generally accurately.
00:36:27.000
I mean, I think maybe people are more focused on, you know, whatever cultural issue is going
00:36:31.380
on and, and this is a big problem and it never seems like to get, you know, all the effort
00:36:35.880
we put into it during the Tea Party era, did we get anything out of it?
00:36:39.260
I mean, you can kind of understand how people get there.
00:36:42.600
Yeah, well, what the challenge is a lot of the Tea Party movement and this, uh, was, was
00:36:49.140
focused a lot on the stimulus and, and the Wall Street bailouts and to, and to then later
00:36:56.060
The issue was eventually, uh, much, but not all of the stimulus expired, uh, and the Wall
00:37:07.400
So what happened is what was left was the real underlying driver of 30, of the 30 year
00:37:13.200
deficits, which is social security and Medicare.
00:37:15.820
If you look at the numbers for the next 30 years, this is amazing.
00:37:19.320
The Congressional Budget Office forecast, uh, forecast $80 trillion in new deficits over
00:37:26.540
They say that social security and Medicare will run $103 trillion shortfall and the rest
00:37:41.440
$103 trillion in deficits for Medicare and social security, but the rest of the budget
00:37:47.240
in, and I feel like this is not actually realistically how these things play out is a $23 trillion
00:37:53.100
surplus to get to still $80 trillion in new debt in the next 30 years.
00:37:59.960
And the issue, I think what a lot of people in Washington will say is, okay, once we got
00:38:05.020
past the stimulus and, and, and the Wall Street bailouts, addressing the deficit means addressing
00:38:12.780
And they've concluded that Republican voters do not want to reform social security and Medicare.
00:38:19.920
Therefore, there's nothing left to do but spend.
00:38:23.140
I mean, that is, I mean, it's, again, I can understand how they get there.
00:38:27.140
Uh, but that is an, it's an amazing thing to essentially admit.
00:38:31.380
Let's, before we get back, and I, cause I want to go over some of the, the Tea Party stuff
00:38:34.580
and, and how we kind of got here, but can you guys walk us through the latest budget deal?
00:38:40.080
Is it, I mean, is it something where we've completely abandoned all responsibility or
00:38:49.980
You know, the, the crown jewel of the Tea Party was the 2011 Budget Control Act.
00:38:54.980
This lowered discretionary spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years.
00:39:01.240
Well, pretty much as soon as the ink was dry, they started weakening it.
00:39:13.380
Each, each two years, they would raise the caps more and more.
00:39:17.640
Since 2014, they raised the caps by $770 billion.
00:39:22.740
And this time around, they essentially just repealed the caps and went back to what discretionary
00:39:28.720
spending would have been had there never even been a Budget Control Act.
00:39:32.460
So when you think back to 2011, all that work, all the grand negotiations, the talk about defaulting
00:39:39.000
on the debt limit with President Obama, they, they did, they were, did all that work to get
00:39:43.960
the Budget Control Act caps, and then they just ignored it.
00:39:46.880
In terms of the cost moving forward, here's what's really scary.
00:39:50.060
They're raising the caps by about $160 billion per year for two years.
00:39:56.400
But the way it's scored, that's going to permanently raise the baseline, which means in two years,
00:40:06.140
And therefore, according to the Congressional Budget Office, this is going to cost about
00:40:10.440
$1.7 trillion over the next 10 years, because they're just going to keep starting from the
00:40:16.640
higher spending level every year going forward.
00:40:22.640
That's really because every, every dollar you spend is really $10 because it's there.
00:40:27.660
There's no way anyone ever goes down from where they are.
00:40:31.540
It's always an increase off of the most recent year.
00:40:34.280
So each dollar you spend is another $10 over a decade.
00:40:41.340
In two years, and that's why, that's why one of the reasons we got this level is they
00:40:47.680
And then when they got to now said, well, we're not going to go back down now.
00:40:52.760
We're going to keep, we're going to keep raising them.
00:40:56.720
So this is going to be $1.7 trillion over 10 years, because they're going to, they're
00:41:02.840
going to use the new higher level as their starting point next time around.
00:41:07.900
Now, when it comes to spending this new money, at least some of this, in theory, you're getting
00:41:12.900
We're getting to a point now where the higher and higher percentage of the budget is just
00:41:17.500
us paying interest on money we've already previously borrowed.
00:41:21.200
Um, what is the, how big, how much of the budget is, uh, is just interest at this point?
00:41:31.180
Um, right now it doesn't look bad right now about, uh, 10% of the budget is interest on
00:41:41.100
It's projected, uh, to triple in, in, in nominal dollar terms over the next decade.
00:41:47.260
And as a percent of the budget, more than double to about 20% of the, to about 20%.
00:41:52.580
And then over the next couple of decades get to about 30%.
00:41:58.380
All of these, all of these numbers I just mentioned, assume interest rates stay at record
00:42:05.060
And the scary thing is every point that interest rates go up will cost $13 trillion over the
00:42:13.100
next 30 years or one and a half trillion over the next decade.
00:42:18.780
So if interest rates go up, let's say the return to 1990s levels, which we don't think of as
00:42:25.180
being a particularly high interest rate era, if interest rates return to 1990s levels, you
00:42:31.420
add $4 trillion over the decade and 40 trillion over three decades, because the debt is so big
00:42:39.820
that even small movements and interest rates will bury us.
00:42:47.020
In fact, even with low interest rates, interest becomes the biggest part of the budget within
00:42:59.580
You write in National Review, I thought this was amazing because, you know, you talk about
00:43:04.000
how people don't care about these cuts and they don't actually want them.
00:43:09.900
A effort by conservative House Republicans in 2017 and 2018 to trim the growth rate of
00:43:14.300
entitlement spending from 5.9% all the way to 5.8%.
00:43:19.800
So again, we're not talking about actually cutting anything.
00:43:25.720
That was rejected and a bill that was going to reduce unnecessary spending by 0.002% of
00:43:35.500
the budget, not 2%, not 0.2, not 0.02, but 0.002% of the budget.
00:43:42.140
Even that was said to be, there's just nothing left in the cupboard.
00:43:48.120
I mean, these are not exactly, this is not austerity we're talking about here.
00:43:55.980
And I mean, it really does enforce that there is, it feels completely hopeless, Brian.
00:44:01.260
Yeah, I mean, you know, I start to wonder what exactly do Republicans come to Washington
00:44:06.980
I mean, if you can't even cut the growth rate of government from one-tenth of one percent,
00:44:11.620
not cut spending, but just have it grow one-tenth of one percent at a slower annual rate,
00:44:19.340
And let me tell you how that relates to this bill.
00:44:21.840
I did some math, and I have been blasting this out to my friends in the House and Senate
00:44:28.780
We could pay for at least the first two years of these caps, not the $1.7 trillion over the
00:44:38.400
We could pay for that by just cutting the growth rate of entitlements again by one-tenth of one
00:44:45.600
Basically, you know, like I said, from 5.9 to 5.8, that would actually pay for this bill.
00:44:52.640
Members of Congress, the Republican Party will not even cut the growth rate of entitlements
00:44:58.220
from 5.9 to 5.8 percent in order to pay for the first two years of this bill.
00:45:06.980
I want to ask you about your perspective on what the Tea Party actually was.
00:45:12.140
Talking to Brian Riedel of the Manhattan Institute, I want to get through a couple quick things
00:45:15.840
here in our couple minutes remaining, if we could, Brian.
00:45:18.800
The Tea Party, do you think—and there's kind of a competing analysis here—is it when
00:45:25.040
these focuses on spending, on government growth, was it one of those things where, you know,
00:45:30.180
most people never really meant it as far as, you know, budget controls, but it was the
00:45:36.400
Someone broke in, they grabbed the lamp because it was the closest thing there.
00:45:39.720
It was at the time the thing everyone was talking about, and the Tea Party used it to
00:45:45.780
Or was it one of those things where people really did mean it?
00:45:48.600
They did connect with the Constitution, but they felt like they did everything right.
00:45:52.200
They pushed as hard as they could, got nothing out of it, and have basically just kind of
00:45:58.240
Well, I think I could say I was there when the Tea Party started.
00:46:01.620
At the time, I was running budget policy at the Heritage Foundation.
00:46:05.460
A lot of the Tea Party meetings would circulate my data.
00:46:09.620
I think that it was legitimate concern about debt and deficit because there was such sticker
00:46:14.380
shock about the deficit rising to $1.4 trillion in 2009.
00:46:20.820
The challenge, I think, with the Tea Party is there was a lot of concern about the deficit
00:46:27.180
to the extent it was driven by the Wall Street bailouts, the stimulus, and Obamacare.
00:46:33.600
And once we got past some of those policies expired or we weren't able to repeal Obamacare,
00:46:39.860
and it became that, well, actually much more of the deficit is based on policies that we
00:46:46.040
benefit from, Social Security and Medicare primarily, that's when a lot of the Tea Partiers
00:46:52.400
So I think it was, you could say that it was kind of convenient that a lot of Tea Partiers
00:46:57.460
were concerned about the deficit when it was based on what they considered programs they
00:47:03.740
But once you got back to their own benefits, it kind of faded away.
00:47:07.940
Additionally, some interest was lost just because the Republicans couldn't do that much to cut
00:47:16.520
I mean, Paul Ryan, you know, people criticize him.
00:47:19.900
He did everything he could, but as long as President Obama was in office, you can't repeal
00:47:25.940
And I think that kind of led to some, you know, why are we bothering views among Tea Partiers.
00:47:32.020
One more thing here, if we could do, how much time do we have left?
00:47:36.080
Because I would love to, we're down to about a minute.
00:47:39.440
Do you have a couple minutes on the other side, Brian, or do you need to run?
00:47:42.600
Okay, because I would love to ask you about, particularly Kamala Harris's policy, when it
00:47:48.800
comes, for lack of a better term, quote unquote, policy, when it comes to her Medicare for
00:47:55.060
all proposal, where she seems to be saying she wants all the stuff from Bernie Sanders'
00:48:00.980
policy, but without any of the middle class tax increases, which to my eye seems completely
00:48:08.020
impossible, but I'd love to get someone who's a lot smarter than me to talk about that for
00:48:12.620
By the way, Brian's a great follow on Twitter, at Brian underscore R-I-E-D-L.
00:48:19.100
And if you care about the budget, I know a lot of people in this audience really do care.
00:48:23.340
He's a great follow, and you get lots of real information about it.
00:48:26.520
And one of the things that I'm fascinated about is this idea of Kamala Harris, who wants
00:48:32.700
to give everyone all the bells and whistles that people like Bernie Sanders want to give
00:48:38.880
But she's not going to raise taxes on anybody unless they make a billion dollars a year or
00:48:45.820
Can you get any sort of rational sense as to what she's claiming to be able to accomplish
00:48:51.460
And can she pay for this program or even come close to it?
00:48:58.580
She got the Bernie Sanders campaign to say that she's living in economic fantasy land.
00:49:07.120
Even the Sanders campaign says you've gone off into la-la land.
00:49:13.520
You know, Medicare for All would cost, in the best case scenario, an additional $32 trillion
00:49:19.300
over the decade, in a more realistic scenario, probably about $40 trillion.
00:49:25.780
I mean, basically, that nearly doubles the size of the entire federal government.
00:49:29.880
Because the entire federal government is projected to spend about nearly $50 trillion over the
00:49:36.640
If you took every Democratic tax-to-rich proposal, the wealth tax, the 70% tax rates, higher capital
00:49:45.860
gains, financial taxes, higher corporate taxes, higher estate taxes, they add up to, at most,
00:49:54.140
And that's using the left's own numbers that assume that these policies actually work.
00:50:01.200
You know, that people keep working and paying the taxes.
00:50:03.740
Even according to their own math, you could not pay for more than one-tenth of this program,
00:50:10.420
even if you did every single tax-to-rich plan proposed by every single Democratic candidate.
00:50:16.460
It is mathematically impossible to do what Kamala Harris is proposing.
00:50:20.060
And this is what brings you back to what Bernie Sanders is saying in a moment of honesty, I
00:50:27.760
The bottom line is you have to raise taxes massively on the middle class.
00:50:37.880
This is regular people making regular salaries, and their taxes are going to go through the
00:50:43.120
You could confiscate 100% of the income of everyone earning $500,000 or more, and it
00:50:52.880
I mean, like, you could – I mean, and let's assume they all keep working, you know?
00:50:57.580
Like, even if, like, you confiscated 100% of their income, it still wouldn't pay for
00:51:02.080
Now, the Sanders people have nothing to brag about because Bernie Sanders' Medicare for
00:51:06.660
All bill actually has the revenue section as TBD.
00:51:14.080
There actually is no pay for section in the Sanders' Medicare for All bill, the one that
00:51:18.100
members of Congress keep saying we need to pass.
00:51:21.060
Sanders can't actually come up with the taxes either.
00:51:23.520
But at least he admits that you can't increase spending by $32 trillion by taxing the 1%.
00:51:30.660
I mean, this is so comical that it should be laughed at.
00:51:38.280
And let me end in the actual padded room here for a moment because Medicare for All is just
00:51:42.620
what one tiny slice of the Green New Deal, which I don't know what it has to do with being
00:51:52.120
When you get to the AOC sort of territory, I mean, this is almost an incalculable cost
00:52:01.460
Well, I mean, they have a universal basic income for everybody, free income for everyone,
00:52:08.880
They're going to rebuild and retrofit every house and building in America.
00:52:13.200
They're going to take every place airplanes fly and replace it with high-speed rail.
00:52:18.600
So imagine every place in America where there's a little bit of a regional airport, we're
00:52:22.880
going to instead spend billions on high-speed rail.
00:52:25.400
We're going to replace every car in America that runs on gas.
00:52:29.460
I mean, I have been scoring bills in Washington for 18 years.
00:52:37.180
I mean, there's no way to even estimate how much would it cost to rebuild and retrofit
00:52:44.540
I mean, essentially what they're saying is we should tear down the entire country and build
00:52:50.500
That is, you know, in many ways, that is exactly what they are saying.
00:52:54.740
Brian Riedel, I am starting a movement to get Brian Riedel as a moderator of a Democratic
00:53:08.540
I think they're asleep most of the time anyway.
00:53:10.480
Brian Riedel, Manhattan Institute, at Brian underscore Riedel, R-I-E-D-L, on Twitter.
00:53:46.040
Look, they just want to spend everybody's money and remake the country.
00:53:51.700
Just tear down the country and build a new one.
00:53:53.420
Speaking of tearing down the country, though, can we kind of get by the, what did Trump call
00:53:57.880
The hellhole, progressive democratic hellhole that it is?
00:54:05.360
Critically acclaimed on HBO for six or seven years.
00:54:08.840
Did it paint the picture of a wonderful suburb where everything runs perfectly and there's
00:54:15.340
It painted a picture of corruption and drug abuse and a city hellhole.
00:54:20.820
There was a show prior to that on television that was critically acclaimed called Homicide
00:54:26.240
Life on the Streets that was based in Baltimore.
00:54:30.740
And it was also, that was, both shows were based on a book from a Baltimore Sun reporter
00:54:42.240
Yeah, and the Baltimore Sun is one of the big, you know, newspapers coming out being critical
00:54:46.300
of Trump and saying, like, you can't criticize us.
00:54:50.140
I mean, sure, we have a couple issues, but you shouldn't be talking about it.
00:54:55.720
I think talking about, you know, a major city and its massive problems does fall under
00:55:01.840
And it's been, you know, look, Elijah Cummings has done such a great job in his 80 terms as
00:55:08.180
a congressman that, you know, somebody, can anything be done with it now?
00:55:17.780
It does feel, I mean, you know, Detroit is another thing.
00:55:20.660
The Democrats are talking about Detroit, obviously, this week.
00:55:23.180
And, you know, you look at Detroit, it has had, certain areas have come back in a funny
00:55:33.460
A big part of the comeback of certain areas of Detroit has to do not with giant government
00:55:38.320
programs, but rich white executives dumping billions of dollars into a city that they love.
00:55:54.320
Now, look, some of the things that we can talk about today, you know, I like to do a few
00:55:59.160
headlines that, I love the headlines, but you don't want to delve into the story, right?
00:56:03.720
I mean, you just want to live with the headline.
00:56:09.780
Like the study that says eating ice cream for breakfast helps improve mental health.
00:56:22.460
It's just, I don't want to know the information.
00:56:24.720
The background probably says you'll die of something else, but your mental health is better.
00:56:29.320
The background says something about probably not, but don't know.
00:56:35.920
We also have health officials are warning McDonald's customers to get vaccinated amid hepatitis outbreak
00:56:46.640
And it doesn't have anything to do with McDonald's.
00:56:48.960
And sure, McDonald's customers are firing guns at employees because they got an order
00:57:02.640
That's one of those I think everybody can understand.
00:57:05.420
Was it Falling Down with Michael Douglas, right?
00:57:09.100
And I remember that was one of those things where he came up and wanted to get breakfast
00:57:12.820
and it was like two minutes after the breakfast deadline and he just starts threatening everyone.
00:57:17.480
And it was one of those movies that's like, that's definitely a crime, but I'm rooting
00:57:24.140
Just like we're getting a petition now that I think I'm for.
00:57:26.880
I'm almost for this petition that wants to change the date of Halloween.
00:57:33.740
They want to change it to the last Saturday in October instead of October 31st.
00:57:45.180
Obviously, the people that are starting the petition are hawking their Halloween wares
00:57:49.500
and want people to buy all their Halloween stuff.
00:57:51.600
But I kind of like the idea of it being on the last Saturday of the month and not just
00:57:56.360
in the middle of the week whenever October 31st falls in.
00:58:05.440
I mean, I don't like going out during the week.
00:58:09.680
You are the creepy guy that shows up at everybody's door begging for candy, aren't you?
00:58:15.040
As someone who I have a six and a seven-year-old kid, and they go out trick-or-treating every
00:58:25.160
And the decrease in the percentage of or the amount of kids that are out on the streets
00:58:31.980
trick-or-treating from when I remember going out as a kid, I mean, it's got to be 70% less
00:58:40.360
Now, I know they have more of these events, like the trunk-or-treat thing, and maybe that's
00:58:46.380
But I mean, I want to take them out old school, trick-or-treating.
00:58:53.180
I want you to, by the end of it, like you're passed out in a candy coma.
00:58:58.600
Plus, I've raised my children on how to get more candy than all the other children.
00:59:02.280
If you want to talk about Halloween, the secret to Halloween.
00:59:04.300
Now, I hate to say this on the air, man, because it gives up, this is a good plan.
00:59:10.700
You always bring an extra bag as a parent, okay, to carry.
00:59:14.220
So when your kids go up to trick-or-treat and they have a little bit of candy, oh, did
00:59:22.260
So when your kids come back to the sidewalk, you take the candy and put it in your bag so
00:59:35.740
Because first of all, you're, of course, counting people into extra candy.
00:59:39.920
I'm just helping my children so they don't have to carry such a weight of candy, Stu.
00:59:44.880
And the second part of that is you've now apprehended all of your child's candy.
00:59:49.200
So now you can just sit there and eat your fill while they think they're getting extra.
00:59:54.060
And they come back and they're like, that's actually less than I got last year.
01:00:00.500
I will say the best Halloween costume I ever had when I was a kid was a three-headed skeleton.
01:00:11.200
And then the two on the shoulders are inflatable skeletons.
01:00:16.500
And that doesn't sound like any amazing, you know, costume until you walk up and you're with someone who's dressed in some other costume.
01:00:26.260
They give them one candy bar and they say, hey, you got three heads.
01:00:39.200
I mean, it's a wonder how we're both overweight.