The Great America Show - May 01, 2026


Mid-Day Update： May 1, 2026


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

174.76

Word count

960

Sentence count

71


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The $31.3 trillion dollar federal debt has now surpassed the size of the entire economy for the first time since the early days of the Great Depression. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly pushes to bring charges against former FBI Director James Comey. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Sayyid Qutaym al-Qutaymi says they are not looking to give up their weapons.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hello everybody, I'm John Fossett with this Great America Show midday update for Friday, May 1st.
00:00:04.580 Happy Friday, folks. Hopefully those April showers are going to bring May flowers and that rain is good as gone, at least for a few weeks.
00:00:13.620 Some news today on the national debt. It's now passed a major milestone rising above the size of the entire economy.
00:00:20.620 As of yesterday, March 31st, federal debt held by the public reached $31.3 trillion,
00:00:26.420 slightly exceeding the annual GDP of roughly $31.2 trillion,
00:00:30.420 putting the debt-to-GDP ratio just over 100%.
00:00:33.720 Now, this is the first time the U.S. has sustained that level
00:00:36.900 since the years following World War II.
00:00:39.600 The government is currently running large deficits,
00:00:41.640 spending more money than it collects.
00:00:43.760 For every $1 in revenue, it spends about $1.3,
00:00:47.740 with this year's deficit projected at around $1.9 trillion.
00:00:52.560 While crossing the 100% mark doesn't trigger an immediate crisis,
00:00:55.900 Economists see it as a clear sign that there's a growing fiscal pressure and probably a fiscal problem.
00:01:04.000 One of the biggest concerns is interest costs, of course.
00:01:06.500 About $1 in $7 of federal spending now goes towards paying interest on the debt.
00:01:11.600 That share is expected to rise if interest rates increase.
00:01:15.000 Not unlike temporary spikes seen during crisis such as the pandemic, current debt levels are being driven by long-term factors.
00:01:21.280 These include rising cost programs like Social Security and Medicare, along with lower tax revenues following the recent tax cuts.
00:01:28.940 Forecasts suggest the trend will continue.
00:01:31.960 Some news out of the Justice Department today.
00:01:33.660 Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly pushed prosecutors to pursue the Comey-Trump Instagram assassination threat after Pam Bondi put it on ice.
00:01:42.860 Pam Bondi, it turns out, was the problem.
00:01:45.940 She reportedly put the case on the back burner, but Blanche revived it and urged prosecutors to pursue charges.
00:01:51.280 earlier this week comey was indicted by a grand jury in the eastern district of north carolina on
00:01:55.560 two felony counts well it's seemingly turning out that pam bondi was indeed the problem folks she
00:02:02.680 was the issue um with no indictments turning now to a little bit of foreign policy iran's supreme
00:02:10.820 leader getting a little defiant vowing to protect the islamic republic's nuclear and missile
00:02:15.340 capabilities which president trump has sought to curtail through airstrikes as part of a wider deal
00:02:20.480 to cement the war shaky ceasefire now in a statement that the ayatollah who's currently
00:02:27.600 waiting for prosthetic legs and facial reconstruction surgery after being a victim of
00:02:33.840 the attacks saying that they're not looking to give up their weapons right now so i guess that
00:02:39.620 seems to be what will be the end for iran some other foreign news on a positive note president
00:02:46.920 Trump yesterday said he's removed tariffs on scotch whiskey also known as scotch touting the
00:02:52.580 move as a celebration of the connection between the U.S. and the United Kingdom to cap off King
00:02:56.700 Charles III's fourth day here visiting in the United States and over on the immigration side
00:03:03.720 Secretary Mullen is thrilled to find out that the DHS is now funded and the Marxist Dems have given
00:03:10.560 up. He said this lapse in funding has caused a huge exodus at the agencies. They're down about
00:03:18.280 1,100 people, a third of the workforce. They've had contractors walking off the border wall and
00:03:23.700 it's absurd. But Mullen says with this new funding deal, things are expected to get better. Take a
00:03:29.440 listen. What we have now is an opportunity to actually move forward. What was taking place
00:03:34.240 was tearing homeland altogether from the Coast Guard all the way down to ICE and everybody in
00:03:40.740 between. This TSA, we lost almost eight percent of the workforce, which is almost double what our
00:03:47.080 attrition rate typically is. Yeah. So how do you replace those people? Well, it takes four months.
00:03:51.200 Well, not really. It takes about four months to onboard people. Just CISA, who's over CISA,
00:03:57.160 by the way, takes care of our cybersecurity. We're down eleven hundred people down down.
00:04:02.100 So almost a third of the workforce is no longer with us.
00:04:05.460 Seventy six days being shut down, not going to be operational.
00:04:08.500 People say, well, but they're getting paid.
00:04:10.280 We had State Department paying our electricity bill.
00:04:12.900 We had D.O.W. Secretary Hegseth was paying our gas bill for the United States Coast Guard to operate.
00:04:19.620 We we we could we may be able to pay paychecks, but we couldn't do anything.
00:04:23.340 We had contractors walking off the border wall.
00:04:26.560 We have drone defense companies that were subcontracting from that was walking off jobs.
00:04:31.560 because we have MOUs, Memorandum of Understanding, with law enforcement
00:04:36.220 that's got to deliver these 11 cities that we've got FIFA coming to with the World Cup
00:04:41.860 that haven't been paid since February.
00:04:44.780 It was absolutely absurd, and AOC wants to sit there and say it was worth it.
00:04:49.200 We are tasked to protect the homeland.
00:04:52.680 I don't care where AOC lives or how she votes.
00:04:57.400 My job is still to protect her constituents,
00:04:59.560 and she thinks it's worth it
00:05:01.160 to put their lives at danger
00:05:02.300 because no other agency
00:05:03.880 protects the homeland.
00:05:05.540 DHS protects the homeland
00:05:06.780 and she thinks it's worth it.
00:05:08.440 It's sad.
00:05:09.220 It's nice that the Republicans
00:05:10.220 got their act together,
00:05:11.180 at least for the interim,
00:05:12.460 while they get a little bit of money
00:05:14.180 for these folks over at DHS.
00:05:16.920 Folks, please be sure to join us
00:05:18.060 each and every day tonight,
00:05:19.160 6 p.m. Eastern time
00:05:19.980 for The Great America Show.
00:05:21.240 Rumble, YouTube, Twitter,
00:05:22.440 wherever you guys join us.
00:05:23.560 We'll see you there tonight
00:05:24.340 and each and every day,
00:05:25.520 6 p.m. Eastern.
00:05:26.220 I'm John Fossett with this Midday Update.
00:05:27.820 Have a great day, everybody,
00:05:28.740 and happy Friday.