The Great America Show - May 01, 2026


Mid-Day Update: May 1, 2026


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

174.75728

Word count

960

Sentence count

71


Summary

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

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.