00:02:07.860I know someone told me to use the beeper line.
00:02:10.220I didn't. It was mostly above the belt.
00:02:12.520But the one thing I found out after is apparently Mehdi has written a book called How to Win Every Debate, which I now want to put on my mantle.
00:03:18.180Very, very excited to have all of you here.
00:03:20.640Especially this week because the Daily Wire broke this major story thanks to our intrepid Luke Rosiak, where he discovered, I think, $150 gazillion worth of fraud coming out of Ohio.
00:09:12.560I don't want to get out of here because you're going to miss out on a very substantive political discussion, which is, I was talking to Luke about this when he broke the story.
00:09:23.640So Luke says, yeah, you know, the issue is all these fraudsters, they're getting paid money from the government in order to reimburse them for taking care of their family members.
00:09:32.380And this is a health care program that says, all right, if you don't want to just ship your granny off to some Jamaican employee and you actually want to take care of her yourself, but you can't do that because you've got to work, well, here the government's going to give you those very same health subsidies that you give to a separate employee so that the granny can be taken care of by a family member.0.89
00:09:50.680And what's tough for me about this, I'm not a libertarian, I'm a traditional conservative, is I kind of like that in principle.0.77
00:09:57.200It's obviously so open to fraud and abuse, I hate that, but I don't hate the idea that we're prioritizing elderly people being taken care of by their family rather than by some random employee.
00:10:11.420So, I mean, it's called having a family, and your family should take care of you, like, period.
00:10:16.840And I should not have to be paid by the federal government to take care of my family.
00:10:19.600Like, this is my general proposition in life.
00:10:21.340Like, there is one thing if you are in dire need, in dire poverty, and, you know, we're all trying to help make sure that your kids get fed or something.
00:10:29.800But the idea that you have to pay me in order to go spend an hour with mom and Redor is, that's just bad family stuff to me.
00:10:36.540Like, this is the biggest problem, I think, on maybe the integralist, right?
00:10:41.440This idea that the government has a role in everything that virtue should actually just fill.
00:10:45.040And this is why when people say, you know, capitalism is emptying America of her virtue, it's like, well, no, you can be virtuous and also think that the federal government ought not spend my money paying you to go visit your mom.
00:10:57.760And in fact, one of the things that you learn when you raise kids is that when you incentivize kids to do the things that they should do, they end up doing it less often, actually.
00:11:05.660Like if you have an expectation that your kids do chores, for example, without compensating them, they will do chores and they will be better about it than if you actually pay them to do their chores.
00:11:13.600because you pay them to do their chores.
00:11:15.260Now they feel like they're giving you a service
00:15:00.400Shout out to him, phenomenal economist and a great, great guy in terms of the Washington, like, social security reform scene, which is not exactly the most thriving social scene.
00:15:12.820Nothing makes me feel older than social security reform because I'm actually old enough to remember when all the Republicans were asking for that.
00:17:54.900But do you think it will play or are people just so used to it?
00:17:59.480I think that unless you connect it to a broader program of slashing these programs and restructuring
00:18:04.600these programs, it's very difficult to see it moving the needle.
00:18:07.020And this is kind of what I was referring to earlier.
00:18:08.860As long as the Republican Party is the party of, yeah, we should have these gigantic social welfare systems, but we'll just make them slightly more efficient.
00:18:16.340And the Democratic Party is, that's ungenerous, and you should spend more money on them.
00:18:20.100I think you lose that argument every time.
00:18:22.320The whole point of the, if you go back to the original sort of iteration of the pushback against the welfare state, which really had to wait until Ronald Reagan.
00:18:30.540The sort of welfare queen argument, right?
00:18:32.520the idea that people are driving around Cadillacs based on welfare, that was an argument that was
00:18:36.300not devoted to the idea that people were bilking the welfare system purely and so we should crack
00:18:40.020down on the fraud. The idea was we may need to cut welfare entirely or we need to heavily chop
00:18:44.960into welfare. We need to completely restructure the system as it works. And that culminated,
00:18:48.920of course, in actual welfare reform in the 1990s under Newt Gingrich, which is, I still think,
00:18:53.920one of the single most transformative things Republicans have done over the course of the
00:18:56.540last half century. Well, now you look at what Republicans are talking about and they're saying,
00:19:00.900okay, we'll do the Doge. Doge will save us all the money because we'll go and we'll eliminate
00:19:04.900this line item that shouldn't have happened. Or we'll do an investigation. We'll cut this
00:19:09.500little piece of fraud out. That's not going to get anybody animated. The argument here
00:19:13.700is that Medicaid itself has huge systemic flaws and you need to remove those gigantic systemic
00:19:19.380flaws because Medicaid has turned into a gigantic fraud program that is not helping the people it
00:19:25.740was set out to help. And many of the people who set out to help don't actually need the help of
00:19:29.920medicaid because again depending on where you are you're talking about people who are many times
00:19:34.340over the actual poverty line who are receiving aid from the federal government if you don't have
00:19:39.580a program on the republican side to actually go small this is why big government conservatism
00:19:43.320is never going to last very you'll have spates of it in reaction to even bigger government
00:19:47.980liberalism but i think that at a certain point i know it's controversial and i know it's falling
00:19:51.480out of fashion at some point conservatives may have to argue again for smaller government not
00:19:56.340just, quote unquote, more efficient government. I mean, look, sorry, go Ben. I was on the 1998
00:20:03.440Social Security and Welfare Reform Commission. That's how old I am. And Clinton and Gingrich
00:20:11.160and that kind of thing that did all that stuff. And the thing that I'll keep, I want people to
00:20:15.840keep in mind is as much as welfare reform was a phenomenal achievement at the time that it
00:20:21.220happened, that's one program. You never saw that spread the way that it ought to to other programs
00:20:28.500as well in terms of work incentives, in terms of the demands of actually having people follow the
00:20:35.440money and make sure that it's not going to people who don't deserve it. And so then you end up with
00:20:39.060these massive systems that, as Ben says, they're piggy banks for people who do crime. And they do
00:20:44.860crime very efficiently, it turns out, and they're very organized at it. You have a low trust sort
00:20:51.140of population of immigrants combined with a high trust population of Minnesota or Ohio or California,0.92
00:20:58.980et cetera. And they can just reap the benefits of knowing how to fill out all the forms,
00:21:03.360knowing that nobody can really ask questions because if you do, you're just going to get
00:21:07.620called a racist. And I think that that's something that has to be overcome by Republicans confronting
00:21:13.840this stuff and taking it on and calling for the end of some of these programs.
00:21:18.120I mean, just saying these things, should these things even exist?
00:21:21.920Let's maybe start with that question, as opposed to trying to find different paths toward
00:21:26.960efficiency or the like, which is what we normally hear from the kind of DC think tank set of
00:21:32.480we can tweak this and we can turn this knob and things will work a little bit better.
00:21:36.940And I just, I don't, I don't necessarily see this Republican class.
00:21:41.660I just was talking to Kevin McCarthy right before we started this about what they should do to try
00:21:46.620to hold back the wave. I'm not sure I see this Republican class coalescing around that argument
00:21:52.280in time to have it actually affect the election. Well, and even forget about the Republican class.
00:21:57.100I think about just the Republican base or the ordinary Republican voters, because Ben,
00:22:01.600the vision that you're promoting, look, I remember it. I was cheering on that vision
00:22:07.280for a while. I was working on campaigns for entitlement reform. And I remember just as well
00:22:12.380as all of you do, it flopped. It didn't work. We'd been pushing for it. I mean, really, even going
00:22:16.860back to George W. Bush was really pushing for Social Security reform. And then Paul Ryan made
00:22:21.460this his raise on debt. You had some of the fringier libertarian candidates like Ron Paul and
00:22:27.040others. But that was the animating spirit of the Tea Party. You know, we did it. We gave it a really
00:22:31.120good shot. And it seems to me that every time we really made that a big issue, we got completely
00:22:36.000blown out of the water. And then in 2016, one of the big shifts that President Trump made,
00:22:40.960and it irritated a ton of conservatives at the time, is he said, you know what? I'm not getting
00:22:44.920into the entitlement thing. I'm not going to cut Social Security. I'm not going to cut Medicare
00:22:48.380or Medicaid. He leaned a little more economically populist, though, of course, he's still substantially
00:22:53.580a free trader. But nevertheless, that built a really big coalition of people that I don't think
00:22:58.860we're going to get on board for Paul Ryan. Well, I mean, I think that's true, Michael.
00:23:02.540I also think that's why if we're asking why this is not a liver issue, the answer is if people see government programs in terms of here's the choices, either we police fraud and maybe my program goes away or we don't police fraud and my program stays, then people are going to tend toward, OK, whatever, man.
00:23:19.660Like, OK, so that, yeah, that guy built the program, but I did get my Medicaid check.
00:23:23.120So, you know, as long as we're spending a cheap heartier, hands off my Medicare.
00:23:26.760That's that's one of my favorite signs that we saw.
00:23:29.820exactly i mean like that that attitude is is quite prevalent but i think that it means that
00:23:35.060it's never going to be the livest issue until you get back to it so that's fine you can have a big
00:23:38.860government conservatism that doesn't make fraud waste and abuse a live issue but i think it's
00:23:41.880very difficult to say waste fraud and abuse are a giant issue for us also we are not touching any
00:23:47.180of these social welfare programs because they're just too important by the way calci has the
00:23:51.560chances on anybody being prosecuted in minnesota the child care fraud scandal um and uh i believe
00:23:58.940that the chances right now a little small here what do we have that at 60 percent something like
00:24:06.000that and then that there will be a yeah there goes 77 percent of people believe that somebody
00:24:10.980will be charged in the minnesota daycare fraud scan okay that sounds about right to me i'm sure
00:24:14.680somebody will be charged there uh yeah mary margaret you know when when you're walking around
00:24:19.520the white house and obviously the vice president is very very focused on digging up these sorts of
00:24:24.360cases. Does he see this as being sort of a major political issue that Republicans are going to be
00:24:29.740able to push? Because obviously, I think some of us are skeptical. What do they think in the White
00:24:33.780House about it? Well, they kind of need it to be a major political issue. And I think Vance,
00:24:38.860in particular, kind of wants it to be a major political issue. Not that the Vance team has
00:24:43.920told me this, but reading between the lines, look, this is something that J.D. Vance has been tasked
00:24:48.220with as kind of his project. He is the fraud czar in the same way that Kamala Harris was the
00:24:53.560borders are and everyone at the white house has joked about how she failed so miserably at that
00:24:58.120right so everyone jokes about how she failed so miserably at that this is his big chance his big
00:25:03.840moment meanwhile we have marco rubio kind of edging up on the sides he's in the briefing room
00:25:08.280yesterday he's getting all this positive attention so i gotta i gotta ask the question i gotta ask
00:25:13.160the question we're seeing the glow up for marco happen we're seeing the wall street journal
00:25:17.620headlines we're seeing this thing like was he he seemed awesome but was he really that awesome in
00:25:24.560the room i mean look i was in there with i don't know how many other reporters so many we were so
00:25:31.740crowded it didn't smell good i was had people's arms in front of my face everyone was laughing
00:25:36.180at him everybody loved him he was as the youth say he was rizzing the crowd uh he enjoyed it it
00:25:42.740was very clear that he did. He worked in two different lines from popular music songs that
00:25:48.360I'm a little too young to actually realize the references. Maybe you guys know them better than
00:25:53.600I do. Insane in the membrane. I feel so old, man. Why are you going to throw that in there,
00:25:59.520Mary Margaret? I'm sorry. I have one question about it. Was he lying when he said that he
00:26:05.540didn't know the names of the people in the room? Oh, he definitely didn't. I mean, think about it.
00:26:10.400he was on Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill Press is very different than the White House Press Corps.
00:26:15.100Someone like me, I think I've interviewed him like years and years ago, but it would have been
00:26:19.560like a one-off, you know, at CPAC or something like that. It's not like the White House Press
00:26:23.080is spending a lot of time over on Capitol Hill or actually at the State Department. So the
00:26:27.320reporters that he would know were in the front row. And I think I said this yesterday, but
00:26:30.980he wasn't calling on the front row too much, which as a member of the new media, I kind of liked
00:26:35.400because he was calling on the aisles. He was calling on people in the back. He called on the
00:26:39.360guy right next to me so just bouncing around the room he was clearly a little overstimulated by the
00:26:44.940vibe in there but anyone would be and i don't know ben i think i think he did a good job and i think
00:26:51.100he really enjoyed himself and for the first time i personally thought oh wow maybe it's going to be
00:26:56.360him there's no job he can't do yeah it's true um is that it just to follow up on just to follow
00:27:10.220up on what uh what we were asking about when it comes to the fraud kind of thing you know how much
00:27:15.820time does jd really have to spend on this it is his home state in terms of ohio is he going to
00:27:21.440kind of do something there is he going to get involved there in some kind of greater respect
00:27:26.500Do you know of any plans on the vice president's part to dive into that?
00:33:17.780But when Swalwell was still in the race, there was a very good shot that you could have had a Republican governor of California, just the way that the elections are conducted there.
00:33:25.920I think this is a big reason why the Democrats sniped Swalwell on three different fronts, on residency, on financial corruption, and then eventually on a sex scandal.
00:33:40.580But two, did anything happen at the debate last night that is going to affect the race?
00:33:46.980Well, no, I mean, a Democrat's going to win. I mean, I like I don't mean to be a downer, but there's a reason we all left the state.
00:33:53.360I mean, California is beautiful and it is mismanaged. And, you know, I love Steve Hilton. He's great. And and Chad Bianco is is fine. He's great.
00:34:03.420I mean, but let's be real about this. If they sneak through with 17 percent of the vote in a multi-candidate primary and then they get through to a general election and Xavier Becerra versus Steve Hilton,
00:34:13.440And I'm highly skeptical that the Republican ends up winning that general election race.
00:34:18.560And that seems like that's the most likely scenario right now.
00:34:21.200It was extraordinary to watch Democrats try to outbid each other in being insane.1.00
00:34:25.520So Katie Porter, who is a nut job.1.00
00:42:13.240I have a grown kid who may soon be living on my couch.
00:42:16.620To give Californians what they need, it's going to take standing up to Donald Trump, calling out greedy corporations, and stepping on some toes along the way.
00:42:25.860Now, could you guys please get out of my shot?
00:42:33.940And also, I do love that all of our politicians, I remember a time when we used to be aspirational toward our politicians a little bit.0.88
00:42:40.000And now, every politician is like, I'm a loser, just like you.0.98
00:45:33.420One of the best parts of the debate is Katie Porter said we need illegal immigration because that's the only way that we've actually received net population increase in California.
00:45:42.280You're not supposed to say that part out loud.
00:45:44.500You're not supposed to say that part out loud.0.84
00:45:45.900And it's also one of those things where, you know, and this is something that I think Republicans need to be putting more of a front foot on going forward is the only reason these states are holding on to the kind of of flow of taxpayer dollars that they have received through all these programs is because of that is because they they welcome these illegals into their state to replace the American citizens who are fleeing for very logical and obvious reasons.0.71
00:46:15.900going to places like Texas, going to places like Nashville. They are moving out of those blue0.85
00:46:21.160states because of those terrible policies. But the blue states are able to hold on to both
00:46:25.860congressional seats and the flow of taxpayer money because they import all of these illegals and
00:46:32.300basically say, we're just going to run our programs in order to feed more and more people0.90
00:46:36.340this type of taxpayer dollars and keep more and more bureaucrats employed.
00:46:40.740Right. Speaking of bringing people over, filling up the ranks, have you seen this trend? I don't
00:46:48.820know if it's real or if it's just social media people babbling, but John Fetterman, who was
00:46:54.020elected pretty left-wing, has consistently moved to the right, at least in his public statements.
00:47:00.380And so now there seems to be an all-out push to get him to actually flip political parties.
00:47:05.080Is there any chance that happens or no? That's all just wish-casting fake news.
00:47:36.420And they're very, very angry at him that he's not totally crazy about Trump or about Israel or about immigration.
00:47:41.800And so if he's trying to avoid a primary, then he could be in sort of a Kyrsten Sinema situation where Sinema ended up trying to run as an independent specifically because the Democrats went so crazy.
00:47:51.900But John Fetterman votes at a plus 90 percent clip for all the Democratic policies.
00:47:56.940He voted consistently with the Joe Biden agenda when he was when when there was crossover there.0.92
00:48:01.440And so the idea that he is somehow a Republican just because he's not totally crazy, that does show, I think, how nuts the Democrats are.
00:48:08.340You look at John Fetterman, who is a fairly traditional Democrat, meaning that he's very left-wing on economics.
00:48:13.820He's somewhat left-wing on social issues.
00:48:16.280And he's kind of middle of the road on foreign policy, but he's still pro-Israel and all the rest of this.
00:48:21.300And they look at him and they go, he must be a Republican.
00:48:24.020That's how crazy the Democrats have gotten.0.99
00:48:26.380I think, again, that's just an indicator of how nuts they are.0.96
00:48:28.340By the way, this is Barack Obama's fault.
00:48:29.780I know everyone wants to blame Zarmam Dhani or they want to blame Bernie Sanders.
00:56:06.480who is something for the Republicans in 2026 for things not going as well for Republicans as they
00:56:12.120should have, then we should recognize the splinter faction that was undermining this administration
00:56:16.440from the very word go in order to divide it and destroy it while claiming that they wanted unity0.98
00:56:22.300because that was bullshit from the first day. Well, I think this is really going to disappoint0.94
00:56:28.600all our new Muslim fans. Yeah, that one I love because when I saw the moderate Democrat thing,0.96
00:56:36.000I thought that was actually this declaration of an actual partisanship, and I really, really like it because it made me think of that Jim Downey meme that sometimes goes around Twitter.
00:56:45.880It's like, Nick Fuentes, you mean the moderate Democrat?