Sen. Mitch McConnell appears to freeze up for 30 seconds on camera, and now two prominent TV doctors begin to weigh in on what might be happening to him. Megyn Kelly and Glenn Greenwald discuss why this could be a sign that something is wrong with him.
00:02:21.980Number one, God bless that aide who was very professional, had his back, was navigating a tricky situation, and she never let us see her sweat.
00:02:32.380Number two, for the listening audience, I mean, he just froze sort of in the way.
00:02:35.580You ever had a situation where, like, your eyes get into a stare and they kind of fixate on an object and you're kind of off in space for a second?
00:02:42.880That's how he looked. He clearly was no longer connected to the audience in front of him.
00:02:46.320And my third point, Glenn, is amazingly, though he did go back to the audience after this, the first two questions, they didn't ask anything about this.
00:02:54.340What happened to you, Mr. Minority Leader? What just happened?
00:02:58.860And he isn't really offering an explanation, though, Sanjay Gupta and Mark Siegel, doctors on CNN and Fox, are both speculating that looks like a Parkinson's episode.
00:03:10.600Yeah, I think we had to remember this is the second episode like this that he has had.
00:03:16.140I think the last one was maybe six or eight weeks ago.
00:03:18.620Very similar, where he just froze, was obviously disconnected.
00:03:22.220I'm not really comfortable with, certainly I'm not comfortable speculating.
00:03:25.340I'm not really comfortable with doctors who haven't examined somebody speculating either.
00:03:29.060I think it's a little bit irresponsible, but I guess it's informative in some way.
00:03:32.620I think it's always a tricky and delicate issue because, first and foremost, I hope we are all human beings.
00:03:38.780We all have had grandparents or parents who have faced the infirmities of old age, and this is something we're likely to face ourselves, every person, every person we love.
00:03:50.380And so you want to be very kind of understanding and empathetic about it just for being human.
00:03:55.360On the other hand, this is not just some ordinary citizen trying to work into his life, into the end of his life, because he enjoys it.
00:04:02.740This is somebody with a great deal of power and responsibility, and therefore it is a concern of public matter, much more so than it would be for a private citizen.
00:04:11.380When we have people like Dianne Feinstein, like Joe Biden, like Mitch McConnell, there are others, too, who are clearly staying in power longer than their capabilities and physical conditions permit.
00:04:22.920And there is a term for this, Megan, called gerontocracy, which is something we used to criticize the Soviet Union in the 1970s very harshly for being governed by in the age of like Leonid Brezhnev and all the Soviet leaders were in their mid to late 70s.
00:04:36.440There were all kinds of valid critiques, if you go back and read those, about why governments and citizenships are very poorly served when people just cling to power for as long as they can, well past the time their capabilities permit.
00:04:48.880And I think that clearly is the case with Mitch McConnell, Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden and others.
00:04:53.140And I think it's starting to become a big problem for the United States.
00:04:56.960Yes, it's I mean, we don't want to kick any of these people out.
00:05:18.960Don't make don't make us watch you deteriorate to the point of incapacity while you're a sitting U.S. senator to where we have to fire you.
00:05:26.100We have to boot you out with an indignant flair.
00:05:29.900You know, I mean, that's what's happening.
00:05:31.560And I do wonder, I mean, look, I I think it's a fair question.
00:05:48.500Because I know, God forbid this ever happened to me.
00:05:51.180My husband would say, honey, you're the bomb.
00:05:54.060But it's going to be super fun for us to travel the Grand Canyon and the great parks of the United States together at this point in your career.
00:06:02.580Right. This is what we're going to do.
00:06:04.080It's going to be the fun next phase of life for us.
00:06:06.040And maybe it's time to step away from the lectern in the U.S. Senate or the microphone in the case of somebody like me.
00:06:15.440Yeah. You know, look, I actually just had this personal choice, this problem, you know, this kind of dilemma myself.
00:06:20.920And as you know, my husband was hospitalized in the ICU.
00:06:23.140He was a member of Congress, the Brazilian Congress.
00:06:25.040He was running for reelection, which was the choice that he had made.
00:06:27.940And we had to make the decision as a family without him because he wasn't capable of participating at that time, whether to withdraw his candidacy.
00:06:35.920And we decided that we should, because even if he recovered, we thought he probably wasn't going to be able to do the job the way he would want to, the way the people who voted for him deserved.
00:06:43.720And it wasn't an easy decision because, you know, it's the person's career talking about their kind of life, work, their purpose.
00:06:51.600But at some point, you have to realize that, especially if you're holding that kind of public power, you do have a responsibility.
00:06:57.280It's not kind of just a theory or a cliche like you do have an obligation to other people to relinquish that power, no matter how much you want to hold on to it.
00:07:07.040If you're not capable of exercising it responsibly for whatever reasons, in this case, we're talking about health problems or old age.
00:07:13.700I do think we want to make sure that we don't just start throwing people away because they're over 80 or 85 or some arbitrary age.
00:07:19.960Like if someone's in their 80s and still capable of doing their job, I mean, look at Bernie Sanders is just one example.
00:07:25.900He seems a very energetic, very engaged.
00:07:58.020And I do think there's a responsibility, even if they're not capable, as you said, for their family members to step in and intervene.
00:08:04.980And I think that one of the reasons they don't is because a lot of times the people in those families are prioritizing their own interest and their own ego and their own sense of self that comes from these titles and these positions above the interest of anybody else.
00:08:19.600And that's what makes it kind of enraging at the end of the day.
00:10:01.540I mean, the thing about it is, you know, there's some areas and topics that require expertise and people feel intimidated by if they don't have that expertise.
00:10:10.840If you talk about medicine or law or, you know, any number of fields that require actual expertise to participate fully.
00:10:17.220But people are very capable of seeing when somebody else is impaired, because, as I said, it's a very common thing that we all deal with in our lives and our families and our friends and everywhere else.
00:10:26.640And people could see with their own eyes that Joe Biden is a completely different person than he was even five years ago, let alone 10 years ago and 20 years ago.
00:10:35.760And he's a very impaired person in a way that an older person becomes very slow down, very kind of just often lost and incapable of navigating themselves physically and mentally.
00:10:52.620I always go back to the fact, Megan, you can go and watch some amazing clips from MSNBC in particular.
00:10:57.400In 2018 and 2019, Democratic insiders, those kind of strategist types that go on cable, were very concerned that Joe Biden was going to get the nomination, primarily due to the fact that he was the most known figure for serving at Obama's side for all those years.
00:11:12.820And that he's been around forever because they were saying he's he's incognitive decline.
00:11:17.640He is not capable of withstanding the rigors of a campaign, let alone the presidency.
00:11:21.900These were Democratic insiders saying that.
00:11:23.860And of course, once Biden got the nomination, it became prohibited to say it any longer.
00:11:57.140Listen to Kareem Jean-Pierre talking about this to CNN the other day.
00:12:00.380It is hard for us to keep up with this president who is constantly, constantly working every day to get things done and making sure that we are delivering for the American people.
00:12:12.700And that's what and I think that's what matters.
00:12:27.600But this is a lie that all the aides keep planting in all the magazine articles and the newspaper articles about how they can barely keep up with him.
00:12:35.980I think one of the reasons why this is such a danger for Democrats is because this is something I think people feel confident in their own abilities.
00:12:46.920They don't need to be told what to think about this.
00:12:49.520This is something people feel very comfortable in assessing for themselves.
00:12:52.300And I think what this is, it's not just ineffective, it's like an aggressive insult to people's intelligence to try and tell them to believe something that with their own eyes they know is a lie.
00:13:03.240It's a disrespectful, classic gaslight.
00:13:06.280And it's also disrespectful because they're essentially saying, we know that you can see this person is not capable of running this country, but we're going to continue to insist that he stay in power anyway.
00:13:19.620It's the ultimate entitlement syndrome.
00:13:21.600Even if people aren't wondering yet who's really behind Joe Biden, who the real president is, which I think is going to start becoming the question.
00:13:28.180I just think it seems very disrespectful to Americans to tell them that this person is just somehow divinely entitled to remain in power, even though everyone can see with their own eyes that he's not capable of doing the job.
00:13:52.280We have a right to know because these people have very important positions.
00:13:55.160Now you have Biden after, you know, 10 days of terrible coverage since last Monday when he went finally to Maui and stepped all over himself and referenced his house fire from years ago that he exaggerated and lied about.
00:14:10.180It talked about how his Corvette almost got damaged and maybe he almost lost a cat.
00:14:15.540I mean, you know, we've gone over the numbers.
00:14:46.580I mean, I think this is the other danger for Democrats.
00:14:49.080Whatever else you want to say about Joe Biden, I've never obviously been a fan of Joe Biden, his ideology, his politics, quite the contrary.
00:14:56.600He has always had a certain kind of political talent.
00:15:01.420He has the sort of ability to relate to people in a way that just makes them seem like an ordinary person, even though he's been in Washington since the age of 29 in the U.S. Senate and has had anything but an ordinary life.
00:15:13.700He has that kind of, like, innate political skill.
00:15:16.860And it isn't just his cognitive abilities and his physical resilience that are rapidly disappearing before our own eyes.
00:15:23.200It's also that ability to connect to other people and to make them seem like he understands.
00:15:27.160And that, I mean, that fire in Maui is horrific.
00:15:31.880You're talking about over a thousand children dead.
00:15:35.840You know, people's homes destroyed, their lives irrevocably wrecked.
00:15:40.280And for him to go in front of a camera after being very distant from this entire disaster, saying no comment that time at the beach and then claiming he didn't hear their question,
00:15:48.880and trying to imply that he has had a similar sort of disaster in his own life because there was, like, a garage spark one time that almost burned down his car or something.
00:16:01.540It's just a kind of, like, tone deaf, you know, just, like, political disaster that I think you're going to be seeing more and more of because it's part of this decline.
00:16:10.360There was a Babylon Bee post the other day, the headline of which was, Biden comforts hurricane victims, meaning in Florida, by talking about time, the urinal splashed back at him a little.
00:16:26.020He always has had this propensity to just, like, pathologically lie.
00:16:30.520I think people have forgotten he had to drop out of the presidential race in 1988 when he got caught lying about, like, the smallest things, like his grades and, you know, where he finished in school.
00:16:42.860He has gotten caught lying and inventing, like, major stories about Nelson Mandela and his role in the civil rights movement and then much smaller things as well.
00:17:12.660But ultimately, I think the fact that Trump still seems perfectly vibrant and obviously very mentally present, you know, to say nothing of other Republican candidates, and then you compare them to Joe Biden, for a lot of people, ideology and party does not rule their lives.
00:17:28.600They want somebody they believe is going to do a job that will improve their lives.
00:17:32.580And if they feel like somebody is basically, like, crippled mentally and physically or exhausted or whatever, I think that's going to make a difference for a lot of people.
00:17:40.580OK, but now, meanwhile, elsewhere in the Democratic field, things are getting interesting.
00:17:46.200There's like a little smoke coming up in the ranks and the Dems.
00:17:50.180And I'm not speaking about RFKJ or Marianne Williamson, Bernie Sanders and Cornel West.
00:17:56.720What do you make of, well, get the audience up to speed on what they've been doing and why they've become a little bit more interesting as we look forward to 2024, even though we're assured, we're assured Biden's running for a second term.
00:18:07.560Well, first of all, Cornel West is just one of the more interesting people in our cultural life.
00:18:22.920I really believe that he's been very widely respected his whole life.
00:18:27.760He wrote a book called Race Matters in the 1990s.
00:18:29.800That's considered by a lot of people one of the most profound intellectual works on race.
00:18:33.600And aside from that, he was a very close friend of Bernie Sanders.
00:18:39.420He was a vigorous supporter of the Sanders campaign, both in 2016 and 2020, when Bernie ran for president.
00:18:44.880Cornel West has always been a left-wing critic of the Democratic Party.
00:18:47.680He's never liked the Democratic Party, but he's kind of maintained like one foot inside of it, the way Bernie used to pretend to do.
00:18:53.580Now Cornel West thinks both parties are equally terrible, that he can't support either, and he's running as a third-party candidate with the Green Party, the way Jill Stein did in 2016.
00:19:04.280And one major problem for the Democrats is that he is a very respected Black intellectual, very popular among a lot of Black voters, on whom Democrats rely in every election to win.
00:19:18.240But he's also somebody I think people are going to start to see who has this ability to speak to working-class people in a way that makes them feel like they're not hearing stale left-wing dogma.
00:19:29.820He's exciting. He's charismatic. He's funny. He's very human. He produces music. He sings. He'll break into song in the middle of interviews like he did when I had him on my show.
00:19:39.640And I think he poses a huge threat to the Democratic Party because even if you take 2% or 3% from Joe Biden, that obviously can make a difference in the way our elections are run.
00:19:47.960And the amazing thing is, Megan, that Bernie Sanders' entire life has prided himself on his independence from the Democratic Party.
00:19:53.880Literally, he's never been a member of the Democratic Party. Even now, he's an independent senator.
00:19:57.900He doesn't belong to either party, technically, even though he caucuses with the Democrats.
00:20:02.740So for them to send out, of all people, Bernie Sanders, to attack Cornel West, and for Bernie to be willing to do it, to attack his good friend, someone who supported him for many years, shows that there is no more internal dissent within the Democratic Party.
00:20:21.380I was in Milwaukee. Everybody who watched that debate saw the incredibly intense ideological and political conflicts the Republican Party has internally, which I think is very healthy.
00:20:30.220Democrats are in total lockstep, including the parts of the party that pretended for a long time to be defiant and rebellious.
00:20:37.400Bernie's catchphrase in 2016 was, our revolution. The revolutionary, the radical revolutionary is now Joe Biden's chief party enforcer, to the point of being willing publicly to exploit his old fake persona to attack Cornel West.
00:20:52.140And I don't know. I think that's going to alienate a lot of people more than it's going to persuade, though.
00:20:56.080Hmm. So interesting to hear you explain that. OK, so here's here's a bit of Cornel West going on Charlemagne's show, The Breakfast Club, on August 7th, talking about Bernie Sanders. Take a listen here.
00:21:07.560I love the brother. And, you know, you even in love, people have deep disagreements about these things.
00:21:15.540But I think, again, he's he's fearful of the neo-fascism of Trump. People look at Biden. They don't really want to tell the full truth.
00:21:23.420He's created the best economy that we can get. Is this the best that we can get?
00:21:30.180You're going to tell that lie to the people just for Biden to win?
00:21:36.900Hmm. OK. And then, as you point out, out comes Bernie Sanders with a response directed at Cornel West.
00:21:43.560Where I disagree with my good friend, Cornel West, is I think in these really very
00:21:51.300difficult times where there is a real question whether democracy is going to remain in the United States of America,
00:22:01.700I think we have got to bring the entire progressive community to defeat Trump or whoever the Republican nominee will be.
00:22:09.580OK, and then one more for you. Cornel West went on rising with, you know, the Hill and had had an interesting POV that we should play.
00:22:23.620Brother Bernie's making a plausible argument, but I think deep down in his heart, he knows that the Democratic Party has no fundamental intention of speaking to the needs of poor people and working.
00:22:34.060People, he and AOC and the others are going to be in a certain sense, window dressing at worst and at best people to appeal to every four years.
00:22:45.700So, Glenn, he, Cornel West is not persuaded by the Bernie message of we've got to get the entire Democratic Party unified and on board to defeat the fascist Trump.
00:22:56.060You know, I have to say, Megan, like Bernie Sanders, it's sad to watch because he is a politician for whom I had personal respect.
00:23:01.760I think a lot of people, even people who don't like his ideology in Washington, will say, whatever you want to say about Bernie, he has integrity in the sense that he's always true to his principles.
00:23:11.120What he's doing now is so despicable because in 2016, this is exactly the argument that was made against Bernie Sanders was, look, we have this Hitler-like menace and Donald Trump.
00:23:22.040This is not a time to have infighting within the Democratic Party.
00:23:25.040You're threatening American democracy by running against Hillary Clinton and damaging her.
00:23:28.320And to this day, a lot of them blame Bernie Sanders for sabotaging Hillary Clinton in the general election.
00:23:34.580And beyond that, Megan, people don't want to face the fact in the Democratic Party that it isn't people like me saying this.
00:23:41.300It's people like Elizabeth Warren and Donna Brazile, the former chairwoman of the DNC, who said that in 2016, the Democrats cheated.
00:23:49.520They rigged the election in order to ensure that Bernie lost and that Hillary won and that she would win no matter what.
00:23:54.820And so to watch Bernie now turn around to the same party that refuses to hold any presidential debates, to declare Joe Biden the winner, even though he has two primary challengers before a single vote is cast, that cheated and rigged the election when he ran.
00:24:08.280And to pretend now that the Democrats are the only guardians of democracy without whom we will no longer be a democracy.
00:24:14.440And not only that, but to do so by attacking Cornel West, someone who's supposed to be his friend in such harsh terms, I think is really grotesque.
00:24:23.560And look, you saw Cornel West in that clip.
00:24:25.320I mean, it's not hard to understand why Democrats, the last poll showed 20 percent of black Americans are saying they're going to vote for Donald Trump.
00:24:33.380But no question, Trump has attracted more and more non-white voters the more he stayed in public life.
00:24:39.100And if you have someone like Cornel West going and saying that stuff that he just said, Democrats don't care about the working class, they don't care about the poor.
00:24:45.540That is not something that Democrats want.
00:24:47.720And I don't think they believe they can persuade Cornel West to stop.
00:24:51.060And so they've launched this repulsive campaign trying to depict him as a deadbeat dad, as a tax cheat.
00:24:59.260And it really shows just how craven these people are.
00:25:01.420The Daily Beast had a piece up this month.
00:25:04.300Cornel West owes more than half a million in unpaid taxes.
00:25:07.380They went and pulled public records from New Jersey and California, claiming he owes the IRS five hundred and forty three thousand dollars in outstanding federal tax liens.
00:25:16.620I don't know what the circumstances of all this are, but they're happy to come after him because he he actually may be siphoning votes off from their dear leader.
00:25:25.860And Joe Biden cannot afford to lose any votes, never mind votes within the black community.
00:25:31.420Why do you think he moved South Carolina up first for the Democratic primary?
00:25:35.740He's it's a reward to Jim Clyburn and for South Carolina for essentially helping him become the Democratic nominee.
00:25:42.180He cannot lose the black vote, period.
00:25:48.080I mean, there's going to obviously be the most unified and concerted push on behalf of every powerful Democratic every half of every powerful institution in this country outside of a few media companies and others.
00:26:01.240But in general, the entire power center in the United States is going to be united behind Joe Biden.
00:26:05.060The propaganda campaign launched against the American people will be unlike anything we've ever seen before.
00:26:09.580Remember, in 2016, the FBI concocted a fake Russiagate scandal in 2020.
00:26:13.740The CIA lied to voters right before the vote by telling them the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, which was a complete and utter lie that the corporate media spread.
00:26:22.320That shows the extent, the lengths to which they're willing to go to try and win this election.
00:26:27.120So there's going to be a huge propaganda push.
00:26:29.240But I think a lot of black voters are coming to the realization that Democrats love black voters as long as black voters do what Democrats tell them to do.
00:26:39.240And that is not something that most people want to accept.
00:27:23.960Unlike this speculation about the third party and possibly running Joe Manchin, as you point out, Cornel West is already aligned with a Green Party that knows how to get you on the ballot and actually will siphon votes away.
00:27:35.300Yeah. And I have to say, Megan, you know, Cornel West is not Jill Stein.
00:27:40.980I have a lot of respect for Jill Stein.
00:27:42.640You know, I don't agree with her on everything, but to put that mildly.
00:27:46.500But I think she's a good and decent person.
00:27:49.080But when it comes to political talent and charisma, Cornel West is in a different universe.
00:27:54.200And also, Cornel West is black and Jill Stein is is white.
00:27:57.980And when it comes to black voters, I think Cornel West is going to have a lot of say.
00:28:03.980And if he spends the next months, even if at the end of the day, he withdraws or endorse Joe Biden or whatever.
00:28:08.880But if he spends the next six months with that message that you just played and when he was on my show, I mean, he spent 30 or 40 minutes just bashing the Democratic Party.
00:28:17.920He agrees with the Trump position on Ukraine, which is kind of the DeSantis position, the Vivek position.
00:28:23.660He agrees with the Republicans on trade issues or the Trump side on trade issues.
00:28:27.840So if he's going out there and saying that sort of thing, the Democratic Party doesn't care about you.
00:28:31.860They have these rich people telling you how great the economy is.
00:28:34.260But that's because people like you aren't benefiting and they don't care about you.
00:28:37.620All of which is true in which he's extremely effective in conveying.
00:28:41.040It's going to do a lot of damage, though.
00:28:43.480It's the Trump message in a lot of ways.
00:28:46.100And Trump was the big middle finger to the establishment that had forgotten the working class.
00:28:50.100And Cornel West could be the same thing for those Democrats who wouldn't go so far as to vote Republican, vote for Donald Trump, but want to give the middle finger and badly.
00:28:59.600And so he's an option that they that they haven't had before.
00:29:04.180Let me ask you about something that's been in the news.
00:29:05.960We talked about it with Victor Davis Hanson earlier this week.
00:29:08.000The notion that's growing in some corners that Joe Biden's not he's not going to run.
00:29:12.360This is he's going to have to withdraw because of his infirmity, because of the scandal around Hunter and himself and that, you know, he's going to stay on the ballot just just long enough, but that he won't ultimately be the one running for the Democratic Party for all of these reasons.
00:29:27.700And they just sort of have to keep it going long enough that they can get some other comers in the mix and it won't just be handed to Kamala Harris, who they know can't win.
00:29:38.000I mean, there was a lot of speculation like this in 2020 when the claim was that Michelle Obama was going to swoop in or even Andrew Cuomo before his scandals was going to swoop in and become the real nominee.
00:31:57.720And Ramaswamy is seen as last week's debate winner saying that there was no bounce for DeSantis as a result of the debate.
00:32:04.640Now, DeSantis' polling firm, Public Opinion Strategies, released its own internal Iowa poll this week to Fox that also did find Nikki Haley rising in Iowa after the debate, but found DeSantis closer to Trump.
00:32:18.400Now, this is what qualifies as good news these days for, you know, the DeSantis camp versus Trump.
00:32:24.100Now, the Trump pollster found that Trump was ahead of DeSantis in Iowa by 26 point points.
00:32:30.480But DeSantis pollsters point out quickly their poll shows Trump only ahead by 20 points in Iowa.
00:32:36.380I mean, in any other election cycle, having covered so many of these, Glenn, this would be a joke.
00:33:32.100He didn't get 50 percent of the Republican votes.
00:33:34.400But you had Marco Rubio and Jeff Bush and Ted Cruz and several others dividing the vote.
00:33:38.700And all he needed was 35 to 40 percent win every primary.
00:33:42.260And that's he's he obviously has at least 35 to 40 percent of the Republican voting base that is not going to abandon him no matter what.
00:33:48.440So if you're him, you want to make sure you don't have just one alternative and don't governor to stand this.
00:33:52.220But you play up every other alternative, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, whomever, to divide them as much as possible.
00:33:58.220That's obviously the Trump strategy and that's a strategy that makes political sense.
00:34:01.400I think the issue here is that and I think this doesn't get appreciated enough, is that Donald Trump didn't win in 2016 simply because he was like a famous TV host or is charismatic or people like him in the Republican Party.
00:34:17.480He won because he had a very clear ideological message, which was to repudiate Republican Party orthodoxy on both foreign policy as expressed by the Bush chaining new conservative worldview and even economic policy as expressed by Reaganomics.
00:34:31.520The idea that what we want are tax cuts for the wealthy corporations, even though he did that in office, that wasn't what he ran on.
00:34:37.520And that is an ideology that I think it is going to be very difficult for someone to compete with Donald Trump if you don't embrace that ideology.
00:34:45.980Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and Tim Scott, Chris Christie, don't believe in that ideology.
00:34:54.220And I think it's the problem for DeSantis is how do you make gains on Donald Trump when you seem a little bit afraid to really draw a sharp contrast between yourself and him because you fear alienating Trump voters?
00:35:22.700I mean, I guess we can just wait and see.
00:35:24.200But he maybe he took like a hit of two points in a poll or two for not debating.
00:35:30.780And now we're celebrating he's only ahead by 20 in one state, but still ahead on a national basis over 40 points like this is not a strategy.
00:35:38.800So it's got to be these are not dumb men and not a dumb woman in Nikki's case.
00:35:43.580They've got to just be hoping he implodes with the electorate when the criminal trials pile on, when they actually get started, when people start to see it in the news every day and get sick of not seeing Trump ads as opposed to just Trump sitting in court or Trump rallies as opposed to Trump sitting in court.
00:36:00.380Or they're banking on him being 77 and no longer.
00:36:03.840I mean, I don't say I don't I don't see the strategy beyond that.
00:36:06.760But to your point, Glenn, I want to say this.
00:36:08.640You're you hit it spot on because this Fabrizio memo shows that Team Trump is now emphasizing DeSantis's early struggles, trying to shift the campaign's narrative from Trump versus DeSantis to Trump versus everyone else.
00:36:23.160The more people wonder, like Trump is propping up Ramaswamy, do you actually think Trump would let Ramaswamy live politically for one day if he thought Ramaswamy was a threat to him?
00:36:47.060I think he's being well advised, honestly.
00:36:49.360Why would you go to a debate when you have a 50 point lead?
00:36:51.640The thing I think is so interesting, though, is there are four criminal indictments, as you know, two in the federal court system, two in the state court system against Donald Trump with possibly more indictments coming.
00:37:02.340And it isn't just that his support in the Republican Party is consolidating, not just despite that, but obviously because of it.
00:37:09.680A lot of Republicans see this as political persecution and they want it.
00:37:13.720They don't want to reward an existential threat for the for the rule of law and for some fundamental pieces of our of our democracy.
00:37:19.520It's it's it's more than just I'm very angry about what you're doing to him.
00:37:35.080And I don't think that is so surprising.
00:37:37.420I think, though, what is surprising to me, at least maybe not to other people, is that you're not really seeing any weakening among independents or those kind of like non-MAGA people either.
00:37:49.260It's not like every time he gets indicted, Joe Biden moves ahead of Trump.
00:37:53.160I mean, Megan, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, being criminally indicted at any point in your life, let alone while you are running, would be instantly fatal.
00:38:00.820But there is so much distrust in the legitimacy of our institutions.
00:38:06.520I think validly so that getting indicted at this point almost seems like a benefit.
00:38:14.060You know, like people have concluded that these institutions are being weaponized and they are.
00:38:20.340Every one of them, including journalistic outlets, have abandoned their core function for a politicized aim.
00:38:27.220And I don't know, I do find it surprising that even among independents and non-MAGA loyalists, Trump's support is not softening as a result of these indictments.
00:39:48.040So he goes on with Hannity on Monday and they start to get into the foreign policy stuff, including Israel, where Sean raises some comments that he made about weaning Israel off of U.S.
00:40:02.480aid by 2028 in a podcast with Russell Brand.
00:40:07.640You said aid to Israel, our number one ally, only democracy in the region should end in 2028 and that they should be integrated with their neighbors.
00:40:24.740What I said is it would be a mark of success if we ever got to a point in our relationship with Israel, if Israel never needed the United States as aid.
00:40:34.360Why did you say that Israel should not have preferential treatment from us?
00:40:41.440No, those are direct quotes from headlines summarized by opposition research fed to the fake news media.
00:40:46.040Abraham Accord's 2.0 is my top priority, which is to get Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar into that pact with Israel and foremost to have a partnership with Israel that does something really important for the U.S.,
00:40:57.940which is to make sure that Iran never, ever, ever has nuclear capabilities.
00:41:03.120So I don't read from the traditional GOP talking point binder that's handed to traditional candidates.
00:41:15.580Now, I know you have a different view on Israel in general than a lot of these core Republicans do, but this support for Israel has been like a must do for any Republican candidate, including Donald Trump.
00:41:33.700Yeah, well, and for every Democratic candidate, too, that's like the most bipartisan taboo there is.
00:41:38.680No, I will say when one of the first ways, the reasons that neocons turned against Trump is because Trump came out in 2015 in an interview and said,
00:41:50.840I do think we have been too heavy handed and on the side of the Israelis and are losing our ability to negotiate a peace deal with the Palestinians.
00:41:57.620That means we need to be more even handed and that will give us more credibility in the region to negotiate a peace deal to finally bring peace to that region.
00:42:04.900Something I think is very reasonable, but not something you're allowed to say.
00:42:09.300A month later, he was in front of AIPAC reciting the bipartisan consensus and sort of never gave up.
00:42:14.800In fact, went very far to the other extreme of being the most kind of pro-Israel president from the perspective of Israel you can find.
00:42:21.660In Vivek's case, I think he's raising reasonable points that absolutely are not popular among Republican voters, even MAGA voters who are not interested in intervention or in involving ourselves in other countries.
00:42:39.240Israel is a huge exception for religious reasons.
00:42:43.420I mean for a lot of evangelical voters as well.
00:42:46.020Just geopolitically, it's been drummed into our head that supporting Israel is our moral obligation.
00:42:50.040And I'm glad there's somebody questioning that because I think all orthodoxy should be questioned.
00:42:54.800But as you said, if you're going to do that, if you're going to step forward and say, and it is true, he didn't say we should cut off aid to Israel.
00:43:01.580That's what Nikki Haley accused him of saying in the debate.
00:43:03.560And I think he was sensitive about Sean asking him about that because of that.
00:43:08.460But what he's saying is a nuanced point, which is, look, it would be a better relationship, not just for us, but for Israel, if they weren't dependent upon our aid, if they were self-sufficient.
00:43:41.020But he admitted six months ago or so that he actually I'm not sure how long, but within the past couple of months that he he doesn't know much about foreign policy.
00:43:49.260And I don't think anybody expected him to know that much about foreign policy.
00:43:52.740You know, there's no reason to believe he would.
00:43:55.600And what's what's getting annoying, Glenn, is the way he speaks about it is as though he's been heading up the Council on Foreign Relations for the past 20 years.
00:44:02.000And everybody else is an idiot and only Vivek has the courage to tell you the truth.
00:44:07.340And then as soon as he realizes he stepped in quicksand, he quickly tries to reverse it, accuses the media of making it up and then slightly modifies it to make it less controversial.
00:44:17.620And he starts getting a little further.
00:44:20.140Same thing happened on Taiwan, right, where he he clearly said some controversial things to Hugh Hewitt about what what's going to happen with Taiwan.
00:44:27.640We're going to be we're going to ramp up our our defenses of Taiwan.
00:44:32.160We're going to abandon strategic ambiguity on Taiwan.
00:44:34.980Instead, we're going to make it very clear to China.
00:44:37.080You F with with Taiwan through now through 2028 until we have semiconductor independence here in America.
00:45:19.860Unlike Donald Trump, I'm going to get the best people in there and I'm going to listen to them like I did as a business executive.
00:45:25.940That's why I have hundreds of millions of dollars and you don't.
00:45:28.660Yeah, you know, I think it's complicated.
00:45:33.220You know, I had a I met Vivek, I think, two years ago or so about a different project.
00:45:39.340I remember walking away from the very first call I had with him thinking, I don't think I've ever interacted with anybody with as much tangible self-confidence as he has.
00:45:48.160Let's use just like a neutral term for that self-confidence.
00:45:50.340He has a high amount of belief in his own abilities.
00:45:52.380That has sort of been vindicated for him along the way.
00:45:57.120He went to the best schools, et cetera.
00:45:59.020Constantly this kind of reinforcement that you are the smartest, you know everything, you're capable of things, other people aren't.
00:46:06.200When President remember, like when President Obama decided he was going to run for the presidency in 2006, he had been in the United States Senate for all of two years.
00:46:14.660And before that, he was in the state Senate.
00:46:16.540He had no foreign policy experience, zero, none.
00:46:20.120But when Hillary Clinton and other people would attack him for that, and then when John McCain did as well, he had a very good argument, which is, you know what?
00:46:26.040I don't have foreign policy experience.
00:46:27.640And I actually think that that is a good thing because you people in the foreign policy community with all your expertise have messed up foreign policy to such an extent that I'd rather have someone randomly picked from the phone book running foreign policy than people with all these great credentials.
00:46:40.260There are ways to address this, but I do think a little bit of humility, even if it's fake, it is necessary because at some point that can, with exposure, start to go from self-confidence to a very kind of unpleasant arrogance.
00:46:56.500You can't just go around announcing that everybody else is dumb and only you are smart or seem like that's your mindset.
00:47:20.320I think he's going to I hope he's going to figure out some of these like more nuanced aspects of being a candidate because I do think he's raising important political debates and I don't want him to alienate people with his personality traits.
00:47:32.980And if you were smart, he'd be listening to us right now because you don't want to be the annoying, smartest kid in the class correcting everyone.
00:47:39.600You're wrong and you're wrong and the teacher's wrong.
00:47:41.580And I'll show you how it's actually supposed to be done when you're in fact saying some things that may or may not be correct at all.
00:48:20.120It is a day meant to celebrate the achievements and contributions of the worker.
00:48:26.520But these days, many Americans are feeling overwhelmed, saddled by high prices and drowning under a record one trillion dollars in credit card balances.
00:48:34.020According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, just 38 percent of Americans approve of the job President Biden is doing on the economy.
00:48:42.180And yet you wouldn't know that if you listen to Joe Biden bragging about his economic policies.
00:48:47.820You know, Bidenomics, how it's going to really help him in the 2024 election.
00:48:52.780And it just might if the media does what it normally does.
00:48:57.020My next guest has a new book on a future where the elites will own everything and you will own nothing.
00:49:04.720And the book is called You Will Own Nothing.
00:49:07.220Your War with the New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back.
00:52:35.420Current U.S. unemployment rate is now 3.5 percent.
00:52:38.640It was 6.3 percent when Biden took office.
00:52:40.800Current annual inflation rate is 3.2 percent.
00:52:44.780It was 6.5 percent back in 2022 and flirted up even higher than that.
00:52:49.880And what they were saying on The Daily, Carol, is it's worked that we had the inflation going up, up, up, up, up.
00:52:59.060And the Fed stepped in and started raising the interest rates and kind of pushed it and pushed it and pushed it and tried to thread the needle so that they wouldn't push it so much that they tip us over into a recession.
00:53:10.940And by George, they did it because the inflation rate has indeed calmed down and we haven't gone into a recession.
00:53:20.420And despite all these credit rates now, you know, being so much higher to get a mortgage or get a car, get a loan, people are still borrowing and spending.
00:53:31.760So, boom, there's the pigskin spiked in the end zone.
00:54:27.960This is a head scratcher, but I knew they were going to do this.
00:54:31.240I tweeted about this multiple years ago because, you know, we are still having increased inflation above a sustainable level.
00:54:39.320The fact of the matter is it went up so high into the nine plus percent range that when you are comparing what's going on this year versus last year.
00:54:47.820Sure, it's not as high in terms of the growth rate compared to last year versus last year versus the year before that.
00:54:55.360But we've still got another three plus percent on top of that.
00:54:59.000And that's if you even believe that inflation rate, you know, they have rejiggered.
00:55:03.340So this is like just to clarify, this is like when I go to the doctor and he says, you gained two pounds this year.
00:55:08.360And I say, what are you getting on me about two pounds for?
00:55:45.780OK, but you're up a net seven pounds and that is the crux of the issue.
00:55:51.160And so we're still at a rate that is killing the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.
00:55:56.340So every dollar that you're working for is purchasing less and less.
00:56:00.220And this is still at an unsustainable rate.
00:56:02.700And by the way, they haven't fixed any of the structural problems that caused many of these issues.
00:56:08.880So, yes, we're in a period where things the growth rate looks like it might be going down.
00:56:13.380You're now gaining two pounds instead of five.
00:56:16.480But what happens if next year you gain three because we haven't fixed our energy issues and we really haven't fixed the structural issues in terms of labor supply?
00:56:25.480And we haven't fixed housing and we haven't fixed all the things that the Fed can't print.
00:56:30.120They can print dollars, but they can't print energy and they can't print housing.
00:56:33.460So we have these long term structural issues that have been caused both by the Federal Reserve as well as by the Biden economic policies.
00:56:41.940And we haven't done anything to shift that.
00:56:45.520So we have a couple of data points that, OK, yeah, we've gained two pounds instead of five.
00:56:50.060But it doesn't mean we're out of the woodwork yet.
00:56:52.600And either way, this is still real cost, long term cost that you are going to bear unless there is a massive period of deflation that undoes things, which potentially comes with the bad other bad scenarios like a recession or whatnot.
00:57:08.080That you are going to be incurring those costs for the rest of your lives.
00:57:13.500And that is the fundamental issue here.
00:57:16.640And the American people aren't stupid.
00:57:20.160And that is why so many people are unfavorable to the Biden presidency, even people who are Democrats and progressives, because they understand that the American dream is now out of reach and that the policies that he's putting forth, whatever he calls them,
00:57:37.480are not truly solving the underlying problem.
00:57:45.700I remember when the Trump tax cuts passed.
00:57:49.200I was at NBC and a very senior executive there was talking about how much money NBC made as a result of the tax cuts and that they were going to be giving them back like a large portion of them.
00:57:59.840They were going to be giving back to employees in the forms of bonuses and so on.
00:58:04.000The workers were thrilled ultimately at those Trump tax cuts because, you know, the corporations would trickle them down in the same way.
00:58:11.040If you hike the corporate tax taxes, you're going to pay for that, too, as the employee.
00:58:14.900They're going to start laying people off.
00:58:16.460Well, Joe Biden, he's got exactly the opposite mentality.
00:58:19.300Just today, there's a there's an article in Politico, new push from Biden administration to expand overtime pay.
00:58:26.360The Labor Department moved to expand overtime pay for for millions, in particular for workers making less than fifty five thousand dollars a year, saying they'd be automatically entitled to time and a half pay.
00:58:37.200This would impact about three point six million folks.
00:58:40.100But this is this to me is an obvious attempt at getting votes.
00:58:44.680And this is government interference with the way a corporation runs its business.
00:58:50.340Same thing we saw this week with the Medicare prices, the drug prices, these first 10 drugs now that are going to have to lower their prices in dealing with Medicare.
00:58:58.180It's a punishment of these corporations that have been I know it's fun to hate on big pharma, but they innovate.
00:59:04.580They come up with, yes, the vaccines that are controversial, but also like our cancer drugs.
00:59:09.780And who's going to go find like the cures for for Alzheimer's now if they realize every time they they come up with one, you're going to have government stepping in to say, actually, you can't make your money back.
00:59:20.820You're going to have to lower the price because I big government have said it's not fair.
00:59:25.860Yeah. So on the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, they hate it so much that they didn't do anything to repeal it.
00:59:32.960And the reason they didn't do anything to repeal it, that is that outside of covid, that after that was passed, they collected more tax revenue.
00:59:40.400This is this is proven to work time and time again.
00:59:43.300When you lower the taxes, they have they have increased the amount of tax revenue they collected.
00:59:48.080And they don't want to see that moving in the other direction, although it has a little bit this year.
00:59:52.460But so that's why they haven't done any movement to repeal this thing that was so awful that they hate so much that they decided to just leave it hanging out there.
01:00:02.180You know, on things like these central planning pushes to change worker pay and things like that, I obviously have a lot of sympathy towards the worker, because, as we said, Bidenomics and what the Fed's been doing over the last 15 years has crushed and frankly, in many cases, obliterated the middle and working class.
01:00:23.740So they do deserve to be making more of a wage that the challenge is that when you have government coming in to mandate something like that, it never works out.
01:00:34.140It's that good intention with that bad outcome.
01:00:36.960So if you now all of a sudden say, OK, at fifty five thousand dollars, if you work more than 40 hours a week, you're going to get time and a half.
01:01:35.840But if you have the government intervention, the one picking the winners and losers, whether it's at the corporate level or trying to buy votes or whatever, it always has bad, unintended outcomes.
01:01:48.540And so we have to find ways to remove barriers that allow American workers to make more, to allow people to create more wealth, to let them seize the American dream.
01:01:59.300But it can't be done by putting in more barriers.
01:02:04.640Well, this gets to your book and the title of the book like this.
01:02:09.180The belief that, you know, contrary to the Reagan mantra, government is the solution as opposed to government is the problem, is all over the Biden economic policy, Bidenomics.
01:02:30.540And yet we have a whole host of economic data that proves exactly the opposite.
01:02:34.200So the title of your book, You Will Own Nothing, is tied to all of this because this is a mentality not only that we see in Democratic leaders in our own country, but at the World Economic Forum and sort of these globalist leaders who think this is our future.
01:02:56.140I just assumed that it was taken out of context because so many things floating around social media are.
01:03:02.120And, you know, when I knew what I knew of the World Economic Forum at that point in time is it's an organization that is tied to the business and political elite.
01:03:10.660So I was like, eh, there's no way that that organization with that kind of membership is going to be predicting the end of private property by 2030.
01:03:19.540And in this particular case, Megan, it took very little research to find it.
01:03:25.520I guess it's x.com now feed and find this video.
01:03:30.140And that is the number one prediction that they have.
01:03:32.360You'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
01:03:34.840And as somebody who has advocated for wealth creation opportunities for more than a quarter of a century now, I know that wealth comes from ownership.
01:03:42.940You have to own assets that have the ability to retain their value or to increase in value in order to gain wealth.
01:03:51.780So the idea that the people who are running businesses and running politics would be saying we're going to remove that opportunity was incredibly frightening to me.
01:04:03.320And then I started to dissect the language.
01:04:05.800You know, the language is you'll own nothing.
01:05:33.820This is just a camel's nose under the tent to control everything.
01:05:37.340I think it goes back to the reality around history and human nature.
01:05:44.320The fact is that at the United States has been the center of the global financial universe for about 80 years now.
01:05:51.500And so for all of us, excuse me, for all of us here, we can't think of anything else.
01:05:57.040You know, it seems like we've always been through this period of prosperity and where we've had the upper hand and we've reaped the benefits.
01:06:04.040But it really is quite, you know, quite a recent thing before us.
01:06:09.480It was the British that were in that pole position.
01:06:11.600And before the British, it was the Dutch.
01:06:13.720So this is a cycle that changes throughout history on every several generation basis.
01:06:19.580And so, you know, when you start talking about a new financial world order, which also sounds very conspiratorial, it isn't.
01:06:41.440You can find this on the White House's website.
01:06:43.720And he says that the financial order ships every few generations.
01:06:47.620And then he says there's going to be a new world order out there and we've got to lead it.
01:06:53.460And I'm assuming since he was talking to that audience, it meant that, you know, him as a representative of the political class and the business leaders and that they're the ones that are going to be in charge.
01:07:03.260So if you have a scenario, Megan, where the financial order is shifting on a global basis and you are people who are very wealthy and powerful, what do you do?
01:07:14.120Do you sit back and go, well, you know, I just hope that this works out for me.
01:07:17.420I hope that, you know, when things shift, I'm still on top.
01:07:20.040Or do you go, oh, no, things are changing?
01:07:21.680We better ensure that we're on top, that we stay in power, that we retain all of this wealth.
01:07:28.900And, you know, if that comes at the expense of everybody else not having it, so be it.
01:07:34.940We just care about our own power, myself, my cronies, and locking that down.
01:07:40.160And so I really think that that's the catalyst here.
01:07:42.960It's not necessarily that you have a cabal of people who are sitting around like Dr. Evil with, you know, the, oh, we've got to control everything.
01:07:50.600I think it's really driven by the basic human nature, that desire to hang on to the power and the wealth as things are shifting from a global basis.
01:07:59.860They see it coming and they want to make sure they're on top.
01:08:09.640It's for a group of the world's leading emergent market leaders, including our economies, naming Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
01:08:17.980This sort of group is getting together, got together recently, and seems to be wanting very much to pose a threat to our role as the economic leader of the free world.
01:08:29.200So what should we be thinking about BRICS?
01:08:31.460Yeah, so this is a really a ragtag group of individuals.
01:08:36.460I've sort of compared it to Dorothy and Oz working with a tin man, a cowardly lion, and a scarecrow.
01:08:43.360Go, how do these people all, you know, fit together?
01:08:45.680But what they were trying to do was they're trying to take down the all-powerful Oz that was controlling everything.
01:08:51.400And the BRICS, which was really an idea that came out of a Goldman Sachs research paper that came into this organization,
01:08:58.200they said they wanted to give themselves more of a voice and more power on the global stage.
01:09:03.120And what we learned out of their meeting that happened just over a week ago now is that they're looking to expand their group.
01:09:10.260So they have put out invitations to another sort of ragtag group of countries, which includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, Argentina, Ethiopia, and Egypt.
01:09:22.460So they're really looking to expand their heft.
01:09:25.480And I do think that China is engineering a lot of this.
01:09:29.920Certainly countries around the world are frustrated with the U.S.
01:09:34.600because, as I said, we've been at the center of the global financial universe.
01:09:40.620And with that, the Federal Reserve is supposed to hold that currency stable because it means that commodities around the world are priced in like things like oil and food are all priced in dollars.
01:09:52.460And so if the dollar shifts wildly, it has a recourse for those countries who are big importers.
01:09:58.900So the Fed, who sometimes has to make tradeoffs between keeping the dollar stable for our economy here domestically in the world stage, has done the amazing job of doing neither, right?
01:10:11.000They've killed the purchasing power here in the United States.
01:10:13.860You know, your dollar is not stable against a bag of groceries anymore.
01:10:16.800And the same thing on the world stage.
01:10:19.460So you have these countries like China who are huge importers of oil and food going like, we can't do this.
01:10:26.480This is a threat to our own economic security and national security.
01:10:30.840And then you had something that the Biden administration, something that they undertook that I think is really the point of no return here.
01:10:37.980And that's when Russia invaded Ukraine, United States led a coalition to say, Russia, you can no longer have access to your reserves.
01:10:47.120And so if people are keeping money in dollar reserves, U.S. Treasuries and the like, and the U.S. can then all of a sudden cut off your access at their whim, you know, that is fully weaponizing the power of the dollar.
01:10:59.820And what countries want to give the United States that power to just be able to cut you off from the money that you're storing in their currency, which, by the way, has given them a huge benefit in terms of cheap financing of the U.S. government.
01:11:14.580So there is this push coming from China to try to have less, not only reserves, but trade happening in terms of the U.S. dollar.
01:11:22.840A lot of these countries have been loading up on gold as a mechanism to perhaps loosely back this trade.
01:11:30.260And the most significant development of the ones I just talked about is really Saudi Arabia coming into that fold, which I think has a lot to do with the green push.
01:11:40.180You know, we're trying to move away from energy.
01:11:43.100Saudi Arabia has been our ally and has been agreeing to price everything in dollars, and they've been plowing their extra dollars, which are considered petrodollars from the oil back into U.S. Treasuries.
01:11:56.040If we are saying, well, we don't want to do this long term and China is a big oil importer and some of these other countries, they want to get their footing secure.
01:12:05.660You know, again, this is shoring up their own economy.
01:12:08.240So we continue to make these decisions, you know, whether on a domestic basis or on the world stage that are just economic suicide for the country overall.
01:12:19.260But particularly, we know that that's going to fall on the middle class.
01:12:24.280Well, and I know that you've been drawing attention to the middle class and the struggle to get housing and get mortgages.
01:12:30.860And unfortunately, this is something that, you know, seems kind of part of the plan.
01:12:35.400Again, not to sound conspiratorial, but it does seem to be part of the plan that you will own nothing, including a home.
01:12:42.720And there's been speculation about about homeowners.
01:12:48.380Well, there's been there was an Axios report blaming homeowners and homeownership for some of the economic issues that we've had now, like the greedy homeowners are the problem.
01:13:01.900How dare you hang on to an asset and keep wealth for you and your family and don't turn it over to Wall Street or whoever else?
01:13:11.040I mean, the media has gone so insane in terms of their attempts to run cover for these ridiculous policies that like it almost seems like satire, like the Babylon Bee couldn't make up some of these headlines that you're now saying that it's the homeowners fault that the economy is going sideways or that the Fed is hamstringed when it was the Fed and the government who created the situation.
01:13:38.480I mean, the home ownership situation, you know, not only did we have the horrible situation coming out of the Great Recession financial crisis, where you had around six million people who lost their homes to foreclosures and short sales at the same time that Wall Street received a bailout.
01:13:56.540But then on the tail end of that, you had all of this cheap and available capital that was given to Wall Street, and they decided once they drove up the price of everything else that they were going to go into the single family home market.
01:14:09.540And so, you know, you have a situation where before 2010, there was no Wall Street institutional capital in single family homes.
01:14:20.060At the end of 2022, just over one in every five homes was purchased by a corporate buyer.
01:14:28.440And the statistics from, I think, this past June, it was 26% of the homes that were sold that were purchased by a corporate buyer.
01:14:36.420It is. It was the most shocking piece of research, I think, that I came up with for the book was the fact that this didn't exist in such a short period of time.
01:14:44.260There was such a shift. And what's happening with these companies, Megan, as you can well figure out, they're not looking to fix them up and then flip them back to you so that you can have this largest asset on your balance sheet there to be able to drive wealth for you and your family.
01:14:58.580They want to rent you the American dream. They want to take that house out of the purchasing supply and they want to make it a rental and basically transfer wealth that has been in families in middle America to Wall Street.
01:15:12.860And it's being aided and abetted by Fed and government policy.
01:15:16.480So you have that issue on one side that's been driving up the prices.
01:15:21.060And then on the other side, now you've got the Fed who has been, you know, did a whipsaw in terms of the rates now that the Wall Street has gotten all their benefits out of it.
01:15:30.220Now they have raised rates. And so even if you wanted to stretch and try and buy one of these very limited homes, which you can't barely afford because the price has gone up.
01:15:41.160Now you've got this mortgage situation where you might be locked into a three and a half percent mortgage.
01:15:46.840Now they're over over seven percent. You're not going to be able to sell your home or if you're a first time buyer, you're not going to be able to buy one.
01:15:52.620And so they have you coming and going. And this is the literal picture of the American dream that they are taking away and they are moving from Main Street to Wall Street.
01:16:02.800So what is a what's a gal to do? Right. Like what are people out there who are dealing with all these issues right now?
01:16:08.000We didn't even talk about how gas is so much higher than it was when Biden took office, but we've got still high gas prices.
01:16:14.340We've got still dealing with the inflation. A lot of people still struggling to pay their bills because of the inflation and the lack of corresponding high wages.
01:16:23.400And now they can't get a home for some of the issues that are some of the reasons that you've discussed.
01:16:27.640So like what like what is the average person supposed to do about any of this?
01:16:32.500Yeah, it's it's really challenging. And obviously some people aren't going to be able to do that.
01:16:39.160And so I'm sympathetic to that. But to the extent that you can, you know, it's a time to practice some personal austerity and figure out where you can cut back so that you're not putting money on credit cards and paying 22 to 24 percent interest.
01:16:54.560Or if you have a little bit of money that you can start owning things, that you have that opportunity to start with the investment from the housing standpoint, you can take a personal stand.
01:17:05.680I talked to our mutual friend, Dana Lash, about this. And I think when she sold her home, she said that she said families only.
01:17:12.880I mean, that that's it, that you don't sell your house to a corporate buyer. We want everyone to get the highest price.
01:17:18.420But, you know, understand that that means that that house is probably never going to be able to be sold and occupied by a family that owns it again if you do that.
01:17:27.580So, you know, you can start talking to your homeowners associations and and even just taking a personal stand or getting involved in local government to try to change some of the policies around this.
01:17:40.440Also, you know, part of the issue is that we don't have enough supply because of government policies.
01:17:46.340So to the extent we can get more people involved at the local level, expanding the ability for new homes to be built, that's another thing that's going to help to ease the pressure here.
01:17:58.340But we need more people who are aware and informed about things like the Federal Reserve and about government policies that are creating this issue because everybody can feel the pain.
01:18:08.900And they know that the symptoms, but they don't know what the ailment is.
01:18:11.820And we have so many people who are standing up and fighting back against things, but not on the financial front because they don't know where to go.
01:18:19.300I mean, when's the last time that we saw a protest of the Fed?
01:18:23.220I can't think of it. It was the 70s. Right.
01:18:25.640So we need more people to be pushing back on these central planners that are just taking policy and completely using it to historically transfer trillions of dollars in wealth to their cronies at the expense of middle America.
01:18:40.840So, you know, bottom line, do it. Do what the elite do.
01:18:43.840Don't don't do what they or don't don't listen to what they say. Do what they do.
01:18:47.300Yeah, exactly. Look out for it for yourself and exactly them, too.
01:18:52.140They're not to be trusted. The book is called You Will Own Nothing.
01:18:56.640But the longer title tells you what you can do about it. Check it out.
01:19:05.100You are my guests for this back half hour.
01:19:11.100Who do you think will be the final competitor to Trump in the GOP primary?
01:19:15.120Who are you rooting for? Let's game it out.
01:19:18.360Vicky from North Carolina. Hi. What are your thoughts?
01:19:22.260Hi, Megan. I was a little disappointed in the debate, but I thought Vivek did a great job.
01:19:30.160I listened to a lot of his follow-up interviews the next couple of days, and there we got the full explanation of some of his answers that were cut off or maybe trivialized or taken in the wrong way.
01:22:06.620Well, he may. I mean, if he loses, of course, that's exactly what he's going to do is stay just at least for the end of this last term of his.
01:22:12.780Yes. But I think it will just tarnish him in a long term political career by having stepped in it now because Donald Trump is just you're right.
01:22:25.580He's the gorilla. I think the things that Rebecca said are very thought provoking.
01:22:30.720But there are some parts of him, like you said, like he wants to be na-na-na-na-na on the outside or you're not.
01:22:37.540And I think that's so, ugh, hate that.
01:22:41.280Do you remember that kid when you were in class?
01:23:25.720You have kept me awake and interested in my whole car ride up to Indiana, my whole car ride now back home to Florida.
01:23:34.520Excellent. Well, now that on the way back, if we're not live, you just go and you listen to the archives because there's a lot of good stuff in there, too.
01:23:40.560Thank you, Terry, for calling. Great to talk to you.
01:23:43.140Stay well and stay safe out there as you as you continue, continue your drive.
01:23:46.820All right. Let's see. Let's go to Pat in Kansas.
01:23:57.500Hey, just want to let you know, I just started listening to you a few months ago and I'm so glad I found you on Channel 111 because I really enjoy your interviews and I just enjoy your style.
01:24:12.000So what are you thinking about this whole GOP race right now?
01:24:14.620Well, I think it's obvious that no one's going to beat Trump.
01:24:19.060I think the only person who can beat Trump is himself.
01:24:22.340And I did tell your screener that I really was impressed with Nikki Haley last week and just her stance on foreign policy and how she stood her ground.
01:24:32.180I do think that she'd make a great running mate for Trump.
01:24:36.800I think any time that you can, and I say this cautiously, throw women or minorities in the mix, it just gives the Democrats a reason to show their true colors and to kind of go against everything that they say they stand for.
01:24:52.300Oh, that's an interesting way to land the sentence.
01:25:46.140We're pulling it over because, yeah, I can hear you now, because to Pat's point, Trump kind of said something interesting about the vague, how he might consider him for something.
01:25:55.000But then it also had a warning for him.
01:27:56.760Almost like, you know, like a mentee mentorship.
01:27:59.500Larry Elder's voice is his ideas inside.
01:28:00.020Usually they go for like some D.C. insider.
01:28:02.580You know, usually they go for like the Rahm Emanuel type who's got the city wired, who can help the president understand how to get legislation through, that kind of thing.
01:28:10.680That wouldn't be Vec, but that's not to say that he couldn't have any rule.
01:28:13.740But, I mean, I think we're all kind of pretending a little that his candidacy is real.
01:28:16.940I mean, we all know that there's no lane for Vivek when Trump is in this race.
01:28:21.220There may be a lane for the others, but Vivek's not even running for the non-Trump lane.
01:28:25.480You know, he's he's just backdrafting behind Trump, which does seem like a play at getting the VP nod or some cabinet role.
01:28:37.080I'm sure I haven't asked, but I got like I was pissed off about the 9-11 comments.
01:28:41.740So I have to let my anger dissipate because I shouldn't like I don't like to interview people who especially who I like when I'm feeling mad about something.
01:28:48.360So that's just my own personal because I don't want it to reflect and I want to be fair and all that fun stuff.
01:28:53.380Jenny, thank you for calling from Georgia.
01:29:56.020I want to not criticize their personalities and just let them talk about the issues because the polls are never right at this point out.
01:30:04.140But yet here we are right now talking as if it's from God's mouth, our mouth to God's ears that Trump is it, setting ourselves up for that foregone conclusion in the primary, which sets us up for this, which is why I think there's some, you know, back end manipulation of what everybody calls the polling data that's out there.
01:30:24.560Because in general, he's going to say, you know, he's you made a good point about getting tired of Trump because I think he did worse.
01:30:39.760You know, when he ran for reelection and then the midterms that followed when people had been exposed to him day after day after day.
01:30:47.620Like there's been a break from Trump and the chaos that was around him to some extent when he was in office.
01:32:49.120And I don't think he's in any way the lunatic that his critics paint him as being.
01:32:55.000And, you know, if you stay open minded on these guys, you know, it's like a it's it is in some ways like a relationship, though, like you get mad at them.