Shocking DOGE Findings, Elon vs. Sen. Kelly, and Hillary's Hypocrisy, with Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine ｜ Ep. 1037
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 40 minutes
Words per Minute
181.58698
Summary
Breaking news from the Supreme Court, Elon Musk's Doge goes on the attack, and the Trump administration files a petition to review the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants. Plus, a new Megyn Kelly Media Podcast, Next Up with Mark Halperin.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Friday.
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Did this feel like a long week to you or a short week?
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In any event, it's going to be a great day today.
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You know how like after 100 days, the news media always looks back and says like,
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He's lived up to virtually every single campaign promise he made.
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Through no thanks of the courts who have been trying to stop him via leftist petitions to
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And we have breaking news on that in one second.
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But first, just let me give you a couple of the headlines we're looking at this morning.
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We've got Elon Musk's Doge now going on real offense.
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This seems like overdue to me because, look, they've been taking such a beating in the press
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They went on with Bret Baier last night, Elon, and some of his top lieutenants in Doge.
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I think the numbers on Doge are going to go up after that interview and pretty quickly,
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I really, now having seen them, I'm like, why did they let this image of just young whippersnappers
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in their backpacks and, like, surfer boy clothes go on as long as they did?
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And they should have been put out there a little earlier.
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Well, whatever, you know, better late than never.
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So we'll show you a lot of the clips from that.
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And we are also going to talk about this, the breaking news at the U.S. Supreme Court.
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I want to get to it all with editor-in-chief of Two-Way, Mark Halperin, and host of the
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new Megyn Kelly media podcast called Next Up with Mark Halperin, launching soon, along
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with former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and former Democratic strategist Dan
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They are the hosts of The Morning Meeting on the Two-Way YouTube channel.
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It took us decades to get into the tangled mess that they're trying to unpack right now
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How long is it going to take to get out of it, and at what cost?
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And the feedback from the viewers has been overwhelming.
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Very grateful to you, Steve, and your colleagues there for inviting me to join up.
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And I hope to be worthy of being part of the mega metropolis of your media empire.
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So moments ago, the Trump administration filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court
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asking it to review the Court of Appeals order in the Judge Boasberg case on the deportations
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This has been one of, if not the biggest legal matter that they've been hashing out in the
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And Trump lost on Wednesday with a divided D.C. Circuit three-judge panel.
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A Trump-appointed judge would have sided with the administration.
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And the splitter was an H.W. Bush appointee who sided with the Obama judge and said,
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you can't use the Alien Enemies Act to just deport a bunch of people.
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So they're asking the Supreme Court for immediate review because right now what's happening is
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Judge Boasberg's order halting these deportations stands.
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So the Trump policy has effectively been shut down until we get a final ruling from the U.S.
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And, you know, there's been no, like, real evidentiary hearing.
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Like, Trump is in there saying, no, the policy should be allowed to go forward until we have
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Okay, so we'll find out what the Supreme Court does.
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But as this happens, a very interesting piece in the news this morning.
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This is all stuff we're going to be getting to, so buckle up.
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The question is whether the Alien Enemies Act can be used by a president when it's not
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technically a time of war, meaning war hasn't been declared by Congress, but the president
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has used other language from the Alien Enemies Act to declare an invasion or an incursion.
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Now, Judge Boesberg was not convinced that a president can do that by proclamation and
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that if he can, it's an appropriate circumstance here.
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And the Court of Appeals agreed with Judge Boesberg on those points.
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They're not convinced that this is an incursion or an invasion as those terms would typically
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And he makes the strong case based on another piece of journalism he had witnessed that Tren
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de Aragua is indeed, it qualifies as a military incursion that's been unleashed on us by the
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He says, there was an extraordinary article last week by Miami Herald investigative reporter
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And Delgado interviewed a team of high-level investigators and analysts who had been following
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The only team member to speak on the record was Gary Bernson, among the most highly decorated
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He confirmed that Tren de Aragua was purposefully sent into the U.S. to destabilize our country
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Quoting Bernson here, the Venezuelan regime has assumed operational control of these guys,
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They have given them paramilitary training, training them to fire weapons and how to conduct
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They have given them all a four- to six-week course.
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They put these 300 guys through that course, and then they were deploying them into the
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And Bernson confirming to the author here that sabotage includes arson, taking a look at the
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L.A. wildfires, the cause of which we still have not yet determined, and so on.
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Um, the CIA, he says, doesn't have this information, according to Bernson, because they refused to
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We tried to brief them about this three years ago.
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They were directed by the Biden administration to ignore it.
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And now those officials are trying to undermine President Trump, who listened.
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I have to tell you, as a lawyer, this is a very important addendum to this argument.
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And if, if they can just get a hearing in front of this court to justify Trump's declaration
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of invasion or incursion, I'll start with you on a Spicer, um, it could be a game changer.
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I'm sure as a lawyer, you know, the case I'm going to cite common sense versus nut job,
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where it, it very clearly, the court, the, the court, the court ruled that you shouldn't
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have to argue that hard to get known gang members out of a country who came here illegally.
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I mean, this is on its face, an insane idea that a president of the United States has to
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go all the way to the Supreme court to argue that people who are known gang members coming
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illegally into the country have to go through some serious process to get sent back.
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I, I, I believe the court will side with president Trump, but I, I think it's sad that we actually
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I don't, you know, this clearly has the support, I think, of most Americans, the deportation
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plan in general, Mark has the support of most Americans.
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Maybe they've got some questions on trend or Aragua, but if so, that hasn't manifested
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I think, you know, the more dangerous the, the potential illegals are, the more Americans want
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Cause as a legal matter, it's tricky, but I think Trump's in the right, but the biggest
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If the Supreme court doesn't uphold the DC circuit and allows Trump to do this, how does
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And if they, if they don't allow Trump to do this, how does it play?
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Well, Henry common sense versus nut job, there's always in the law, right?
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There's always ambiguity and, and we don't know how any of these judges or justices will
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rule when you add in the overlay of politics becomes more complicated.
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One you've illuminated, which is super important, which is the actual facts.
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If those facts are true, you'd have to make it akin to the president striking the hooties.
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No federal judge is going to, is going to say, I'm enjoining the president from striking
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the hooties because this is for most Americans.
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And, and as a practical matter, it's every bit as urgent a war in some ways, more urgent
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because it's right here at home than the president trying to, you know, clear up the shipping
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And if those facts are close to true, he should be unshackled to do this.
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And these district court judges, I think should show some humility about what they're interfering
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with and, and stop acting like this isn't urgent.
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Number two, as someone who's had, who had federal litigation that lasted 20 years, I
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know full well how slow the wheels of justice grind.
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In this case, I urge every district court judge, every appellate judge, every Supreme Court
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justice to think about these cases and not treat them all like they're on the same conveyor
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This one should get expedited and ruled on so the president can deal with not just fulfilling
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a campaign promise, but dealing with something that's threatening the life and liberty and
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property of Americans, which is yes, akin to a war.
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Here's, here's how the DC circuit court of appeals saw it, Dan.
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They said, we understand that the government is arguing that we've had these unwanted illegals
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come into the country unlawfully and you're calling it an invasion or an incursion.
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But the court said those terms as used in this statute must be considered in their military
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Now, already as, as a lawyer, I'm thinking, okay, that's fine.
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Who, who has the ultimate say on military calls?
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It's not judge Bozberg and it's, it's not even the U S Supreme court.
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And if you read the terms of the alien enemies act, it specifically says that, I mean, the
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Supreme court's already said, we don't have jurisdiction to review commander in chief calls
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under this, but under very limited circumstances, they can review a couple of pieces of it.
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First of all, those terms invaded or encourage incursion has to be considered in the military
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Uh, and then they go on to say, uh, okay, these words in the statute must be read to mean quote,
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a hostile encroachment by a nation state and concluded that these conditions do not exist
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because we haven't had a hostile encroachment by a nation state.
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Now, if this stuff about trend to Aragua is true, that's a very different story.
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And judge Bozberg had no right to shut down the commander in chief's call on this just
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He shut it down saying, I believe they're going to win.
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And now if the Supreme court doesn't step in, this whole policy could be shut down, even
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though the Venezuelans really may be trying to send an incursion into the United States
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Look, Democrats should not ever be on the side of criminals, uh, who are illegal immigrants.
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And I think the issue of immigration has bedeviled the party now for the last, you know, eight
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And I think to Sean's point, we have been on the wrong side of common sense issues the
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And so I think the party's probably best path here is to support the crackdown on criminal
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illegal immigrants and just say, look, the justice system should work this out.
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You know, let's let it work its way, but not try to kind of like spike the football and
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look like we are on the side of protecting criminal illegal immigrants.
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It is in everyone's interest to get them off the streets.
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To Mark's point, poll after poll, you know, here where I live in New York City and down in
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MS-13 has been terrorizing parts of DC where a lot of Democrats live for the last 10 years.
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And so where they're doing this, we should applaud Trump's efforts to try to clean up
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Megan, if I can real quick, this is a win-win politically for President Trump.
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If the Supreme Court, which I believe it will, rule in his favor for all the reasons that
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you kind of enumerated there, then it's a political win.
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If by chance the court at the highest level rules against him, I think at least on the MAGA
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base side, and I think for a lot of independents, after the four years that we were gaslit and
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told that there was no problem with immigration, that the border was sealed, that criminals
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weren't coming in, they'll give President Trump credit for fighting.
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And so, you know, this to him is a perfect issue because there is no downside.
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If the court rules against us, God forbid they make us bring criminals back into the country.
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But at the end of the day, I think this is one of those ones where you, if you're President
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Trump leading this, to Dan's point, you have, you've put Democrats in a trap.
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They either have to side with you or with the criminals.
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With the worst of the worst, at least in some cases, the, um, the Trump administration is
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asking for an urgent review at the U S Supreme court.
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And my understanding is though, I'm going to have to go, have to go back and check this,
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but my understanding is it's potential, it's potentially the case that chief justice, John
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Um, I know he can either at least grant them urgent review.
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My only question is whether he can actually, without the support of, uh, at least four justices
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in this circumstance, um, reverse the, the temporary restraining order being blocked.
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Anyway, I'll find out, but this is getting hotter, uh, this whole case.
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And now it's going up to the big boys and girls who actually will have the final say.
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And one of the reasons why that's good is because I've made this point on this case before,
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but the Supreme court's more aware than anyone, more aware than anyone, Mark, that
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And that the only thing that gets us to comply with their rulings is our general respect for the
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rule of law for one another, for this sort of implicit agreement. We have to live as non-barbarians
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in a country where we've agreed that there's this through line that will keep us all within the
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certain bounds of behavior. And, um, the Supreme court has the ultimate authority on what the law
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is. And the Supreme court knows, however, John Roberts above all knows if he hands down our
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ruling telling the commander in chief that the nine men and women in black robes have the final say
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over what is perceived as a military threat unleashed on us by a foreign government.
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He's on the thinnest of possible ice and he's so obsessed with the court. Just can't see him
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wanting to do it. Well, he's an interesting figure, right? Because he does vote sometimes against
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Republican presidents, including this one. Uh, he does care about the integrity of the court,
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the reputation of the court, the statement he put out a few days ago, uh, uh, in reaction to the
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president calling for impeachment of judges whose rulings he didn't like testifies to his willingness
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to play in the real world and not just in the rarefied earth, uh, air of the high court.
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I think that they're going to rule some against the president in some form, and they're going to be
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some that are result oriented. They don't, they don't all rule on the merits. Sad to say, I think in
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this case and in the ones, uh, that are comparable, as you suggested, as we've been mentioned,
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deference, the commander in chief on this stuff, something where there's clearly popular will.
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You can find that you don't need, you don't need to look outside the walls, the constitution to find
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that. And I agree with Sean, they'll probably vote with the president on this one, but Roberts is got
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to expedite these things. It's, it doesn't make any sense for America to not expedite them. These
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should be on the fastest of tracks. They should be on a track like Bush v. Gore, not treated at all
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like normal cases because it's a campaign promise and it's, it's happening now. This is not some abstract
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thing. It's happening now. So I wish you were, I wish you would expect them. And then however,
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the court rules, I hope the president does what he said several times he'll do, which is adhere to
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the rulings of the court. I think he will. I actually do. I think he will. I think he understands
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blowing off the Supreme court is, and that, that really is a true constitutional crisis. Um, we can't
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have more Lake and Riley's while we wait this out. John, John Roberts, controversial though,
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he is, especially with righties who wanted somebody who was more like a Thomas or an Alito
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is a good man. And he is going to understand the danger of leaving little kids out there getting
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molested by these rapists. That's that is happening with these gang members and young women and men being
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murdered by them. I mean, every week we have a story. So time is of the essence. It's long overdue.
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Thanks to Joe Biden and Trump is trying to clean up a mess. That was not of his own making. I just
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don't see John Roberts wanting the Supreme court to be the thing that stops him. I will see what
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we'll know better after we hear from them. And, uh, if we get an oral argument after that, okay,
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let's, well, I want to get to Elon Musk and what happened last night. Cause it was such good stuff.
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But before we go there, can we just spend a minute on something else Trump did yesterday,
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which I think is awesome and not getting enough attention. We got an executive order that will
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pull wokeness, DEI and radical, uh, you know, race essentialism and gender ideology out of the
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federal museums, including most specifically the Smithsonian, uh, the zoo he mentioned. And also
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he's directed JD Vance to restore the national monuments and statues that fell post George
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Floyd, meaning they were ripped down by protesters, not all necessarily, but he wants him to take a
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look at this. I mean, it wasn't all, you know, people who are pro-slavery or who were armies in
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the Confederate army or generals in the Confederate army, Sean, that we tore down. We country Christopher
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Columbus statues, Thomas Jefferson statues, George Washington statues, Ulysses S Grant,
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Francis Scott key. Like you didn't have to be all that controversial for these things to get torn down.
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And so Trump is actually going to take a look because for example, at this women's museum,
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um, that's being built, he says specifically they were about to put trans women, meaning men posing as
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women and honors to them in this thing of Trump is stopping it in its tracks.
00:22:04.940
Well, look, obviously this was a big issue in the election. Dan referenced it earlier before. I mean,
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the wokeism, the pendulum swung way, way, way too far. And I think what Trump is doing is resetting
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that. This is again, where he can get some great wins on these things through executive order that
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while he waits for reconciliation, some of the big policy issues to come in really kind of score
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points for the American people resetting the culture issues that swung too far. And so going
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through the museums, resetting these things, rebuilding these statues. And the funny thing
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is it's been probably eight or nine months since I seen, I saw any, any inside polling on this,
00:22:41.460
but even when it comes to Confederate statues and renaming things like Fort Bragg, uh, those were
00:22:47.120
extremely popular. It didn't mean that anybody was a Confederate or racist or anything like that.
00:22:52.160
I just, I think there's an aspect of not whitewashing history that was important. So there's,
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this kind of covers a lot of ground that I think he's on solid ground with the base and,
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and probably the majority of Americans, regardless of party.
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What he's doing, Dan, is he's actually having JD Vance, take a look at the Smithsonian and the zoo,
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et cetera. And he's having Doug Burgum as secretary of the interior, take a look at public monuments,
00:23:14.860
memorials, statues, markers, and similar properties, um, that have been removed or changed. He says to
00:23:20.800
perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, et cetera. He can't go after like state
00:23:26.640
monuments. He can't go after, you know, the museum of natural history had Teddy Roosevelt out there.
00:23:32.420
He got torn down because there was a native American near him. I like whatever. There's
00:23:38.060
just been a lot of tearing down. He can't, if it's a local thing, he doesn't have jurisdiction,
00:23:42.100
but the, the federal land stuff and federal monuments, he does. Here are a couple of examples
00:23:47.660
on what he's concerned about in the Smithsonian American art museum. There's an exhibit that said,
00:23:54.460
quote, societies, including the U S have used race to establish and maintain systems of power,
00:23:59.420
privilege, and disenfranchisement by it. Another national museum of African-American history and
00:24:05.260
culture proclaimed that hard work, individualism, and the nuclear family are aspects of white culture
00:24:12.460
by, and then, as I told you, the women's history museum soon to soon, soon it will be forthcoming
00:24:20.840
planned to feature female athletes, including male athletes who claim to be female, which is not a
00:24:30.540
thing. It's not real. And it's not recognized by the Trump administration. So what do you think? I
00:24:34.920
mean, here's the interesting thing. It's going to happen. Trump will sanitize these organizations of
00:24:39.660
all this. And then we're going to be in an interesting position four years from now, if a Democrat were to
00:24:44.440
win the presidency, because I think this stuff will be very popular to get rid of this nonsense,
00:24:48.980
to put back up the non-controversial statutes, George Washington among them. And whenever Trump
00:24:55.440
does something, I guess, with an EO, Dan, I've been asking myself, would the Democrats really have
00:25:00.220
the nerve to tear back down George Washington, to shove back in the race essentialism at the
00:25:06.260
Smithsonian, the trigger warnings on the national archives that were all over the electronic database
00:25:11.440
about our declaration of independent? Like, what do you think?
00:25:15.540
I certainly hope that no Democrat would talk about doing that. I mean, as a rule, this is mostly one of
00:25:23.820
those 80-20 issues. You know, James Carville said last summer, or I think it was maybe a few years ago,
00:25:29.000
that sometimes Democrats sound like they're talking at the Harvard faculty lounge and not like a real person
00:25:34.000
in the real world, you know, on the streets of any town USA. I think where Trump does stuff like, you know,
00:25:40.960
put George Washington back on a military base or something like that, there is general support for
00:25:47.760
it. I think when he does something like eliminate the, you know, recognizing the Tuskegee airmen at
00:25:54.380
the Pentagon, I think sometimes people will say, hey, it's a little too far. And this is like small and
00:25:59.300
petty. And so I think generally speaking, though, look, Sean said it is a huge issue in the election.
00:26:05.640
The country kind of voted pretty overwhelmingly on this front. I think he enjoys broad support.
00:26:11.840
And look, I don't know how much you remember, I think it was a year and a half ago or two years ago,
00:26:16.480
the San Francisco school board, several members were voted out in a in a like recall election,
00:26:23.280
because the people of San Francisco parents of who lived in downtown were upset that the school
00:26:29.300
board meetings during COVID were focused on renaming the schools in these kind of DEI, you know, neutral
00:26:36.360
names and not reopening the schools for their kids to go back to. And so the history of Democrats
00:26:42.820
focusing on issues that aren't, you know, important to the average American per se is part of what has
00:26:49.680
got us in the hole that we've dug. And so to get out, I think we are best to focus on real issues
00:26:55.660
that impact the real lives of real Americans and not go back to trying to relit again, DEI.
00:27:01.220
What do you know? Tim Walsh has a bone to pick with you, my friend. He was out there campaigning
00:27:08.220
with Beto O'Rourke. Why? I don't. But he was out there having a town hall with Beto. And he sees
00:27:15.460
the loss in 2024 very differently than you do, my friend. Here he is.
00:27:20.000
That our strength is our diversity. We've been talking about this for years as a country of
00:27:27.380
immigrants, and we let them define the issue on immigration. We let them define the issue on
00:27:32.800
DEI, and we let them define what woke is. We got ourselves in this mess because we weren't bold
00:27:41.400
enough to stand up and say, you damn right were proud of these policies. We're going to put them in
00:27:45.760
and we're going to execute them. Lean in, he's saying. Lean in to all those messages.
00:27:53.240
Sean agrees. Sean says, yes, go for it. That's how we all feel. I have his back. Lean in. Lean in,
00:27:59.100
brother. And more of Jasmine Crockett, I think we can all agree, except for Dan.
00:28:04.040
Yeah, I think that, look, I think most Americans, I think, do applaud efforts to diversify
00:28:11.360
a workforce to include different people in decision-making. I think companies, and there's
00:28:19.200
a lot of research that you do get better outcomes if you have different aspects, different slices of
00:28:24.840
America at the table. I think where there's real objection is on the E, the equity, the idea that
00:28:32.420
you're going to specify 30% has to be X and 30% has to be Y, not who's most qualified, not who is
00:28:40.120
the best for that position. And I think that's where the party kind of just really lost control
00:28:45.280
of this issue. I think if we just say we're proud of having a diverse country, we're proud to try to
00:28:51.980
include people, but the most qualified, the best person should be hired or get the admissions slot
00:28:59.340
is probably kind of the middle ground when we think about the future.
00:29:04.820
On Governor Walz, I didn't understand why he was picked originally and nothing he's done since he
00:29:14.280
was picked has cleared up my confusion. On the question of these policies, your viewers understand
00:29:21.200
the central role these issues played in the election. I think part of the challenge for the
00:29:26.880
part of the country that still doesn't get it is the media, for the most part, still doesn't get it.
00:29:32.400
And when you ask about will a Democrat change it back? Well, if they rename Dulles Airport,
00:29:38.880
Steve Bannon Airport, maybe they would change that back. But most of these things I think will be very
00:29:44.120
difficult to change back because the energy in this country is not with this frog boiling in the water,
00:29:50.840
move towards a fetishizing race and gender. But the energy is for people who say,
00:29:56.880
thank goodness for the change and the change happening quickly. The changes in the other
00:30:01.900
direction happen very slowly. But they change dramatically over time. President Trump and
00:30:07.840
the cultural and social forces that are pushing back are happening quite quickly. And I think
00:30:13.160
they're going to they're going to move as things things tend to move quickly, tend to move hard
00:30:17.980
and fast. And I think it's gonna be very difficult for a Democrat, not just politically,
00:30:21.520
but practically to try to put these things back.
00:30:24.880
They they're the Republicans, and frankly, the more centrist Democrats who objected to this stuff
00:30:29.780
when it was overwhelming us. They were silent about those objections because they were scared.
00:30:35.700
Not only has that fright been eliminated, they're emboldened, you know, they voted for Trump,
00:30:42.060
he's emboldened all of them. They're ready for this war. They now have learned that they're in the
00:30:46.940
majority and that this was a temporary insanity that we went through and that it has to be stopped
00:30:53.040
because it's actually extremely dangerous. It's like the whole everything's turned, you know,
00:30:56.380
in the past five years and dramatic. So I agree with you. It will not be brought back
00:31:00.480
because the popular will of the people will not allow it. Now, I opened the show talking about Elon
00:31:05.960
on with Brett Baer and some members of the Doge team last night. And.
00:31:11.340
You know, I did wonder in watching it, why didn't we see this earlier? These guys are amazing.
00:31:19.460
Like this is exactly we should all be on our hands and knees at night, thanking God that men and I
00:31:26.220
presume there are women, too. They weren't on the set last night are willing to take time off from
00:31:32.060
their real jobs and real lives and do this for us. They were all really just public servants.
00:31:38.440
Go ahead, Sean. But to your point, the caliber of these people,
00:31:42.000
when he was talking about what Brett Baer was telling him. So you co-founded Airbnb. You're
00:31:47.180
the CFO of Morgan Stanley. These the credentials of these people. We talked about this a little
00:31:52.740
on the morning meeting this morning that it was the illumination of of just the it wasn't like,
00:31:58.080
you know, finding some buried treasure. The guy was like, yeah, we found out that the
00:32:02.380
Department of HHS has 40 CFOs, 40 CFOs, 40 CIOs, chief information officer. There are four point
00:32:10.180
three, four point six million government credit cards and two point one million employees.
00:32:15.940
There's obvious things that are like that doesn't make sense. That doesn't compute.
00:32:20.080
Eight thousand American federal workers can retire in a given month because that's all the system can
00:32:26.600
handle because it has to take a manila envelope going down a mine, a mine. That's how many envelopes
00:32:33.980
can go down in a month. That's insane. And the idea that they were talking about utilizing common
00:32:40.940
sense technology reforms, efficiencies to allow the government to run better. And even Elon, when it
00:32:49.160
came to Social Security, made it very clear that what 40 percent of the people who call the Social
00:32:55.680
Security hotlines were fraudsters trying to steal the money of American retirees. And what they're
00:33:03.360
trying to do is put processes in place to protect the American consumer from fraud. It's something that
00:33:10.640
I agree with you. I was like, where has this been? I wanted to hear this for the last 70 days. And I
00:33:16.100
finally, I was excited. I was fired up. I hope they do more because I think that the more people hear
00:33:23.360
about not only what's really goes on in government, but how it's being corrected, the more support Doge
00:33:29.460
and Elon will get. Here's just a little bit. You mentioned this in your last answer of Joe
00:33:36.420
Jebbia, the Airbnb co-founder and Doge digital retirement project guy. Here he is.
00:33:42.300
Now picture this. This giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets stacked 10 high to house 400 million
00:33:52.040
pieces of paper. It's a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't changed in the last 70
00:33:58.300
years. And so as he dug into it, we found retirement cases that had so much paper, they had to fit it on
00:34:04.620
a shipping pallet. So the process takes many months and we're going to make it just many days.
00:34:11.060
Will it be digitized or how? Absolutely. So this will be an online digital process that
00:34:15.060
will take just a few days at most. And I really think, you know, it's an injustice to civil servants
00:34:21.420
who are subjected to these processes that are older than the age of half the people watching your show
00:34:27.140
tonight. So we really believe that the government can have an Apple store like experience, beautifully
00:34:34.140
designed, great user experience, modern systems.
00:34:36.880
He he said that there were actually at the point where we have to train federal employees on how to retire.
00:34:46.020
They have to go through a training training. It's so embarrassing.
00:34:53.240
It is embarrassing. You know, Mark, I like what Americans sit at home is going to have any reaction to that
00:34:59.400
other than what? It's great to have private sector people in in the government who, you know, my favorite
00:35:08.020
moments was when Brett was asking them their motivation for doing it. And one of them said he's got four kids
00:35:12.520
and he doesn't want the country to decline for his kids. They're an impressive group. And, you know,
00:35:20.040
even Democrats, most Democrats will say, yeah, there's inefficiencies, the federal government.
00:35:24.140
But this is an attempt to to get rid of them. You know, we talk about waste, fraud and abuse.
00:35:31.360
This is, you know, you could call it waste, but it's really just inefficiency.
00:35:34.960
And it's really not having the will to use the ingenuity of the private sector up until now to try to change these things.
00:35:41.940
Al Gore talked about reinventing government, but that was in the dawn of the digital age.
00:35:46.440
There's so much more that can be done now using digital stuff. And this is, again, as Sean said a couple of times,
00:35:53.200
this is such an impressive group from the private sector. I just hope that they're adhering to guidelines
00:35:57.820
and I just hope that they don't get shackled. They do need to move fast for all the reasons that this plan was launched.
00:36:04.500
In my head, like the way they were being described by the media, it was like I pictured like these dope,
00:36:09.720
smoking, hacky sack, kicking, beanie wearing foggy shirts, put them in, right.
00:36:19.360
Were they wearing Crocs or, or, or Birkenstocks in your, in your mind? I couldn't get sandals.
00:36:25.100
I never got down below the ankle in picturing them, but I definitely, I could smell the aroma.
00:36:30.460
I had a perceived smell. This is, they're not that at all. These are actually really accomplished,
00:36:35.180
bad-ass professional guys who are super articulate on top of their game. Now I'm sure they sent their
00:36:41.160
best for the Brett Baer interview. Uh, there may be guys who better match my description,
00:36:46.080
but you know, chief among them was Elon with some very interesting facts of his own. Here's one,
00:36:53.360
uh, here that is somebody, somebody mentioned, but it's not for,
00:36:58.520
uh, the sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. It's mind blowing.
00:37:04.400
Uh, just, uh, we routinely encounter wastes of, uh, a billion dollars or more casually.
00:37:13.400
Um, you know, for example, like the, the, the, the, the simple, the simple survey, uh, that was,
00:37:17.740
uh, uh, uh, literally a 10 question survey that you could do with survey monkey cost about $10,000,
00:37:23.100
uh, was, uh, uh, the government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that for just the
00:37:28.760
survey, a billion dollars for, for a simple online survey. Do you like the national park?
00:37:32.480
And then there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. So the
00:37:36.440
survey would just go into nothing. It was like, you're saying
00:37:38.180
Casually. And you know what, the, what's so devastating about that, Sean is, you know,
00:37:44.580
it's true. I know I've been in the military for 26 years in and out of government. I mean,
00:37:50.840
it's finally good hearing someone articulate, uh, what, what I've known to be the case for,
00:37:55.980
for decades. Yeah. And just be honest about it. That's like the social security thing.
00:38:01.020
Everybody can understand that too. Why are we sending social security checks to people who
00:38:05.240
appear to be 120 or an infant, which is what Elon was saying. He was like, there people are,
00:38:13.040
we're sending checks to infants. And he was explaining exactly how they do the fraud.
00:38:18.900
Someone has a baby and they steal their own child's social security number and they use it to get
00:38:25.360
some sort of payout from the federal government. And they ruin that child's credit because they just
00:38:29.860
don't give a damn. Here is Steve Davis, who was called the CEO of Doge though. He didn't seem
00:38:36.220
totally comfortable with that label. Um, speaking to some of that issue in SOT6.
00:38:42.100
Now the, um, the amount of issues that were the social security system are enormous. As an example,
00:38:47.880
there are over 15 million people that are over the age of 120 that are marked as alive
00:38:54.500
in the social security system. And that's an accurate figure. Yes. Correct. 15 million. Correct.
00:38:59.660
This has been something that's been identified as a problem. Again, preexisting problems since 2008,
00:39:04.860
at least from an IG report. So there were some great people working at the social security
00:39:10.140
administration, social security administration that found this 2008 and nothing was done.
00:39:15.060
And so 15 to 20 million social security numbers that were clearly fraudulent, um,
00:39:19.240
were floating around, um, that can be used to only for bad intentions. There'd be no way to use those
00:39:24.280
for good intentions. And so what, one of the things the Doge team is doing is carefully and very
00:39:29.400
methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.
00:39:34.620
Well, that is shocking, but also not. Um, and this, here's my question. I'm going to play one more
00:39:39.880
SOT on social security, Dan, but this question is coming to you on how,
00:39:42.800
how are the Democrats going to object to this? Everybody knows what a money suck social security
00:39:49.080
is along with Medicare slash Medicaid. We all know that we all know we're not going to make
00:39:52.920
a lot of progress, if any, on our national debt, unless we get honest about what's happening there.
00:39:57.520
Nobody wants us to touch the retirement age. We get it. It's political poison, but this stuff,
00:40:03.700
this stuff we can do, we can do, but the Democrats are saying no, no to Doge, no to Elon. He's evil.
00:40:10.780
Here's the second soundbite on social security with a guy named Aram Mogadassi. He's a Doge engineer.
00:40:18.620
I'll say the two improvements that we're trying to make to social security are, um, helping people
00:40:24.160
that legitimately get benefits, protect them from fraud, um, that they experience every day on a
00:40:29.900
routine basis and, uh, also make the experience better. Um, and I'll give you one example is at
00:40:37.140
social security. Um, one of the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day
00:40:41.780
of people trying to change direct deposit information. So when you want to change your
00:40:46.080
bank account, you can call social security. Um, we learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are
00:40:51.840
from fraudsters. 40%. That's right. Almost half. Yes. And they steal people's social security is what
00:40:59.380
happens is they call in, they say, uh, they claim to be, uh, a retiree. Um, then they, they, and they
00:41:06.640
convince the post, the social security person on the phone to change the, where the, where the money's
00:41:11.020
flowing. Uh, it, it actually goes to some fraudster. In 67 days, they figured all of this out, Dan,
00:41:18.520
why would the Democrats stand in the way of these fixes? So I think the important thing for the party
00:41:23.740
is they need to split what is common sense from what is questionable. I think what they're talking
00:41:29.340
about here, and I actually saw this morning too, they're talking about trying to upgrade the social
00:41:33.380
security software and computer systems, which are literally decades old just because they haven't
00:41:38.960
received the funding. They want to migrate it to a new platform where they're trying to do stuff like
00:41:43.800
stop fraud. I ran government relations for H and our block, and I know the, a lot about the IRS and
00:41:49.320
fraud. And they're absolutely right. It's the Russian mob. It's all sorts of people who try to
00:41:54.940
steal your social security file returns, you know, falsely before you do and get your refund. And by the
00:42:01.420
time you realize what happened, it's too late where they're trying to do that. We should say that is
00:42:08.100
good. It will also give us credibility with the public for when we say timeout, this might be
00:42:13.760
objectionable. And one of those things is I know we all say, okay, cutting phone service
00:42:19.200
and making you have to come in, make sense to try to deal with fraud. Sure. If I live in New York
00:42:24.780
city, I can walk down to the social security administration or take the subway or a bus
00:42:28.680
in lots of parts of this country. It is hundreds of miles to reach it. And the elderly it's hard.
00:42:35.620
Some of them don't drive. They have a medical issues that makes movement challenging. And so when
00:42:41.780
Democrats say, wait a second, you need to offer those telephone services. People need, there has to be a
00:42:47.560
way for them to verify and get through. That is where I think the public will say, yeah, okay.
00:42:52.700
All right. But if all we do is always scream no and everything, it's a huge problem. And I actually
00:42:59.220
thought, you know, look, we're making some headway. We Democrats with Elon's favorabilities coming down.
00:43:04.700
But to your point, Megan, those were real people. They were uncomfortable. They looked anxious. There's
00:43:10.200
empathy and sympathy as they talked because they're just regular real people trying to help.
00:43:14.760
And that as Democrats, you know, is a, is something that we need to recognize.
00:43:19.740
I mean, it's the same party that didn't stand for the little boy who got the badge and became the
00:43:23.800
honorary secret service mate. So I don't think they're going to feel for the, for the Doge agents,
00:43:28.640
but here's why I think Mark, they're not going to give an inch on Doge or Elon. NBC news just did a
00:43:37.180
focus group of black men who backed Trump and approve of his presidency and asked how they're
00:43:45.280
feeling. And that focus group showed that nearly all of them, 10 of the 12 still are with Trump and
00:43:53.120
staunchly. The only concern that some of them raised, uh, was about Doge. They said, I'm trying to get my
00:44:02.700
numbers. They say 10 of the 12 said they approved of Trump's early tenure during his second presidency,
00:44:08.000
but only five said they approved of Doge's actions. Only five said they approved three said
00:44:15.440
they disapproved and the rest of the group, they weren't sure. So if I'm a Democrat who really just
00:44:21.580
wants to win back power, I see something I can exploit here. And I'm not sure I want to do anything
00:44:28.580
to give Doge credit for anything, even if it would be good for the country. Well, except as Dan said,
00:44:34.500
they need to have credibility. I think we, you know, we've all wondered why, what we saw last
00:44:39.100
night, those very articulate spokespeople for this effort were not out sooner. I'd say there are two
00:44:44.900
other things that they've done to hurt their cause and, and made it easier for Democrats to rally public
00:44:50.320
opinion around some things. Number one, they've not totally been truthful and accurate as Musk has
00:44:56.020
acknowledged about what's being saved about certain programs are using as examples. And they've not
00:45:04.100
quantified it or qualified it accurately. And that's allowed the press, which is hostile to Doge
00:45:07.880
and those Democrats who want to be against it, to be against it. But the other thing I think they
00:45:13.460
haven't done is they haven't told the stories. They haven't humanized it. We saw humanization last
00:45:18.880
night with these folks, but to say, here's, there's just a cert people are having their social
00:45:23.980
security stolen. This has to be on a human level because cuts while popular in the abstract,
00:45:29.080
when you start to cut specific programs, you run into trouble. I don't think the democratic party
00:45:33.260
has a plan right now. They're all over the map about how to deal with this, but their job of
00:45:38.000
opposing it would be a lot more challenging. If the administration talked about this in a way
00:45:42.740
that was easier to understand why it's a good thing, not just in the abstract, but with some real
00:45:47.380
specifics that can be emotionally, emotionally told in a way that involves great storytelling.
00:45:53.180
I don't know why they haven't done it. Yeah. Why don't we see the guy who says,
00:45:57.220
I tried to retire and it took me six months to, I wanted to retire and one month took me six months
00:46:01.460
to just get out because of the paperwork. We haven't seen those people all over TV.
00:46:06.340
We, we had these guys getting closer and closer to real person stories where you were like,
00:46:12.120
oh yeah, oh God, that would be really annoying. Oh, that sounds so dumb.
00:46:15.120
Um, here's one, Anthony Armstrong, uh, Doge OPM. What does that stand for? Operating
00:46:22.040
Office of Personnel Management. Office of Personnel. Why aren't they all, I guess he's over there in
00:46:26.840
particular. Um, anyway, he's over there at the group that, that takes care of all your paperwork
00:46:32.020
if you're a federal government employee. And here's what he said. Sade.
00:46:34.540
A good example of overstaffing would be the IRS has got 1400 people who are dedicated to provisioning
00:46:42.860
laptops and cell phones. So if you join the IRS, you get a laptop and a cell phone, you're provisioned.
00:46:47.860
So if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned two employees per day, you could
00:46:55.200
provision the entire IRS in a little more than a month. So 12 times a year, you can reprovision.
00:47:00.920
Why would you have 1400 people whose only job it is to give out a laptop and a phone?
00:47:04.500
Right. The whole IRS could be handled once a month. So that doesn't, that doesn't make any sense.
00:47:09.640
And president Trump's been very clear. It's scalpel, not hatchet. And that's the way
00:47:13.000
it's, it's getting done. I mean, that sounds so right. Sean, you've worked for the federal
00:47:18.480
government. That sounds so right that you'd have to go through that number of people just to,
00:47:23.780
whose only job is to do two things, give you a laptop and give you a phone, which literally
00:47:28.660
should take, even if you consider setting up your password and getting you registered on it
00:47:33.540
at most a half an hour, how does somebody, how do we have 1400 of those in the IRS alone?
00:47:40.560
Yeah. Well, the scary part is, is that they're not alone. There's probably 1400 people who
00:47:45.020
do various other tasks. And as a guy who look, I'm all about tech support. I either I've learned
00:47:51.260
that you just power things on and off and that's, that's the extent of my tech support. So I get it.
00:47:56.480
I appreciate that and I welcome it, but I think 1400 is a bit excessive. And unfortunately it's
00:48:00.740
not, you know, like I said, you go to HHS and they talk about having 40 chief information officers,
00:48:06.760
40. I mean, generally when you're the chief, there's only one, but I, it just shows you the
00:48:13.060
duplicity that exists. Um, I think to your point, these individuals themselves did the, the, the effort,
00:48:21.160
a huge bonus by going out the examples they gave. And then if we can add in the human element,
00:48:26.360
the number of people who, you know, took a month to retire or who couldn't get a benefit
00:48:32.260
or who had their money stolen, we're missing that third of the, of the piece. I was thinking about
00:48:38.260
this, as you were saying a moment ago, you know, the, the, the young gentleman that, that was so cool,
00:48:42.740
um, during the state of the union, president Trump, I think did better than any previous president
00:48:47.440
highlighting his policies through those individuals in the gallery. I think they almost need to embark
00:48:52.620
on a very similar policy or a similar effort now, which is to go highlight individuals who've had
00:48:57.680
struggles with the federal government, uh, who haven't been able to retire, who were taken
00:49:01.500
advantage of who worked in the government, but there was massive duplicity or et cetera, and start to
00:49:06.680
literally put faces to these problems, uh, because they did. And, and by the way, continue to roll out
00:49:13.240
members of Doge, uh, who are finding these things, not just the dollar amount in the programs,
00:49:18.560
but the overall crisis that exists, because that's not to Mark's point though. Those aren't,
00:49:23.760
it's not waste or fraud. The fact that you can't retire, you know, that you can only retire 80,000
00:49:29.080
people. It just doesn't make sense in the military. We went to medical record, electronic medical records,
00:49:34.420
because literally you would have to carry your bulky medical record around with you, wherever you went
00:49:40.480
from assignment to assignment, station to station. And that's how we handle it for until some genius
00:49:45.620
realized, wow, we could just digitize this like everyone else. And it has made life a lot easier,
00:49:51.020
right? What, if we can start doing that within the federal government, it's a win-win for the
00:49:55.640
government. It saves us money. It saves us time. It cuts down on bureaucracy. In fact, I'm sure as one
00:50:01.160
of those gentlemen alluded to the, the federal workers themselves would probably like to go that route,
00:50:07.100
as opposed to climbing up 10 file cabinets high to grab somebody's record from 1979.
00:50:13.440
So we'll have to get training on how to retire, how to retire. It's the least amount of time you
00:50:19.040
want to, you want to take on new training. Personally, I think they should just move all
00:50:22.580
these records onto signal could make everybody's life easier. Nothing more secure, right? I'd get at,
00:50:29.700
get at it in. We'd all get at it in. The best people use it. All right, stand by guys. I'll be
00:50:36.380
right back. And I want to play you an extraordinary exchange with Elon. Let's talk about that car you
00:50:41.060
own, but don't use the one you're paying to keep registered and insured. It's just sitting out there
00:50:46.560
taking up space out front and it's not doing anybody any good. You have a choice. You can give
00:50:53.360
cars for kids. That's cars with a K a call and have them take care of it for you. Just give them the
00:50:59.200
info and they will come to you as soon as the next day and take that car off your hands at no cost to
00:51:04.680
you. Even better, they will turn that car into funds to help children. So visit cars with a K
00:51:11.360
for kids.org slash MK that's cars with a K and then the number four to donate or just call cars for kids
00:51:18.780
directly at 1-877-CARS-4-KIDS and they will get that car picked up quickly. Plus you can get a tax
00:51:26.420
deduction and a vacation voucher. These guys have been around for 30 years. You've seen the ads,
00:51:31.780
right? They've done this over a million times. Call now or head on over to cars, K-A-R-S, the numeral
00:51:38.780
four and then kids.org slash MK right now to get this done. Cars for kids.org slash MK. That's cars with a K.
00:51:47.180
Are you surprised at some of the legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed in? There's
00:51:54.720
about eight or 10 now of these cases that are at least temporary holds. They're being challenged by
00:52:00.800
the DOJ. Are you surprised by that pushback? Well, the D.C. circuit is notorious for having
00:52:08.320
a very far left bias. And when you look at the people close to some of these judges,
00:52:15.820
who are, where are they working? Are they working at these NGOs? Oh, they're getting them. They're
00:52:20.540
the ones getting this money. Does that seem like a system that lacks corruption? It sounds like
00:52:25.460
corruption to me. Mm-hmm. I mean, not said was one of the judges he's thinking about is almost
00:52:32.140
certainly Judge Boesberg, who is the one behind the blocking of Trump's effort to deport Venezuelan
00:52:38.760
suspected gang members to El Salvador. Back with me now, my panel, Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer,
00:52:44.740
and Dan Turrentine of Two Way. Okay. I did look up the SCOTUS protocol for that appeal,
00:52:52.620
and here's how it's going to go down. So just for those who weren't with us at the top of the hour,
00:52:57.140
the Trump administration has appealed the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against him.
00:53:02.140
On his effort to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected Venezuelan gang members out of
00:53:08.300
the United States and place them in an El Salvadorian prison, the trial court judge was Judge
00:53:13.460
Boesberg, an Obama appointee, originally put on the bench by W many years ago, but elevated to the
00:53:18.640
federal bench by Obama. He has had a leftward bent, no question. And he's got a wife and a daughter
00:53:24.460
who own or work in and run, respectively, an abortion clinic, and reportedly the daughter
00:53:29.680
with this NGO organization that helps illegals and gang members. So yeah, I think that's what
00:53:36.700
Elon's suggesting is maybe going on there. And now the Trump administration, just before he came to
00:53:44.380
air, has appealed their loss on the temporary restraining order Boesberg put against them to
00:53:50.520
the U.S. Supreme Court just before we came to air. They want the high court to lift that temporary
00:53:55.700
restraining order so they can continue deporting these Venezuelan illegals and shipping them off
00:54:01.300
to El Salvador during the pendency of the litigation. And I was unclear when we started
00:54:06.800
whether Justice Roberts could do this chief justice alone. And I was right. He can do it alone.
00:54:13.040
He's the chief justice of the United States. And each justice on the court has a region of the
00:54:19.760
country for which he or she is responsible. And as the chief justice, he oversees the D.C. region,
00:54:26.720
which is where this case is coming out of because all these federal government agencies are in
00:54:30.700
D.C. Anyway, that's where it is. And so John Roberts, if he wants to, can grant the relief himself.
00:54:39.520
He could, with the stroke of his pen, lift the TRO and say, have at it, Trump. And then the case would
00:54:45.920
go back down to Judge Bozberg for litigation on the merits. You know, they would hash it out. It's
00:54:50.480
not a final adjudication, but it is on the TRO. It's in a form of relief that he could grant to
00:54:57.100
Trump. Or he could say, I'll give you an expedited briefing schedule in front of the United States
00:55:03.960
Supreme Court at large. And so we'll keep the pedal down, but we'll let all nine of us decide
00:55:10.460
whether you can do this. Or he could just deny it and say, I'm not dealing with any of this yet
00:55:16.120
and kick it back down, which would be a loss for Trump. So Trump could win with the stroke of a
00:55:20.300
Robert's pen. He could lose with a stroke of a Robert's pen, or he could get a hearing in front
00:55:24.800
of the all nine justices. And hopefully we'll find out soon which one of those it's going to be.
00:55:30.920
Okay. Elon Musk sat across from me in September at the All In Summit and said one of the main reasons
00:55:38.180
he wanted Donald Trump elected and was willing to serve and was talking about forming Doge and
00:55:43.880
doing the, finding the efficiencies was his experience as really a rocket scientist, right?
00:55:49.460
As a rockets guy and talked about how it takes longer to get the permission slip, in his words,
00:55:55.480
to launch a rocket than it does to build the rocket and how insane it is and how, you know, you,
00:56:02.440
you get fined $40,000 for dumping potable water, like water that one could drink. You dump it out
00:56:11.420
of the spaceship when you got back and the government would swoop in and fine you for it. You say, well,
00:56:16.860
what do you mean? It's, it's potable water. Why is, why am I getting fined? That cut like comes out of
00:56:21.000
the sky. Why, why if God drops it, is there no fine? But, but if I drop it, I'm getting fined. Well,
00:56:27.560
that's just the rules. I said, that's the way, well, what do you mean? Like, I'm trying to get
00:56:31.020
us to Mars. Why are you hassling me this way? Like I could, my daughter could come by with a little
00:56:36.260
garden, uh, pitcher and do the same thing. You're going to find her 40,000. This is what he was
00:56:42.000
dealing with. And he had it up to his eyeballs, which is why he's now doing all of this, the red
00:56:47.460
tape. And for those out there thinking it may just be a Republican issue, think again, because Ezra Klein
00:56:53.580
of the New York times, who's on this book tour, making a bunch of stops swung on by John Stewart's
00:57:00.640
podcast, I guess. I don't, I don't follow John Stewart at all. And it makes me a very happy
00:57:05.520
person, but there was the following exchange. Watch step four has to review and approve and award
00:57:14.320
again, planning grants, not broadband grants, planning grants. Step eight is states must submit an
00:57:21.780
initial proposal, an initial proposal to the NTIA. Then is that the result of their $5 million
00:57:30.380
planning fund? I assume, but then what was the five-year plan? And what the fuck did they apply
00:57:36.320
for? What was their nofo? Like if the five-year action plan isn't the initial proposal, then what's
00:57:42.980
the five-year action plan? Forget nofo, mofo. Step 10, states must publish their own map and allow
00:57:49.500
internal challenges to their own map. Wait, who's challenging it within the state?
00:57:54.740
Well, you know, organized interest groups, environmental groups, like I don't know who
00:57:58.100
specifically, but any, literally anybody. This is, I want to say something because it's very important
00:58:02.480
I say this. This is the Biden administration's process for its own bill. They wanted this to
00:58:08.280
happen. This is how liberal government works now. This is a bill passed by Democrats with a regulatory
00:58:15.180
structure written by Democratic administration. Step 12, states must run a competitive sub-granting
00:58:23.140
process. Oh my fucking God. At step 12, by after all this has been done, I'm speechless.
00:58:31.640
This is the $42 billion expansion of broadband internet service under Joe Biden, which has yet to connect a
00:58:39.220
single household. Ezra Klein, they're detailing how in the end, only three of the 56 jurisdictions that
00:58:45.160
did apply for it actually finished the process by the end of 2024. I mean, this is just, this is
00:58:52.020
devastating. And you know why, you know why, I mean, you guys tell me, I'll let any of you take it.
00:58:56.680
This is why I think Trump's approval ratings are at a historic high for him and why the direction of
00:59:03.900
the country numbers are so positive for him is because everyone knows this. They didn't apply for
00:59:10.460
broadband broadband internet expansion, but they've had to deal with the federal government when their
00:59:16.740
tax refund didn't come. It's a nightmare when they wanted to go on Medicare Advantage and like
00:59:23.960
upgrade that. Like when they, when anything went wrong with their federal government paperwork,
00:59:27.800
they had to correct it. We've all been there calling or dealing with the federal government on
00:59:32.780
any of this stuff. Nevermind like your taxes. It's a nightmare. So what Elon's saying,
00:59:38.440
the doge guys are saying, and Ezra's saying it all has the ring of truth. And I do think like,
00:59:44.480
while Elon's getting battered and bruised, the people are generally going to back this. Maybe
00:59:49.660
they, they feel a little bad about the layoffs of the federal employees. Uh, maybe they just don't
00:59:53.760
really like Elon cause he's brash, but they like the cleanup in aisle seven. Who would like to take
00:59:58.840
that? Well, it's even worse than that. Right. So that just laid out the stupid process and the amount
01:00:03.700
of money we wasted on broadband. And people look at that and say, I had my own experience with like
01:00:08.860
some Titsi fly in the backyard when they wouldn't let me put a shed up. But then they also look and
01:00:12.840
go, wait a second. Isn't there a thing called Starlink that you could get for like eight bucks
01:00:17.660
that you don't even need to do all that. That right. I mean, it's, it's worse than even that
01:00:23.760
example that Ezra Klein was going through. That's, that's just, if you wanted to, you know,
01:00:27.680
what it takes to lay down broadband and do this, but then you go, okay, that's stupid enough as it is,
01:00:31.840
but there's actually an alternative that's costs like no money. And that's linking up to Starlink,
01:00:38.660
getting you internet, not having to lay down all that. The, this, the mindlessness of everything
01:00:43.980
that the federal government touches is unbelievable. And you're right. Most people get it and they just
01:00:50.400
need to have it validated, uh, in terms of the absurdity. Explain to them. Yes. All right. So,
01:00:56.600
uh, I tease this before we took the break, we got into a bit of why Elon is disliked by some,
01:01:05.420
you know, he's not afraid to throw a barb on X, which he owns. You know, he's not,
01:01:11.520
he doesn't sound like Supreme court justice, John Roberts. He does not sound like he doesn't speak
01:01:17.640
the same way he does. And, um, one of the things he did was to call Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona,
01:01:23.860
a Democrat who's married to Gabby Giffords. And he's the brother of Scott Kelly, both of whom are
01:01:29.320
astronauts. Scott's amazing. By the way, came on my show at NBC and told us all about how he was a
01:01:34.180
straight C student, straight C, right? Isn't that your first question? Did you get all A's you crushed
01:01:39.840
physics? You know, you were a math whiz and a science. No, he was like, I was listless. I had no
01:01:44.760
direction. And I was a terrible student. If you became an astronaut, that's brother, Scott,
01:01:49.200
brother, Mark, also an astronaut and now a Democrat Senator. Elon called him a traitor
01:01:54.780
in the context of Ukraine. And Brett asked him about it and listen to this answer.
01:02:02.640
We should have empathy for the thousands of people that are dying every day in trenches
01:02:06.720
for no movement in the, in the lines. So the borders remain the same for the past two years.
01:02:12.900
Thousands of people have died every week for nothing. For what? And I, I take great, great
01:02:23.520
offense at those who, those who put the appearance of goodness over the reality of it. Those who
01:02:34.480
virtue signal and say, oh, we can't give into Russia, but have no solution to stopping thousands
01:02:40.360
of kids dying every day. I have contempt for such people. I don't want to make that clear.
01:02:44.620
Yeah. So you're optimistic because they're virtue signaling and their, their lack of a solution
01:02:50.960
means that kids don't have a father. It means that parents lost a son for what?
01:03:01.980
Pretty powerful. Mark Kelly came in his crosshairs because he posted something on X about having
01:03:09.780
just returned from Ukraine and how, in his view, it was very important that we stand by Ukraine. He
01:03:13.600
wrote, um, everyone wants the war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine security. Can't
01:03:18.380
be a giveaway to Putin and went on from there. Um, I here again, I have to say, Dan, I think the
01:03:25.460
American public is with Elon. I think the American public, while they have nothing but empathy in
01:03:29.700
general for Ukraine, they realize where we are, that this thing needs to end and that we can't
01:03:35.080
keep throwing good money after bad as Americans. Well, I think there's two things here. I think
01:03:41.340
generally speaking, president Trump ran on trying to end the war in Ukraine. And I think you're right,
01:03:46.000
even within the democratic party and the Bernie Sanders kind of base, there is a desire to spend,
01:03:51.200
but you know, focus and spend money on problems at home, not necessarily abroad. Although aspirationally,
01:03:56.960
as you say, people would like Ukraine to be protected. I think where Musk gets in trouble
01:04:01.520
is when he makes statements like that. People died because Russia tried to invade Ukraine and
01:04:07.340
they're trying to defend their homeland. Right? So I, I get why they dug trenches and they're doing
01:04:13.400
everything they can to resist a country that's trying to take it over. I think when Musk does stuff
01:04:18.480
like in the interview, say, this is a revolution, we're trying to revolutionize things.
01:04:23.960
Yeah. The public doesn't necessarily love that language. I mean, this goes to like Joe Biden
01:04:28.980
trying to suddenly become FDR, right? That's not what a lot of people signed up for in 2020.
01:04:34.840
And so I think Musk, to your point is brash. I would never bet against him as a businessman.
01:04:40.720
He's unbelievably successful to state the obvious, but he's rough around the edges. And I think as he
01:04:46.540
wades more into politics, whether it's trolling people on X or kind of forcefully interjecting into
01:04:51.920
politics, you get the good, but you also get bad that I think, you know, you have to be willing
01:04:57.040
to digest, but I think his numbers are coming down. He is the wealthiest man in the world with
01:05:02.960
conflicts, you know, from here to kingdom come. I'm not saying I don't care about that.
01:05:08.060
Well, they, they, I, I actually think they do a little bit. George Soros.
01:05:12.820
Well, that's it. Americans are inherently distrustful of very wealthy people who start
01:05:17.780
getting involved in government. And to your point, Democrats who have had a lot of them in our
01:05:21.660
corner and we loved it. It was damage was done to us on George Soros and other things. So I, I,
01:05:28.000
I think again, it's good and bad with Elon. I want to get to what Elon's doing in Wisconsin,
01:05:33.600
because this is an important election that's coming on Tuesday and you guys are the people
01:05:37.900
to ask about it. But before we go to the special elections and what's happening in Wisconsin with
01:05:41.960
this judicial election, can we spend a minute on Hillary Clinton? Hillary Clinton decided to drop
01:05:52.420
an op-ed in the New York times today. Uh, that's entitled how much dumber will this get? And she
01:06:00.960
uses signal gate and the messaging by Pete Hegseth and Mike walls and JD Vance and Tulsi and others on
01:06:07.860
there as the jumping off point to talk about how dumb the Trump administration is. Uh, some
01:06:13.840
highlights, uh, she calls the Trump administration, hypocritical, dangerous, and dumb over this story.
01:06:18.980
It's not the hypocrisy that bothers me. It's the stupidity. We're all shocked, shocked that
01:06:24.380
president Trump and his team don't actually care about protecting classified information or federal
01:06:29.720
record retention laws. I mean, this is so rich given her history, but we knew that already. This is
01:06:36.160
her just trying to say like, I did nothing wrong. And all my whole controversy was made up. No one
01:06:40.440
actually cares about any of that because they're not blaming Trump harder. And Trump allowed this
01:06:45.040
in the first place, which much what's much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our
01:06:51.080
troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a
01:06:56.380
journalist into the chat. That's dangerous. And it's just dumb. Okay. I mean, fine. I really think
01:07:04.820
Hillary Clinton should have sat this one out given she's in no position to throw stones. She did this
01:07:10.460
willingly. She had her homebrew server for years, an intentional choice. Actually, we do need to stop
01:07:17.400
and take that one for on for a minute, like for years and intentional choice that she's, she's trying
01:07:23.300
to be like, no one really gave a shit about that. This is far worse. This unintentional mistake that was
01:07:29.840
done by adding in the journalist. And yes, they, obviously they intentionally chose signal to have
01:07:35.740
the discussion on, but we've already heard in recent days, Mark, that this was a means of
01:07:40.980
communication used by the Biden administration. I just think she should have had Bill write it.
01:07:46.700
She should have had some friend of hers on team blue, write it someone other than the person with
01:07:52.920
this brand of problems. Well, in Arkansas, we have a word for it. We call it chutzpah.
01:08:00.260
Look, Dan knows Hillary Clinton better than I do, but you can hear her voice in that thing.
01:08:06.260
There may have been some ghostwriting help, but that's her. And she has the rare honor,
01:08:13.940
along with Kamala Harris, of losing presidential elections to Donald Trump.
01:08:16.920
Trump and she will never get over it. And I understand why you're saying she shouldn't have
01:08:23.280
been to what right when the right it, but it's a pretty good enunciation of the view of tens of
01:08:27.660
millions of people about what's going on. And the Clintons, both Clintons, they just love the
01:08:33.080
national town square. They don't want to be away from it. I will also say that she has not just
01:08:40.840
because she lost to Donald Trump, but because of her worldview, she has a genetic inability to stay
01:08:48.440
off of the stand to criticize him. It's in her craw. She cannot help herself. And I'm surprised
01:08:57.580
that she's been relatively low key in the first 100 days here because she is, I know from talking
01:09:05.540
to her friends, she's very engaged on this in a day-to-day capacity. Here's, here's what really
01:09:12.460
galls me, Sean. She writes that as secretary of state under Obama, she used smart power while Trump
01:09:21.440
is now using dumb power. As secretary of state during the Obama administration, I argued for smart
01:09:27.500
power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development
01:09:35.320
assistance, economic might, and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job
01:09:42.180
alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. I believe she's
01:09:50.580
talking about, among other things, Ukraine, where she was secretary of state when we went over there.
01:09:58.540
And to say we meddled in their election is to understate where we are today as a result of that
01:10:06.480
meddling, in part, for which she takes no responsibility. She just talks about how smart
01:10:11.380
she was and the way she manipulated the world and how dumb Trump is, who's now, again, having to clean up
01:10:17.660
a massive Democrat-fueled, if not made, but at least fueled, mess that's cost countless numbers of lives.
01:10:26.340
Yeah. If she still has that reset button that she handed Sergei Lavrov, maybe she wants to take a
01:10:34.080
do-over on this op-ed and get a reset there. I mean, this is the woman who literally brought a
01:10:39.620
reset button to try to make a joke over our relationship with Russia and wants to lecture
01:10:45.960
somebody else about that. I really wouldn't go there. Then to go into the classified issue,
01:10:51.640
after having kept all of your stuff on an unclassified server, wiping it with bleach blit.
01:10:59.540
I just, there are days when you go, you might want to sit this one out. This was one.
01:11:05.980
Wait, one quick follow-up for you on it, Sean. Then she goes on to say,
01:11:09.260
she criticizes him for de-emphasizing the importance of embassies. Oh my God.
01:11:16.700
Why would she touch anything having to do with an embassy or a diplomatic facility after Benghazi?
01:11:26.000
I just, there's a million, I literally feel like she's the one who let someone in her chat that
01:11:30.660
shouldn't have gotten in and wrote that op-ed. Cause that, that, that, that re- I know that's
01:11:36.240
where it's like, I wish she could have at least blamed that on somebody and, and use the reset button,
01:11:40.840
but it's just embarrassing how clueless, uh, and how unselfaware she is of her own vulnerabilities
01:11:48.360
that cause it's not just that when she does stuff like this, it means that Democrats have to answer
01:11:53.520
for it. We have to talk, we get to talk about it. This is one where you literally say, I'll write it
01:11:58.460
for you and then hand it off to somebody else or just sit this one out or don't send it into the
01:12:03.620
New York times, write it for your, in your journal or put it on your unclassified server and keep it
01:12:08.900
for yourself. I know how she tried to act bored during the Benghazi hearings. Like, Oh my God,
01:12:13.940
I just didn't listen to this nonsense. Well, also her homebrewer server or cell phones were wrong
01:12:19.160
either. Go ahead. But, but for, for, for just one thing we got, we lost in the conversation about
01:12:24.020
signal gate was that the president and his team knocked out all of those Houthi targets. No lives
01:12:31.460
were lost. Targets were hit. The Obama, uh, or the Biden administration lost 13 lives coming out
01:12:38.440
of Afghanistan. She dealt with Benghazi. If we want to talk about missions and diplomacy and,
01:12:45.220
and actions, I'll take the Trump record over her record over Biden's record any day of the week.
01:12:51.340
Yeah. I mean, we, uh, we lost an ambassador. Like she, now she's just kind of like, Oh,
01:12:56.780
the embassies, there's a de-emphasis. Would you like to have the embassy conversation? Cause we could
01:13:01.420
do that. We could definitely get back into it. You purported to be bored about it. I know you like
01:13:05.640
this thing, Dan, how did you like this thing? So I, I actually loved it. I will fully admit all
01:13:11.980
the things. Yes. All that, all the things that you guys both said and Mark that she may not be
01:13:17.220
necessarily the best messenger for the reasons that you guys all said, but I think she fully
01:13:21.820
believes it. She, she, she's throwing punches. And I think the party has sat around frozen since Trump
01:13:28.820
got elected. They're exhausted. They don't know what to do. They're questioning, you know,
01:13:33.720
all their strategies and tactics the last four or five years against Trump. And I think to Mark's
01:13:38.740
point, she sits there and she's, I mean, Hillary Clinton is if nothing else, one tough SOB. And I
01:13:44.880
think she's just like, gosh, darn it. We need to stand up and start saying stuff and I'll do it.
01:13:49.680
And I look, I give her credit. I mean, she knows exactly what we're saying are all the words about
01:13:54.960
her. And she's not going to be our candidate in 2028, but she is trying to give some, some steel
01:14:01.240
to the spine of Democrats to just say common sense, as we see it stuff and get in the game
01:14:08.000
and start trying to go at him instead of just sitting around in the fetal position, getting
01:14:13.300
rolled. Dan, do you think your donors on the Dem side or, or house rank and file house members
01:14:18.780
were excited to see that op-ed in the New York times this morning? I think they were probably
01:14:24.300
not excited to see the name. They're the reasons that we all just, but I think they probably say,
01:14:29.620
all right, you know, she's getting off the sideline. Like I think, and we may get to this,
01:14:33.120
this has been the best week for Democrats probably since August of last year, kind of optimism going
01:14:39.400
into the convention. There was less coming out of it, but I think they're like, all right,
01:14:43.900
now Hillary's in, in the game. She's one of the few people in the party who's an aircraft
01:14:48.280
carrier who can take the fight to Trump with clarity. And while the answer is some donors
01:14:55.240
were not happy to see it. I know some were not because it was her, but because as Dan said,
01:15:00.500
they need someone to enunciate the contrast, you know, Bill Clinton could do it. You know,
01:15:05.680
Barack Obama could do it. They won't, they won't because they're former presidents, but she will.
01:15:10.820
And so it's not an imperfect messenger, obviously, but, but go read it and take the name off of it.
01:15:16.320
And you'll see a lot of stuff. As Dan said, Democrats want to hear somebody saying,
01:15:21.280
Oh, I, I want to ask you a follow-up on signal gate, but you mentioned that they won't do it
01:15:26.080
because they're former presidents. And, you know, there's this, I guess, unwritten rule,
01:15:30.280
or at least used to be about unwritten about, about sitting presidents,
01:15:35.220
former presidents, trashing the sitting president. And this is what Joey Behar said about it on Thursday.
01:15:40.580
They also have a tendency to blame the Biden administration. It's like, move on, that ship
01:15:49.100
has sailed. I never remember in my lifetime, a sitting president, trashing a previous president.
01:15:54.340
I've never heard that before. You never heard, you know, Ronald Reagan didn't do it. They're,
01:16:00.800
And just quickly just found in like a 30 second Google search. Here's Joe Biden as president.
01:16:07.400
What in your view constitutes the primary threat to freedom and democracy at home?
01:16:14.140
Donald Trump. Donald Trump and the maggie Republicans
01:16:16.860
represented extremism that threatened the very foundations of our republic.
01:16:23.040
Donald Trump has no character. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.
01:16:27.780
There's one more thing Trump and his Republican friends want to do.
01:16:31.000
These are the kind of guys you like to smack in the ass.
01:16:33.400
Hey, so yeah, some of that was when Trump had declared, but I could have given you 20 other
01:16:40.680
examples of Trump not running of him. There's no, there's no rule anymore. The only rule is there's
01:16:46.640
no rules. It's just like the same as the end of Greece. When Danny Zuko and Kinnicky were doing the
01:16:52.840
drag race, the rule is there ain't no rules. That's where we are in today's day and age. Back to
01:16:57.760
Signalgate. Mark, what is happening with the weirdness between what seems to be like Team
01:17:04.780
Hegseth and Team Walsh? Like, are these two guys maneuvering against each other to see like if one
01:17:13.020
of us has to go down, it's going to be you? What's happening?
01:17:17.180
Um, there's certainly people in their orbit who are interested in of, uh, moving the spotlight if
01:17:23.560
necessary to save their friend or their boss. I don't know about between the two of them. I think
01:17:28.780
my, my belief is that everyone on that chain bears some of the responsibility because they should have
01:17:35.500
said, whoa, this conversation shouldn't be here. If there's two primary mistakes involved, errors of
01:17:42.800
judgment beyond the shared error of all of them. One is allowing Jeffrey Goldberg on the chain. Still
01:17:48.500
don't know how it happened, but the national security advisors taking the blame for that. And for many,
01:17:52.900
that's the big sin. And so Walsh is taking the blame there. But the other is the sharing of
01:17:58.140
information that almost everybody I know, including Sean, because we've talked about it on two-way,
01:18:03.240
doesn't believe should have been on Signal. And that falls primarily on the Secretary of Defense. So
01:18:07.820
they both have primary responsibility for one of the things that went wrong.
01:18:12.320
Many people have noticed that the president has been more critical of Walsh than he has
01:18:16.080
of, of Hegseth. And, and there've been some reporting that, that for a couple hours,
01:18:20.880
a couple of days, at least there was some chance the national security advisor would go. So
01:18:25.000
those guys are both ferocious competitors. They both want to stay in their jobs. One of them has
01:18:32.500
got more personal closest to the president, which is Hegseth, but it appears they're both fine for now.
01:18:38.120
And in the last day, the tensions that I've heard between their camps have tamped down appreciably as
01:18:44.220
it looked like they kind of teamed up to, to move the thing off the table.
01:18:47.900
All right, Sean, same question to you. What do you see happening there? Yeah, go ahead.
01:18:52.380
Well, this is my big tell. I said this this morning. It's the manifest to Greenland
01:18:57.760
is important today. More importantly, is the manifest returning from Greenland.
01:19:03.640
Right. So pay attention to the manifest on the flight home. Does anybody become the special
01:19:08.640
envoy to Greenland and just get stuck in Nook? You know, I mean, I know she's fine. I think
01:19:15.760
everybody loves her. She bought, she bought a round trip ticket. But, but I do wonder if somebody
01:19:21.700
ends up hanging around the commissary too long there at the, at the base. Um, can you, can you speak to
01:19:27.120
what he was saying about, you know, the biggest question is, and I've heard this too from Trump,
01:19:32.020
how did Jeffrey Goldberg get into Mike Wallace's phone? Something Mike is denying, but we all know
01:19:37.360
he was in there in one way, shape or form, or this mistake could not have happened.
01:19:42.680
Yeah. So there's two things. Not all sins are created equal. And I think in Donald Trump's
01:19:46.300
eyes right now, the sin of allowing Jeffrey Goldberg into that conversation is greater
01:19:50.520
than Pete Hegseth probably going beyond what he should sensitivity wise on that chain. Right.
01:19:56.820
And the mission was a success. So I think Trump looks at it and says, who am I more pissed at?
01:20:02.560
Uh, somebody who allowed this Jeffrey Goldberg guy into the thing who obviously is, uh, someone
01:20:08.980
of dubious character to begin with, uh, and obviously a never suckers and losers. So I, I,
01:20:14.920
I think Megan, the problem that a lot of people are having is, and I said this on the free Goldberg
01:20:20.900
is in my phone. I had to call and yell at him during the transition because of a horrible,
01:20:24.880
horrible story. Uh, when I met him the first time that his reporter wrote that I called to chastise
01:20:30.740
him about. So like, it's not a, I think if Mike Walt said, Hey, yeah, he was in my phone book
01:20:35.180
because one time he was writing a profile on blah, blah, blah. No one. I mean, I have a lot
01:20:40.580
of people in my phone that good and bad, but because over 30 years you that's, I mean, I actually
01:20:46.720
have Mark Halperin's contact information going back like 18 jobs time that I can do Mark's bio
01:20:52.420
because I don't delete anything, but that's another story. The point is that like, it wasn't,
01:20:58.380
if, if it doesn't Jamison Greer might've been the, who's the U S trade rep is JG. Maybe that's
01:21:03.760
who, why would they be putting a U S trade rep on the, such a conversation? I mean, that's,
01:21:07.880
that's again, that's a whole separate thing. But my point is it's an honest mistake instead of just
01:21:13.360
saying, Hey, look, the guy was in my phone book. Cause I had to yell at him eight years ago or he
01:21:16.960
did. Who cares? Instead of trying to do this, I don't know how he got in my phone book. I think that
01:21:22.500
that's gonna, that could be the bigger problem because he's opened himself up to, I think that
01:21:28.660
we should investigate this. Well, at some point, I don't know enough about tech, but you know,
01:21:33.120
maybe there's some way of finding out the date that a contact ended it entered into your phone
01:21:38.040
book or something like that. I bet there is. You don't want to look like Joy Reed. Like,
01:21:42.400
I don't know who made those anti LGBTQ entries on my blog. I demand an FBI investigation.
01:21:48.240
I agree with you. I don't think it's that controversial to have weird, bad, nasty,
01:21:54.320
anti-Trump reporters or whatever in your context. It's like the nature of all of our industry. You
01:22:00.380
deal with people you can't stand. You deal with people who can't stand you.
01:22:05.580
It's just change over time. I mean, you might've met someone 15 years ago. I've had people work for
01:22:10.360
me during my six years at the RNC who I haven't spoken to since because of some of the positions
01:22:15.520
they've taken. They're still in my phone book. I don't spend time purging it. I don't think that
01:22:19.800
was the big sin. And so this to me is going to be the rub. If there is something that comes of this,
01:22:26.280
that's going to be a problem because a crisis should die after 48 hours if it's not given
01:22:30.960
oxygen. And I think this thing has lasted way too long. I don't think they should have said it's
01:22:36.420
not war plans. I just don't think that was worth a worthwhile argument. Well, I don't think he
01:22:40.860
should have said Jeffrey Goldberg wasn't in my, I, I just think all of it, they should have said,
01:22:44.820
here's exactly what happened. You just, I mean, the way you put out a scandal is you say,
01:22:48.720
here's everything, here's everything. And we're going to get the defensiveness on the plan though.
01:22:53.740
I will say as somebody who, who understands what those terms mean, right.
01:22:59.140
But the average person isn't really drawing the same distinctions. I mean, I get it. I understand
01:23:05.560
why he felt unfairly attacked, but I just think as a PR, like PR is something I actually know pretty
01:23:11.200
well. He knows war plans and I know PR. But you also, but Megan, here's the thing. You also know
01:23:15.780
the law very well. And if I started pontificating and said, well, they should have just filed this
01:23:20.460
motion inside of you as the good lawyer you are, you'd say you can't do. And I think there's a
01:23:25.580
defensive posture for people in the national security space to say that wasn't a war plan.
01:23:30.660
Though Jeffrey Goldberg wouldn't have released the actual text with the, with the, whatever you want
01:23:37.080
to call those things. And the story didn't get better for Pete and Mike and everyone when he did
01:23:42.860
that. So it's like, I'm just saying, I'm just saying I get their defensive reflexive defensive
01:23:49.840
response because you're defending something, you know, not to be true. I get why they did it.
01:23:55.600
I know. I just like, you have to be smart when it comes to PR, same as you do as a military planner
01:24:01.640
and be able to see three, four or five steps ahead. So it's going to make you feel better to
01:24:05.920
do this counterstrike, but then, then what? Right. I, and that's, I bring it up because you're,
01:24:11.060
you know, we're talking about how we're now in day five of what should have been a 24 to 48 hour
01:24:15.520
scandal. I think it's over. I don't think it's, I mean, the Democrats will still continue to try to
01:24:19.420
light the flame. Megan, we also, you know, one of the things that didn't get much attention,
01:24:23.340
someone brought this up. I can't, I will steal the idea, but it wasn't mine is you think about
01:24:27.740
this. Goldberg knew about this for weeks, right? And he held it until he knew there was a pre-planned
01:24:34.040
hearing of the Intel chiefs on Capitol Hill. Like he got away with that. Just think about this. He
01:24:40.120
timed the drop of that story until he knew those chiefs were going to be on Capitol Hill. I mean,
01:24:44.980
you talk about the PR piece of this. I will give the Atlantic credit for, for literally thinking about
01:24:49.640
how to place this story and when to get the maximum effect.
01:24:53.860
Well, Walter Kern and Matt Taibbi were on the other day and they had a really good point.
01:24:58.320
They were like, why would you ever declare that you were on there? Just think you could have four
01:25:03.540
years of access to the most amazing communications ever. And then at the end of the administration,
01:25:09.080
be like, here's everything I saw. Oh my God. Like I could have been an even better scoop for them.
01:25:14.620
Anyway, I think it's over. I just thank God nobody on our side got hurt. The mission went
01:25:20.160
off perfectly and that we should be grateful that it did. I guess the trade representative
01:25:24.780
might've been on there because we were striking trade routes and the Houthis therein. Okay.
01:25:29.460
Next up, we've got to talk about, you know, on Monday, all the news was how the Democrat party is
01:25:34.500
in shambles. It has its worst approval ratings in years within its itself. You know, it's Democrats hate,
01:25:40.840
hate the party. Democrats hate their leaders. They have no leader. And then we start to see
01:25:45.980
like last night, Elise Stefanik was withdrawn as Trump's nominee for UN ambassador because he needs
01:25:52.180
her to stay in her seat. And then we find out that there was a special election in Pennsylvania
01:25:56.680
in a jurisdiction Trump won by double digits that went blue. And now we're looking at two in Florida
01:26:04.180
where Trump won by huge margins that are potentially in trouble. So what, what's happening? Is this a party
01:26:10.420
that's in trouble or isn't it? That's where we go with the guys right after this.
01:26:16.760
I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open,
01:26:22.680
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01:26:26.680
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01:27:19.320
What are we supposed to make of what I said before the break? I thought the Democrats were imploding
01:27:25.420
and yet Elise has got to leave the UN job so she can hold on to that seat. You've got, um, this was a
01:27:33.340
Pennsylvania state race that the Democrats won, but it was a, it was a jurisdiction by Lancaster
01:27:42.620
County, Pennsylvania. It was a state Senate seat that Trump won by 15 points in November and included
01:27:49.420
the more conservative parts of a County that only one Democrat presidential candidate, Lyndon Johnson,
01:27:55.400
had won since the civil war. So that's Dems have to be feeling good about that. And then you've got
01:28:01.080
the Matt Gates seat and the Mike wall seat in Florida, which are normally totally solidly red,
01:28:07.440
but Republicans are worried about those. Elise Stefanik won her seat by 24 points last year.
01:28:13.780
And the guy who was running to replace her as the Republican on the ticket is up 16 points,
01:28:18.260
but still Trump said, get back down there. Elise, we can't afford to lose it. So I like what,
01:28:23.640
what's happening, Mark, what's happening. Well, don't want to overstate what the trend here,
01:28:29.120
because the country, the polls say, yes, the country's thinks, uh, people think the country's
01:28:34.020
on the right track. Um, president Trump is still wielding his power in a pretty dramatic and some
01:28:39.740
ways unprecedented way. I think there's three things going on. First of all, with any president,
01:28:44.060
the year after the election, you almost always see some sort of bounce back, right? The two
01:28:48.700
gubernatorial races the year after the presidential, only two, uh, competitive races every year,
01:28:53.280
uh, or, or somewhat competitive, at least New Jersey and Virginia. And for years, they swung
01:28:58.700
almost always to the president, the party, not of the president. So part of it is just,
01:29:03.240
it's a year after. Second is some of the stuff the president's doing does not seem, uh, relevant on
01:29:09.800
the economy to a lot of voters, particularly on inflation, where the, where has the president's
01:29:17.020
focus been on the economy. It's been on tariffs. Most people don't understand that. Some people
01:29:20.760
are worried about them. Um, and we see consumer confidence is, is a little bit off. So, or,
01:29:26.380
and some polls a lot off. So I think, I think that there's an economic, uh, gap and then you see that
01:29:31.700
in the president's polling where his ratings on the economy are lower and that's a big issue for voters.
01:29:35.980
And then lastly, there's no perfect off year election. That's going to tell you, you know,
01:29:41.720
exactly what's going on nationally, but there's no doubt that a factor in these races is when Donald
01:29:46.880
Trump isn't on the ballot, Republicans don't do as well. He's not on the ballot in these races
01:29:50.940
and Democrats finally have a little bit of pep in their step. They finally have a feeling of, well,
01:29:55.920
we can't beat him in Washington. We didn't beat him in the last election, but if we win these
01:29:59.920
special elections, if we donate money, if we volunteer, if we get energized, we can send a
01:30:04.140
message to everybody that we want to check on Trump. I think all those things have combined to
01:30:07.920
put Republicans back on their heels. Doesn't mean they're going to lose any of these races
01:30:11.760
necessarily, although they did, as you say, lose the one in Pennsylvania, but this is a time,
01:30:17.080
uh, uh, we talked about it on the show, this, our show this morning, it's been the best week.
01:30:20.840
We all agree for, for Democrats since Trump got elected and, and that adds up to creating an
01:30:26.620
electoral environment that's favorable right now for Democrats as compared to the mean.
01:30:31.680
Dan, Scott Pressler is the guy who went to Pennsylvania, moved there for more than a year
01:30:37.080
prior to the vote and really was very instrumental in turning it red. Um, and he tweeted out,
01:30:43.120
I'm going to be honest with you, even if you don't want to hear it, Republicans have been losing
01:30:47.840
special elections all over the country, even red districts in Iowa and Pennsylvania. Democrats are
01:30:53.880
fired up. Unless we begin focusing on ground game, we will lose 2025 and 2026. Do you agree?
01:31:02.560
Yeah. And I think James Blair, I think it was in an interview with Politico,
01:31:05.760
the white house political director recently said, like, it is a little bit of a problem that our
01:31:10.340
team, meaning kind of Trump and MAGA supporters are pretty kind of happy right now. And you're
01:31:15.440
always a little less energized when you feel like everything is being accomplished that you fought
01:31:19.780
so hard for. Whereas angry MAGA is more effective, right? Whereas conversely Democrats are fired up.
01:31:26.120
And I think there's two things. Democrats are fired up about Donald Trump. They've also,
01:31:31.300
they're fired up about the kind of incompetence and ineptness of their own leaders. And what you're
01:31:37.500
seeing is this, like we've had enough and now like we are going to force action from the bottom up for
01:31:44.340
our own party to get its act together. And so on the local level, on the grassroots level, we can all
01:31:50.260
talk about AOC and Bernie Sanders. Their politics are not necessarily my politics, but what they're tapping
01:31:56.420
into, what they're showing the party. Hey, we can get 30,000 people to show up in a red state.
01:32:01.580
That is hard. I was in politics for 20 years. The only person who's been able to do it for year
01:32:06.600
after year is Donald Trump. You know, Obama had like a two year period where he was like really hot,
01:32:10.700
could fill arenas. And then it became a grind. Trump is the only one in Bernie Sanders who can do it.
01:32:17.000
And I think that you're seeing, you know, this week was signal. It was a little bit of a ding,
01:32:21.000
a self-inflicted error that Democrats said, okay, they're human a little bit, right? They were
01:32:25.440
fumbling around like it gave them some confidence. And so I think Democrats are energized. Republicans,
01:32:32.220
maybe not quite as much. And we'll see here. I also would not underestimate that what Mark said,
01:32:40.040
Trump got elected on the economy and inflation. And he doesn't even talk about those things most
01:32:45.320
of the time. Most of these press conferences, DEI, Doge with Elon Musk a lot, Ukraine, it's not on the
01:32:52.880
economy. And I think voters are frustrated. And you combine that with Doge having kind of a little
01:32:58.280
bit of a rickety, you know, reputation in polls, you see some, some pieces together.
01:33:05.080
You know, Megan, the thing is, look, special elections are special. That's a fact. There are
01:33:10.600
though lessons to be learned. And one of the things that I learned out of Pennsylvania beyond,
01:33:14.740
I mean, the environment we just talked about, there's no question. Republicans aren't as fired
01:33:18.640
up as Democrats right now, but mechanics matter and candidates matter. And in Pennsylvania,
01:33:23.100
by all estimation, the candidate was not very good. The mechanics on the ground were horrible.
01:33:28.320
That's what worries me about the Florida two special elections. The first district, which is the,
01:33:32.760
the, the one held previously by Matt Gaetz should be okay. Jimmy Petronis has run statewide before
01:33:39.280
and won several times. So he's a good candidate. He's got a good fundraising base. He's got people
01:33:43.760
motivated. The, the sixth district, which is the Matt, uh, Mike Waltsey, uh, which is the,
01:33:49.780
the Republican nominee state Senator Randy fine is not raising it by 30 points, 30 points. This
01:33:56.560
should be a slam dunk. Uh, now again, it's special. So maybe he only wins it by 10 or 12,
01:34:01.780
but right now it's dead. Even there's even one poll that shows the Dem up. This should be
01:34:06.660
a huge wake up call. The candidates matter. The mechanics matter, but that, I mean, that should
01:34:12.620
still keep it within five or 10. We have a problem. Scott Pressler is absolutely right. And that's the
01:34:17.860
thing is that at some point you can, you know, those things matter for a few points here and
01:34:22.200
there. We got a bigger problem too, in terms of keeping the base motivated. Well, um, it won't
01:34:28.120
be long until they get angry again. That's, that's Republicanism. There's always somebody disappointing
01:34:33.460
you. Um, go from fat and happy to angry in a big hurry. Yeah, it's, it's easy. Um, the Wisconsin
01:34:40.820
Supreme court race, we should spend a moment on spend a moment on too. There, there, I can't
01:34:45.380
believe the amount of messaging I get on a daily basis about this race as somebody lives in
01:34:49.980
Connecticut. Like, why am I getting this online and everywhere? Elon's doing his, you know,
01:34:55.340
you'll get a million dollars. If you can show me that you voted, you don't have to tell me who you
01:34:59.160
voted for. He's doing that thing again, uh, going back out there. Everybody's sounding very alarmist on
01:35:04.480
this thing. Uh, but the Democrat is up and by a lot, according to the latest poll, uh, where her
01:35:10.600
name is, uh, Crawford, Susan Crawford, she's up against Brad Skimmel and it's 50 42. According to
01:35:17.040
the latest poll of likely voters, 500 of them, although Wisconsin, they say is like impossible
01:35:21.180
to poll. So what's going to happen there and why does everyone care so very much? And is it
01:35:27.560
redistricting that this court is going to have the final say on? Yes. Yes. That's the biggest issue
01:35:35.000
redistricting. I mean, that, that's when they're going to, that would be a huge issue that people
01:35:39.040
should care about nationwide, not just the folks in Wisconsin, a lot of voter ID thing, a lot of
01:35:43.260
early voting all goes through this will go through the state Supreme court. So yeah, for a lot of
01:35:47.500
reasons, people should care about that. I think there's no question. Democrats have the edge going
01:35:51.480
to this. This is going to be a turnout thing. And that's why you're seeing Elon, Don jr. Others try to
01:35:55.860
make the case, tele-town halls, personal visits, et cetera, that Republicans could do themselves a
01:36:01.280
huge favor, uh, if they pick up the Supreme court seat. And, uh, I would say that they're not favored
01:36:07.000
to do it, but it's definitely one of those things is we head down the stretch that they have every
01:36:10.940
ability to do. I can't think of any state. Sorry. Go ahead, Mark. I can't think of any state
01:36:17.840
whose Supreme state Supreme court decisions have been as impactful, not just in the state, but kind of
01:36:23.160
nationally resonant as Wisconsin and like the, the, the political culture and the States and the U S
01:36:29.640
senators, they are actually purple, right? You can't think of very many States cause there aren't
01:36:34.060
very many left who have senators from different parties. Wisconsin does Ron Johnson, far right,
01:36:39.220
MAGA, Tammy Baldwin, pretty far left. And you see on that state Supreme court, the stakes are huge.
01:36:45.880
Again, Wisconsin's probably been supplant, supplanted by Pennsylvania as the battleground state,
01:36:51.480
but it's still number two. And so the stakes are high in order to not just impact that particular
01:36:57.320
state, but the symbolism is what's important to so many to say, we're going head to head with all
01:37:03.280
the outside money and the state ground games to see who can win a very contested seat in, in,
01:37:08.680
in Wisconsin. We've seen it before with Scott Walker. We've seen it before with the U S Senate race.
01:37:13.220
It is high stakes there because of the national resonance of the state of the state and it's put in
01:37:17.940
our political culture. So Dan is what's going to happen. Let's say that if the Democrat wins,
01:37:22.500
then the Democrats control that court. And then is it true that that could mean as many as two
01:37:28.520
congressional seats, additional congressional seats for the Democrats?
01:37:33.820
It could, I mean, we'll, we'll have to see, there's going to be a gubernatorial race in Wisconsin
01:37:39.020
here in two years in 2028. And, um, you know, we'll just have to see kind of how it shakes out.
01:37:44.800
Look, what it does do is just give a little, you know, momentum to the party. We just lost,
01:37:51.180
but Tammy Baldwin did win there. I think one of the things that we're really watching for all three
01:37:56.220
of us and Megan, you probably as well as Elon Musk in the fall last year was an asset to Donald Trump.
01:38:03.880
I don't think anyone would disagree with that. He is now going there this weekend. He's put a lot
01:38:09.840
of money into this race. He's been very vocal on X and other places. I'm curious if his presence
01:38:15.720
helps, if he is still an asset or if what we're seeing in polls, that his favorabilities are coming
01:38:21.900
down as unfavorables are rising, like the black focus group, people have concerns about him.
01:38:27.380
Does he become a liability? And if he does, that will be interesting, right? As we head into
01:38:33.680
more doge cuts, we, we head into this bill, the reconciliation bill, it will start to say to
01:38:39.520
Republicans, perhaps, perhaps the ground is shifting. Hmm. I don't like the chances in
01:38:46.780
Wisconsin, but I'm heartened by the fact that the polls in Wisconsin are never correct. I mean,
01:38:52.440
it's just like you, you can't, it's like having no pull whatsoever. So I suppose anything could
01:38:58.180
happen because Trump won it. So, you know, it's not like there's no. Yeah, so did Ron Johnson,
01:39:03.080
so did Scott Walker. It tends to break to the right at the end. Uh, but that assumes a strong
01:39:08.220
ground game. And as you know, these off year ones are just so, so, so, uh, reading the electorate's
01:39:14.900
very difficult. So I, I mean, that's, you're absolutely right. That's the one on one piece of
01:39:19.180
hope. The GOP has to learn to win without Trump because, you know, he's not going to be on the
01:39:25.560
ballot again. I mean, I know there's some ban and talk, but he's not going to be on the ban on the
01:39:29.760
ballot again. You guys, it's a pleasure. Have a great weekend. It's so great to see you. Thanks
01:39:36.300
for sticking with me. Great to see you, Megan. Thank you again. Great to see you. Wow. So
01:39:40.120
interesting. Aren't those guys great? Uh, if you would like to weigh in on the show, you can email me
01:39:43.920
Megan at Megan Kelly.com. And today is the day to go to Megan Kelly.com because there you can
01:39:48.980
register for our once a week email. We call it the American news minute, and it gives you all the
01:39:53.520
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01:39:59.140
antics. And I think you'll really like this week's Stradwick update among, among other things that are
01:40:05.120
newsy. Uh, thank you all so much for watching and you have a great weekend too.
01:40:08.460
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.