The Michael Knowles Show - Daily Wire Backstage： Trump’s Address to Congress

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00:00:30.000 Hey, everybody. Michael Knowles here.

00:00:31.840 The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage.

00:00:33.520 Trump's address to Congress live is available now.

00:00:37.560 Join me, Andrew Klavan, and the God King Jeremy Boring,

00:00:40.080 along with Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh reporting live from Congress

00:00:43.120 as we break down President Trump's biggest moves since taking office

00:00:46.820 and give our real-time reaction to his address.

00:00:49.880 Was this the greatest address of all time?

00:00:51.860 How has Trump changed Washington since becoming president?

00:00:54.660 We're covering it all, so do not miss it.

00:00:57.140 Enjoy.

00:01:00.000 Welcome to Daily Wire Backstage's live coverage.

00:01:29.580 of Donald Trump's address to Congress.

00:01:31.580 Some people will call it a State of the Union.

00:01:33.240 Some people will get on to us if we do call it a State of the Union.

00:01:35.760 It's very controversial.

00:01:37.200 It will look exactly like a State of the Union, and I think that's really what matters.

00:01:40.520 I'm joined here in Nashville by Andrew Klavan and Michael Knowles.

00:01:43.300 Of course, I'm your host, Jeremy Boring.

00:01:44.900 And joining us remotely from the Capitol itself tonight, we have Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh.

00:01:50.260 There's an empty chair, which we were saving for Elijah, but it has now been filled.

00:01:53.980 And the man filling it is the former acting director of ICE,

00:01:56.900 and the current border czar in the second Trump administration, Tom Holman.

00:02:00.080 Thank you for being with us.

00:02:00.860 Thanks for having me.

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00:02:18.200 And if you join now, you can take part in the live chat,

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00:02:25.260 Obviously, a really big night, the sort of triumphal return of Donald Trump to the Capitol

00:02:31.960 as now the 47th president.

00:02:33.880 What can we expect tonight, Ben?

00:02:36.620 Well, I mean, I think that you're going to expect a very enthusiastic Republican reception.

00:02:40.740 It heard from the speaker that we are expecting a bunch of Democrats to show up with empty egg cartons,

00:02:45.800 and they're going to wave them at the president about egg prices.

00:02:47.840 That'll show him.

00:02:48.720 Noisemakers.

00:02:49.920 They're going to try and disrupt as many things as possible,

00:02:52.380 but they've been unable to disrupt the agenda thus far,

00:02:55.920 and so I think they're going to have a rough time of it tonight.

00:02:58.080 But, you know, we'd be remiss.

00:02:59.340 We don't get to sit with the borders are very often.

00:03:01.320 So, borders are on home.

00:03:02.660 What are you expecting tonight?

00:03:04.480 I expect President Trump to educate American people on the facts of the border,

00:03:08.680 that what he did in three weeks, Biden administration failed to do in four years.

00:03:12.520 We had the lowest border numbers in the history of the United States border,

00:03:15.580 and that's not an exaggeration.

00:03:17.320 Last month, we had the fewest number of encounters in the history of this nation.

00:03:22.460 And President Trump did that in four weeks.

00:03:24.380 So, think what he's going to do in the next 47 months.

00:03:27.600 So, we've got the most secure border ever right now.

00:03:29.980 We've got a little bit more work to do.

00:03:31.660 I said record amounts to rest in the interior.

00:03:34.680 So, as the president secures the border, here's what I hope people take away tonight.

00:03:39.680 When you have 97% less people coming, border patrols now on the border, 100% engaged, 100% on duty,

00:03:45.460 not changing diapers, not making baby formula, not making hospital runs,

00:03:48.860 means we seize more fentanyl, less Americans die from fentanyl.

00:03:52.520 We arrest more traffickers, so less women and children are sex trafficked.

00:03:56.440 We've got less non-inspected terrorists getting away in this country.

00:03:59.820 The God of Ways alone, under Biden average, 1,800 God of Ways, the day that we know of.

00:04:05.760 The other day, it's 41.

00:04:07.460 And we're going to get that down to zero.

00:04:09.060 So, we're going to have total operational control of our southern border.

00:04:12.840 It'll be the first time in history. 0.53

00:04:13.900 Just to state the obvious, so when the media tries to claim that, well, the deportation numbers aren't as high as what Trump promised,

00:04:22.860 the point is that the border is being secure, so we're not having the people come in, right?

00:04:26.860 Exactly.

00:04:27.520 They're counting the numbers of what was removed.

00:04:29.760 Look, President Trump can remove 90% of people coming across the border.

00:04:34.200 His deportation numbers are still going to be lower than Biden, even if Biden deported 10%,

00:04:38.760 because they brought millions of people in.

00:04:40.860 But understand, in one month, a total of 8,000, 8,000 in one month, and under Joe Biden, we're doing 11,000 a day, right?

00:04:52.580 I don't mean...

00:04:53.700 It's a big game changer.

00:04:55.440 And I say every day, and I'll say it tonight, President Trump proves every day why he's the greatest president in my lifetime.

00:05:03.000 It doesn't seem possible that the administration could have made this accomplishment,

00:05:08.200 because I was under the impression that it was impossible to secure the border unless we voted for Joe Biden's comprehensive immigration reform package.

00:05:16.520 So, somewhere I just got bad information.

00:05:20.700 Well, look, the President Trump did it before.

00:05:23.440 This administration knew how to fix it, and they just didn't choose to fix it.

00:05:27.820 This isn't...

00:05:28.520 What Biden did was not mismanagement.

00:05:30.400 It was not incompetence.

00:05:31.340 It was just by design.

00:05:32.620 They knew exactly what they were doing.

00:05:34.480 He ran on open borders.

00:05:35.820 He said he was going to shut down ICE detention.

00:05:37.600 He said he was going to put a moratorium on deportations.

00:05:40.840 He said he was going to give free health care to illegal aliens. 0.72

00:05:43.660 The promises he made, we knew the whole country, the whole world was going to come to the greatest nation on Earth

00:05:48.520 when you're offering all these giveaways with no consequences.

00:05:51.660 They knew how to fix it.

00:05:52.740 They refused to do it.

00:05:53.640 But, again, what they failed to do in four years, Donald Trump did in three weeks.

00:05:59.180 You know, Mr. Homan, Ben just mentioned that the Democrat lawmakers are planning to interrupt the speech with all sorts of noisemakers

00:06:08.540 and make a general nuisance of themselves.

00:06:10.640 I know you're busy, sir, but would it be possible for you to deport them as well, please?

00:06:14.660 Don't tempt me.

00:06:20.580 Don't tempt me because, you know, I've been fighting with the Democrat side of the House for a long time,

00:06:25.560 but especially the last couple of days, there's going to be members of Congress sitting in the audience tonight

00:06:30.120 who are educating criminal illegal aliens how to evade law enforcement.

00:06:34.900 They say, well, we're educating them as a constitutional rights.

00:06:37.940 Okay, plan what you want.

00:06:39.180 We all know what you're doing.

00:06:40.060 You're educating those how to evade law enforcement, don't open your doors, don't answer questions, you know, hide.

00:06:47.580 And these are Congress people that begged that these people had a right to claim asylum.

00:06:53.900 They got a right to see a judge.

00:06:55.300 They got a right to due process.

00:06:57.020 And that happened.

00:06:58.680 They had that due process.

00:06:59.980 But 90 percent have been ordered removed.

00:07:02.120 So if we don't execute the final decision of the courts, there is no due process.

00:07:05.540 It means nothing.

00:07:06.080 You can't demand due process and ignore the final decision of the courts.

00:07:10.100 If we do that, they might as well just shut down immigration courts, take the border off the border.

00:07:14.220 There's no consequences.

00:07:15.560 You can't ask to implement a system of laws and ignore the final result.

00:07:20.780 And that's why we're going to have a massive deportation operation because millions of people across this border,

00:07:25.120 90 percent would get an order of removal.

00:07:27.140 We've got to remove them.

00:07:28.240 So any member of Congress who wants to educate, we made it clear the Trump administration is going to concentrate on this,

00:07:33.600 the worst of the worst, worst public safety threats, right?

00:07:36.440 I can't believe any member of Congress wants to educate an illegal alien who's been convicted of a serious offense. 0.63

00:07:43.800 He's got order removal at the due process at great taxpayer expense and wants to educate them on a day to rest.

00:07:50.180 To me, they are resigned their position as member of Congress.

00:07:53.960 They're doing the complete opposite with American taxpayers expectable.

00:07:57.000 Can I ask you about what about the Democrat mayors and governors who have promised, claimed,

00:08:01.920 in some cases claimed that they're going to harbor illegal aliens in their own homes?

00:08:05.540 Have you found that they're actually doing this?

00:08:07.900 What are they doing to interfere with your operations?

00:08:11.420 Or are they kind of getting in line?

00:08:12.620 What's going on there?

00:08:14.300 They haven't crossed the line yet.

00:08:16.000 But if they cross the line, they're going to be prosecuted.

00:08:17.720 You can stand aside and watch ICE do your job.

00:08:23.100 ICE is making their community safer.

00:08:25.460 And I find it hard to believe every day that there's any mayor or governor or city council person

00:08:29.940 that doesn't want public safety threats removed from the public.

00:08:34.140 It's in our more responsibilities of community safety.

00:08:36.200 If you want to help us, get the hell out of the way.

00:08:37.740 Well, I've warned numerous mayors and governors, don't cross that line.

00:08:44.640 If you impede us, that's a felony.

00:08:47.180 And Pam Bondi, we'll ask Pam Bondi to prosecute. 0.78

00:08:50.340 If you harbor or conceal an illegal alien, knowingly harbor or conceal an alien from ICE, that's a felony.

00:08:57.460 In my career, I've arrested U.S. citizens for harboring and concealing an illegal alien in a workplace or a home.

00:09:02.060 If I can prosecute a U.S. citizen for doing it, why can't we prosecute a politician who does that same thing?

00:09:10.360 So, you know, I think we've got a strong A.G. and Pam Bondi.

00:09:13.000 And if they cross that line, we should prosecute and make an example of them.

00:09:18.020 To your point earlier, sir, it's perfectly reasonable, perfectly understandable why someone living south of our border in particular

00:09:26.560 would want to get to the greatest country in the history of the world.

00:09:30.260 It's a no-brainer.

00:09:31.160 When you add further incentives through all of our government programs, all of the handouts,

00:09:35.840 the open invitations that Joe Biden and his administration were putting out to people to come to the country,

00:09:40.980 you can't be surprised when they do.

00:09:44.500 At the same time, the idea that American politicians would engage in harboring those people,

00:09:51.940 it seems to me, it's very easy to throw around words like treason in political discussion.

00:09:57.080 But when you're actually using your position as an elected representative of the American people

00:10:02.580 to help criminal aliens in the country at the expense of your own constituents, 0.57

00:10:09.200 I mean, how is that not a treasonous offense?

00:10:11.120 When Joe Biden shuts down the Remain in Mexico program and says,

00:10:14.160 no, instead, we're going to bring millions of people into the country who don't need to be here. 0.99

00:10:19.360 We already have a solution.

00:10:21.020 The first Trump administration implemented the solution.

00:10:23.020 We're going to remove the solution.

00:10:25.000 How is that not treasonous?

00:10:27.720 Look, I think a lot of what they did is treasonous.

00:10:31.040 Take, for example, the Gataways, right?

00:10:33.320 They overwhelmed the Border Patrol where many nights, 70%, 7-0,

00:10:38.340 70% of agents were pulled off the line to make sandwiches, change diapers, make baby forms,

00:10:42.960 to make hospital runs, dealing with this humanitarian crisis they created on purpose.

00:10:47.460 And the Border Patrol is overwhelmed.

00:10:49.720 So we've got 30% of Border Patrolies left on the line.

00:10:52.460 Then the criminal cartels have sent a group of 100 family units in one area,

00:10:56.040 knowing that 30% are going to seize that opportunity to deal with a humanitarian crisis there,

00:11:00.600 which the cartels create gaps.

00:11:02.680 So you've got 2.2 million known Gataways.

00:11:05.320 You've got to ask yourself, why did 2 million plus people pay more to get away?

00:11:10.880 Because you pay the cartels one amount of money to get to the border.

00:11:13.980 The cartels' job ends when you get to the border because you turn yourself into a green uniform. 0.94

00:11:19.540 You get released within 24 hours.

00:11:21.060 You get a free airline ticket to the city of your choice.

00:11:23.420 You get put in a free hotel room.

00:11:24.680 You get three meals a day and free medical care.

00:11:27.380 After about three months, you get work authorization, the very reason they came here.

00:11:30.960 So why did 2 million people pay more not to take advantage of that giveaway program?

00:11:35.200 Why did they pay more to get away?

00:11:37.080 Because they didn't want to be vetted.

00:11:38.700 They didn't want to be fingerprinted.

00:11:39.840 These are going to be people trafficking women and children. 0.98

00:11:42.500 They're going to be ones carrying the fat and all.

00:11:43.980 And they're going to be ones coming from a country sponsoring terror. 0.93

00:11:48.940 Now, under Trump, in four years, we arrested a total of 14 people on terrorist watch list.

00:11:53.640 14 in four years.

00:11:55.780 This Biden administration had 14 in a day.

00:11:58.640 I mean, they were up over 400.

00:12:01.040 So the question is, border patrols arrested people from 181 different countries.

00:12:04.760 Many of these countries are sponsored by terror.

00:12:06.700 They've arrested over 400.

00:12:08.520 How many of that 2.2 million came from countries sponsoring terror? 1.00

00:12:11.540 If you think it's zero, you're a moron. 1.00

00:12:14.160 So this is the biggest national security vulnerability I've seen in my lifetime. 0.99

00:12:18.060 Even FBI Director Wray, who I don't like, even he agreed this is the biggest national security vulnerability.

00:12:24.920 He's seen a lot of red flags.

00:12:26.500 What they did when they purposely opened this border up is create the biggest national security vulnerability this nation's ever seen.

00:12:36.140 And we know there's people here that want to do us harm.

00:12:40.000 We know national security threats entered this country.

00:12:43.640 We're monitoring some.

00:12:45.120 Some, we don't know where there are.

00:12:46.320 So, when you use the word treasonous, I agree with you. 0.93

00:12:50.500 Because they, on purpose, created this open border, which resulted in a significant national security concern, national security vulnerability.

00:12:59.380 We all know something's coming.

00:13:00.820 The intelligence community believes something's going to be coming.

00:13:03.320 And thank God we got President Trump in the Oval Office to deal with it when it happens.

00:13:07.060 And when you talk about this, it's very clear that the Biden administration, it was an act of will for them to leave the border this way.

00:13:13.580 I was talking to you before we were on air.

00:13:15.200 I was actually down at the border in Arizona.

00:13:17.100 There's a Native American reservation right along the border.

00:13:19.300 There's no fencing there because the Native American reservation doesn't want there to be fencing there.

00:13:23.100 And so, basically, it's wide open.

00:13:25.360 And the Biden administration, I was told by Border Patrol, had assigned them to process people as a number one priority.

00:13:31.920 The drug cartels would essentially drive up with a truck filled with people.

00:13:35.000 They would unload them at the border.

00:13:35.940 There was actually a button they could hit at the border that would call Border Patrol to them.

00:13:39.740 Border Patrol would then have to take them for processing.

00:13:41.600 And that would leave the rest of the border completely wide open for the predations of the drug cartels.

00:13:46.500 I think one part of the story that hasn't been told here is just how much the Biden administration enriched the drug cartels.

00:13:51.800 The drug cartels made literally billions of dollars off of human trafficking and drug smuggling during the course of the Biden administration.

00:13:58.580 No one celebrated that election more than the criminal cartels.

00:14:01.460 They knew they were back in business.

00:14:02.600 The reason there's so much violence in Mexico right now is because the cartels are making more money than they've ever made in sex trafficking in women and children, alien smuggling, and the smuggling of narcotics.

00:14:12.840 Now, there's a lot of discontent in Mexico because President Trump has taken billions of dollars out of their pockets when he secures that border.

00:14:21.180 So I think you're going to see more violence on the border.

00:14:23.040 I don't think they're going to go away quietly.

00:14:24.780 I think President Trump did the right thing, designated them a terrorist organization, because these cartels have killed more Americans than every terrorist organization in the world combined.

00:14:32.700 But what they did to the border was on purpose.

00:14:36.680 I agree 100%.

00:14:37.480 And here's why I know it's on purpose.

00:14:39.600 We never talk about this.

00:14:40.740 Let me just mention this.

00:14:42.700 When Barack Obama was president, Joe Biden was vice president, Secretary Mayorkas was a deputy secretary.

00:14:49.300 We had a surge of family groups coming across the border.

00:14:52.300 How did we stop it?

00:14:53.440 We built family residential centers.

00:14:55.440 We held them long enough to see a judge.

00:14:57.600 91% lost their case.

00:14:59.160 We put them in an airplane, send them home, and the border number's dumped.

00:15:02.680 So Mayorkas knows how we fixed it, and Biden knows how we fixed it.

00:15:06.080 So what did they do when he becomes president?

00:15:08.320 Mayorkas becomes secretary.

00:15:09.920 They don't contain him.

00:15:11.960 They don't make him see a judge.

00:15:13.660 They don't deport him.

00:15:14.760 They did exactly the opposite of what proved worked when he was vice president and Secretary Mayorkas, deputy secretary.

00:15:21.640 So this wasn't an accident.

00:15:22.860 They did the exact opposite of what they knew we succeeded with when President Obama was in office.

00:15:31.860 So this wasn't, again, this was by design.

00:15:34.600 They knew exactly what they were doing.

00:15:36.120 And the reason they didn't detain them is because when an alien's in detention, they get a hearing within 40 days at top,

00:15:44.060 which means in 40 days that 91% be ordered removed and they go home.

00:15:47.520 That's not what they wanted.

00:15:48.900 So they released them to NGOs, put them in a hotel room, because once you're out of ICE custody, it's called the non-detained docket.

00:15:55.600 Non-detained docket takes anywhere from three years to nine years, depending on what city you're in.

00:15:59.740 Wow.

00:16:00.120 And they knew in that three to nine years, they'll get one or two U.S. citizen kids.

00:16:04.960 They'll get equities here.

00:16:06.560 And hopefully a Democratic Congress and Democratic president that will reward them in amnesty.

00:16:10.880 This is why they didn't detain them.

00:16:12.660 They don't want them removed.

00:16:13.840 So they figured they put them on a non-custody docket with Immigration Court.

00:16:18.300 Their cases are so far down the road that there will be a change in the administration and they can award them in amnesty.

00:16:24.320 That's exactly what is their plan.

00:16:26.240 And thank God we changed that in November.

00:16:28.500 We got President Trump.

00:16:28.940 Mr. Holman, you mentioned just now that President Trump redefined these organizations as foreign terrorist organizations.

00:16:35.840 And a lot of people hear that and they think, well, that's just kind of a new way of describing them.

00:16:42.700 But obviously that is an official classification that then frees up certain American resources to deal with them.

00:16:48.740 So in case there are any face-tattooed gangsters watching the stream tonight, practically speaking, what does it mean that the cartels can anticipate now that they're designated this way?

00:16:58.320 If you're involved in cartels in any way, if you're transporting for them, if you're moving money for them, if you're helping these cartels in any way, then you are part of a terrorist organization and we'll charge you with terrorist-related crimes, which has significant penalties.

00:17:15.260 Being designated terrorist brings a whole of U.S. government, I'm including the military.

00:17:20.320 We're not just going to attack them on our southern border.

00:17:22.280 We're going to attack them across the globe.

00:17:23.980 Calisco cartels in 43 countries around the globe.

00:17:26.480 Not only are they moving drugs across the border, that's the way it used to be, now they have a presence in every major city in this country.

00:17:33.660 So on top of smuggling narcotics in this country, they're taking over the interior distribution of narcotics within our largest cities.

00:17:39.620 We're going to attack them on the border.

00:17:41.280 We're going to attack them in the interior of the United States. 0.99

00:17:43.060 We're going to attack them in every country there around the world with the assistance of the other countries. 1.00

00:17:47.600 This designation has put them on notice.

00:17:50.520 We're going to use the whole might of the United States government to take them out.

00:17:54.580 We're going to, and the first thing we do is take the money.

00:17:57.320 If they don't have money, they have no power.

00:17:58.740 They can't buy the Mexican military.

00:18:00.180 They can't buy Mexican legislation.

00:18:02.380 They can't buy Mexican judges. 0.99

00:18:03.980 So we're going to shut them down one piece at a time.

00:18:07.200 What President Trump did by designating a terrorist organization to take the first step of whiting these cartels off the face of the earth.

00:18:14.100 You know who's going to be more grateful than anybody?

00:18:16.120 The country in Mexico.

00:18:17.100 I've said this many times.

00:18:19.680 There's a lot of corruption in Mexico, whether it's the military, law enforcement, or government officials. 1.00

00:18:24.720 Many of them didn't choose to be corrupt, but cartels will tell you, you're going to do this, and we're going to kill you and your family. 0.99

00:18:31.920 To take the cartels out of Mexico and demolish them and incinerate them and take them off the face of the earth, we're going to free Mexico. 1.00

00:18:40.100 We're going to free Mexico. 0.98

00:18:40.940 Mexico wants to be under the control of the cartels.

00:18:43.840 They can operate in a free society.

00:18:45.540 So I think no one's going to be more grateful than Mexico.

00:18:49.320 Porter Czar, Tom Holman, thank you for making time with us.

00:18:51.860 It's a huge night.

00:18:52.820 We're very grateful for the work you're doing, very grateful for the work that President Trump is doing,

00:18:56.900 and just looking forward to actually having some sanity and law and order on the southern border.

00:19:02.200 Thank you.

00:19:03.820 I appreciate the thanks.

00:19:05.200 Let's give the thanks to the men and women wearing the green uniform.

00:19:07.880 We're down there 24-7.

00:19:09.540 While I'm sitting at this event tonight, there's some board station standing on a dirt trail someplace.

00:19:13.960 It's going to take somebody on, whether it's just an illegal ant or a heavy-armed drug smuggler.

00:19:18.880 These are the men and women who sit on that board 24-7 while we're laying in bed sleeping safe at night.

00:19:23.960 Thank the ICE agents who are out there with a Kevlar vest and a gun on their hip going to sanctuary cities,

00:19:29.060 arresting bad people because they couldn't arrest them in the jail.

00:19:31.360 And we've got leakers telling people where these operations are.

00:19:35.340 Let's pray for the men and women on ICE that they go home and save their families every night.

00:19:38.880 There's the real heroes.

00:19:39.840 I'm grateful to be in.

00:19:41.200 I've got a great president.

00:19:42.600 But I want to thank the men and women on the front line who are doing the job.

00:19:46.760 Steve Miller is the architect, probably one of the smartest men I've ever met.

00:19:50.860 We strategize.

00:19:52.180 We come up with plans.

00:19:53.080 We come up with the methods of what we want done.

00:19:55.740 But the men and women carrying the badge and gun, God bless them.

00:19:59.280 Let's keep them safe because they're doing God's work on the front line.

00:20:02.380 Amen.

00:20:02.880 Amen.

00:20:05.380 Ben, it's hard to follow that with an ad read, but if anyone can do it.

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00:20:28.680 Is it Reiki energy healing?

00:20:32.840 I mean, that looks relaxing, but nope.

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00:20:36.860 I know about you, but that kind of stuff is not for me.

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00:21:37.060 So quite a treat to have Tom Holman with us and also a treat that Ben and Matt get to attend this event.

00:21:46.080 And to make it even better is that you had to go to the Joe Biden.

00:21:50.080 I know this.

00:21:50.740 I'm feeling a little gypped.

00:21:51.960 I mean, I'm very grateful to my friend Congressman Andy Ogles for having me last year.

00:21:57.360 It was very cool to be at the State of the Union.

00:22:00.240 But I had to listen to Joe Biden incoherently scream for like 45 minutes.

00:22:04.680 And you guys get to go to the UFC fight of State of the Union addresses.

00:22:08.700 It's going to be super fun.

00:22:11.520 Oh, it is going to be great.

00:22:12.880 First of all, I think there's a good shot that President Trump is going to announce this rare earth mineral deal with Ukraine.

00:22:18.080 So that'll be a big win for him.

00:22:19.640 And I think it'll rectify a lot of the breach that happened last Friday in that extraordinarily combative press conference between Zelensky, President Trump, and Vice President J.D. Vance.

00:22:28.780 He's obviously going to talk about his accomplishments on immigration that Borzar Homan just mentioned a moment ago.

00:22:33.840 He's going to be talking about the investments that were just made by a number of companies in America.

00:22:39.320 The TSMC, which is, of course, the gigantic semiconductor maker in Taiwan, has announced they're going to spend $100 billion additionally in the United States.

00:22:46.740 The Honda Civic is now going to be produced entirely in Indiana as opposed to in Mexico.

00:22:50.860 I'm sure he's going to be talking a lot about that.

00:22:52.520 There's been a lot of winning.

00:22:53.220 He's going to talk about DEI.

00:22:54.360 I'm sure he'll talk about Matt's big issue, the issue that if one person really helped push over the line, it was Matt Walsh, the death of men in women's sports.

00:23:02.540 I'm sure he's going to mention that as well.

00:23:03.680 I mean, this has been, as we discussed last time we were together, the fastest moving administration in modern American history.

00:23:11.020 I mean, this administration is moving like absolute lightning.

00:23:13.180 It's going to give Trump a lot to talk about.

00:23:15.380 And, of course, it's going to get spicy because I would be shocked if there's no dramatics from the fainting couch left out there.

00:23:21.640 Some of them are not showing up.

00:23:23.000 And frankly, to me, that seems like the best tactic for some of them. 1.00

00:23:26.480 I think they're the ones who are idiots are going to show up and make fools of themselves. 1.00

00:23:29.280 You know, it seems like not showing up, though. 1.00

00:23:30.920 They actually get paid to show up.

00:23:32.160 That's what they're there for.

00:23:33.260 I agree.

00:23:33.500 It seems like everything they do, every strategy they come up with just sends them further and further into the wilderness.

00:23:39.080 And I agree for them.

00:23:40.000 I miss them deeply.

00:23:40.700 But I think that if they just continue to protest cutting fraud and waste, if they continue to protest securing the border, if they continue to protest putting not allowing men into women's sports, I could be gone before there's another Democrat administration, which may be only 10 minutes away.

00:23:57.320 But, like, still, I think that this could be a long, long term in exile.

00:24:01.040 They seem to have learned absolutely nothing.

00:24:03.320 I mean, you mentioned some of the members not showing up tonight. 0.79

00:24:07.340 But even the Democrat governors who say, no, by golly, we're going to ignore federal law and we're going to force hulking dudes to crack women's skulls. 1.00

00:24:14.600 And they elect David Hogg, one of the least likable Democrats, even among Democrats, to be the vice chairman of the party.

00:24:22.980 It just seems like these guys cannot possibly win for losing.

00:24:26.560 I would like to ask a question of you guys.

00:24:28.960 You know, when I'm listening to Homan talk about the border, this lawlessness, this incredible, it was an invasion.

00:24:36.060 I mean, I know that's like a big word, but it was an invasion allowed by the president of the United States, allowing us to be invaded.

00:24:42.780 And you hear all these theories of bringing in voters.

00:24:45.520 It's the great replacement and all this.

00:24:48.040 Do you think that that was the strategy?

00:24:50.160 Was that it, that they just thought that this would turn the Democrats?

00:24:53.060 They told us this in 2004.

00:24:55.300 Ben, you correct me because you probably remember the paper better.

00:24:58.100 It was 2004 or 2006.

00:24:59.840 There was a very prominent political science paper pushed by the left on this strategy to import people from all over the world and to have a permanent electoral majority.

00:25:09.020 And I don't think they were counting on Trump winning 46 percent of Hispanics or an increasing number of black mail votes or anything like that.

00:25:14.880 But they were, I think they were pretty open about it.

00:25:17.240 I don't think they hid the ball.

00:25:18.580 Because it's happening in Europe too.

00:25:20.140 I mean, I think there's some of that.

00:25:20.720 But I also think that there was, I think that there was something else happening too.

00:25:23.720 And that is that there's been this myth in democratic politics really since 2012 that you could create a permanent minority majority coalition.

00:25:31.980 And so it was almost a no loss proposition for them.

00:25:34.140 They figured that they were going to win more Hispanic votes in the United States by opening the vote, by opening the border. 0.87

00:25:39.020 And they could simultaneously bring in new voters.

00:25:41.100 And at the same time, they'd be pleasing all of their white liberal college graduates who believe that the United States bears blood guilt for ever having won Texas and California from Mexico. 0.58

00:25:49.200 And so it was sort of a win-win for them.

00:25:50.620 And what they didn't understand is that you are now creating a backlash that's going to make for your undoing.

00:25:54.140 If there's one issue more than any other that really swung the election, it was the illegal immigration issue.

00:25:58.820 And number two, it was the trans issue.

00:26:00.060 And Democrats are unable to kind of let go of both.

00:26:02.200 But I want to ask my buddy Matt here because he's been sitting here silently as is his once during our backstage.

00:26:07.400 He's always very excited to be here, as we know.

00:26:10.020 And he's even more excited to travel.

00:26:12.240 Matt, do you feel the electricity?

00:26:14.020 Do you feel the energy?

00:26:15.300 Are you just like ecstatic to be here?

00:26:17.600 I appreciate the pity throwing it to me so I have something to say.

00:26:22.000 And it's a great honor to be here.

00:26:24.620 We're a little too physically close right now.

00:26:26.180 So it's an uncomfortable physical proximity that I'm not accustomed to.

00:26:29.460 I am wearing a tie for the first time in two years.

00:26:33.560 So that shows you how much I would honor it.

00:26:35.840 And there's a pocket square.

00:26:37.320 I'm going to note that right before this, by the way, Matt actually did up his tie.

00:26:40.860 Like a few minutes ago before we began, Matt had not buttoned his top button.

00:26:44.620 Well, it's still not buttoned.

00:26:45.680 It's still not buttoned.

00:26:46.120 Yeah, but you've got the tie tight enough that you can masquerade.

00:26:48.680 And his short was pretty loose.

00:26:49.900 And he kind of looked as though, and he had the cup of whiskey in front of him and the glass of whiskey.

00:26:54.100 And he looked as though, you know, he'd worked a long day at the accounting office.

00:26:57.960 And now he'd been finally released to his local pub where he could, you know, just let the tie down a little bit.

00:27:03.820 And that was actually him dressed up.

00:27:05.000 So I'm just going to point that out.

00:27:06.540 I don't even know if we're, can we drink alcohol where we are right now in these sacred halls?

00:27:10.540 It's Congress, my friend.

00:27:14.480 I will say it was pretty cool.

00:27:17.040 We met with Speaker Johnson right before this.

00:27:18.980 And he actually took us to take a picture, which I'm sure has now been posted online.

00:27:23.100 And he actually showed us a room that apparently has never been used in the Capitol building, which was a prayer room.

00:27:30.240 It was actually like a prayer room off to the side.

00:27:31.840 It was really cool.

00:27:32.540 It was a beautiful stained glass window of George Washington kneeling in prayer, you know, the famous painting, and emblems from all 50 states.

00:27:39.920 And George Washington was the last one to use it.

00:27:41.680 Yes, exactly.

00:27:43.280 Well, I mean, at least use it for prayer.

00:27:44.880 I mean, I'm hoping that none of the other Congress people discovered it, because the one rule about Congress is you never want to blacklight anything here.

00:27:50.340 It's just a huge mistake.

00:27:52.660 So basically, this is going to be a giant pep rally for the right tonight.

00:27:59.120 And to make it all the more glorious, we're going to be filling up with leftist tears left, right, and center.

00:28:03.980 Is there anything being bandied about that we think would be a surprise?

00:28:10.600 Is Donald Trump going to do anything here tonight that shocks his constituency, or is this pure fan fiction playing out right in front of us tonight?

00:28:19.180 Well, I think the big floating idea is that you could get an announcement of the Ukraine deal, which might surprise some people because President Trump picked that fellow up and flung him out the window the other day during their Oval Office meeting.

00:28:32.460 But again, you know, these kinds of deals are bigger than just one shouting match in the Oval Office.

00:28:36.740 So you could see that.

00:28:37.720 That would be somewhat surprising.

00:28:38.700 Obviously, President Trump last night implemented these tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which surprised some people because I think some people believed that the tariffs were merely a negotiating ploy to try to get concessions on fentanyl or border enforcement or whatever.

00:28:53.740 However, I think Trump campaigned on believing in tariffs in terms of economic theory, like in tariffs for the good of the American economy.

00:29:01.840 Well, not just tariffs themselves, though, balanced tariffs.

00:29:04.460 In other words, why should we have tariffs on our goods going out and not put tariffs on people coming in?

00:29:08.960 The whole ethos of Trump is we're not your daddy.

00:29:12.700 You know, if we're going to help you, you're going to help us.

00:29:14.560 We want to get paid for what we do.

00:29:16.180 We want you to take part of your own defense.

00:29:19.140 I mean, I've been telling Europeans this for over a decade, that all their wonderful welfare programs that they have and their universal health care that they have is paid for by us because we protect them.

00:29:28.340 Right. Of course. But the one surprise tonight potentially could be that Trump, as Howard Lutnick was suggesting earlier today, Trump could roll back some of those tariffs that he announced last night.

00:29:40.740 So that might be somewhat surprising.

00:29:42.580 Otherwise, I'm expecting the pep rally. I don't know about you guys.

00:29:45.960 It's too late to buy any index funds.

00:29:47.700 Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'd be a little surprised if he rolls back the tariffs that quickly.

00:29:53.780 I think that he has to have some sort of headline that he can latch on to in order to do that, some sort of win that he can say that he prized out of Canada or Mexico in order to do that.

00:30:03.200 The one thing about President Trump that I've said many times, but I think you're going to see it play out with regard to these tariffs, is that President Trump likes good headlines and he does not like bad headlines.

00:30:11.440 It's when the Dow Jones Industrial Average drops by 1,500 points in two days and suddenly the lights start blinking red.

00:30:17.560 I don't think that President Trump is so wedded to the magical idea of tariffs that he won't reverse himself in order to sort of preserve economic health.

00:30:24.060 That's one thing.

00:30:25.000 There had been some rumors.

00:30:27.020 I doubt that he'll do it tonight.

00:30:28.580 But obviously I was pushing very hard today to pardon Derek Chauvin, which I think would be a good move for the country because while he was convicted on state charges, it wouldn't free him from prison.

00:30:37.500 I do think that it would be very good and salutary for the country for the federal government to make clear that it is not going to hold to account people for crimes they did not commit and in which the jury was pretty obviously poisoned by everybody surrounding the court.

00:30:51.380 Anybody who thinks that Derek Chauvin got a fair trial, regardless of what you think of the actual outcome of the trial, anybody who pretends that that was even remotely a fair trial or the evidence stacked up to the conviction in that case, I, honest to God, don't understand what you're thinking, to be fairly frank with you.

00:31:04.700 And, again, I think it would be a shocker if President Trump said anything about it tonight.

00:31:09.360 But I would not be surprised if something in the near future is done about it.

00:31:12.560 Well, Ben and Matt, you've got to get to your seats.

00:31:15.500 The show's about to begin.

00:31:17.000 You're sitting with Speaker in Speaker Johnson's box, as I understand.

00:31:21.320 It's an unbelievable honor.

00:31:22.640 I have no doubt that Drew and I will be invited to the next state of the union.

00:31:27.620 Tell Speaker Johnson we actually met.

00:31:29.280 He and I met right after he was elected.

00:31:30.900 I sat next to him at the first Trump prayer breakfast, and he's forgotten me entirely.

00:31:34.860 I think your invite was lost.

00:31:36.060 Yeah, I know.

00:31:36.640 He doesn't care.

00:31:37.380 You guys have a great night.

00:31:38.440 We'll see you after the president's remarks.

00:31:40.540 Hopefully we're able to get you back.

00:31:42.640 And in the meantime, we're going to look at the people coming in, which is always kind of my favorite part of this, like the red carpet of ugly people.

00:31:50.120 When people make their grand entrances into the state of the union.

00:31:54.220 All right, guys, we'll see you later.

00:31:57.200 Yeah, yeah, bye.

00:31:57.640 Catch you later.

00:32:00.900 Ben and Matt, off to the Speaker's box to hear President Donald Trump make his address to a joint session of Congress.

00:32:09.220 We're seeing all the best people walking into the Capitol as we speak.

00:32:14.940 It's actually kind of fun.

00:32:16.120 I mean, I really saw Elon a second ago, and of course, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Speaker Mike Johnson already up on the podium.

00:32:24.620 And then a bunch of really sullen-looking Democrats, which makes it...

00:32:28.640 I can't imagine what's wrong with them.

00:32:30.840 They are quite colorful, though.

00:32:32.140 It's interesting because in recent years, the Democrats, especially the squad Democrats, have worn white to make themselves look like the suffragettes or something.

00:32:40.360 This year, they're wearing pink.

00:32:42.240 Maybe the, I don't know, the purity...

00:32:43.620 The femininity. 0.50

00:32:44.540 It's the femininity. 1.00

00:32:45.620 No one was buying the white dress.

00:32:46.620 The softness and gentleness in the Democrats.

00:32:48.240 I noticed that none of them have shaved their heads, though.

00:32:50.720 I feel like if you're going to do it, do it.

00:32:53.040 Go all the way.

00:32:53.960 I'm waiting.

00:32:55.000 You know, I like this whole idea of them having noisemakers and, you know, like throwing egg...

00:33:00.420 Firecrackers and things.

00:33:01.720 Yeah.

00:33:01.980 They can't humiliate themselves anymore.

00:33:04.220 At least as far as I'm concerned, they can't humiliate themselves enough to actually humiliate themselves as much as they deserve.

00:33:11.140 Nancy Pelosi is not a young woman.

00:33:14.900 Well, you know, evil ages you.

00:33:18.800 She's actually only 40. 0.85

00:33:20.180 It's just the evilest, sucked all the life out of her. 0.66

00:33:21.900 What does it say on that lady's jacket?

00:33:24.080 We the people...

00:33:25.520 Huh.

00:33:26.060 It may have been the 14th Amendment on her sleeve. 0.79

00:33:28.440 It's interesting.

00:33:29.420 I mean, I'm not positive, but I think it may have been the text of the 14th Amendment.

00:33:33.700 We're hearing that the president is running just a few minutes late, which I call presidential prerogative.

00:33:37.560 Of course.

00:33:38.180 You.

00:33:39.220 Or just rudeness.

00:33:40.240 Wherever the president arrives, he is precisely on time.

00:33:43.100 That's right.

00:33:43.620 That is one of the perks of the job.

00:33:45.400 It's like classifying documents.

00:33:46.800 He just declares it.

00:33:47.620 You know, it's hard to tell exactly what the Democrats are trying to convey with their

00:33:51.660 coordinated outfits, because the white was supposed to convey women's rights, you know, 0.99

00:33:56.780 hearkening back to the suffragettes.

00:33:58.320 The pink presumably is more, and we have Melania walking in now, looking much more elegant 1.00

00:34:02.740 than any of the Democrats.

00:34:03.360 Anybody else.

00:34:03.960 But the pink, I suppose, is to communicate women's rights vis-a-vis abortion, I would guess.

00:34:11.120 Hey, there's Ben Shapiro.

00:34:12.040 I know.

00:34:12.660 I know them.

00:34:13.920 Wait a second.

00:34:16.960 I'm certain it has something to do with abortion.

00:34:19.060 It's really the, it's the only issue they care about.

00:34:21.400 But I guess it, that to me again states that the Democrats haven't learned anything from

00:34:26.300 the election.

00:34:27.140 Because abortion was supposed to win in the election, and they lost the biggest, the biggest 0.91

00:34:31.460 election that they'd lost in 20 years.

00:34:34.500 So then even this 14th Amendment thing, you know, trying to make an argument that birthright

00:34:38.540 citizenship pertains to anchor babies and illegal aliens, even the New York Times ran a column

00:34:44.660 the other day making a good point that actually it's unclear from the 14th Amendment, and the

00:34:50.420 Supreme Court has never definitively ruled on that.

00:34:52.280 So I don't know.

00:34:53.020 It seems like they're fishing for an issue.

00:34:54.440 Well, see, usually it's the right who is blind to the culture, but this is a really interesting

00:35:00.200 situation in which the left does not know that that shield of invisibility that was created

00:35:05.800 by our corrupt news media has vanished.

00:35:07.520 It's been destroyed by the evil us. 0.79

00:35:11.240 And I think that they just don't get it.

00:35:13.340 They do not get that we can see them.

00:35:15.000 They don't get that they're standing there naked and like the whole country is kind of

00:35:18.520 laughing at them.

00:35:19.360 The president's cabinet arriving now is the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and crew.

00:35:26.660 Pete Hegseth, who's kind of a friend of the organization and a fellow Nashville resident

00:35:31.860 with us.

00:35:33.600 Howard Lutnick.

00:35:34.900 People don't know this.

00:35:35.560 Howard Lutnick talked to us one time about buying The Daily Wire.

00:35:38.340 Really?

00:35:38.500 Not buying it.

00:35:39.460 He wanted to help us take it public at one time.

00:35:41.640 Can we nationalize it now?

00:35:42.880 Yeah.

00:35:43.220 Well, that would be.

00:35:43.900 Is it gone first?

00:35:44.760 I like Lutnick.

00:35:45.600 I like his enthusiasm.

00:35:47.020 I do too.

00:35:47.480 I get a big kick out of Lutnick.

00:35:49.520 He's a, you know, he's, he actually is Bobby Axelrod.

00:35:54.380 But they say that the character was actually, they say the character was actually written

00:35:58.360 in part.

00:35:58.980 Is it really based on Lutnick?

00:36:00.560 Yeah.

00:36:00.700 Yeah.

00:36:00.980 That checks out.

00:36:01.440 Based on Howard Lutnick.

00:36:02.420 His RFK, I'm surprised he showed up because he has measles.

00:36:04.840 I think it's right.

00:36:06.980 Oh yeah.

00:36:07.560 Heart's breaking all over the crunchosphere as he endorsed the mRNA vaccine.

00:36:12.100 Except, did you read the column?

00:36:13.900 So the headline.

00:36:15.180 Not mRNA.

00:36:16.120 The measles.

00:36:17.140 The MMR.

00:36:18.560 So the headline from foxnews.com was, you know, the measles vaccine is really important

00:36:23.880 and it's crucial to fighting the disease.

00:36:25.840 If you read the column.

00:36:27.080 So the editors write the headline.

00:36:28.540 If you read the column, he never endorses the vaccine.

00:36:31.440 Really?

00:36:31.700 And in fact, he says, really, the best way to fight this is good nutrition.

00:36:35.500 And, you know, actually 98% of deaths disappeared before the measles vaccine.

00:36:40.180 So if you read the text of it, clearly HHS and the White House want to hedge their bets

00:36:45.240 a little bit in case there is a big outbreak.

00:36:47.560 But what's funny is, if I'm reading the tea leaves, if I'm looking to invest maybe in different

00:36:51.800 big pharma companies, I think this health secretary still hates the vaccine. 0.96

00:36:56.600 If he hates the measles vaccines, he's a doofus.

00:37:00.700 Because the measles vaccine cured the measles.

00:37:02.860 It's like, whenever it appears, they're gone.

00:37:04.640 At the very least, he is the greatest Kennedy.

00:37:07.240 You know, I don't know.

00:37:07.820 I don't know what he's damning with my praise.

00:37:09.520 That's a cruel thing to say.

00:37:10.920 I will say that the Make America Healthy Again movement, I think that it has some very

00:37:16.320 good foundations, and then it also has a little bit of kooky silliness to it.

00:37:22.260 I get the sense, though, that RFK Jr. is one of the most genuinely decent dudes in American

00:37:29.280 politics.

00:37:29.600 Really?

00:37:30.320 I just think that he's a, I think he actually likes people.

00:37:34.340 Yeah.

00:37:34.500 I think he actually likes the country.

00:37:36.240 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:36.940 I think he's intelligent.

00:37:38.800 I think he's intelligent.

00:37:40.020 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:40.280 And I love that he drove a chainsawed-off whale head from Kennebunkport to my hometown.

00:37:46.180 Okay, that's the part I like.

00:37:47.320 Yeah.

00:37:47.800 I don't know.

00:37:48.340 There's a lot of stuff with the women. 1.00

00:37:49.500 I'm not sure.

00:37:50.440 Well, you can't judge a Kennedy by that.

00:37:53.620 That's only 50% of the world.

00:37:55.540 If all of the women in his background are still alive and none of them are submerged.

00:38:00.460 We lost one of them, didn't we?

00:38:03.940 Yeah, that's a fair point.

00:38:05.080 Yeah.

00:38:06.180 We also now, actually, oh, I guess that's Usha Vance.

00:38:09.880 I don't know who the two other women are. 1.00

00:38:13.520 What I want, you know, you know how they always introduce people that they've helped?

00:38:16.760 What I want is for Trump to say, heal, and for Walsh to stand up and go, I can walk again.

00:38:21.640 And Shapiro can say, like, that was better than Jesus.

00:38:26.240 I'd never like that guy.

00:38:27.760 Oh, man.

00:38:29.480 Oh, man.

00:38:30.040 You can't say things like that.

00:38:30.900 Oh, I'm sorry.

00:38:33.920 We've got...

00:38:34.760 Just imagining what would be fun.

00:38:37.760 Long speeches.

00:38:39.100 So, everyone's still mingling.

00:38:40.740 This is not kicking off for a little while now.

00:38:42.700 No, no, no.

00:38:43.360 This is Mingle City. 0.64

00:38:44.580 Yeah.

00:38:45.700 It is interesting, though, to think, in recent memory,

00:38:49.140 we've had a mixture of conservatives and liberals up there on the dais.

00:38:53.800 We've had at least one woman, you know, Nancy Pelosi, ripping up the beach. 1.00

00:38:58.280 We've had Kamala Harris up there, you know, being Kamala. 1.00

00:39:01.440 And now, just a bunch of Republican dudes, you know,

00:39:05.140 just a bunch of normal-looking Republican white dudes.

00:39:09.800 Yeah, I like to think we're back.

00:39:11.500 We're back.

00:39:12.680 We're so back.

00:39:14.080 The New York Times today ran an article, Trump has bullying masculinity.

00:39:18.200 I thought, good.

00:39:20.180 A lot of people who need bullying in that town, you know.

00:39:23.300 It would be very interesting to see what the president chooses to cover in the speech.

00:39:26.840 Obviously, Donald Trump has never given a short speech.

00:39:31.840 Well, except his inaugural speech.

00:39:34.760 That's true.

00:39:35.400 He was pushed inside, yeah.

00:39:36.620 That's right.

00:39:37.300 But then, in fairness, he immediately went downstairs and gave the rest of the speech.

00:39:42.280 Absolutely true.

00:39:43.140 That's absolutely right.

00:39:43.940 And this one, you know, truly, Trump said we'd get tired of winning.

00:39:49.400 And I almost am tired of winning, and I mean it in a very literal way,

00:39:52.320 and I do have three kids, four and under, and I've been traveling a lot.

00:39:55.460 This news cycle is exhausting because Trump, whether you love him or hate him,

00:40:01.240 you have to admit he has notched so many victories in the first month in office.

00:40:06.300 Yeah, we're like 45 days or something into this.

00:40:08.520 Yeah, less than that.

00:40:09.400 Less than that.

00:40:09.920 And I personally have not stopped grinning.

00:40:12.640 I have been giddy.

00:40:13.540 And it's like, you know, sometimes Trump annoys me, sometimes he doesn't.

00:40:16.580 But, like, I think he's doing great.

00:40:18.960 I love what he's doing.

00:40:19.900 And, you know, it's funny.

00:40:22.140 This needed to happen, and there's going to be some ancillary damage.

00:40:25.920 I mean, I'm sorry for some of the people losing their jobs.

00:40:28.300 Some of the people who lose their jobs are going to be good people.

00:40:30.280 But this cancer of these agencies has to be ripped out.

00:40:33.660 It just has to be.

00:40:34.420 And the president needs to be able to run the executive branch.

00:40:38.380 The executive branch, right.

00:40:39.200 It's all kind of basic stuff.

00:40:40.680 So, you know, the Democrats are whining.

00:40:43.280 I was on a liberal news show recently.

00:40:45.760 They said, oh, isn't there a threat to the separation of powers?

00:40:48.640 And I thought, no, no, no.

00:40:49.400 There was a threat to the separation of powers.

00:40:51.700 Trump is exerting, actually, his just authority.

00:40:54.360 I would like to hear a lawyer.

00:40:55.600 I have not asked a real constitutional lawyer how the legislature can create an agency in the executive branch

00:41:01.920 that the executive can't destroy.

00:41:04.160 It seems to me, if it's in the executive branch, the executive can do anything he wants with it.

00:41:07.820 Well, the trick of it is, and this is kind of what Chevron is ultimately, was ultimately about,

00:41:13.600 is that it actually is the legislature ceding its authority to regulate to executive agencies.

00:41:22.800 That the executive doesn't have control over.

00:41:25.480 Yeah, they don't have control over.

00:41:26.940 No, they created a branch of government.

00:41:28.420 They created a branch of government.

00:41:31.220 And all this stuff about Elon Musk wasn't elected, you know, and they have all of these people weren't elected.

00:41:35.800 But the other crazy thing when they knock Elon and the Department of Government Efficiency,

00:41:40.700 Doge has a 100-year-plus precedent.

00:41:44.240 This began really under Wilson.

00:41:46.480 Wilson, the Bureau of Efficiency, that reformed the executive branch.

00:41:50.840 After that, you had FDR, had the Brownlow Commission.

00:41:53.740 That created the executive office of the president.

00:41:56.200 After FDR, Truman had the Hoover Commission.

00:41:59.140 Same thing, reorganized the executive.

00:42:00.980 Reagan had the Grace Commission.

00:42:02.040 My favorite example, though, is more recently Al Gore as vice president.

00:42:06.320 I was just going to say that.

00:42:07.320 It was Al Gore in the 90s.

00:42:08.620 I actually, oddly enough, was just sitting behind Al Gore on an airplane.

00:42:12.060 Apparently, global warming doesn't pay anymore because it was sitting right in front of me commercial.

00:42:15.540 But Al Gore in the 90s had the National Initiative for Reinventing Government.

00:42:20.340 And it fired a quarter million federal employees, and it consolidated 800 agencies.

00:42:26.300 Elon hasn't come anywhere close to that.

00:42:27.940 I know.

00:42:28.200 The only problem with him is a lot of it was gutting the military because they thought the Cold War was over,

00:42:34.080 and they were going to get rid of all these soldiers we didn't meet.

00:42:36.420 It was actually a bad thing.

00:42:37.980 But in terms of cutting government and cutting regulation, Gore was very successful.

00:42:42.460 You know, Clinton was a good president domestically.

00:42:45.260 If you don't look at him overseas, he was actually not a bad person.

00:42:47.860 And if you don't look inside the office.

00:42:48.880 And you don't look inside his heart.

00:42:50.680 Never look inside.

00:42:51.300 Inside his black heart, yeah.

00:42:52.320 It is fun to think back to the 90s.

00:42:57.440 As you know, I always say that the 90s were the peak of American civilization.

00:43:02.340 The 90s are like the new 50s.

00:43:03.840 That's the new era that you look back to sort of nostalgically.

00:43:06.660 But it's so much better than the 50s.

00:43:08.000 In the 50s, we were in the middle of this Cold War, the nuclear arms race, the space race.

00:43:13.640 Everyone had PTSD from the war.

00:43:15.500 In the 90s, we didn't have a single problem.

00:43:19.500 In the 90s, we could have sent Bill Clinton twice to be president of the United States.

00:43:24.700 It didn't matter.

00:43:25.220 And it didn't matter.

00:43:26.240 It was actually pretty good.

00:43:27.660 In the 1990s, we could make Smash Mouth, a best-selling rock and roll band,

00:43:33.560 singing songs about having your finger and your thumb in the shape of an L on your forehead,

00:43:40.460 because literally nothing was wrong.

00:43:42.580 Somebody once told me about that.

00:43:43.940 That was the great Onion headline when 9-11 happened. 1.00

00:43:48.320 Americans yearn to care about stupid crap again. 1.00

00:43:51.520 That was the 90s, no question. 1.00

00:43:54.540 I spent the 90s in England, so I missed the whole thing.

00:43:56.760 It was great in England.

00:43:57.700 You missed the height of American power.

00:44:01.320 There is truth to that.

00:44:03.320 In the 1990s, Kurt Cobain killed himself to protest that nothing was wrong.

00:44:10.500 There was literally nothing wrong.

00:44:12.640 Now is this?

00:44:13.280 All right, now we have, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.

00:44:25.000 I mean, what a triumphant moment for Donald Trump.

00:44:27.840 No kidding.

00:44:28.380 This is like the greatest version of when Nigel Farage went to the European legislators and he said,

00:44:41.420 you know, I came here a decade ago and I said we were leaving the EU and you all laughed at me.

00:44:46.060 Who's laughing now?

00:44:47.280 This is Donald Trump's who's laughing now moment.

00:44:49.460 And in living memory, nothing like this has ever happened.

00:44:52.780 No, I don't think it's ever.

00:44:53.880 I can't think of anything.

00:44:55.000 Maybe Napoleon is escaping from that.

00:44:59.320 You know, my son has a little placemat with all the presidents on the dining room table.

00:45:05.860 And he loves Trump.

00:45:07.280 He loves Johnson for some reason.

00:45:08.620 But he loves Trump.

00:45:09.060 Points to Trump better.

00:45:10.440 He loves impeached presidents.

00:45:11.820 Not that Johnson.

00:45:15.740 No, Lyndon Johnson.

00:45:17.520 But there's one president with two pictures on there.

00:45:21.340 And on the next edition of that placement.

00:45:23.340 Yeah, there'll be two.

00:45:24.060 There are going to be two.

00:45:25.080 And, you know, so Trump runs for president in 16 and he says, I'm going to be great.

00:45:29.240 I'm going to be the greatest president.

00:45:30.160 So historic.

00:45:31.120 And he has now made that happen.

00:45:34.400 Yep.

00:45:34.520 He is now one of the most significant figures in American history.

00:45:38.920 There's no question about that.

00:45:44.500 And it's still, you know, it's up for grabs whether he's going to get away with doing what he has to do,

00:45:49.200 which is killing the influence of the deep state.

00:45:53.220 Yeah.

00:45:54.120 But he did get kissed by Nancy Mace, which I think is, that's my personal dream.

00:45:59.880 I'm a simple man.

00:46:01.160 Win the presidency.

00:46:02.500 Win the presidency again.

00:46:03.640 Yeah.

00:46:04.580 It's huge from Nancy Mace.

00:46:05.720 Yeah.

00:46:17.020 I keep thinking that the sergeant in arms is Senator Bob Menendez.

00:46:20.780 And then I remember that Menendez is out.

00:46:22.320 Yeah, not going to the plane.

00:46:23.720 If he was, he's not anymore.

00:46:25.000 Yeah.

00:46:30.540 Is that Chip Roy?

00:46:31.500 I can't tell in the sea.

00:46:34.800 Yeah.

00:46:36.820 I think anyone else has such a handsome goatee.

00:46:39.220 True.

00:46:39.680 You know, you may be good for it.

00:46:40.020 The United States Congress.

00:46:43.900 Oh, this is a joke.

00:46:47.480 Rubio nearby.

00:46:48.400 He's recovered from sinking into the couch during that Oval Office.

00:46:51.440 Yeah, oh, man.

00:46:51.960 He looked like he was just going to see some steam behind him.

00:46:54.420 Yeah.

00:46:54.920 It was sort of like that meme of Homer Simpson backing into the bush.

00:46:57.720 He, by the way, is doing great.

00:46:59.200 He's doing a great job.

00:46:59.860 He's doing a great job.

00:47:03.440 Kavanaugh.

00:47:05.340 All the justices he's saying are.

00:47:07.140 Yeah.

00:47:12.440 You're welcome, Brett.

00:47:14.200 You're welcome, Amy.

00:47:16.260 Who are you?

00:47:17.340 The president greeting the Joint Chiefs.

00:47:31.060 Now, I couldn't quite see which justices made it.

00:47:35.140 I did not see Ketanji Jackson.

00:47:37.160 No.

00:47:37.740 I did not see Sotomayor or Kagan.

00:47:42.000 Now, I might have just missed him.

00:47:43.420 It's hard to see.

00:47:44.060 The cameras are moving.

00:47:45.560 Scalia famously would not go to the State of the Union.

00:47:48.760 He went in the first few years, and then he said it was just a ridiculous political display, and the justices really had no role there.

00:47:55.480 The president about to take the podium and address the Joint Session of Congress.

00:48:00.100 We'll cut to his remarks, and then we'll be back as soon as the speech is over to tell you what we think about it.

00:48:06.220 We'll see you then.

00:48:06.740 An amazing speech by Donald Trump to the Joint Session of Congress.

00:48:13.140 Maybe the longest joint session ever by a president of the United States.

00:48:17.620 I mean, if we think of it as a State of the Union address, even though technically it isn't one, you know, was this an hour 40, an hour 50 minutes?

00:48:25.700 Bill Clinton had some doozies in there, so I don't know if it was the longest ever.

00:48:28.920 But, you know, I was there at Biden's last year, and it felt long.

00:48:33.520 At 40 minutes or something?

00:48:34.520 It was, yeah, I mean, he might have pushed it closer to an hour, but it felt like two days.

00:48:39.160 And this one, I'm not saying there weren't moments that lulled compared to others, but I was engaged for about 92 percent of this.

00:48:47.720 I mean, this was an amazingly well-written and delivered speech.

00:48:52.500 Also, Trump set this trap for Democrats.

00:48:55.560 Really, the Democrats set the trap for themselves, and he just called their attention to it.

00:48:59.500 When he said, I could get up here, I could cure the worst diseases, I could do the greatest feats, and they would not stand up and applaud.

00:49:06.880 And at that point, they said, well, now we're really not going to stand up and applaud.

00:49:10.040 So, you know, just to use the most stirring example, in a night of amazing moments, the one that stole the show was that 13-year-old boy who's been fighting brain cancer.

00:49:20.280 DJ.

00:49:21.420 Special agent, Secret Service agent.

00:49:23.320 Yeah, exactly.

00:49:24.140 You know, he always wanted to be a cop, and he's now made a member of the U.S. Secret Service.

00:49:29.260 And you just think, man, if you can't agree in this country that that is a good thing, we have nothing in common.

00:49:37.180 We have nothing that we can agree on.

00:49:38.300 And the Democrats would not stand up.

00:49:40.760 Many of them would not even applaud a little kid fighting cancer. 0.99

00:49:45.520 You know, these are sick people.

00:49:47.820 It was an extraordinary speech. 0.66

00:49:50.220 And, you know, yeah, you can say it was too long, Trump tends to do that.

00:49:53.760 Guys, according to AI, which knows everything, the record belongs to Bill Clinton.

00:50:01.180 Yep, knew it.

00:50:02.580 One hour, 28 minutes, 49 seconds.

00:50:05.920 Oh, wait.

00:50:06.460 I think there may be a new record.

00:50:08.300 We might have a new record.

00:50:08.920 Wow, okay, all right.

00:50:09.640 I think there may be a new record.

00:50:10.760 Wow.

00:50:11.340 But I've never, I don't think anyone has ever seen a president go in there as pugilistically as he did and really take the Republicans, the Democrats, head on like that.

00:50:21.200 And the Democrats who came to start trouble were bullied into silence, beaten into silence by this one man who has just taken everything from them.

00:50:32.720 You know, false accusations, impeachments, an assassination attempt, you know, convictions for felonies that don't even exist that no one can name.

00:50:40.880 And he has beaten them every time.

00:50:43.220 And he did it again.

00:50:44.120 He did it again.

00:50:44.760 And I just can't help thinking that, look, in the end, the proof is in the pudding.

00:50:50.020 He's going to have to pull it off.

00:50:51.020 He's going to have to improve the economy.

00:50:52.260 He's going to have to bring down prices.

00:50:53.680 He's going to have to resolve the debt and all those things and build our military back because we're in big trouble with our military as China's military soars.

00:51:00.480 But in terms of a promise, in terms of looking at a president and thinking, yeah, that guy could do that, that we now have a leader, it's an extraordinary, he's an extraordinary person in an extraordinary moment.

00:51:12.060 And, you know, he has this way of blowing away all the kind of picayune criticisms that you can throw at him because it's been so long since anybody stood up and said, this is a great country and I will bring it to another level of greatness.

00:51:33.020 Who has said that besides Reagan, since Reagan?

00:51:35.340 Right.

00:51:35.540 Who has said, this is a wonderful, wonderful country, which it is, and I will make it and I will stand up into that tradition and move it to the next step.

00:51:43.760 It was an amazing thing.

00:51:45.260 And I don't know, I can't help thinking, I could be wrong, you never know about this stuff, but I can't help thinking that after the press fumes and screams and roars and shakes their fists, the American people are just going to, you know, push his popularity up to the next level.

00:51:58.360 You know what they won't be able to say?

00:51:59.720 They always say after Trump's speech is, it was dark.

00:52:02.500 Dark, yeah.

00:52:03.080 And the reality is, there was nothing dark about this speech.

00:52:07.000 Trump was having a great time.

00:52:09.080 Yeah, he looked like he was having fun.

00:52:10.060 And this, I think, really off-footed the Democrats.

00:52:12.880 Trump was having so much fun and it was infectious and the audience was having fun and they did not know how to react to that.

00:52:20.880 So I can't name even a tenth of the examples, but when Trump goes out there, he says, we killed the top terrorist in Afghanistan.

00:52:29.340 The Democrats, not only do they not stand, they don't applaud.

00:52:32.440 So the Democrats formally come out in favor of the top terrorist in Afghanistan.

00:52:36.440 When Trump says we're taking down the cartels, the Democrats don't applaud.

00:52:40.360 Democrats formally come out as pro-cartel.

00:52:42.800 That's a curious political choice.

00:52:44.240 Right.

00:52:44.300 When Trump announces that he brought an American citizen home from a Russian prison, they can't even applaud that.

00:52:50.820 They booed the police.

00:52:51.820 They booed the police.

00:52:52.440 That's no surprise.

00:52:53.100 We've got to support the police and they booed.

00:52:54.860 Yeah, but that moment has passed. 0.99

00:52:56.460 That moment when you could say maybe one of the stupidest things any political party has ever supported defunding the police. 0.88

00:53:04.980 That moment of hysteria and dizziness and vertigo has gone. 0.98

00:53:10.800 And now we know, we remember the obvious thing.

00:53:13.680 We need police because they're bad guys and we need good guys to stop the bad guys.

00:53:17.100 And he supports them and they're booing.

00:53:19.300 They're literally booing it.

00:53:20.240 They're not just not standing up.

00:53:21.280 They're literally booing him.

00:53:23.680 Unbelievable.

00:53:24.600 And, you know, the Democrats, they do not know.

00:53:27.800 I said this to Megyn Kelly the other day.

00:53:29.840 They simply do not know what has happened.

00:53:32.120 And what has happened is that force field of protection that was given to them by our rotten, corrupt, left-wing establishment press has been destroyed by people like us.

00:53:44.580 You know, and by Megan and by Joe Rogan and by all those people, this new media has wiped it away.

00:53:49.740 And, you know, they're still there.

00:53:51.100 They still have a lot of reporting power.

00:53:52.680 But they do not have the power to lie without being exposed in real time, thanks to Elon Musk to some degree on X, you know, that they can be exposed and people see through them.

00:54:03.860 They don't get it.

00:54:04.920 They don't get that their force field is gone.

00:54:06.900 Should we talk about Al Green getting thrown out?

00:54:08.960 Not the good singer.

00:54:10.040 Yeah.

00:54:10.300 I was going to say, I always liked Al Green. 0.98

00:54:13.000 You know, when he stood up there right at the beginning, I just thought, wow, this is, he's a ridiculous person. 0.95

00:54:19.020 But really, he was just, by degree, a little bit more extreme than the Democrats. 0.97

00:54:24.380 Many of them were heckling him tonight.

00:54:25.960 And I thought from the moment they started doing that, I said, this is a, it's inappropriate, it's disreputable, but it's just a bad political choice.

00:54:35.420 I agree.

00:54:35.800 I also think it was a bad choice of the people who were producing the actual video broadcast of the speech not to let us hear what he was saying.

00:54:45.020 Yeah.

00:54:45.600 Because he went to all that trouble.

00:54:46.820 It was so disruptive.

00:54:47.720 It's shut down the speech.

00:54:49.080 All these things happen.

00:54:49.840 And none of us know what on earth, I mean, he had a cane.

00:54:52.620 I think you made the point that it was like from the 1800s.

00:54:55.160 The caning of Sumner or something.

00:54:56.560 Yeah, yeah, right.

00:54:57.260 But I don't know what the guy was on about.

00:54:59.020 But you could tell, obviously, that Speaker Johnson was already prepared for this.

00:55:04.780 Yes.

00:55:05.160 He had all of the procedural order in front of him so that he would be able to react because the Democrats were forecasting that they were going to cause this kind of trouble for the entire day leading into this.

00:55:16.260 And Al Green, I think, has already introduced articles of impeachment against Trump.

00:55:20.120 He's tried to impeach him like 150 times already.

00:55:22.320 So he's a slightly more extreme version of the Democrats.

00:55:26.620 But all the heckling tonight, I just thought, you know, it was going to be a bad night for the Democrats because they lost the electoral college by a lot.

00:55:35.060 They lost the popular vote significantly and for the first time in 20 years.

00:55:38.600 So it was just going to be a bad night.

00:55:39.960 And if they just sort of were even slightly normal, they might have gotten through it and lived to fight another day.

00:55:47.260 But I don't think the median American or even the even the center left American watching that display tonight is taken.

00:55:53.840 It's a terrible night for the Democrats.

00:55:55.240 And truly, if they had just treated it like any 1990s State of the Union address, they would have come out far ahead of what they could have walked out and just said, what a divisive speech.

00:56:04.740 You know, he could have brought the country together and he didn't.

00:56:07.160 It would have been ineffective, but it would have been a lot more effective than this.

00:56:10.840 And because he knew it was coming, he brought that force of personality.

00:56:14.700 I've never seen it.

00:56:15.500 You know, he's just he's like he's like those old sheriffs in the movies who go out and stand up against a lynch mob.

00:56:20.220 And just the force of their personality makes everybody kind of ashamed and go home.

00:56:23.640 By the end of it, they weren't saying anything.

00:56:25.020 They were just sitting there. 1.00

00:56:26.060 They put down their stupid signs and all this. 1.00

00:56:28.300 What do they support? 1.00

00:56:29.540 You know, what do they support?

00:56:30.640 They're stuck. 1.00

00:56:31.280 They're stuck with this transgender garbage. 1.00

00:56:33.500 They're stuck with this racial garbage that people, you know, I think people on both sides of the racial divide, if it still is a divide, I think they're sick of it. 1.00

00:56:41.680 You know, they know it doesn't work. 0.99

00:56:43.020 The DEI thing is disgraceful.

00:56:45.020 It is racism embedded in government like it hasn't been since the end of the Jim Crow laws. 0.92

00:56:49.540 It's all of it is so disgusting.

00:56:51.660 And I think that that that fog that people were in.

00:56:54.600 I mean, this is the thing that bothered me most about the Biden administration is I would talk to normal, everyday people who were not particularly political.

00:57:02.280 And you would say, you know, sexually mutilating a child is a Nazi like atrocity. 0.96

00:57:08.660 It's not like saying, oh, Donald Trump is Hitler. 0.98

00:57:10.900 Or it's actually like what Nazis did. 0.55

00:57:13.620 And they would kind of just gloss, you know, kind of go into this fugue state because we were all in this bad dream that this was the way it was going to be, that this was normal, that there was something right about this or defensible about it.

00:57:24.540 And I think people have woken up from that.

00:57:26.400 He just took advantage of that and slammed them.

00:57:28.780 And one last thing.

00:57:30.080 He's right about Joe Biden.

00:57:31.500 Joe Biden was the worst president ever.

00:57:33.280 And the fact that he was protected by the press and Jake Zapper is writing a book, if I did it, you know, it's like, yeah, no, I mean, they think we're going to forget, but we don't have to forget anymore.

00:57:45.900 Because the new media is here to remind us and to show us and bring the receipts.

00:57:49.640 I think there was that look on some of the Democrat members' faces tonight, which was, and not all of them, but some of them, where they thought, you know, yikes, maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't have raided this guy's house.

00:58:02.800 Like, you know, because Donald Trump woke up today and he chose violence.

00:58:08.340 He knew.

00:58:09.400 He came to this thing.

00:58:10.720 He said, you know, I've paid a lot and I nearly lost my life, very nearly on one occasion and almost on another occasion, to be here.

00:58:18.160 I've given up a lot for this job.

00:58:20.320 And you people, you tried to throw me in prison four times.

00:58:24.380 You tried to kick me off the ballot. 0.91

00:58:25.960 You tried to murder me.

00:58:26.940 You raided my home. 0.96

00:58:28.260 And guess what?

00:58:29.180 Guess who's laughing now?

00:58:30.540 Yeah.

00:58:30.800 Guess how did that?

00:58:31.740 He even asked the question of the members.

00:58:33.380 How did that work out?

00:58:33.980 How did that work out for you?

00:58:35.420 You know, I mean, just a political vindication, the likes of which we have never seen in this country before.

00:58:42.160 And you're right.

00:58:42.780 That line where he said, you know, I could do anything and you wouldn't stand up, it actually kind of cut their legs off.

00:58:48.120 Yes.

00:58:48.320 Because he started by saying, look, you know, what would you applaud for?

00:58:53.000 What would you?

00:58:53.360 And they proved that he was right.

00:58:54.900 And so it just kind of took the legitimacy away from them.

00:58:58.160 It's kind of amazing.

00:58:59.100 And I did enjoy seeing Walsh and Shapiro in the gallery.

00:59:02.620 Yeah, do we have any video of Ben and Matt at the event?

00:59:07.880 Quite an amazing thing.

00:59:09.140 Yeah.

00:59:09.500 Oh, I believe we may have the Democrat response.

00:59:12.100 Let's hear what they're saying.

00:59:15.240 I also signed an executive order to ban men from playing in women's sports. 0.93

00:59:29.900 Here we are.

00:59:30.860 Here we are.

00:59:31.400 Here we are.

00:59:32.620 With our friend Riley Gaines.

00:59:33.820 With Riley Gaines.

00:59:35.180 Hey guys, I believe we have the Democrat response.

00:59:37.720 Can we hear it?

00:59:40.680 I guess not.

00:59:42.720 You can find that same sense of patriotism here in Wyandotte, Michigan, where I'm speaking from tonight.

00:59:48.160 Is there a way we can hear this?

00:59:48.840 It's a working class town just south of Detroit.

00:59:51.840 President Trump and I both want here in November.

00:59:54.400 It might not seem like it, but if you're running places like this still exist across the United States.

00:59:59.440 There we are.

01:00:00.380 Places where people believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, you should do well and your kids should do better.

01:00:06.700 You don't believe that.

01:00:07.380 It reminds me of how I grew up.

01:00:08.760 My dad was a lifelong Republican by mom, a lifelong Democrat.

01:00:12.320 What is your name?

01:00:13.300 It was never a big deal because we had shared values that were bigger than any one party.

01:00:20.260 We just went through another fraught election season.

01:00:23.780 Americans made it clear that prices are too high and that the government needs to be more responsive to their needs.

01:00:30.180 America wants change.

01:00:31.260 And we don't want gangsters and we don't want you cascading little kids. 0.60

01:00:35.940 And we can make that change without forgetting who we are as a country and as a democracy.

01:00:41.420 So that's what I'm going to lay out tonight.

01:00:44.020 Because whether you're from Wyandotte or Wichita, most Americans share three core beliefs.

01:00:50.000 That the middle class is the engine of our country. 0.99

01:00:52.700 That strong national security protects us from harm.

01:00:55.600 And that our democracy, no matter how messy, is unparalleled and worth fighting for.

01:01:02.580 Let's start with the economy.

01:01:04.760 Michigan literally invented the middle class.

01:01:07.160 The revolutionary idea that you can work at an auto plant and afford the car you were building.

01:01:10.820 There's a lab, I think, in Minneapolis.

01:01:13.560 Oh, that's not even Michigan.

01:01:14.660 Sorry, Detroit.

01:01:15.880 Because I'm pretty sure it was like Italy in the high middle class.

01:01:18.880 But invented the middle class. 0.99

01:01:19.720 I don't know.

01:01:20.540 Things we spend the most money on.

01:01:22.600 Groceries, housing, health care.

01:01:24.200 We need to make more things in America with good-paying union jobs. 0.94

01:01:28.860 And bring our supply chains back home from places like China.

01:01:30.600 She's right.

01:01:31.160 I'm voting for Trump.

01:01:34.120 I'd have to say she's doing a very good job.

01:01:36.340 But I actually don't understand how she is just supposing the Democrat platform from Trump's administration.

01:01:43.020 Look, the president talked a big game on the economy.

01:01:46.700 But it's always important to read the fine print.

01:01:49.660 So, do his plans actually help Americans get ahead?

01:01:53.340 Not even close.

01:01:55.900 President Trump is trying to deliver an unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends.

01:02:00.840 He's on the hunt to find trillions of dollars to pass along to the wealthiest in America.

01:02:05.920 And to do that, he's going to make you pay in every part of your life.

01:02:11.400 Grocery and home prices are going up, not down.

01:02:14.480 And he hasn't laid out a credible plan to deal with either of those.

01:02:17.560 His tariffs on allies like Canada will raise prices on energy, lumber, and cars.

01:02:23.580 And start a trade war that will hurt manufacturing and farmers.

01:02:27.320 Your premiums and prescriptions will cost more because the math on his proposals doesn't work without going after your health care.

01:02:35.120 Meanwhile, for those keeping score, the national debt is going up, not down.

01:02:40.780 And if he's not careful, he could walk us right into a recession.

01:02:45.180 And one more thing.

01:02:46.600 In order to pay for his plan, he could very well come after your retirement.

01:02:50.500 The Social Security, Medicare...

01:02:52.500 Come on.

01:02:53.120 They were talking about taking your savings.

01:02:56.220 The president claims he won't.

01:02:57.800 But Elon Musk just called Social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.

01:03:02.500 I mean, in fairness, it is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.

01:03:03.540 I'm calling the subject of Elon Musk.

01:03:05.640 But Trump won't touch it.

01:03:06.000 Is there anyone in America who is comfortable with him and his gang of 20-year-olds

01:03:09.720 using their own computer servers to poke through your tax returns,

01:03:13.860 your health information, and your bank accounts?

01:03:16.440 No oversight.

01:03:17.320 They're actually using the U.S. Digital Service, which is a branch of the federal government.

01:03:20.840 No card rails on what they do with your private data.

01:03:24.440 And 20-year-olds are the only people who know how to do this.

01:03:26.560 If it's my private data, why does the government have it?

01:03:29.800 And all those people, what are there, like 100,000 people in the Treasury Department looking at you?

01:03:34.060 The mindless firing of people who work to protect our nuclear weapons,

01:03:37.220 keep our planes from crashing, and conduct the research that finds the truth.

01:03:40.340 This is, by the way, what I mean by the press, right?

01:03:42.160 In the old days, the press would have said all this was true.

01:03:45.620 Yeah, people would have actually, you know, thought that maybe it was true.

01:03:49.500 But now, like, we do.

01:03:50.140 So we've talked about economic security.

01:03:52.420 How about national security?

01:03:53.080 She is quite good.

01:03:53.780 Whoever she is, I actually think she's quite a good presenter. 0.94

01:03:56.420 They made a choice to seem normal.

01:03:59.140 They picked someone we never heard of.

01:04:00.680 Yes, that's true.

01:04:01.720 That's right.

01:04:02.140 What is coming across its border. 0.95

01:04:03.020 You're a blue dog, man. 0.88

01:04:03.760 Period.

01:04:04.700 Democrats and Republicans should all be for that.

01:04:07.600 But securing the border without actually fixing our broken immigration system

01:04:11.820 is dealing with the symptom and not the disease.

01:04:14.080 Oh, my Lord.

01:04:15.140 America is a nation of immigrants.

01:04:16.920 No, but, yeah.

01:04:17.500 We need a functional system to heed to the needs of our economy.

01:04:20.520 But that's dealing with the diseases.

01:04:21.800 The symptom is all the illegals that are here. 1.00

01:04:23.960 Right.

01:04:24.720 So I look forward to the president's plan on that.

01:04:27.600 Because here's the thing.

01:04:29.320 Today's world is deeply interconnected.

01:04:32.240 Migration, cyber threats, AI, environmental destruction, terrorism.

01:04:36.500 Until we can solve it all, we can't solve any of it.

01:04:38.500 We need friends in all corners, and our safety depends on it.

01:04:44.760 President Trump loves to say peace through strength.

01:04:47.620 That's actually a line he stole from Ronald Reagan.

01:04:50.560 But let me tell you, after the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week,

01:04:55.760 Reagan must be rolling in his grave.

01:04:58.780 Well, here's the thing.

01:04:59.460 We all want an end to the war in Ukraine.

01:05:00.560 This, they should have edited this part of the speech.

01:05:03.760 The events in the Oval Office with Zelensky were very difficult to watch.

01:05:08.980 But in order to have a judgment about them, now, you have to ignore the fact that he got the deal.

01:05:16.380 Zelensky literally today sent him a letter and said, yeah, all right.

01:05:20.780 As we knew he would when we were watching it, because he had no choice.

01:05:23.040 I swear, the Democrats told him he could go in there, and the American people, they'll greet him as a conqueror.

01:05:30.840 Yeah, greet him as a liberator.

01:05:31.500 A liberator, yeah.

01:05:32.400 Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s.

01:05:35.040 Trump would have lost us the Cold War.

01:05:38.400 Donald Trump's actions suggested in his heart, he doesn't believe we're an exceptional nation.

01:05:44.660 He would have lost World War II.

01:05:45.620 He would have lost the Spanish-American War.

01:05:47.700 He would have.

01:05:49.300 But I stand with the majority of Americans.

01:05:51.280 I stand with the Rough Riders.

01:05:53.880 Unparalleled.

01:05:55.020 And I would rather have American leadership over Chinese or Russian leadership any day of the week.

01:06:00.440 Oh, wow.

01:06:01.120 Me too.

01:06:01.700 Because for generations, America has offered something better.

01:06:05.460 Our security and our prosperity, yes.

01:06:07.540 But our democracy, our very system of government, has been the aspiration of the world.

01:06:12.500 And right now, it's at risk.

01:06:15.260 It's at risk when the president decides you can pick and choose what rules you want to follow,

01:06:19.420 when he ignores court orders and the Constitution itself,

01:06:23.200 or when elected leaders stand by and just let it happen.

01:06:27.080 But it's also at risk when the president pits Americans against each other,

01:06:32.460 when he demonizes those who are different and tells certain people they shouldn't be included.

01:06:37.040 Are you doubling down on trans?

01:06:38.780 Tell me you are.

01:06:39.380 Because America is not just a patch of land between two oceans.

01:06:42.780 We are more than that.

01:06:44.900 Generations have fought and died to secure the fundamental rights that define us.

01:06:48.680 Those rights and the fight for them make us who we are.

01:06:51.360 This woman has secured her career if there's an opening of a view. 1.00

01:06:54.060 We're a nation of strivers, risk-takers, innovators, and we are never satisfied.

01:06:59.140 She's too good for the view. 0.98

01:07:00.220 That is America's support.

01:07:00.840 I'm actually somewhat impressed with her.

01:07:03.200 I've lived and worked in many countries.

01:07:05.640 I've seen democracies flicker out.

01:07:08.120 I've seen what life is like when a government is rigged.

01:07:11.220 You can't open a business without paying off a corrupt official.

01:07:13.780 You can't criticize the guys in charge without getting a knock at the door in the middle of the night.

01:07:19.100 That's what I'm announcing tonight.

01:07:19.980 I'm becoming a Republican.

01:07:22.360 The kind of countries that have ballot drop boxes.

01:07:24.940 Just all over, unsupervised.

01:07:27.400 Widespread mail-in ballots contrary to the state constitution.

01:07:30.180 You don't even need your identification to vote.

01:07:32.080 I know a lot of you have been asking that question.

01:07:35.200 First, don't tune out.

01:07:37.560 It's easy to be exhausted.

01:07:39.440 All right, I'm officially saying let's tune out.

01:07:41.180 I know.

01:07:42.280 I'm not joking, Matthew.

01:07:43.780 As soon as she said, we can't tune out, I'm not.

01:07:46.760 Game over.

01:07:47.880 I will say, I have truly, I'm not, this is not a joke.

01:07:51.440 I do not know who this human is.

01:07:52.760 I get the sense that she's from Michigan.

01:07:55.200 I think this is maybe one of the best responses that I've ever seen.

01:07:57.920 Consider this indictment of the Democrat Party.

01:08:00.740 They had to find someone who was reasonably normal.

01:08:04.380 And they scoured.

01:08:06.480 Anyone we've ever heard of.

01:08:07.680 Anyone we've ever heard of.

01:08:09.360 And anyone that we might have even seen on TV one time.

01:08:13.100 Yes.

01:08:13.340 And they came up with the dog catcher from Michigan or whatever.

01:08:16.860 I have no clue what position she ought to be in.

01:08:19.380 Her name, according to the control booth, is Alyssa Slotkin.

01:08:22.260 Oh, it's Slotkin.

01:08:23.300 Actually, she is like a name.

01:08:24.660 She ran, you know, she's actually, she is a member of the Senate.

01:08:27.760 I didn't even recognize her, though.

01:08:29.440 Is she a member of the Senate? 0.64

01:08:30.940 Yeah, she... 1.00

01:08:31.520 I feel bad about this.

01:08:32.500 Slotkin ran.

01:08:33.260 I don't feel bad at all.

01:08:34.460 She, because, also, that was a close race, and that was very frustrating, this cycle.

01:08:38.440 But, you know, it is funny, because, like, this woman, so she's relatively new.

01:08:42.840 That is also why people don't, like, recognize her.

01:08:44.880 She's kind of new to her job.

01:08:46.060 And they do try to pick fresh faces.

01:08:48.780 Yeah.

01:08:48.920 You know, they did it with Katie Britt last year for the Republicans.

01:08:52.180 And this is the worst job in politics.

01:08:54.480 Yeah, it's awful.

01:08:55.360 You never do it right.

01:08:56.060 That's why I'm quite impressed with her.

01:08:57.720 Yeah.

01:08:58.060 I'm also, it's a very moderate speech.

01:09:00.600 Yes.

01:09:00.960 It's so moderate, in fact, that it is actually difficult to distinguish most of what she just said from what Trump actually said.

01:09:06.620 That's what I mean.

01:09:07.400 It's like she's actually attacking the Democrats' policies and pretending they're the Republicans' policies.

01:09:13.420 Yeah, that's exactly right.

01:09:15.340 Yeah.

01:09:15.560 You know, Pavel, can you please bring in the basket?

01:09:20.020 A basket?

01:09:20.740 Yeah.

01:09:23.660 Oh, my, holy angel of mercy, what on earth is that?

01:09:28.320 That is a lot of fruit.

01:09:29.980 I'll say.

01:09:30.700 I had to get the strongest man on this property to even get that thing out there.

01:09:35.840 Pavel, is it heavy?

01:09:37.620 Yeah.

01:09:39.660 Can you imagine, can you imagine?

01:09:42.280 I cannot imagine.

01:09:43.220 Having to eat all of that fruit in one day.

01:09:47.000 What about every single day?

01:09:49.160 How many Polish men would we go through? 1.00

01:09:51.780 That would be absurd.

01:09:54.120 You want to get all of that nutrition, but you don't want to be sickeningly stuffed with fruit.

01:09:59.220 Or breaking the bank on an absurdly large basket of healthy food.

01:10:03.820 Or taking the time it would take to eat everything in that basket.

01:10:07.180 Let me introduce to you balance of nature.

01:10:10.960 With balance of nature, fruits and veggies, there's never been a more convenient dietary supplement to ensure you get a wide variety of fruits and vegetables daily.

01:10:19.400 31 fruits and veggies, to be exact.

01:10:22.120 Drew, can you eat 31 fruits and veggies every day?

01:10:25.020 You're damn straight I can.

01:10:26.820 I'm not a wimp like you, but I prefer not to. 0.98

01:10:29.920 Ha-ha, because it sounds miserable. 0.95

01:10:32.340 And it drips in my beard.

01:10:34.660 But I can take one of these.

01:10:37.680 Balance of nature takes fruits and vegetables, freeze dries them, and turns them into powdered capsules.

01:10:43.620 It sounds painful, but take it from me, it is.

01:10:46.460 Take balance of nature, fruits and veggies, every day, and your body will do the rest.

01:10:51.920 I don't want to see that.

01:10:52.680 Do that in the privacy of your own home.

01:10:54.880 Go to balanceofnature.com and use promo code BACKSTAGE for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer.

01:11:02.220 Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice.

01:11:04.460 That's balanceofnature.com, promo code BACKSTAGE.

01:11:08.980 Ow! 1.00

01:11:09.760 That hurt!

01:11:10.500 Because you don't take the balance of nature.

01:11:11.740 I'm not healthy enough. 0.99

01:11:12.780 You're a weakling, that's it. 0.98

01:11:14.140 God, I miss Shapiro. 0.99

01:11:16.460 That was quite a display, guys.

01:11:19.640 So are we cutting back to the trash collector from Michigan?

01:11:23.640 No, no, no.

01:11:24.680 The mayor of political Michigan?

01:11:26.300 I'm not joking.

01:11:27.040 I have a monitor here, and I could see the audience numbers beginning to plummet.

01:11:30.420 The minute she was speaking.

01:11:31.500 Yeah, you know.

01:11:33.040 We had just heard that speech.

01:11:34.800 It was a repeat.

01:11:35.540 Yeah.

01:11:36.320 So where is Shapiro and Walsh?

01:11:38.800 They're out drinking with the Senate.

01:11:40.200 Difficult to get out of the House chamber, but they are.

01:11:44.420 We do think there's some chance that they will make it back to Speaker Johnson's office.

01:11:48.060 I think it's possible.

01:11:49.860 Last year, I was up there.

01:11:52.320 I was actually sitting right behind Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.

01:11:55.200 And Bill Lee, if you're a governor, it turns out you get to keep your cell phone during the State of the Union.

01:12:00.040 Most people do not.

01:12:00.740 And you get a heads up from Secret Service before the president's about to wrap so you can get out of there before they lock you down.

01:12:09.120 So they lock you down in the House chamber, and you just kind of sit there and schmooze with the people to your right and left.

01:12:17.040 What's a little weird, not if you're sitting as Ben and Matt were with Riley in the Speaker's gallery,

01:12:22.400 but when you're sitting just with the hoi polloi, with the regular, you know, members guests, you're often sitting next to Democrats.

01:12:29.880 So, you know, some people who might be fuming about the speech or, you know, it's a little bit awkward, but you make small talk.

01:12:36.020 And, you know, it takes something like half an hour to get out of there.

01:12:38.400 Yeah, of course.

01:12:38.760 Now, happily, because, you know, now the Republicans are back in charge in D.C.,

01:12:43.380 I think Ben and Matt will be able to broadcast from the Capitol.

01:12:46.960 So it won't take them five hours to get out there, and we might be able to hear what it was like in the room.

01:12:51.400 But of all the State of the Unions that I've watched, one in person, all of the rest of them on television,

01:12:58.240 I think that was the best one I've ever seen.

01:13:01.580 Yeah, I have to say, it was a bit rambling in places, as Trump speeches can sometimes be,

01:13:09.920 and went longer than it needed to, as Trump speeches almost always do.

01:13:14.280 He's sort of like the modern Martin Scorsese of speech makers.

01:13:17.360 But you're like, somewhere in there, there was a perfectly good 90-minute...

01:13:21.320 The greatest master of this, of our generation.

01:13:24.620 However, it was the most fun State of the Union address I've ever seen.

01:13:29.260 No question.

01:13:29.800 He was there.

01:13:30.800 It was triumphant.

01:13:32.160 And you said it before, he was enjoying himself.

01:13:34.620 You know, he had some great lines, too.

01:13:36.520 I mean, what a mic drop moment to be able to say,

01:13:38.780 oh, yeah, and Zelensky just called and wants me to make a peace deal with Russia.

01:13:43.520 That's a...

01:13:44.780 One week ago, people were essentially saying the world order was over.

01:13:49.880 Yeah.

01:13:50.220 There's going to be a unified European army.

01:13:52.560 Yeah.

01:13:53.360 And now he's just getting exactly what he wants.

01:13:54.940 Less than one week ago, Friday afternoon.

01:13:57.360 Friday afternoon.

01:13:58.200 And you know, when he said to Zelensky, you don't have the cards, that was true. 1.00

01:14:01.980 Yeah.

01:14:02.160 You know, I mean, you knew that was true when he was saying it.

01:14:04.360 And it really, nobody really asked, like, what was Zelensky thinking?

01:14:08.900 You know, even if, you know, there was this idea that it had been some kind of setup

01:14:12.560 that they were waiting to line and wait for him.

01:14:14.640 But what did Trump have to gain from that?

01:14:16.000 Nothing.

01:14:16.660 Where Zelensky spent 40 minutes kind of sighing and rolling his eyes.

01:14:20.340 Needling them.

01:14:21.080 Needling them.

01:14:21.680 Provoking J.D.

01:14:22.660 He started that part.

01:14:23.960 And Trump remained very gracious to him until that moment when Zelensky said,

01:14:29.060 you are going to feel this.

01:14:30.200 You don't feel it now.

01:14:31.360 And he was like, don't tell me.

01:14:32.680 And I was kind of like, ooh, you know, that was a mistake.

01:14:36.380 There are a couple theories on it.

01:14:37.600 One is that Zelensky wanted there to be a tense moment to spur Europe to greater aid

01:14:43.340 because he kind of knew that Trump wanted a peace deal.

01:14:45.620 And if Trump negotiates a peace deal with Putin, then that's going to involve concessions

01:14:48.920 from Ukraine.

01:14:49.620 Yeah.

01:14:49.920 And Zelensky doesn't want that.

01:14:51.600 The other theory that was going around some of the press was that Zelensky was talking

01:14:56.040 to some of his friends from the past Democrat administrations, many of whom have been

01:15:00.740 integral in American policy in Ukraine going back to 2014 even, and that maybe they encouraged

01:15:06.740 him not to play nice with Trump.

01:15:08.780 And so then I have this image afterward of, you know, Zelensky running up to Victoria Nuland 0.99

01:15:14.400 like, I will kill you. 1.00

01:15:15.340 You are going to make me dead. 1.00

01:15:16.600 Like, what did you do to me, woman? 1.00

01:15:19.720 And so clearly within 48 hours or something, he's back on the horn to the White House and

01:15:25.060 it looks like they have a deal.

01:15:26.000 That was clearly a mistake.

01:15:27.380 And, you know, the thing is, no matter if Biden had negotiated this deal, if that woman 0.90

01:15:32.560 who ran for, I can't remember her name, had, you know, oh yeah, Kamala something.

01:15:36.380 Oh, yes.

01:15:36.960 I can't remember.

01:15:37.580 I forgot.

01:15:38.140 But if she had negotiated this deal, same thing would have happened.

01:15:40.440 Putin would have gotten some of the stuff that he'd already stomped on and that would

01:15:44.160 have, they just would have had to settle for that.

01:15:45.780 There was never going to be, you know, the Ukrainians were never marching on Moscow.

01:15:49.960 That was not something.

01:15:51.640 I find it distasteful that some on the American right now are sort of, are playing the, uh,

01:15:56.600 Putin is the great defender of Christendom.

01:15:58.300 I hate that. 0.97

01:15:59.020 It's absolute nonsense. 0.82

01:16:00.300 Vladimir Putin's the aggressor in the war.

01:16:01.880 He invaded a sovereign nation in Ukraine.

01:16:04.460 He has missiles pointed at us.

01:16:05.780 He has nuclear missiles pointed at us right now.

01:16:08.080 He's not our friend, but Ukraine can't win this war.

01:16:10.960 Right.

01:16:11.220 Yeah, that's right.

01:16:11.900 That can't be done.

01:16:12.500 The other, I know we're not allowed to have any historical nuance or anything in here,

01:16:15.600 but the, some of the territories that we're talking about, most notably Crimea have been

01:16:20.980 contested for, um, millennia and many centuries at this point and have historically been part

01:16:27.620 of Russia and have been considered very important to Russia.

01:16:30.240 And so like, I know Americans decide they're going to become experts on every issue overnight,

01:16:34.940 but this is a complex issue.

01:16:37.100 And that was kind of Trump's point in the, in the Oval Office is, you know, look, we're

01:16:41.940 going to have to come to a deal here.

01:16:43.420 Unless you want to be like the Democrats and just have it be a meat grinder forever with 0.98

01:16:46.880 no end in sight.

01:16:47.560 But if you, if you are going to have a deal, then you need to figure out what these strategic

01:16:52.460 objectives are and the interests and where is it there?

01:16:55.900 It's also different in kind than any war that we've seen in our, in our lifetime.

01:17:01.440 I'm not making an age joke, but you actually have seen things like this.

01:17:04.700 Michael and I have not.

01:17:06.180 Yeah.

01:17:06.460 This is a war where the battle of Lepanto.

01:17:09.760 This is a war where the casualties are in the seven figures.

01:17:13.900 Yeah.

01:17:14.180 Yeah.

01:17:14.320 You know, America lost something like 5,000 troops in the totality of the war, the war

01:17:21.160 on terror.

01:17:21.740 You're talking about hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have died in the

01:17:27.520 last three years in this war.

01:17:28.920 When we say meat grinder, we're not, we're not being rhetorical.

01:17:32.380 It's a world, it's a world war one kind of stalemate that they're just killing each other.

01:17:36.740 And the other thing about it is, you know, you don't have to make excuses for Putin or say

01:17:42.160 that it's a good thing that he invaded to understand that in these situations, power matters and

01:17:47.620 who is in power matters.

01:17:49.460 And we're not going in there.

01:17:50.640 We're not putting boots on the ground.

01:17:51.720 America, America.

01:17:52.860 And this is the other thing because the Putin apologists make of him this larger than life

01:17:58.180 figure.

01:17:58.960 And they want to say, well, America couldn't beat Putin.

01:18:01.280 Of course, America could beat Putin.

01:18:02.300 Yeah.

01:18:02.700 Yeah.

01:18:03.120 Europe could beat Putin if they set their mind to it.

01:18:05.220 Europe and America would destroy Putin at risk of nuclear war.

01:18:09.960 Yeah.

01:18:10.080 Which is why it will not happen.

01:18:12.620 It will not happen because it cannot happen.

01:18:15.560 And just on a, I don't think this is really cynical, but on a realistic level, China is

01:18:20.940 the threat to America.

01:18:22.820 We are not under threat from Russia.

01:18:24.540 China is the threat. 0.98

01:18:25.680 China and Russia have formed an alliance.

01:18:27.480 This is a way of breaking that alliance.

01:18:29.100 It is better for Putin to be friends with us who will not try to devour him than friends

01:18:33.420 with China who will devour him last. 1.00

01:18:35.280 And Putin knows that.

01:18:36.380 He knows when he's not looking at Xi and thinking he's a great guy.

01:18:38.860 I look into his eyes and see his soul and he's going to be good to me.

01:18:42.260 He knows that the price of an alliance with China is Russia ultimately, and he won't have

01:18:47.640 to pay that price to us.

01:18:48.920 And so if we separate them and we have to make a little bit nice to him, you know, it's distasteful.

01:18:53.280 I think it is distasteful, but it may just be necessary because we have to be ready for

01:18:57.740 China.

01:18:58.200 And that's the one thing I think is in Trump's mind in a way that it's not in the minds of

01:19:02.340 our intelligence community.

01:19:03.460 And I don't know why it's not, but it's not.

01:19:05.860 Maybe because the head of our intelligence is named Heinz Haikou.

01:19:08.660 I don't know.

01:19:10.640 The one thing that I found disappointing in the foreign policy part of the president's

01:19:14.500 speech is that he didn't talk about the new Trumpistan colony in what was formerly the

01:19:21.340 Gaza Strip.

01:19:22.200 I wanted at least three paragraphs.

01:19:24.520 Maragaza.

01:19:25.520 Magaza.

01:19:27.580 Magaza International Hotel and Casino.

01:19:29.660 You know, part of that, when that announcement came out, everyone lost their minds, as is

01:19:34.280 often the case when President Trump makes big declarations.

01:19:37.420 And some people still haven't learned it 10 years into this thing.

01:19:41.040 But, you know, when Trump throws something out there, he is often negotiating or speaking

01:19:47.120 past the sale to you, Scott Adams' phrase.

01:19:49.200 And so in this case, why didn't he bring it up?

01:19:52.820 Because he, well, just look at the news today of the Arab states coming in and saying,

01:19:57.020 no, no, no, hold on, wait a second, we don't want you, maybe we'll be involved in this. 0.52

01:20:00.360 And maybe that sort of thing is what Trump was actually after.

01:20:02.900 Obviously he was. 0.98

01:20:03.760 And he was also after putting paid to the two-state solution, which is the dumbest idea 0.96

01:20:09.100 that people have clung to for decades, you know. 0.96

01:20:11.960 It's like, one state called Israel, another state that wants to kill Israel, it'll be 0.98

01:20:15.220 perfect.

01:20:16.640 And I think he just avoided that exactly for what you said.

01:20:20.820 He had negotiated them into a position, which we said at the beginning, where he would

01:20:25.220 be able to say to him, okay, what's your idea?

01:20:26.740 You don't want me to build my hotel in Gaza.

01:20:28.440 What's your idea?

01:20:29.240 And now there's thought.

01:20:29.700 Because they were in sort of a stalemate of these two notions and no one was moving.

01:20:33.900 And then Trump just came in and dropped this wild idea.

01:20:38.080 And everyone sort of just stopped and said, wait, what?

01:20:39.900 Wait, hold on.

01:20:40.440 BB Netanyahu when he announced it.

01:20:41.780 Wait, hold on.

01:20:42.960 Yeah.

01:20:43.480 Did I catch that right?

01:20:44.600 We didn't talk about this.

01:20:46.860 I mean, I was a little surprised he didn't mention it, only because, as we knew they would,

01:20:51.080 the Hamas is violating, you know, not going forward with the ceasefire and has not returned 0.63

01:20:56.100 all the hostages. 1.00

01:20:57.360 And I assume Israel is going to go back in there and kick some ass. 1.00

01:21:00.400 And I think that he probably didn't want to seem to have incited it. 0.99

01:21:04.020 Right.

01:21:04.780 Though he's going to support it, I suspect.

01:21:06.520 He's going to support it.

01:21:07.440 And it is, at this point, it's a fait accompli.

01:21:10.160 Of course, Israel is going back into the Gaza Strip. 0.85

01:21:12.100 I thought it was, you know, it's funny, at the inaugural ball that we were at, they interviewed

01:21:17.520 me on the red carpet and they asked me what I thought of the deal.

01:21:19.560 And I said, well, the deal is terrible, but we know that Hamas is going to break it and 0.98

01:21:22.960 we know that Trump is going to support them when they go back in.

01:21:25.180 Right.

01:21:25.360 That was kind of the setup of the deal, that it was always going to come to this, you know.

01:21:28.860 But he got the win that he needed, you know, so he could, he didn't stand in the way of

01:21:33.680 a ceasefire, which would have been bad for him.

01:21:36.340 And it would have been bad for everybody.

01:21:37.940 But he's now going to support.

01:21:39.440 Also, in terms of foreign policy, he presented tariffs in a way that was digestible and common

01:21:45.580 sense to people.

01:21:46.240 First of all, I mean, I've been advocating throughout the campaign that really the key

01:21:51.080 phrase here has got to be common sense.

01:21:53.200 That's why, I mean, and I'm not the first to notice it.

01:21:55.680 It goes back to Antonio Gramsci and many other political thinkers.

01:21:59.000 But, you know, he held on to that.

01:22:00.860 And so when we're talking about free trade or tariff theory or these kind of complex economic

01:22:07.000 concepts, it's a little difficult for any, even someone who's studied economics to really

01:22:12.080 grasp what he's talking about.

01:22:13.320 And so when he says, look, you guys charge us a lot of money for our products, but you

01:22:19.120 expect us not to charge you a lot of money when you bring your products into our market,

01:22:23.860 which is much more valuable, that's not going to happen.

01:22:26.440 We're going to have tariff parity.

01:22:28.000 Yeah.

01:22:28.240 OK.

01:22:28.460 And if we get into a trade war, I promise you we're going to win.

01:22:31.780 Yeah.

01:22:32.020 That is really clear, common sense thinking that doesn't require a degree in economics.

01:22:36.380 I have to say, I am maybe the only person in America who does not know what the result

01:22:40.080 of the tariffs will be and will openly admit it.

01:22:42.340 But that did make sense to me.

01:22:43.520 You know, I mean, I thought like that.

01:22:44.700 I thought it was a sensible enough rhetorical argument for something that I think is somewhat

01:22:50.040 nonsensical in practice.

01:22:51.620 I'm completely against the tariffs.

01:22:53.500 I think using tariffs as a form of leverage to get us better trade deals than we might

01:22:58.160 otherwise have, which we've seen President Trump do in the past, is a perfectly good thing

01:23:02.280 to do.

01:23:02.720 But free trade has been very good for America.

01:23:04.940 And the dollar being the standard currency, basically, of all global trade.

01:23:10.180 Yeah, that's been good for us.

01:23:11.160 It is very, very good for us.

01:23:13.540 And that's a thing that you do not want to lose and that you put at risk with this tariff.

01:23:17.160 But globalist trade has not been so good for us.

01:23:19.940 It's not been good for everyone.

01:23:20.920 Yeah.

01:23:21.200 The idea that the center of the country is going to be gutted of jobs, but your iPhone is

01:23:25.660 going to cost less because it's made by slave labor has not really worked out for us.

01:23:30.080 He's right.

01:23:30.980 Remember, this is why his first inaugural speech was called Dark, because he talked about

01:23:34.640 American carnage.

01:23:35.780 I was out there during the Biden administration and all the boarded shops and all the people 1.00

01:23:40.280 out of work and all the closed factories.

01:23:41.880 It was heartbreaking.

01:23:43.040 And I think he was right about that.

01:23:44.800 So if he can bring America back to the place where we support American goods and still can

01:23:50.300 have free trade, I mean, that would be better than the globalist trade that we were dealing

01:23:53.980 with.

01:23:54.520 Well, I think that if we're going to talk about things that none of us understand, we should

01:23:57.560 bring someone on who doesn't really do them.

01:23:59.300 And that is Matt Walsh.

01:24:01.880 And also Ben Shapiro.

01:24:03.520 You guys are at the Capitol.

01:24:05.100 What was the energy like in the room?

01:24:06.380 I mean, it was pretty outstanding from where we were sitting.

01:24:09.100 Well, I mean, right now we're just wondering why we're here because, I mean, well, we're

01:24:11.680 exhausted.

01:24:12.480 I mean, it's been a very, very long evening.

01:24:14.380 And my annoyance is you sent the two most easily annoyed people in America to this.

01:24:22.580 And now you're bringing us back and it's 1135 at night.

01:24:27.840 So I have not I have not clapped and I have not clapped that much like in total in my entire

01:24:33.420 life as I did in the room.

01:24:35.160 So it's a lot of clapping.

01:24:36.940 I will say that that I thought it was a great speech.

01:24:40.620 And I thought but for me, unfortunately, being in the room, even though it was a really good

01:24:45.540 speech, the big takeaway is just the Democrats.

01:24:48.560 And I'm sure you guys have covered it. 0.99

01:24:50.500 But the performance by the Democrats, I thought, was just disgraceful and ridiculous. 0.98

01:24:56.600 And being in the room, I mean, I don't know how much you pick up on camera. 0.97

01:24:59.940 I'm sure the one guy standing up and refusing to leave, that certainly made it in.

01:25:03.460 But the just constant comments, the little stunts there, they're looking down at their

01:25:09.040 phone there.

01:25:10.300 You know, I had a woman who was right in front of me down below who was like taking angry 1.00

01:25:13.660 selfies of herself and texting him to her friend.

01:25:15.840 I could see that happening.

01:25:17.120 So this is this is what the lawmakers were busy doing.

01:25:20.040 Matt, did you photobomb any of the selfies for this Democrat woman's friend?

01:25:23.820 Just like I got I did.

01:25:25.860 I got in one of them.

01:25:27.420 I got in one of her that she sent to a friend.

01:25:30.020 But but to me, the the the thing that kind of tells you everything you need to know is

01:25:35.600 that the Democrats sat on their hands and did not clap anything.

01:25:39.160 They didn't you know, they didn't clap a child cancer survivor.

01:25:42.360 They didn't clap planting a flag on on Mars.

01:25:45.760 They didn't clap, you know, protecting Americans from crime, killing terrorists and all of

01:25:50.440 that.

01:25:50.900 The only thing they clap for, the only thing that they clap for was Ukraine.

01:25:55.160 That was the one single applause line from the Democrats.

01:25:58.280 And I think that that sort of tells you everything you need to know about the Democrat Party,

01:26:02.520 which is just nothing but a they didn't even clap for their own vote.

01:26:05.180 There was one point when Trump thanked them for voting for Marco Rubio for secretary of

01:26:07.960 state.

01:26:08.120 They didn't clap for that.

01:26:08.960 I mean, it really was an impressive show.

01:26:10.860 And they kind of were gradually walking out.

01:26:13.320 You could see Bernie Sanders maybe 15, 20 minutes before the end.

01:26:16.460 He gets up and he walks out.

01:26:17.980 You can see a bunch of the Democratic Congress people starting to file out kind of slowly

01:26:21.340 during during the actual event.

01:26:24.240 Now, President Trump's energy was was really good.

01:26:26.160 I mean, President Trump is happy to be there.

01:26:28.220 He's in a very good mood.

01:26:29.760 Obviously, Republicans love him.

01:26:31.260 They were they're really pumped.

01:26:32.980 They're really ready to go.

01:26:34.000 A lot of enthusiasm.

01:26:35.460 And I got to tell you, the Democrats felt dead.

01:26:37.560 They felt dead.

01:26:38.040 I mean, it felt like the air had been sucked out of their side of the room, not just because

01:26:40.480 they were depressed because they lost, but also because there's just no juice to the

01:26:43.340 resistance anymore.

01:26:44.080 It feels as though they have kind of lost their their points of opposition.

01:26:47.680 And so they're kind of sitting there in weirdly disparate fashion with signs that read different

01:26:53.660 things.

01:26:54.100 And they're holding them up.

01:26:55.140 And and we're supposed to take away from that that they're they're unified.

01:26:57.880 The only points of unity they seem to be able to find in opposition to President Trump

01:27:01.240 were at one point they tried to start a chant of January 6th, which is so played out as

01:27:04.680 to be meaningless.

01:27:05.400 Oh, my gosh.

01:27:06.040 And then again, when they applauded Ukraine, which which, again, was less about their love

01:27:10.660 of Ukraine and much more about their belief that President Trump is a cast ball of Vladimir

01:27:14.000 Putin.

01:27:14.780 So as far as the speech itself, you know, I think that it is very clear that President Trump

01:27:19.680 was focusing in on two really, really big themes, aside from the tariffs, which I heard

01:27:24.400 you guys talking about the two big themes that he kept coming back to.

01:27:27.440 And he actually did come back to them multiple times.

01:27:29.380 He actually would go away from them and then come back to them again.

01:27:31.540 Illegal immigration. 1.00

01:27:32.300 He beat the border to death tonight.

01:27:33.760 And I think that that was actually a really smart strategy because it is the greatest single

01:27:37.760 success of the administration so far.

01:27:40.060 I mean, we were talking to Tom Homan earlier.

01:27:41.820 The stats that he was citing are extraordinary.

01:27:43.660 And when President Trump brought that up and talked repeatedly about the damage that criminal

01:27:48.140 illegal immigrants have done in the country and kept going back to that, that is a huge 1.00

01:27:52.220 issue.

01:27:52.580 It is an entire country moving issue.

01:27:54.640 And then the other big issue was, of course, one that is all near and dear to our hearts.

01:27:57.940 I mean, obviously, we all care about illegal immigration, but the one that maybe the Daily 0.98

01:28:00.500 Wire has taken the lead on as a company more than any other company in America is the trans

01:28:04.040 issue.

01:28:04.340 President Trump spoke about it.

01:28:06.260 He left it.

01:28:07.060 He came back to it.

01:28:08.220 He came back to it repeatedly.

01:28:09.900 And we had the pleasure, Matt and I, of sitting next to Riley Gaines, who, of course, has also

01:28:13.040 been a big sort of character in pushing forward the notion that traditional sex actually

01:28:18.620 is the metric for how we measure human beings in terms of, for example, sports.

01:28:23.360 And the energy in the room for those two issues was extremely high.

01:28:27.160 He gave what I thought was properly short-trifted foreign policy, actually, because he is a

01:28:30.960 domestic policy president.

01:28:32.320 He said, we're going to strengthen the military.

01:28:33.720 We're going to rebuild our shipping.

01:28:35.880 We're going to build Golden Dome, which is a take on Iron Dome, even though Iron Dome,

01:28:39.960 for the record, is actually a system for shooting down short-range rockets.

01:28:42.960 And Golden Dome would be presumably a large missile defense system designed for shooting

01:28:46.400 down, say, supersonic, sort of low-altitude Chinese missiles.

01:28:52.640 But, you know, same difference.

01:28:54.420 He kind of talked about that, but it was all domestically focused.

01:28:57.080 And I think that's totally appropriate for a president who is, in fact, domestically focused.

01:29:01.320 And I know you guys are talking about the tariffs.

01:29:03.480 It's interesting to see how he's playing the tariffs, and it'll be interesting to see how

01:29:06.080 they materialize.

01:29:06.720 The big question going forward, I think, for both the economy and for President Trump is

01:29:10.020 whether the key word in the phrase reciprocal tariff is reciprocal or tariff.

01:29:15.180 So if the key word there is reciprocal, I think that, you know, what he's going to do

01:29:19.200 is what, Jeremy, you were talking about, leverage other countries to lower their own tariffs

01:29:23.160 in order so that we can get our tariffs lower, and then more free trade for everyone, yay,

01:29:26.900 hooray.

01:29:27.740 If the key word there is tariff and not reciprocal, meaning what he actually just likes are the

01:29:31.960 tariffs, economic theory and history tell that that is a dicey proposition.

01:29:37.680 And you can see the effects on the stock market almost immediately, right?

01:29:41.600 I mean, you've seen it over the course of the last couple of days alone when Dow Jones

01:29:44.140 Industrial Average dropped 1,500 points.

01:29:45.920 So, again, that is a dicey game that he's playing right there if he's fighting inflation.

01:29:52.000 Large-scale tariffs tend not to lower inflation.

01:29:54.540 They tend to increase, you know, sort of prices of goods and services because you're limiting

01:29:57.540 supply while leaving demand exactly the same, which obviously increases prices.

01:30:02.420 And then the question is just going to be whether it is a leverage play or whether it is a

01:30:05.580 principle play that he sort of likes tariffs and has a vision of the world in which everyone

01:30:09.080 reshores to the United States and we export but we don't import, which, again, I think 1.00

01:30:14.520 that is likely to result in some pretty dire economic side effects.

01:30:18.040 Well, this is to me the most interesting question because the guy is a good poker player and it's

01:30:23.740 hard to read it.

01:30:24.780 You know, on the one hand, there are people, though I know it's unfashionable in our day

01:30:29.160 and age, but there are people who make a serious principled economic argument for tariffs and

01:30:34.680 there's a long history of tariffs in the Republican Party.

01:30:36.800 Going back to Abraham Lincoln, who said, give me a tariff, I'll give you the greatest country

01:30:39.420 on earth.

01:30:40.040 Now, that obviously fell out of favor in the middle to the latter part of the 20th century,

01:30:43.200 but there is a world in which, and Trump has been, I think, advancing this view, that

01:30:48.340 he really believes as a matter of principle in tariffs and many of his economic advisors

01:30:53.400 do as well.

01:30:54.560 However, Trump is a dealmaker.

01:30:57.080 He has promoted free trade, global free trade, for, you know, many years of his career.

01:31:02.420 And so there is also a view that he's kind of bluffing.

01:31:07.020 But the thing is, if he's bluffing, he's doing so in an extraordinarily persuasive way,

01:31:13.340 which is his great strength on the global stage, is his unpredictability.

01:31:18.000 So if you are an adversary of the United States or a trading partner of the United States that's

01:31:22.220 kind of maybe ripping us off a little bit, and you're trying to read Trump right now,

01:31:26.500 at least 10 to 20 percent of you has to think, the guy might just love tariffs, and I better

01:31:33.440 play my cards real cautiously.

01:31:35.200 Yeah, and it is, it does, I don't know, I'm a simple man.

01:31:38.420 When you tell me that they're putting a 275 percent tariff on milk going out, but we can't

01:31:43.220 put anything on, you know, and I think, well, why not?

01:31:45.020 I don't understand why we can't play.

01:31:46.980 It's all part of Trump's we're not your daddy strategy, you know?

01:31:49.680 Like, we are not here to just support the world.

01:31:52.760 And we have been treated like that, especially by Europe, but we have been treated like that

01:31:56.240 by the country.

01:31:56.760 We're supposed to show up, but they don't have to show up for us.

01:31:59.580 And Trump's, you know, it may be garish, it may be a little boorish to say, what's in

01:32:03.520 it for us all the time?

01:32:04.860 But what is in it for us?

01:32:06.140 We are a sovereign nation.

01:32:07.460 I mean, I think what's in it for us is actually a pretty good pitch.

01:32:10.580 What's in it for us is a pretty good pitch.

01:32:11.840 I think the thing that we do have to remember, however, is that we are also, there is something

01:32:17.200 in it for us, which is namely that our gigantic national debt is actually funded by other

01:32:21.840 countries who are buying our bonds.

01:32:23.960 I mean, so it turns out that actually there are two sides to the story.

01:32:27.060 It's not just the United States funding everybody else.

01:32:28.940 The reality is that everybody else is also funding us by holding the dollar as the global

01:32:31.860 reserve currency and then holding bonds that they can easily transfer into dollars.

01:32:35.000 So again, economics is a bit of a sensitive game.

01:32:38.320 And, you know, the one thing, and this is the thing that I really fear for President Trump's

01:32:42.960 administration, the one thing that can send things south, because the Democrats are so

01:32:46.760 gone.

01:32:47.220 They're so gone.

01:32:47.960 I mean, that's what you can see in the room.

01:32:49.100 They have lost it.

01:32:50.380 They've lost it.

01:32:51.140 When it comes to the trans issue, they've completely lost it.

01:32:54.280 When it comes to illegal immigration, they've completely lost it.

01:32:56.400 They're just so far from common sense.

01:32:57.800 The one thing that could really hurt Trump is an economic downturn.

01:33:00.500 It's the one thing he cannot afford.

01:33:01.700 No president can afford it.

01:33:03.040 President Trump more than most, because he's seen as a pro, correctly, as a pro-business

01:33:06.500 president.

01:33:07.320 And so anything that can be done to avoid an economic downturn is the thing that he really has

01:33:11.120 to do, the good news about Trump, I think, is that even if he loves tariffs, like adores

01:33:14.520 them, President Trump also, even more than that, likes good headlines and does not like

01:33:18.660 bad headlines.

01:33:19.640 And so if the economy starts to go south, this is one area where President Trump will stick

01:33:23.600 and move.

01:33:24.140 Though, again, even on that point, Trump seems to, in recent weeks, and even in that speech

01:33:29.340 tonight, be preparing the American people for some potential short-term economic challenge.

01:33:35.440 He says, look, it's going to be a little tough in the short term.

01:33:38.260 So, again, I don't exactly know how to read it, because that might just be him bluffing

01:33:45.680 really well to say, no, I am really serious about Trump, because I understand the implications.

01:33:48.600 I don't know that Donald Trump bluffs.

01:33:51.400 I think that Donald Trump changes.

01:33:53.940 I don't think that Donald Trump is fundamentally ideological.

01:33:57.660 He fundamentally wants to make a deal.

01:34:00.500 And so I think that one of the reasons that he is so unpredictable is because everyone assumes

01:34:06.720 that there is some other motive at play, when in fact it may just be as simple as, the thing's

01:34:12.760 unfair, I'm going to put tariffs on it. 0.97

01:34:14.580 And if somebody comes back to me, and there's a better deal to be made in the future where

01:34:18.420 I take the tariffs off because something good's happening, then that'll be the thing that

01:34:21.840 I'm for.

01:34:22.580 I don't know that he's, I don't know that Trump is sophisticated.

01:34:25.260 And I don't say that as a knock on Trump.

01:34:28.200 I'm actually saying it kind of as a good thing.

01:34:30.000 Like, I just don't think that he is, I don't think that he is that.

01:34:33.220 I don't know.

01:34:33.660 I think he has this way of looking at things in a general way that seems, it seems unsophisticated,

01:34:39.960 but it is not.

01:34:40.580 He can't have won as often as he's won and be unsophisticated.

01:34:44.720 I think what he does is he thinks differently.

01:34:46.860 He thinks in a gestalt style that everybody calls gut politics.

01:34:50.220 But it's really a way of seeing the world in total.

01:34:53.620 And sometimes, I do believe that sometimes even he hasn't got his whole strategy worked

01:34:57.660 out.

01:34:58.080 Look, there are going to be some bad headlines.

01:34:59.700 You cannot bring down inflation without increasing unemployment.

01:35:02.840 There are going to be bad headlines.

01:35:04.080 And I notice nobody's talking about unemployment because it always goes up when inflation goes

01:35:08.600 down.

01:35:09.260 And so no one is talking about it.

01:35:10.500 So they're waiting, lying in wait so that when it goes up, they can hit him with it.

01:35:13.860 He's going to have some bad headlines.

01:35:15.480 Happened to Reagan when he brought down inflation.

01:35:17.320 The unemployment went up and it cost him his majorities in the legislature.

01:35:22.720 But still, I do think he has an idea of what he's doing.

01:35:26.260 And I do think, I don't think he bluffs. 0.79

01:35:28.260 I think he makes a deal and takes an extreme position knowing that's not where he's going

01:35:32.800 to end.

01:35:32.960 Right, right, right.

01:35:34.320 Yeah, I think, and I agree with that.

01:35:37.080 I don't see this as a bluff at all.

01:35:38.420 I mean, it might change.

01:35:39.400 That might be the case that it changes.

01:35:41.080 I certainly don't think that it's a bluff because, I mean, I agree with Drew that I think

01:35:44.100 Trump thinks in a, his great appeal is that he thinks in a very simple way, which is not

01:35:49.020 to say simplistic, but I say simple.

01:35:51.160 I consider myself to be a simple guy in a lot of ways, which is just, you look at an

01:35:55.880 issue like this.

01:35:56.560 Well, why should they slap us with higher tariffs than we put on them?

01:35:59.920 I mean, you did it to us.

01:36:00.880 Why shouldn't we do it to you?

01:36:02.080 It's a pretty, it's the same thing with Zelensky.

01:36:03.980 He visits the White House and it's like, hey, we gave you all of this.

01:36:08.920 And so if we're going to give you this, then we expect something in return.

01:36:12.600 It's, you know, in that case, it's kind of similar to the, you know, I say to my kids

01:36:18.060 all the time, you're in my house, you know, you're under my roof, it's my food, you're

01:36:23.620 going to play by my rules.

01:36:25.060 Every father says that.

01:36:25.900 I gave you javelin missiles and you're going to listen to me.

01:36:29.000 Right, exactly.

01:36:29.740 I say that to my kids all the time.

01:36:31.220 I give you all the weapons, so you're going to play by my rules.

01:36:34.200 So, and I think most people hear that and think, yeah, well, it kind of makes sense.

01:36:38.700 Like, why not?

01:36:39.680 And that's, that's the way that I look at it.

01:36:42.680 By the way, credit to Zelensky for recognizing that he really, really needed to put out a

01:36:47.000 statement before the speech.

01:36:48.060 Yeah.

01:36:48.540 I mean, seriously, like Zelensky blew that meeting on Friday in a massive, massive way.

01:36:53.920 I went through on my show, like the entire details of that meeting, like went through

01:36:57.300 all 50 minutes of that particular meeting and Zelensky really blew it.

01:37:00.680 And then he continued to blow it.

01:37:01.640 And then today he came back and he said the thing he was supposed to say, which is we're

01:37:04.920 very, very grateful for all the support.

01:37:06.560 We're ready to sign a rare earth mineral deal.

01:37:08.040 We're trying to get to the end of this war.

01:37:09.960 And so tonight, instead of President Trump spending half the speech shellacking Zelensky

01:37:13.460 in Ukraine, instead, President Trump did what he does, which is he pocketed the victory.

01:37:17.640 And again, this goes, I think we're all saying very similar things here.

01:37:20.780 I don't think that President Trump, when it comes to these policies, is sitting there

01:37:25.220 thinking, okay, if I make, if I move my rook here, they're going to move their knight

01:37:28.680 here.

01:37:29.000 And then if they move their knight here, I'm going to move my bishop here, checkmate.

01:37:31.280 Like, that's not how President Trump thinks.

01:37:32.640 The way that he thinks is much more like, I'm going to do this thing.

01:37:36.340 And if you respond in the way that I want, then we can make a deal. 0.97

01:37:39.180 And if you respond in the way I don't want, I'm going to hit you. 0.98

01:37:41.460 And you know what? 0.77

01:37:42.980 Most policy can actually get done fairly well that way.

01:37:46.180 I will say, I did enjoy the break with tradition that was pretty evident from the beginning

01:37:50.140 of the speech.

01:37:50.900 I think this is what he meant when he said, remember, he had to put out this truth social

01:37:53.640 in all caps.

01:37:54.320 I'm going to speak plainly tonight.

01:37:55.820 And everybody's like, I don't know what that means.

01:37:57.140 Like, when has he ever not spoken plainly?

01:37:59.260 When, when, where is the subtlety, my man?

01:38:01.100 But it's, but you know, I think what he meant, I'm going to speak plainly.

01:38:04.620 What he meant was, I'm just going to, if I feel like banging on the Democrats, I'm just

01:38:07.880 going to bang on the Democrats.

01:38:08.800 When he started off right at the, I mean, it was hysterically funny.

01:38:11.240 When he started off right near the top and he said, listen, I've been doing this for five

01:38:14.440 years, five years, five times I've come to you.

01:38:17.260 They never clapped once.

01:38:18.600 I don't even care anymore.

01:38:20.780 I'm sorry.

01:38:21.360 That's really funny. 0.94

01:38:22.120 And it cuts through the bullshit of the entire sort of evening, which is, you know, propped 0.94

01:38:26.640 up as the sort of almost post-imperial event. 0.97

01:38:30.900 I've spoken on the program a thousand times about how much I generally hate State of the

01:38:34.600 Union addresses.

01:38:35.140 I will say it was kind of funny because it felt like kind of a post-State of the Union

01:38:37.700 State of the Union.

01:38:38.520 But I'll go just like, I'll go a step further.

01:38:40.800 It was kind of like, I don't think that it was just funny, although it was certainly funny.

01:38:45.140 I don't think it was just plain speak and shellacking the Democrats, although it was certainly

01:38:48.840 that.

01:38:49.140 It was also a perfect trap that he put them in because once he said, they cannot clap

01:38:55.100 for me no matter what, he took all the tools that they had.

01:38:58.680 I mean, this is the reason all their shenanigans basically fizzled out in the first three minutes

01:39:02.580 because what was left once he had already established, here's how the game's going to

01:39:06.960 get played.

01:39:07.520 When he promoted no tax on tips, a policy that the Democrats stole from him and campaigned 0.98

01:39:13.940 on, and they couldn't even applaud for it, they looked absolutely ridiculous. 0.67

01:39:17.940 Had he not made those remarks at the beginning of the speech, they would have clapped for 0.95

01:39:22.700 the 13-year-old boy.

01:39:23.580 By the way, I agree that Trump has a good gut and everything like that, but I do think

01:39:29.060 he also has strategic sophistication.

01:39:30.920 Maybe that's one area where I disagree.

01:39:32.540 That was clearly a trap, and it worked very well.

01:39:35.980 I don't mean that he doesn't have strategy, but it's not the same kind of strategy.

01:39:40.440 I can't remember which one of you guys said it, but he's not talking about a chess game.

01:39:43.940 He's more talking about a kind of, like I said, a gestalt, an atmosphere that he knows

01:39:47.940 how to move through, and he does it really expertly.

01:39:50.380 He's also really funny.

01:39:55.000 He's really, really funny.

01:39:55.880 He's just hilarious.

01:39:57.140 In the room, it was very funny.

01:39:58.940 There were a lot of things that we were chuckling at in the room, for sure.

01:40:01.540 Yeah, I'll say that this was my first time I've been in a room for, actually in the room

01:40:05.000 for a Trump speech.

01:40:07.040 And, you know, I knew he was a really funny guy, but that's one thing you appreciate

01:40:11.140 when you're in the room, it's just kind of the energy of it and sort of the aside comments.

01:40:14.200 And, I don't know, being in the room, you kind of-

01:40:17.720 The little hand motions.

01:40:18.800 Yeah, I mean, at the very beginning, they're clapping for him, and he actually did the Trump

01:40:21.340 dance.

01:40:22.480 I mean, could you- I don't know if you guys can see that on camera.

01:40:25.060 No, we didn't.

01:40:25.320 But he actually did.

01:40:26.100 When they were doing the- when they were giving, like, the big ovation, I don't know

01:40:28.280 if they're panning in the crowd or whatever, he literally stepped to the side of the

01:40:30.960 podium and did the-

01:40:31.960 Yeah.

01:40:34.080 I noticed-

01:40:34.720 And it was really funny, like, really funny.

01:40:37.080 At the MSG rally right before the election, I noticed it was the first time I'd seen him in person,

01:40:42.580 I think, certainly that close, but I think maybe in person.

01:40:45.160 And he gets up on stage, and I realized, oh, I get it now.

01:40:48.880 He's Elvis.

01:40:50.340 That's his thing.

01:40:51.320 He's actually Elvis.

01:40:52.500 That's what he- it's not that he's Reagan.

01:40:53.960 It's not that he's Bush.

01:40:55.820 He's Elvis.

01:40:56.780 And there was- speaking of these great little moments and these great little asides, there's

01:41:00.800 one that no one is talking about, but it killed me, which is that Trump was talking

01:41:04.700 about illegal immigration, and he goes, and these people, you know, coming over, murderers, 0.56

01:41:10.640 human traffickers, and then he just points to the Democrats in the room, like, these

01:41:15.560 murderers, human traffickers, and I go, well, you know, shoe fits, man.

01:41:22.460 Truly the most entertaining State of the Union-

01:41:24.400 Yep.

01:41:24.720 No question.

01:41:25.280 ...that I've ever seen.

01:41:26.360 And, you know, I had a kind of sadness watching it because Donald Trump's not a young man.

01:41:33.100 No.

01:41:33.200 Like, this- we are- we are in the end of whatever this is, and, you know, four years is a long

01:41:38.160 time.

01:41:38.460 We get to take- we get to enjoy the ending of it.

01:41:39.980 Eight years with a third term.

01:41:41.360 Yeah.

01:41:43.660 Thank you.

01:41:45.160 But it was the first time that I felt a kind of nostalgia for Donald Trump, and I was feeling

01:41:48.920 it while he's still president because we will never see anything like this again.

01:41:52.740 No, no, no.

01:41:53.340 Yeah.

01:41:53.500 It's- it's going to be- well, it's going to be the- the last great administration of

01:41:57.380 my lifetime, but it may be the last great administration of your lifetime, too, because

01:42:00.840 they don't come along-

01:42:01.420 Though I am hopeful for the- the reign of Baron Octavian Augustus Trump, and I don't

01:42:06.280 know if it'll be exactly like this, but- but, you know, Augustus was actually better than

01:42:10.000 Julius in any ways, so we'll see.

01:42:13.340 Fellas, I know it's late in D.C., and you have shows to do tomorrow.

01:42:16.180 Thanks for hanging out with us.

01:42:17.080 Thanks for coming back after fighting your way through whatever mob there was and signing autographs

01:42:22.960 for Congress people, and Boebert, I know, there's just all kinds of weirdness that you

01:42:27.280 guys had to- had to deal with, but it was a good night.

01:42:31.640 Yeah.

01:42:32.540 Very.

01:42:33.240 A marvelous night.

01:42:34.280 Marvelous night.

01:42:35.240 Thanks to all of our DailyWire.com subscribers for hanging out with us, making it possible

01:42:39.440 for us to do this work.

01:42:41.100 We do have one fun thing going on, and that is that Ben is leading this crusade to get

01:42:45.620 President Trump to consider pardoning Derek Chauvin of the federal charges that he was

01:42:52.060 convicted of.

01:42:52.580 It won't mean that he gets out of jail, will mean that he has to go to a state prison,

01:42:56.280 but it will still be the beginning of correcting this horrible injustice, and we have a petition

01:43:00.980 at pardonedereck.com.

01:43:02.720 We'd love for you to sign it, as we're letting President Trump know that this is still an

01:43:06.520 important issue that he's- he's given all these great pardons already in his time as

01:43:10.580 president, but there is like one guy who's obviously still been left on the field, and

01:43:14.680 that's Derek Chauvin.

01:43:15.440 So head over to pardonedereck.com and add your name to our petition today, and we'll see you

01:43:22.160 guys back here next time for Daily Wire Backstage.

01:43:24.460 We'll see you guys back here next time for Daily Wire Backstage.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 05, 2025

Daily Wire Backstage： Trump’s Address to Congress

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