00:00:22.080By the time this is over, Andrew Klavan will be dead.
00:00:24.540And Matt Walsh, his beard will be gray and he will have no hair.
00:00:28.000So, you know, a lot's going to happen.
00:00:29.800In the next few years, because that's how long we are slated to be together.
00:00:34.180Basically, we are now doing the extended director's cut of all three versions of all three movies of Lord of the Rings, because that's what tonight is going to be.
00:00:49.840So we have with me, of course, Matt Walsh, who is suffering, and Andrew Klavan, who is likely to suffer with me even more.
00:00:56.180Somehow, Matt begged out a part of the show, which I got to say, that's a smooth move.
00:01:45.700Well, I don't have a soul to begin with, so it can't leave my body.
00:01:48.480What I'm excited about is that when you guys come back to talk about and analyze the State of the Union, I'm going to be fast asleep in bed.
00:01:58.440I don't know what story I gave them, but I'm just going to actually be asleep.
00:02:20.080I do think that if there's any, you know, if I were to predict that anything out of this, or if anything, you know, makes an impact out of this speech,
00:02:29.680I would guess it's likely to be less what Trump says in the speech and more the antics of the Democrats.
00:02:36.800And I guess there's going to be fewer of them in the room now because a lot of them are boycotting.
00:02:54.020But I expect that we heard about some of the illegal immigrants that are going to be attending, you know, Ilhan Omar and others along with her.
00:03:02.780And so, but I expect that the Democrats in the room, they're probably going to get a lot of antics out of that.
00:03:06.140And so if there's any, if anything really makes an impact, it's going to be them embarrassing themselves.
00:03:11.940Look, I mean, the State of the Union has always been pointless.
00:03:13.800I think we're all on the same page that he should just send an email and be done with it.
00:03:17.560But if there was ever a time when you could, when there was any sort of function of the State of the Union, which I guess is supposed to be, you've got both sides that are there and they're kind of unified.
00:03:28.680And we're hearing the vision for the country going forward.
00:03:32.400And there's supposed to be a little show of kind of like unity and togetherness and some decorum.
00:03:37.440And I think that's kind of the point of it, the pageantry.
00:04:15.240I had not heard that, but again, I think it would be fabulous if Tom Homan just started muscling his way through the Democratic caucus with handcuffs and started dragging people away.
00:04:24.220That would be the best version of this.
00:04:25.940Matt and I were actually in the room for this last time.
00:04:28.420And so, again, I'm jealous of Matt that he gets to go to sleep this evening.
00:04:33.280Andrew Klavan, I want to get your commentary on this because it will be your last commentary on this earth.
00:04:38.680Because while Matt's soul is likely to leave his body out of excitement, yours is likely to leave your body out of, you know, death.
00:04:44.520But first, I do want to talk to you about the fact that you are still alive.
00:04:48.500And I feel like one of the reasons you are still alive is because you've been eating your fish.
00:05:48.900That is the thing that I'm allowed to eat.
00:05:50.260But, honestly, the person in my office, because of kosher reasons who has been enjoying the fish, is producer Phil, who's looking fit as a fiddle and ready for love, as they say.
00:05:59.560Well, apparently, it is sustainably sourced, wild caught from Alaska.
00:06:02.700Every order supports sustainable harvesting practices.
00:06:04.920And your membership delivers flexible shipments, expert tips, and truly feel-good seafood.
00:06:10.100Matt, I believe that you also are a fisherman.
00:06:12.160I'm surrounded by men of the wilderness.
00:06:14.480Matt, talk about how good this seafood is.
00:06:43.620Just head on over to WildAlaskan.com slash Friendly Fire for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood.
00:06:49.800That's WildAlaskan.com slash Friendly Fire for $35 off your first order.
00:06:53.780Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode of Friendly Fire.
00:06:58.100Okay, so, Andrew, I was calling on you, and then I immediately shifted into the way that we make money, of course, which is our ads.
00:07:04.540So, I'm going to throw it back to you, because as the hours tick down on your life, and you realize that you're going to have to spend the next several hours with me listening to an interminable address interrupted 1,273 times by applause, what are your last thoughts on this earth?
00:07:20.520Yeah, it's like head barreling into infinity.
00:07:24.700You know, what I kind of like about the Democrats is the last time there was a State of the Union, they behaved so badly that even they must have felt, if they have the capacity for shame, they must have felt a little bit of shame.
00:07:36.460I mean, you know, Trump was praising a child with cancer, and they sat on their hands.
00:07:40.860I mean, they just could not, they couldn't applaud for anything at all.
00:07:44.020So, the question was, they must have gathered together and thought, can we act like adults who respect our country and respect our fellow countrymen, taking a vote, and said, no, we can't.
00:07:55.420They're going to sit at the children's table where you can throw food until mommy finds out.
00:08:00.020You know, you can just play around and pretend that you're not part of the government.
00:08:03.280And I think that that's actually the state we're in.
00:08:05.740You know, I think it is an amazing thing that we have reached a place where we have two major parties.
00:08:11.180One of them is kind of incompetent, the Republicans, but the other one is actually out to destroy the country.
00:08:16.520They actually feel, you know, when they get up and they say things like there are no illegals on stolen land, they're actually saying, this country doesn't belong here.
00:08:25.500And we're supposed to vote for people, and people do vote for people, whose entire intent is to shut the country down and make it go away.
00:08:32.620And they're ashamed of us, and they're ashamed of George Washington, and they're ashamed of everything.
00:08:36.020So, I think this is actually kind of a symbolic moment.
00:08:38.560I, too, I've come closer to you, Ben, on how I feel about the State of the Union.
00:08:41.920I never, it never used to bother me, the imperial part of it, but now it kind of does.
00:08:45.700Now that our Congress is like a dead letter, that they're just sort of sitting around the Supreme Court is trying to wake them up with like the shock paddles.
00:09:34.120I think that's like the best version of this.
00:09:37.600But I think that the high points will obviously be him calling out some of the people.
00:09:41.440Erica Kirk is showing up as well, which I think is a terrific invitation by the president, obviously, in the face of Candace Owens.
00:09:48.760It's a tremendous evil, which I'm just going to put out there while she's doing to Erica Kirk right now.
00:09:51.500I'm hoping Candace Owens would fly by on a broomstick saying send out Erica.
00:09:54.980I mean, as a person who doesn't often use the adjective satanic, what Candace is doing right now is absolutely satanic to Erica Kirk.
00:10:02.680And I think Erica showing up at the State of the Union in honor of her husband.
00:10:06.380So the president can talk about left wing violence against right wingers is absolutely good by the president, good on the president for doing it.
00:10:49.620Well, first, I would tell him, get a better advisor, because I'm the worst person you could probably ask this question to.
00:10:55.260And I will say that I do enjoy that this is the most cynical and depressing intro to a State of the Union that we've probably ā and we've given some bad ones.
00:11:07.740No, the thing is ā and it's kind of funny, because although we feel this way about the State of the Union, I mean, Trump does have actually things to celebrate.
00:11:17.820I mean, let's start with the fact that closing down the southern border is a real, significant, historic achievement that has made America a better place.
00:11:26.560It doesn't solve all of our problems, but it's something that no president was able to do before him, and that's not his only achievement.
00:11:31.900So he's got real things to talk about, real things that he can kind of brag about.
00:11:37.400And so if I'm advising him, it's real simple.
00:11:52.020But part of the point of the State of the Union is supposed to be ā this is where we are right now.
00:11:57.560This is the state of things right now.
00:11:58.720So it's kind of also a review of the past year and being able to highlight those things and also, again, being able to contrast that with how the Democrats react to it.
00:12:08.120I mean, politically, that's going to be very powerful because I think that, as you mentioned, we saw this last year in the room, that they refused to applaud anything.
00:12:19.740And so I would guess ā I mean, this is one prediction I'll make is that when he has the line about political violence, condemning political violence, and he mentions Erica, I'm going to guess that a lot of Democrats are not going to applaud that because they're going to perceive that correctly in a lot of ways as a repudiation of them because all the political violence is coming from the left, and these are the people that have explicitly or implicitly encouraged it.
00:12:45.940So I think even something like that, we're not going to get a unified response, and that will tell the American people a lot, I think.
00:12:55.460So, Drew, you know, I'm going to ask you the same question.
00:12:58.360You're now advising the president, and aside from telling him that he probably should not say that the Supreme Court is in the pay of a foreign power and that also he's amazing at reading legal opinions, what else would you tell the president to highlight?
00:13:10.660I think a key thing here ā you know, the polls are really bad for the president.
00:13:14.260People are actually saying that they were better off a year ago, and it's hard for me to see how that could possibly be true.
00:13:20.840I mean, not only is the border closed, crime is down, drug use is down, imports of drugs are down.
00:13:25.800All of these things have actually improved, but it's got to be about the economy and I think the affordability question.
00:13:31.780And the thing ā I do not believe it would be possible to impress this on Donald Trump, but it's not a bad idea for him to acknowledge the fact that people are unhappy.
00:13:40.460You know, this is something I used to say through the whole Biden administration.
00:13:44.380People were going, you know, the inflation is killing us.
00:13:47.020Biden's people would come out and say, no, no, you're really happy.
00:13:50.560You know, I thought like, you know, I think people know when they can't make the rent.
00:13:54.620I think people know when they can't get their kids the Christmas presents they want.
00:13:57.820I think they know when they're not buying the same foods they were able to afford before.
00:14:01.440So if people are saying they're unhappy about the economy, they probably are, and there's probably no chart you can point to and no statistic you can point to that's going to make them feel better.
00:14:10.760So it wouldn't be a bad thing if Trump could muster up just that little mustard seed of humility.
00:14:15.640And I know, don't laugh when I say Trump and humility in the same sentence, but, you know, if they could just muster that little bit of humility to say, hey, you know, I know this is not going as fast as I wish it would, but it is going to go faster and this is why.
00:14:29.580You know, and I think that that's just something that is not in Trump's repertoire, and yet I think it would go a long way to just say, you know, it's not about, it's not always about Donald Trump.
00:14:39.880It's sometimes about the people, and the people do feel bad about the economy.
00:14:44.900It does seem to me that things have picked up, that not only has inflation gone down, but wages have actually gone up and outstripped inflation.
00:14:52.540But apparently people are not feeling that yet, and hopefully they will soon, and hopefully that will turn around the predictions about the midterms.
00:15:01.300You know, for my part, I will say that I think that the thing that has been missing, and this is true for both parties, I think the president has done an amazing job of fixing many of the problems left in his lap by Joe Biden.
00:15:13.740I think that wiping out DEI, closing the southern border, as Matt mentions, going after the transgender agenda, these are all huge gaping holes in the American psyche that the president has done a great job of working to heal.
00:15:26.480I think that what people are missing, and I think where people are feeling dyspeptic, which is my new favorite word, and also, you know, just feeling uneasy in their stomachs, is they don't know what are they supposed to think the country looks like in three years.
00:15:41.500There are a lot of worries out there about AI, and I don't think those worries are completely unjustified.
00:15:46.140Again, I tend to be more of a tech optimist.
00:15:48.000Matt would like to take every computer, apparently, in America and just smash it with a hammer, sort of like office space.
00:15:53.900But I think that Matt's sentiment, even for people who are tech optimists, were like, well, I think it'll be okay, but I'm not kind of like sure it's going to be okay.
00:16:01.920And I think there are a lot of people out there who are wondering, what does life actually look like three years from now?
00:16:06.700So listing off the accomplishments is one thing, but saying, look, here's what you can look forward to, right?
00:16:11.000If things go the way that I want them to go, here is what industries are looking like.
00:16:15.540Here's what your job looks like in a couple of years.
00:16:18.140Here's what the international scene looks like in a couple of years, right?
00:16:21.200Just read the trend lines that I've created and take people to a future and then say, and if you stick with me, we can get to this future together.
00:16:28.020And that's something that actually no president that I can remember has actually ever done.
00:16:31.840I think they virtually all talked about the thing they did in the last year, but none of them has actually talked about what they want the future to look like in sort of real terms that people can wrap their brains around.
00:16:40.840The White House did on their YouTube feed actually put out an AI.
00:16:44.620And again, we'll talk about things that I have wonders whether they help.
00:16:49.580They put out an AI of President Trump listing his accomplishments.
00:16:53.900It is a little weird and makes me also want to smash computers with a hammer, actually.
00:17:25.980One of the things that really bothers me about the conversation, the American conversation, is we've skipped over that part where people say like, wow, human beings invented artificial intelligence.
00:18:21.080And I'm certainly not the only one because when I look at it, as I've expressed a million times, what I see is a very high probability that at a minimum in the short to midterm, AI is going to come in, already has come in, and is going to wipe out millions and millions and millions of jobs.
00:18:58.280And this is why, again, I think that it would be great if you did it.
00:19:00.700I mean, if I were writing the speech for the president, what I would probably say is your medical care is going to get wildly cheaper and better because of AI, which is just true.
00:19:07.920It's going to get so much cheaper and so much better in the next five years.
00:19:10.420It's going to make your head explode with how good it is.
00:19:12.980But the possibility of you being able to organize your life in better ways is already here.
00:19:17.960I mean, cloud AI is doing extraordinary stuff in terms of you being able to organize your workflow.
00:19:23.080Small businesses are going to be able to start because the cost of starting a small business is going to be reduced so much you won't have to take out big debts in order to go hire five people to start your business.
00:19:31.480You're going to be able to use AI to do all that sort of work.
00:19:34.180You as a worker are going to become significantly more productive, which means that presumably your hours will be able to be shorter because you're able to be so much more productive with this stuff.
00:19:42.720There's going to be expansion, particularly in industries where you use your hands.
00:19:46.240There's going to be a lot of expansion in industries where the human body actually matters.
00:19:49.700The places that are going to get hit pretty hard are the white collar industries and particularly kind of lower half of white collar.
00:25:24.060So that same kind of unbridled, you know, feeling that he brings to his substance, which is great,
00:25:30.120he brings to his style, which is not so great.
00:25:31.900Well, I think this is where, you know, again, the president is at his best.
00:25:34.980Where he can really deploy that is when he's got his book of enemies open and he because he is he is absolutely the most effective destroyer in modern American history.
00:25:44.700He what I've always said about the president is that he has the art of politics is making it very hard to vote for your opponents and easy to vote for you.
00:25:50.520And he's always been amazing at the former and, you know, kind of mixed bag at the latter.
00:25:54.720Right. He's great at making it hard to vote for Democrats.
00:25:57.300And so the question, you know, Matt, is who again, the president is looking for a target.
00:26:03.740What is the target? Who is the target?
00:26:05.500How how does he singularly polarize around a Democratic target?
00:26:08.760Who is the who's the target rich environment that he should be going after right now?
00:26:12.300I don't know. I mean, I think they all kind of are the the the the good thing that we have.
00:26:16.580And we're talking about returning. Americans want normal.
00:26:18.820We want a sense of normalcy. I think that's true.
00:26:20.500And it brings to mind Gavin Newsom, who just I think yesterday was on CNN saying that, well, you know, the Democrats need to be a little bit more culturally normal.
00:26:29.760So he's he's doing his whole his whole moderate shtick, you know, which, of course, is a shtick.
00:26:34.380He mentions pronouns. So he said maybe we won't be so focused on the pronouns.
00:26:38.320Very boldly coming out against the pronoun thing four years after that peaked anyway.
00:26:43.320But the advantage that that Trump has and Republicans have is that Democrats actually can't do that.
00:26:50.380Like, at least in theory, Republicans can be normal.
00:26:54.680Many times a lot of weird stuff happens among Republicans, but we they can be normal.
00:26:58.880That is a possible thing. With Democrats, it's not even possible.
00:27:01.500It's like inherently impossible because it's they're progressive.
00:27:05.200And so what that means and they would even admit this if you framed it in a more positive way.
00:27:10.020But it means that you're constant. It's a it's a constant state of transformation all the time.
00:27:14.600So there's always a new normal, you know. And so if there's always a new normal, it means that there's never a normal at all.
00:27:20.280And so Democrats are just not just not capable of it.
00:27:22.800I mean, they literally march under a banner that says dismantle.
00:27:26.160You know, that's that's that they they they are the party.
00:27:29.320They are the side that uses a word like dismantle in a positive way.
00:27:32.300Conservatives almost never do that. And what are they always trying to dismantle?
00:27:35.420It's always like fundamental aspects of human society, nuclear family and so on.
00:30:14.600I mean, I could see him being the usher.
00:30:15.820I mean, my assumption is that in order for you to go to the State of the Union, you have to be hit in the teeth with a hockey stick.
00:30:20.600So I volunteer right now to make that happen.
00:30:23.840That would actually improve Knowles' face.
00:30:25.820Okay, so, Matt, I do want your rant on how much Canada sucks, because that was pretty great.
00:30:31.060I mean, the United States, if you could not feel a surge of pride at us defeating our communist northern neighbors who murder the disabled, then I'm not sure what exactly we're doing here.
00:30:40.780Yeah, and it was the first hockey game that I've watched all the way through, and it was actually pretty exciting, but most exciting just to watch Canada get vanquished.
00:30:55.380And what makes it so hilarious, of course, as many people have pointed out, is that hockey is the only thing they know how to do.
00:31:11.980We barely even know it exists, and then we just kind of wander over there.
00:31:15.200We're like, yeah, fine, we'll take the gold in that.
00:31:16.760So my whole pitch was that I think we should just do this now, and I think our next project should be assemble the greatest cricket team that the world has ever seen, and then go and dominate in cricket.
00:31:28.620And I want a bunch of drunk Americans going to the Cricket World Series or whatever it's called, tailgating outside, being obnoxious, bragging.
00:31:35.480We don't even know how the game is played or anything about it.
00:31:40.640And I will also say, just on the Canada point, that I'm not totally making the argument that we absolutely should invade Canada and depose its regime.
00:31:53.140But I am saying that given that America has done this, and we just did it in Venezuela, many of the arguments that have applied and have justified those actions, if you favored them, really do apply to Canada.
00:32:08.560It's not a crazy thing to talk about, and as you mentioned, Ben, I mean, they are in the middle of a campaign of eugenics.
00:32:15.480They are executing not terminally ill people, but thousands of people who are just chronically ill, which is to say they're sick, but they're not going to die of the sickness.
00:32:25.200And that's just what they're burning down churches, not arresting anybody for it, you know, a partial birth abortion.
00:32:30.800I mean, it's really just a parade of atrocities in Canada.
00:32:33.360And so I don't know, it's something we should talk about.
00:32:35.040Maybe Trump will speculate about it in the State of the Union.
00:32:39.680Well, also, by the way, we should mention here, before Walsh ducks out and gets his nighty-night sleep, that he has a new episode of Real History that is out right now about the history, the real history of Native Americans, about American Indians.
00:32:52.120That episode is episode two in his wildly popular Real History series.
00:32:55.740Matt, maybe you want to give people a quick rundown.
00:32:57.460By the way, you can only get that if you subscribe, because if you don't give us money, then we can't do things at this company, people.
00:33:02.600So if you want to see that and also give us money, then you should definitely subscribe to see Matt's Real History.
00:33:07.100Matt, give a little bit of a pitch to episode two for yourself.
00:33:11.040This was a fun one to do, and it's a topic that's really interested me for a long time.
00:33:17.040I've been on this soapbox about the Native Americans for a long time.
00:33:22.380And it's really important, because this is, we heard it from Billie Eilish at the Grammys, and this is the idea that America is built on stolen land.
00:33:33.080And that idea, as silly as it is, has been very persuasive to a lot of people.
00:33:37.160It's been a justification for some of the worst policies that we've ever seen and some of the worst tyranny in this country and in places like Canada as well.
00:33:46.840Well, so part of what we're doing in this episode is kind of inspecting that claim.
00:35:49.340It is a small crowd, still not much of an update.
00:35:53.820We just had Chris Van Hollen talk to people.
00:35:56.680He talked about Minneapolis and how people need to be like the protesters in Minneapolis and, you know, rise ahead into the event, whatever.
00:36:05.040And then other update, we just had a national scientist.
00:36:37.320We got to get the guy who really is going to sell this thing.
00:36:40.200Let's get Chris Van Hollen, most recently seen like a schmuck down in El Salvador, hanging out with Camaro Abrego Garcia, the guy who was alleged to have beaten his wife.
00:36:48.480Well, meanwhile, the first family has arrived in the box, Baron Trump, whose head stretches all the way to the top of the Capitol Dome, is standing there.
00:37:13.060There's a beautiful first lady that we've got.
00:37:14.980She hasn't been on the cover of one lousy magazine.
00:37:17.580Can you imagine the small, kind of like miserly pinch-heartedness of going, we're not going to let her on the magazine because people might think she was pretty, you know?
00:37:26.340Dude, the magazines are so bad that Time magazine featured Eileen Gu, like the lady-
00:38:49.740That is the next Matt Walsh documentary.
00:38:51.720And it was unfair, because they unleashed the same amount of hate against her that they unleashed against you, and she was just showing off her clothes.
00:39:21.420There won't be hard drugs, because I know that there are law enforcement authorities watching.
00:39:26.520But we will be here back with you on the other end for all of our hot takes.
00:39:30.440Michael Knowles will somehow make his way to a place where we can talk to him, God love us all, and others.
00:39:36.420A wild cast of luminaries will be joining us post the State of the Union after the President speaks, which may or may not end anytime in the future.
00:39:46.360So we still have people who are entering the chamber.
00:47:26.560I mean, like eat like trash, but don't have beer and also don't exercise.
00:47:31.460And you can, you too can be president of the United States and be extraordinarily well preserved.
00:47:35.520This is why it was always so funny, Democrats trying to come back at the president with, well, you know, just like Joe, you're just like Joe Biden.
00:47:42.280And it was like, no, you know what he's not like is Joe Biden, who was legitimately a barely ambulatory corpse by the time he left the office.
00:47:51.800So Isabel Brown is there tonight as well.
00:47:53.960So half the Daily Wire team or more is there.
00:47:57.140He kind of walked right by John Roberts and right over to Brett Kavanaugh, which is not exactly surprising.
00:48:02.400He kind of ignored Amy Coney Barrett right there.
00:48:04.260He's he's shaking the hands of the Supreme Court justices.
00:48:06.920He likes he's playing duck, duck goose with the Supreme Court justices, basically.
00:48:11.020And now he is greeting the general, the the chiefs of staff or the armed forces of the military and making his way up onto the podium.
00:48:19.740Democrats are standing there not clapping.
00:48:22.140You can see Elizabeth Warren in the background as as as non-moving as the stature we have of her in our studios.
00:48:28.040And and the president is making his way up to the podium right now is he is getting a big ovation from the Republican side of the aisle.
00:48:35.820Of course, J.D. Vance behind him, the vice president, speaker of the House behind him as well.
00:48:40.680The president is approaching the microphone is in a wave to the room a little bit.
00:48:47.600I assume that in a couple of moments he will begin to speak everyone on the Republican side of the aisle on their feet up to and including the rafters, the Trump family, which, of course, is very large, is up in the rafters cheering.
00:48:57.720You can see there there's a tremendous enthusiasm for the Republican side of the aisle on the president pointing to members of the crowd clapping as he as he prepares to walk forward to the speech.
00:49:07.860Again, one of the benefits of having Mike Johnson behind the president is that he won't be ripping up the president's speech in the immediate aftermath of the State of the Union address.
00:49:16.360The president turning to the vice president as well as the speaker in just a moment.
00:49:21.180He will be approaching the microphone to begin speaking.
00:49:27.720In just a moment, we're going to go live to the president of the United States in the room.
00:49:33.580Pretty long ovation here in front of the president.
00:49:37.240It's good. It's good color commentary, Ben.
00:56:48.280And in actuality, the number is much higher than that.
00:56:51.280And California, Massachusetts, Maine, and many other states are even worse.
00:56:57.280This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation.
00:57:01.280And we are working on it like you wouldn't believe.
00:57:04.280So tonight, although it started four months ago, I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President, J.D. Vance.
00:57:15.280The only thing standing between Americans and a wide open border right now is President Donald J. Trump and our great Republican patriots in Congress.
00:57:53.280That is why I'm also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials.
00:58:03.280Who blocked the removal of criminal aliens.
00:58:07.280In many cases, drug lords, murderers all over our country.
00:58:11.280They're blocking the removal of these people out of our country.
00:58:16.280And you should be ashamed of yourself.
00:58:18.280And no more crooked mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military or travel. None.
01:01:50.280As President, I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must.
01:01:54.280That's why, in a breakthrough operation last June, the United States military obliterated Iran's nuclear weapons program with an attack on Iranian soil known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
01:02:17.280After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, and in particular, nuclear weapons.
01:02:30.280Yet they continue starting it all over.
01:02:33.280We wiped it out, and they want to start all over again.
01:02:36.280For years, large swaths of territory in our region, including large parts of Mexico, really large parts of Mexico,
01:02:45.280have been controlled by murderous drug cartels.
01:02:49.280That's why I designated these cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,
01:02:54.280and I declared illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
01:03:00.280We've also taken down one of the most sinister cartel kingpins of all.
01:05:01.280The only thing I would say differently than that is I don't think the takeaway was how badly they acted.
01:05:05.280I think it's how brutally he slapped them down.
01:05:08.280And I am not somebody who's always in favor of Trump's tendency to brutality against his enemies.
01:05:13.280But tonight I was because the Democrats have been behaving like this for years.
01:05:17.280They've been having been behaving like this is not their country, that this country is not our country, that this is not the place they work for.
01:05:23.280The only time they cite American freedoms is when they're defending a gangster or an illegal immigrant or a killer.
01:05:29.280They never cite them in favor of actual American natives.
01:06:52.280Well, Mary Margaret Ohan, our White House reporter, is here with us.
01:06:55.280So, Mary Margaret, you're in the room for what was sort of the mood?
01:06:58.280Obviously, when when you have these sorts of events, you have the Republicans on one side of the aisle, the Democrats on the other side of the aisle.
01:07:03.280Yeah, the the the big game seems to be now trying to figure out when Democrats stand when it when they don't stand.
01:07:08.280Were there any moments where they actually stood in unity or was pretty much on their hands the entire time?
01:07:12.280No, I wouldn't say there were any moments when everyone stood in unity.
01:07:17.280I think, you know, many of them stood for Charlie Kirk, thankfully, and there was a chance of Charlie Charlie Charlie Charlie.
01:07:24.280And I think in general, the mood in the room was the Democrats on the one hand kind of saltily sitting around and then a few of the more radical Democrats shouting, yelling.
01:07:34.280In fact, I'm hearing from other reporters in the room.
01:07:37.280I didn't hear it myself that Ilhan Omar said the F word at one point towards Trump.
01:08:25.280He knows that he needs to spend a lot of time reaching American voters, letting them know what his agenda is.
01:08:31.280And to me, a lot of this was showing American voters, don't forget that the Democrats are not on your side.
01:08:37.280Look at all these different examples of things that they don't stand with you with.
01:08:41.280Don't forget that they still support radical gender ideology.
01:08:45.280Don't forget that they don't want to protect your young women on the Metro.
01:08:48.280They don't care about your young women as they're taking Metro rides and if they're brutally killed by violent criminals.
01:08:54.280And so all of these messages are going to make for fantastic talking points going forward.
01:08:59.280They're going to make for fantastic stories going forward.
01:09:02.280And, you know, especially when it came to gender ideology, I found this really interesting because you all know that I spent a lot of time covering this before I became the White House correspondent.
01:09:11.280He harpened on that one specific word, crazy.
01:09:17.280And that is one of the messages of his 2024 campaign that I think resonated so deeply with American voters who are so tired of hearing about radical gender ideology and being told that it was normal and not insane.
01:09:29.280And so he's hearkening back to those words and reminding the public, no, it's not OK for a little girl to be taken away from her parents by the state and transitioned.
01:09:38.280And he actually suggested he might do something about that as well, which I have a lot of sources telling me they're trying to get him to sign an executive order on that.
01:09:45.280So I was really interested in that as well.
01:09:48.280And one of the things that I think was pretty astonishing about the speech is how little actual policy there was in it.
01:09:53.280So he mentioned some of the policies that, of course, he has promoted.
01:09:56.280As you say, Mary Margaret, he moved really fast through that.
01:09:59.280So he would mention a policy that he'd done and then he'd move pretty quickly into story time.
01:10:04.280And he would pick somebody out of the audience and explain how the policy had personally impacted somebody in the audience rather than going into the details of the policy,
01:10:11.280which I thought was actually quite smart because of the overall sort of tenor of the speech was less about here are the things that I'm doing that you may or may not agree with or understand and more about.
01:10:20.280I actually care about people and these people over here don't care about people and them not clapping for the people became, I thought, his chief weapon tonight.
01:10:28.280I thought he used it to great effect for those who missed it.
01:10:30.280Obviously, the most evocative moment was a moment when the president got into a war of wars with Ilhan Omar.
01:10:36.280He was speaking about fraud in Somali communities in Minnesota.
01:10:40.280She started screaming back at him, saying that he should be ashamed of himself.
01:13:37.280He loves these guys genuinely, as we know from the video of him interacting with them as they were in the locker room celebrating their win.
01:13:44.280I heard that these guys were hanging out in a side room with pizza and beer, which I think is a fun way to help them enjoy the State of the Union
01:13:51.280without being too locked in while they're still celebrating.
01:13:54.280And, you know, this is just a very fun part of this evening and I think also lends itself to the very patriotic element of this State of the Union.
01:14:03.280You know, we're celebrating American excellence. We're celebrating patriotism. We're celebrating, for example, this service member who was part of the raid on Maduro.
01:14:12.280I loved the story that the president told about him, how his wife dipped his dog tags in holy water before he left because she knew he was going on some dangerous mission.
01:14:22.280And now he was here and honored in front of the whole world for his heroism in that mission.
01:14:28.280So just so many examples like this of Americans being honored and the president celebrating how truly amazing our country is.
01:14:36.280And it gives me chills just talking about it. It's just we've been experiencing patriotism unlike anything we've seen in many years.
01:14:43.280And it's a lot of fun to be a part of it.
01:14:47.280Now, Drew, obviously you mentioned earlier the these people are crazy clip. So did you, Mary Margaret.
01:14:52.280And we do have that clip as well for those who missed it.
01:14:55.280This was the moment when the president basically lost it at the Democrats for failing to recognize that, hey, maybe, you know, treating minor girls as though they are boys is a crazy thing to do.
01:15:05.280Here's what that sounded like when the president went off.
01:15:09.280These people are crazy. I'm telling you, they're crazy.
01:15:14.280We're lucky we have a country with people like this. Democrats are destroying our country, but we've stopped it just in the nick of time, didn't we?
01:15:36.280Yeah. You know, this is a really a really interesting question about this.
01:15:41.280We always talk about the State of the Union and we always try to be honest about the fact that it usually doesn't move the needle very much, but it can change the dialogue sometimes.
01:15:50.280And one of the things that's been shocking to me as Trump's polls have not been very good, as people have said unbelievably that they're still as bad.
01:15:59.280They're worse off than they were a year ago. One of the things that will be interesting to see if maybe he did remind people of what it was like under Joe Biden, why they voted him back into office and what it would be like to have them back.
01:16:12.280I mean, how can anybody think, you know, Trump is so bad, this guy is so bad that we have to go back to children being butchered, to people being hired according to race, to this absolute unrelenting hatred of the country as an entity.
01:16:27.280I just it's hard for me to see how people can really think that I may be wrong.
01:16:32.280Maybe the polls are right. But I do wonder if that if that idea is so fragile that he may be broken.
01:16:38.280You know, Drew, I think I think one of the things that that tonight showed and I think this is why Republicans have been looking for a face of the opposition to identify.
01:16:45.280I think one of the big flaws that Republicans had to face down is the fact that Joe Biden was so forgettable that we've all forgotten that he was president already.
01:16:51.280I mean, truly, like he was such a non entity that by the end of his presidency, he was not even really the president.
01:16:56.280Kamala Harris was effectively the president. And so what that means is that it's very easy to sort of go, oh, yeah, who was even president before this guy?
01:17:03.280Maybe it was better. Like it doesn't even clock in your memory that Joe Biden was president.
01:17:07.280Joe Biden was president. If you had told me that Donald Trump was president and then he was president again and there was no kind of mid middle term of Joe Biden that that wouldn't shot like 30 years from now.
01:17:18.280People are not going to remember that in the same way that people kind of don't remember the Benjamin Harrison served between Grover Cleveland.
01:17:23.280You know, I think that that that that is going to be a reality. And so I think that's been a challenge for President Trump.
01:17:29.280There is no one of his stature in the Democratic Party for him to pummel.
01:17:32.280And I think that one of the things that you saw tonight, and this is why that Ilhan Omar Rashida Tlaib fail is a real fail for the Democrats.
01:17:39.280And I think a real danger for the Democrats. People don't like those people. They don't like them.
01:17:44.280The Ilhan Omar and Rashida. Yes. I mean, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are totally radical and insane.
01:17:50.280Rashida Tlaib was wearing watermelon earrings in solidarity with the Hamas, the Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
01:17:57.280Rashida Tlaib was wearing a button that said F ice on the air.
01:18:01.280Right. There is a point at which Ilhan Omar pretty clearly on camera mouthed about the president that he was a sick F.
01:18:08.280Like all that stuff was happening. It was all on camera.
01:18:11.280And so when you put that on the camera, you say, OK, here are your choices.
01:18:14.280It's this versus this. President Trump in a vacuum always doesn't pull very well.
01:18:18.280He never has pulled amazingly in a vacuum going all the way back to 2015, 2016.
01:18:22.280It always tends to pull a lot better the minute you put somebody else on the other side.
01:18:25.280Because, again, as I said earlier on the show, Mary Margaret, you know, there are two things in politics that are important.
01:18:30.280One is making it hard to vote for your opponent. And second is making it easy to vote for you.
01:18:34.280And the president sometimes has trouble with the second. But he's always very, very good at the first.
01:18:38.280And he needs an opponent. I've been saying for a decade that the president is a hammer in search of a nail.
01:18:44.280And when there aren't enough nails, he starts to hit kittens. Well, right now, he may have found some nails to hammer here.
01:18:50.280And I think that tonight was pretty good evidence of that, Mary Margaret.
01:18:55.280Absolutely. And I mean, earlier today we saw Kamala Harris saying that she might be considering running again.
01:19:00.280So I'm sure the president is excited to actually have a foe on the other side of the aisle because until now we haven't had anyone truly declare.
01:19:07.280So we might have another Kamala and that would be a very fun presidential run.
01:19:12.280But, yeah, I think the president is looking out there. He's seeing Ilhan Omar in a hijab, shouting insults, shouting swear words, just shouting and acting in a rowdy way.
01:19:20.280And she's not a formidable opponent. She's she's very aggressively progressive.
01:19:25.280She's very radical. The whole world knows that. So that's that's an easy win for the White House where they can point to her and say, Americans don't agree with you.
01:19:32.280And in Kamala Harris, he might have a might have a better opponent.
01:19:37.280But, you know, he's got Gavin Newsom imitating his style on Twitter. Again, it's not a formidable opponent.
01:19:42.280And so when it comes to things like this where he can literally look the American people in the eye and say, do you see all these Democrats not standing for the things that you care about so deeply?
01:19:52.280And I keep coming back to that young woman who was on the train, who was so cruelly attacked by that criminal and killed.
01:19:58.280This actually happened maybe days before Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
01:20:01.280And it was one of the last things that he himself talked about, how deeply he felt this.
01:20:06.280And to see these Democrats not stand for her mother, just unthinkable.
01:20:10.280So I think that's one that's really going to resonate with people is going to stay with us for a long time.
01:20:15.280And whether or not these people are protesting specific policies, they have to understand that these are real lived American stories.
01:20:23.280They're the most powerful weapon that we have in favor of the truth, because they literally lived these things.
01:20:29.280And so Trump having all these Democrats look them in the eye and not do anything about it, I just, it was very well done, very well executed in terms of a oration style strategy.
01:20:41.280And I think his comms team is probably patting themselves on the back tonight because this was a well played speech.
01:20:48.280You know, the president obviously took on inflation as well. He talked a lot about the economy.
01:20:54.280He really relegated his foreign policy remarks to the end, which I think is smart politics.
01:20:59.280Obviously, the American people are much more concerned about domestic political issues than they are right now about foreign policy.
01:21:04.280It was sort of fascinating on a foreign policy level to hear what the president had to say, given the fact that we have such an enormous military presence ready in the Middle East right now about Iran.
01:21:13.280Obviously, the president's comments about Iran, he seems skeptical of the idea that Iran is going to come through with some sort of last minute concessions.
01:21:21.280His he's maintaining the same position he has maintained for legitimately his entire political career, which is that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
01:21:28.280But he went a little bit further than that as well, talking about their ballistic missile capacity, their attempts to redevelop terrorist support.
01:21:35.280All of those sort of issues in negotiation.
01:21:38.280There is supposed to be at the end of this week some sort of proposal from the Iranians, a sort of last ditch proposal to stave off the possibility of American strikes.
01:21:46.280Here is what the president of the United States had to say about Iran in the middle of the speech.
01:21:52.280My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy.
01:21:57.280But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon.
01:22:22.280For a while there, we were we were OK.
01:22:25.280But now Michael has arrived looking looking dapper, his hair a little bit must after spending nine hours in that room during the State of the Union address.
01:22:34.280I do have to say he's got the young Republican look going there.
01:26:50.280And yeah, there are the Democrats committing political suicide on the air. So again, amazing decisions being made there. Now, Michael, obviously the president comes into this with a low approval rating, historically low approval rating for him. The midterm elections, right now, Democrats are running about five points ahead in the generic congressional ballot.
01:27:10.560But the real question about every State of the Union address, as we were discussing beforehand, is whether it really is going to reset the table. Will it be a sort of inflection point or will it just be a thing that happened? And a week from now, we'll be back to sort of business as usual. What do you make of it? Do you think the president can generate some sort of lasting momentum on the back of what was a pretty tremendous speech?
01:27:29.880This was a great pivot. And I'm not saying that this will save the midterms for the Republicans or anything. But it certainly reset the message in exactly the way the president had to do it. We were all making our predictions before the State of the Union. And I got a bunch of the particulars wrong, you know, how long it would be or who he'd call out or whatever. But the one part that I got right wasn't even a prediction of what would happen so much as something I was really hoping would happen, which is that President Trump would say,
01:27:59.600look, look, Americans, we're making you safer. We're making this country normal again. These people, those people over there are crazy. That was an actual line from the speech. And it completely landed because the Dems refused to back down from transing the kids. I mean, it was, you know, the extreme of their ideology. What he had to do was say, look, Americans, I understand that you feel things are a little precarious right now, whether we're talking about migration, whether we're talking about the economy. This is why I think some of the economic favorability,
01:28:29.460the economy numbers are low, even though a lot of the actual nuts and bolts of the economy are pretty good. It's just people feel uneasy. They feel big shifts. They are uncertain about the future. And what Trump had to do is say, we've got you. We're the adults in the room. We're going to make you safe. We're going to make you wealthy. We're going to restore the norms and the kind of country that you've loved for 250 years because this is America's birthday.
01:28:54.660I think he completely achieved that objective. And so I think it does give him very good momentum going into the midterms. But of course, now one speech is not enough. Now the Republicans need to stay on message. Impossible for Republicans. And two, they need to be able to carry that through the miasma of misinformation and Democrat ops through November.
01:29:17.660I mean, obviously, I think that it is true that Republicans must stay on message. It will definitely help if we don't have to deal with questions about whether Erica Kirk killed her husband or not. That seems to be a gigantic fail that is happening in the midst of the Republican online space.
01:29:35.220That seems like a very stupid thing for people to follow a rabbit hole on. And a lot of the infighting that's been happening around conspiracy theories surrounding the president.
01:29:43.280If you would like to see the president not impeached after the Democrats win back Congress, then now would be a really good time to actually look at all the things that he has done over the course of the last year to fix many of the problems left by Joe Biden.
01:29:54.560Mary Margaret, what is actually on the schedule for the president in the coming days and the coming weeks?
01:29:59.860Because very often you'll see after the State of the Union that there's sort of a tour that happens where the president goes around and tries to retail some of the bigger messages that he has been pushing.
01:30:11.560Yeah, the president is flying out of state to have another affordability event.
01:30:15.740These are something that we hear about a lot because the legacy press is obsessed with asking the White House, why isn't the president talking about affordability more, though he talks about it all the time.
01:30:24.300And so currently this week, I believe he's headed to Georgia. I need to double check on which state, but he is having another affordability event.
01:30:31.340These are really heralded or shepherded by Susie Wiles, who's really trying to keep the president focused on this affordability message so that, you know, all these critics who are saying he's too focused on foreign policy won't be able to say, I told you so, when the midterms come and go, if the president doesn't do so well, if his candidates don't do so well.
01:30:49.120So that's definitely on his radar. But all of these topics that we heard him talking about tonight, going into the future, these are things that he's going to continue talking about.
01:30:58.500We were able to pretty accurately assess what he'd be talking about tonight based on what the White House has been harping on.
01:31:04.040They've been really consistent in what they're focused on, what they're talking about.
01:31:07.980It's the economy. It's immigration. It's keeping our city safe. It's this foreign policy ending all these wars.
01:31:13.700They've been very consistent and focused on these issues, and the president has been hammering this home.
01:31:17.860So I think when you head into the midterms, unlike what we're hearing from legacy media, that Americans only care about affordability, that this is all they want to hear about from the president,
01:31:27.420there's a lot of different topics that we've been hearing the president talk about.
01:31:31.240And like I was saying earlier, this sense of patriotism and pride in our country, I don't think that's lost on the public.
01:31:37.480I don't think that the USA men's hockey team winning this victory, I don't know that that's just a victory on the, I was going to say the hockey field.
01:31:46.400I don't know how to talk about sports. The hockey rink. I think it's bigger than that, and we all see that.
01:31:51.800It's this sense that this is bigger than sports. This is bigger than these hockey players.
01:31:56.940This is American pride returning to our country.
01:31:59.860And so these are all things that are playing into the situation going forward, and the president can talk about them all.
01:32:05.680But now he also can talk about these Democrats not standing for these very important issues.
01:32:11.320And when Ilhan Omar goes home tonight and she gets all excited to have her team post that clip on Instagram of her just sitting there for all these issues, that's her big win.
01:32:20.240That's the Democrats' big win tonight.
01:32:21.540And they clearly don't understand the massively tragic optics of these things.
01:32:26.980So for Trump and his team, I think they're going to go to bed feeling pretty good about themselves tonight.
01:32:31.940And they'll have a lot to talk about on the road on these affordability campaign stops.
01:32:35.760And I don't think it will be just affordability that will be the topic of conversation.
01:32:40.260Well, Mary Margaret, I know that you need to go to sleep because you need to get up early in the morning and then go cover the rest of this over at the White House.
01:32:49.280And Isabel is going to be joining us in just a moment.
01:32:52.100I know that she was at the State of the Union as well.
01:32:54.960So, Michael, you know, I'm going to ask you some more questions because Drew and I had to suffer for like several hours in your absence.
01:33:01.400You should have heard me tap dancing in order to just get to the president getting to the microphone.
01:33:07.300It was an astonishing feat of leisure to me, I must say myself.
01:33:10.260But, you know, I think that the big question that's always the takeaway from all of this is is also did the president sort of reunify the party?
01:33:18.840This has always been sort of a problem in the aftermath of a second term victory.
01:33:24.120Presidents have a tough time holding their coalition together.
01:33:26.940And obviously you're seeing a lot of fracturing inside the coalition right now.
01:33:31.320I think that, you know, people blame different folks for that fracture.
01:33:35.000But the president is the person who, in the end, is the leader of the coalition.
01:33:38.700And the agenda that he spelled out is a pretty widely agreed upon agenda inside the Republican Party.
01:33:44.220Do you think that he's going to get some of the reluctant Trumpers sort of back on board, given his focus on his victories?
01:33:55.740And it's remarkable because Trump has been called a divisive figure for the last decade, or really more than a decade, but certainly a decade in politics.
01:34:03.700And so the fact that this man is now probably the most unifying figure on the right is really impressive.
01:34:12.300I mean, we saw this in his re-election in that he was re-elected this time with the popular vote.
01:34:17.220And then so much focus has been paid to conspiracy theories and division on infighting on the right and, you know, really factions of the right splintering off into ways that are almost unrecognizable.
01:34:29.560And what I think is quite charming about that, actually, is we seem to look to the activists and the pundits and the chattering class for unity, but they really have no incentive to unify or to even accomplish very much at all in politics.
01:34:44.840And so where pundits and podcasters have been irresponsible with their rhetoric, Mr. Trump, who everyone tells us is the most irresponsible orator of our time, Trump is actually the one who's being responsible here and who is reaching out.
01:34:59.460I think he's really been able to bring together a broad coalition of people.
01:35:03.140And even the way he spoke tonight about foreign policy, you know, there were people who veer a little more on the isolation side, a little more skeptical of intervention, who were up there standing for strength and the Fordo strikes in Iran.
01:35:16.340And there were people who were, you know, there were people who were a little skeptical of, you know, the tariffs who were right up there cheering with President Trump when he was casting a little bit of shade at the Supreme Court, but not too much shade at the Supreme Court because he knows he's going to need the Supreme Court in the future.
01:35:33.580So, you know, Drew loves to talk about how Trump learns things over time, and he obviously does.
01:35:39.960And one of the things he's learned is to be nuanced with his words, and I think that showed tonight.
01:35:46.340Well, I want to welcome in Isabel Brown, and then we can get to Andrew, who has been sitting there, as always, awaiting death.
01:35:54.620But before we do that, Isabel, who is significantly more sprightly than any of us right now.