On this week's episode of Triggered, we discuss the latest in the Michael Cohen case, JD Vance's VP pick, and why he's not a good one. Plus, we take a look at the latest on the Trump administration, and of course there's a little bit of everything else. Enjoy, and tweet me if you like it! Timestamps: 0:00:00 - Michael Cohen is in court 6:30 - What's going on with the Trump/Cohen case 11:00 - Who's going to be the next VP pick? 16:15 - Why JD Vance is a better VP pick than Mike Pence 22:30 - Why Mike Pence is less good than JD Vance 27:00- What's next for the Red Lobster 29:30- Is JD a good pick for VP 32:15 - Is Mike Pence a good VP pick or is he a bad VP pick ? 33:20 - Is he a good deal better than Ted Cruz or Mike Pence? 36:00 -- What's the best VP pick you've ever heard of? 37:10 - Who would you like to see as a VP pick for the 2020 election? 39:15 -- Is JD Vance a good choice? 40:30 -- Is he good at it? 45:20 -- Who's a good bet? 46:00 | JD Vance? 47:10 -- What do you think Mike Pence better than MJ? 48: What's your favorite VP candidate? 51:10 | What would you think JD Vance & Mike Pence's chances of winning in 2020? 55:00 // 56:30 | What's better? Theme song? 57:00 / Theme song by Ian Dorsch? Music by Jeff Kaale Theme Song by Jeffree Starz Theme by Ian Macpherson Music Credit: "Goodbye, My Old Ass" by Skating, My Bad Ass? by Haley & The Good Lady (feat. by The Good Vibes by Fizz & The Bad Vibed Outtro by Haley and the Good Ol Ol' Lady (Goodbye? & the Good Vibrations (Good Morning, Good Morning, Myself? by Mr. Good Ol' Goodbye? by The Bad Bad Voodoo? )
00:18:57.000I apologize for a little bit of the late start, obviously with all the craziness going on today in court in New York.
00:19:06.000Like, I was like, I just want to make sure we have it all so that we can compile it because, you know, we're not going to get to it otherwise till Monday.
00:19:12.000It looks like, looks like Michael Cohen, let's just say, really bombed.
00:19:17.000You know, I know he's been, you know, plotting his revenge for not getting the Chief of Staff position.
00:19:27.000I guess he thought he was going to be the Chief of Staff for some reason.
00:19:32.000No one, no one in our world at that time thought it was realistic.
00:19:35.000It was like one of those things were like we didn't even want him on television because every time you know this is the guy that was like you can't rape your wife on national television I mean he actually said that I'm like Michael this is not uh this is not uh not helpful not helpful at all so I used to you know I'd get calls from guys like Sean Hannity were like, Hey, Michael says he really, you really want him to go on TV tonight.
00:20:40.000Lemonade says, the implosion was awesome.
00:20:43.000I figured I'd do a couple minutes of, you know, questionnaire before I get into the sort of news of the week and then JD Vance, I know a lot of you guys love JD, probably my favorite senator, someone who literally fights for what we actually believe in.
00:20:58.000But just because of the little bit of the delay in the timing and just kind of compiling all of the clips that I was getting last minute, I didn't want to go live and then not have it.
00:21:25.000Usually, you know, like I said, after six o'clock and sometimes I'm up 12 hours of other work before I go live and you get a little bit, a little, little tired.
00:21:39.000Yeah, listen, that'd probably be my pick, because, you know, you watch him, like, he goes on CNN, and he just tears these, like, intellectual lightweights apart, you know?
00:21:49.000He doesn't just do the, they're like, don't you believe January 6th was an insurrection?
00:21:54.000Like, he doesn't just take what they say as gospel, and then, well, yeah, but, you know, he just gives it right back to them.
00:22:02.000So I think he's one of those guys that's, That's really good at it.
00:22:06.000Red Lobster, I know, Red Lobster's going, you know, going chapter 11, I guess it seemed like.
00:22:15.000Someone wrote it down four times, so it must be a very big deal to them.
00:22:19.000You know, I don't know much about it, but I always hate when I see American businesses like that go out, because I understand there's a lot of jobs created with this.
00:22:27.000But, you know, by dynamics and otherwise things probably help that.
00:22:45.000Like, I don't know if you've, if you, you know, you'll see him tonight.
00:22:47.000I'm sure he'll be, uh, you know, measured and not off the cuff, but the best is you watch him like when he does like the CNN interviews and like, you know, when he's really up in there against, uh, You know, the enemy and the spokespersons for the other side.
00:23:02.000He literally just takes all of their stuff and he just tears them apart.
00:23:07.000So he does that so well that my logic for like a J.D.
00:23:10.000Vance, it's partly why like, you know, a J.D., even like a Tucker, someone like that you put in there early, like while they're trying to keep my dad on the stand or, you know, in court forever so he can't campaign.
00:23:23.000You need someone You know, who is going to be able to, like, aggressively prosecute the other side and do that, you know, with like a master class, you know, level of talent.
00:24:22.000I mean, listen, Peter's in prison standing on principle right now.
00:24:26.000I visited him, for those of you who missed Monday's show, I visited him on Saturday at the federal penitentiary in, you know, south of Miami.
00:24:50.000Yeah, that's another, obviously that's going to be a very, a very big one.
00:24:58.000JD's the only one still speaking out for East Palestine, Ohio.
00:25:01.000Yeah, no, it seems like Palestine over in the Middle East, you know, The place known as, you know, even if it's... I haven't quite been able to find it on an accurate map, but minor details.
00:25:13.000Obviously, that's his home state, but like, when that happened, like, he was the guy that... I went up there with my father when that tragedy happened, and we were there before the Biden administration and all that stuff.
00:25:22.000And like, uh, you know, we got there on the ground.
00:25:39.000I like Doug, but I don't know about that for VP.
00:25:42.000You need someone, I think, that's out there showing that they're in there with that experience in government, that's actually taking that on.
00:25:54.000Um, you know, I don't know that, you know, I, well, I know that he's not on, you know, on that shortlist, uh, you know, or anything like that.
00:26:02.000So, you know, of the guys that are, uh, there's some good choices.
00:26:04.000Uh, JD's probably my personal favorite, but, you know, there's, there's a lot that goes into this.
00:26:09.000I'm of the mindset you gotta pick someone now because you need to be out there fighting when they're trying to clearly keep my father away from the fight.
00:26:17.000And I'm sure they'll bring up other stuff or try to push other things forward so that even when this thing's over, you know, they'll get the next thing going.
00:26:24.000So, you know, let's see what happens with that.
00:27:21.000Dan's not a lawyer, though, so I think you probably, you know, if you're gonna be the Attorney General, you probably have to be a lawyer, but he would actually... You may not.
00:27:29.000I mean, I think Dan Bongino would do better than, you know, probably better than, you know, anyone we had in there, so...
00:30:53.000Like, she'd be... She'd be good at that, you know?
00:30:56.000She's one of the, you know, and she does her, like, she's a worker also, so she'll do the homework to, uh... Tanjun, you're digging a hole.
00:32:51.000I'd love for him to be in that position.
00:32:52.000I'd love for him to be in that administration.
00:32:54.000I literally cannot speak more highly of the individual other than, again, in this day and age, in this time, he may be too nice to deal with the insanity of all of that stuff.
00:34:25.000Also, hey, while I got you guys, while you're tuned in, while you're making fun of me for being Orange Man Jr., make sure you guys are hitting the like button.
00:34:39.000The rest of big tech is stacked against us.
00:34:41.000We need to work harder, faster, better.
00:34:45.000More perfectly to make sure we break through all of the noise that we can actually grow this movement.
00:34:50.000Don't forget, guys, you can also get Triggered, this podcast, you can get it on Spotify, you can get it on Apple Podcasts.
00:34:56.000So if you miss the show here on Rumble, if you, you know, if you get your podcast, perhaps when you're, you know, Driving, or traveling, or whatever it may be in other formats.
00:35:05.000Don't forget to download it on there as well.
00:35:07.000Share it with your friends, if perhaps that's where they get their podcasts.
00:35:11.000For all of the headlines that we'll spotlight right here on the show, go over to my news app, MXM News.
00:35:51.000But let's get into some of those top headlines.
00:35:53.000And I'll probably keep going in and out of the commentary because it seems Actually seems really- I like sort of- you guys like when I do the warm-up Q&A just to get things going a little bit or not?
00:36:04.000Little change of pace, we tried something a little different.
00:36:06.000You know, I kind of screwed up with you guys at the time a little bit, so I wanted to make sure everyone could tune in.
00:36:11.000But, you know, I think a couple minutes of that is good, because sometimes I feel like I get to it and it's like, you just see people building, but it takes 10-15 minutes for them to kind of get in there to full effect and they miss half of what I say.
00:36:23.000You're handsome and don't worry, Kim, I'm closer to Trump senior in years.
00:37:36.000It looks like he bombed and we'll get into more details on just what happened in a moment, but I want to begin by playing Some of the reactions from the media, because I think that's important, right?
00:37:47.000And I don't mean conservative media, I mean like, you know, when you're losing CNN, it's a problem.
00:37:52.000It went so poorly for the prosecution today that even deranged, insane, Radical leftist never-Trumpers are having to face actual reality.
00:38:07.000For example, here's unhinged Trump hater and The View co-host Alyssa Farrah saying even she wouldn't or couldn't vote to convict.
00:38:21.000I couldn't today convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
00:38:24.000Michael Cohen is just such a problematic figure.
00:38:27.000And in this own cross, I was just waiting to see somebody who was above board, didn't step in it, didn't lie, didn't end up getting kind of hostile and pushing back in some of these challenges.
00:38:37.000And it's hard for me to believe him when he's misrepresenting something as fundamental as having wanted a job in the White House.
00:38:44.000Now guys, my father's lawyer, Todd Blanche, caught Cohen in such a lie on the witness stand today that Even Anderson Cooper realized it was a disaster for the Democrats' case.
00:38:58.000Witness that piece of cross-examination.
00:39:01.000Do you have doubts that that conversation happened the way Michael Cohen testified on his direct examination?
00:39:11.000I think it's devastating, I mean, for Michael Cohen's credibility on this, I mean, on this one particular topic, whether it's, you know, he just didn't, I mean, it's hard to I don't know.
00:39:23.000I think if I was a juror in this case, watching that, I would think, this guy's making this up as he's going along, or he's making this particular story up.
00:39:33.000You know, Todd Blanch is pointing out, you were testifying just on Tuesday in this court, you know, and all morning long he's been pointing out You know, inconsistencies in Michael Cohen's testimony, or at least questionable aspects of Michael Cohen's testimony, but nothing that you would necessarily, as a juror, think, OK, that's clearly a lie.
00:39:56.000Maybe he was misunderstanding, or he was bragging, or whatever.
00:40:02.000This one, Todd Blanch clearly saved this to right before the lunch break, I'm assuming, because it was just so well crafted.
00:40:12.000And just point by point walking through this story, which at first seemed, you know, why, why this seems like a ridiculous story.
00:40:19.000Some 14 year old is sending him, you know, nasty text messages and he's going to call a Keith Schiller about it.
00:40:25.000And then you realize you look at the, he showed the phone logs that the prosecutor had shown.
00:40:30.000And it's the phone call that, that, that, that Michael Cohen had previously talked about.
00:40:34.000I think it is severely damaging to Michael Cohen's testimony.
00:40:39.000And we've actually been busy right here on the show doing some real investigative reporting, getting inside details on what went on in the courtroom.
00:40:48.000These are some nitty-gritty details, but it's important to understand them all because, again, this is the stuff that won't even make CNN.
00:41:00.000If you've lost them, just understand it's probably so much worse than they'll ever even allude to.
00:41:07.000So we're told that before court broke for lunch, my father's attorney, Todd Blanche, went over call logs.
00:41:13.000Anderson Cooper started talking about this, but the call logs were between Cohen and my father's former bodyguard, Keith Schiller.
00:41:20.000Cohen testified earlier this week that he made a call to Schiller in October 2016 to speak to my father and confirm the so-called hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
00:41:30.000But Blanche questioned Cohen about a series of harassment calls where Cohen claimed he received around the same time, referring to text messages between Cohen and Schiller.
00:41:40.000Blanche pointed to a message exchange where Cohen said a 14-year-old prank called him.
00:41:45.000In the message exchange, Schiller asked Cohen to call him.
00:41:49.000And according to the call logs, the call Cohen made to Schiller was less than two minutes long.
00:41:54.000Blanche made the argument that the call was too short for Cohen to have explained both the prank call and shared confirmation about the payment with my father.
00:42:07.000What my father's lawyer is saying is that the call Cohen claims was him informing my father about the payments was actually a call about him dealing with a prank caller.
00:42:16.000And that he never actually spoke to my father at the time about this payment.
00:42:20.000We understand also, obviously, the DA's office, they misplaced, you know, call logs with Stormy Daniels.
00:42:26.000They misplaced all these things that seem to magically disappear, yet you heard about, and it all starts to make sense.
00:42:33.000Of course, they're covering this stuff up.
00:42:35.000As Todd Bland said to Cohen today, I quote, that was a lie.
00:42:42.000Translation, Cohen is caught red-handed and it appears that he's only helping to sink Alvin Bragg's sham prosecution against my father.
00:42:51.000And if all that wasn't bad enough for Bragg, Biden, Michael Cohen, the Democrats, Michael Cohen's former attorney, Bob Costello, His former attorney, okay, went on TV and laid out how Michael Cohen told him he had no evidence of my father being involved in any crimes.
00:43:26.000...seeking, according to his own words, an escape route.
00:43:30.000I want you guys to tell me how I can get out of this, because he saw these enormous legal problems coming his way that were so bad in his mind that he was willing to kill himself.
00:43:40.000And so I kept on going back and suggesting to him, listen, Michael, if you have something truthful on Donald Trump, Now is the time to cooperate.
00:43:50.000And he kept on saying over and over again, 10 to 20 times, I swear to God, Bob, I don't have anything on Donald Trump.
00:43:57.000I even said to him, Michael, think about this.
00:43:59.000Isn't it easier to cooperate against Donald Trump if you have truthful information than it is to kill yourself?
00:44:14.000He kept on saying, I have nothing on Donald Trump.
00:44:18.000And then when we got into the discussion of the Stormy Daniels NDA, he said specifically, and I cross-examined him on this, this was my idea.
00:44:28.000It was his idea to take care of the NDA because he had been contacted by a lawyer for Stormy Daniels who said she was going to claim that Donald Trump had sex with her.
00:44:38.000Cohen said, I didn't believe the allegation.
00:44:41.000Yeah, I mean, that's Michael Cohen's own lawyer talking about Michael Cohen being a liar.
00:44:45.000I mean, think about how insane that is.
00:44:47.000Now, Michael Cohen, he can go out and he can do his podcast and he can sell merch and try to pitch a reality TV show.
00:44:53.000He can be the most biased human being in the world against Donald Trump.
00:45:01.000He can just say whatever he wants about Trump.
00:45:03.000He can continue his perpetual lies that he's already gone to prison for.
00:45:07.000But, you know, I guess, hey, if you're lying about Trump, I guess you can keep doing it and that's okay.
00:45:12.000Only Donald Trump is not allowed to talk to defend himself against this insanity.
00:45:16.000Only Donald Trump has his First Amendment rights stripped away from him.
00:45:21.000But Alvin Bragg is living in an alternate reality.
00:45:25.000He wants to bring a baseless case he doesn't even have the power to enforce for violations that don't actually exist.
00:45:32.000He hasn't even said what the actual crime is.
00:45:34.000It's just this is in preparation of these crimes and I guess they wait till see what the rest of the testimony comes and maybe maybe they'll tell my father what he's actually accused of at the end.
00:46:11.000Biden will be forced to defend his awful record and his agenda at this bait, but he's going to have to answer for a record of high inflation, a bad economy, and a crisis that he caused at the southern border.
00:46:23.000And that's before we even get into the wars.
00:46:26.000We just got new numbers showing how bad the border has gotten under Biden.
00:46:31.000The Border Patrol keeps stats on so-called gotaways.
00:46:35.000These are illegal immigrants who avoided agents but were detected by forms of surveillance such as cameras, sensors, drones, whatever it may be.
00:46:43.000And new data released this week shows that a number, the number that got away, has ballooned heavily under Joe Biden.
00:46:52.000For example, in 2018, there were just 128,000 gotaways.
00:47:55.000girl. Lopez is an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala.
00:47:59.000According to authorities, he left Guatemala in early January, crossed through Mexico, turned himself in to Border Patrol, and was given a court date for some time in 2027 and then released.
00:48:11.000He found his way to Florida at the end of January this year.
00:48:14.000And now he commits a crime where he held an 11-year-old girl against her will, sexually assaulted her, That's a capital crime.
00:49:11.000They're sending every freakish animal To America, so they don't have to pay for it.
00:49:18.000And we're going to have to live with this.
00:49:19.000And this stuff's going to happen times a thousand as more and more come, as they get more and more comfortable, as time goes by and there's nothing the Democrats want to do about it.
00:49:30.000Crimes like this are happening every single week.
00:49:37.000Biden's also responsible for the inflation crisis that's making life more difficult for everyday Americans to afford.
00:49:42.000And now you'll have the privilege of also paying for all of these illegals, many of whom will never, ever be able to take care of themselves.
00:49:50.000They'll always be a drain on our coffers, and in many cases, on our society.
00:49:55.000The new inflation data released yesterday shows that overall prices have increased 19.9% since January 2021.
00:51:55.000But there are plenty of other programs where they can just get away with that.
00:51:58.000They can just say it and it's the gospel.
00:52:00.000No one's gonna correct it, you know, online because big tech won't do that.
00:52:05.000They'll continue to run the Democrat narrative.
00:52:07.000While Joe Biden is lying about inflation at home, his Secretary of State is abroad in Ukraine trying to pretend he's a rock star or something with guitar diplomacy.
00:53:05.000This is the guy that thinks, and it was shocked and dismayed, that the Taliban didn't install a diverse and inclusive government in Afghanistan.
00:53:12.000I mean, you know, I don't know, probably not.
00:53:16.000Something that was ever going to happen.
00:53:18.000If he's shocked and dismayed about that, I got bridges all over the place I could sell him and, you know, waterfront property, oceanfront property in Arizona, and all sorts of other stuff.
00:53:31.000But instead of providing any oversight to the hundreds of billions of dollars we're blowing in Ukraine, he goes there and does a crappy job playing guitar.
00:53:40.000They're literally partying in Ukraine.
00:53:42.000I thought it was a war zone, but hey, What do I know?
00:53:47.000Apparently they just send what they call their peasants over there to die on the front lines and everyone else can have a party in Kiev.
00:53:55.000Finally, Joe Biden is asserting executive privilege to stop the Justice Department from giving Congress the audio of his interview with Robert Herr.
00:54:04.000That's the interview in which Joe Biden forgot the year his son died.
00:54:08.000After conducting that interview, Herr wrote that Joe Biden is an elderly man with poor memory that is unfit to stand trial.
00:54:16.000Doesn't stop him from having the nuclear codes, but he's apparently unfit to stand trial according to someone put in place by his own DOJ.
00:54:24.000The transcript of the interview is already released, so the only reason to block the release of the audio is that Joe Biden knows, or the people that are his handlers know, That the delivery of his answers would destroy his already failing presidential campaign.
00:54:42.000Joe Biden wants to hide the evidence that he is publicly unfit for office.
00:54:48.000The debates that we're doing, they're going to be hosted on CNN by ultra-liberal hosts.
00:54:53.000They don't want to have a live audience.
00:54:55.000I'm hearing that they want to negotiate so they can have earpieces in their ears.
00:54:59.000So, you know, there's a reason Joe Biden wants to debate under those rules, because they're going to do whatever they can to rig them, to give Joe Biden, to give someone an earpiece in a debate so that, like, I don't know what, Obama can whisper to him what he wants his little puppet to say?
00:55:16.000Well guys, the good news is that today, House Republicans moved to hold A.G.
00:55:22.000Garland in contempt of Congress over this abuse of power.
00:55:26.000But the real question is, will there ever be any actual accountability?
00:55:31.000It's one of the many things we'll talk about with Senator J.D.
00:55:35.000So we're gonna get to that in a couple of seconds, but before we get to tonight's interview, a quick word from some of our incredible sponsors.
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00:56:23.000They're not just an online store, they're also a community of like-minded patriots who understand the importance of the Second Amendment, of self-defense, and preparing for a time of crisis.
00:56:33.000And honestly, guys, if there's ever a time of crisis, it looks like we are living it, or at least the precipice of it, because it's insane what's going on in our country.
00:56:43.000See some of the stories we just talked about.
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01:00:04.000Well, so this conversation is very dangerous for me, Don, because I feel like if we just, you know, shoot the shit like we normally do, then I'm going to say some things that are going to get me in trouble.
01:00:12.000So I'm going to try to be careful here.
01:00:15.000Okay, so here's my initial take on it, right?
01:00:18.000So I'm sure you've like been to this, you know, this building a million times.
01:00:21.000It was my first time being in like the residence at the top of Trump Tower.
01:00:34.000And then you hop in the car and you go to the most depressing place in the world, which is this courtroom that's ugly and old.
01:00:43.000It's not like these grand courtrooms that make you think of the greatness of the American legal system.
01:00:48.000It actually makes you think like you're in a sham trial in a sham courtroom.
01:00:52.000And then, you know, the testimony of Michael Cohen is like so dry and so ridiculous that I look over the jury a few times and they're clearly getting bored with it.
01:01:10.000First of all, it's like psychological torture for Donald Trump, for your dad.
01:01:15.000Because, you know, they yank him out of, like, a beautiful place and force him to sit in an ugly place for eight and a half hours to listen to, you know, Cohen, who's an obvious scumbag.
01:01:23.000And then the second thing is, their entire legal strategy, such that it exists, is to just wear the jury down, right?
01:01:31.000If you're a juror, you would do anything to get out of this situation.
01:01:36.000Just tell me what I have to do, and I will get out of this situation.
01:01:39.000And I think that's actually their only hope for a conviction, even as far left as New York is.
01:01:45.000And even if you judge by the statistics, probably every single juror voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
01:01:51.000Even with those circumstances, my assumption is that these guys, they see how ridiculous this whole thing is, and they just want to get the hell out of there.
01:02:00.000And I hope that they do the right thing, but I actually don't think it matters, but neither here nor there.
01:02:04.000Yeah, so, I mean, you tweeted sort of funny.
01:02:09.000You know, sort of discuss some of the craziness that's breaking today, because we're finally on cross-examination.
01:02:16.000But you tweeted, basically, hey, I've been here for about 10 minutes, and when they write stories about Donald Trump sleeping, like, you can understand why, because it isn't exciting.
01:02:42.000So, you know, so President Trump sort of sits there, and except for when something is actually going on, that's interesting, you know, because most of it, it's, you know, Michael Cohen, I worked at this place from 10 years ago to eight years ago, and this place from eight years ago to six years ago, and it's just incredibly dry, sort of basic foundational testimony.
01:03:02.000I was there Monday, and that was sort of the original prosecution hit.
01:03:32.000So they have to hide Joe Biden walking from the helicopter because his gait shows that he clearly just isn't the same guy that he was even 10 years ago.
01:03:40.000And they're trying to sort of draw this false comparison.
01:04:40.000But second, like actually get out there and make as good of a case as I could make to people that this was ridiculous and that they should reject it by voting for President Trump in November.
01:04:50.000And, you know, so some, like, random journalist yells out and says, well, you're not allowed to violate the gag order either.
01:04:59.000What gives you the right to violate the gag order?
01:05:01.000And I'm just, I think to my head, you know, well, the answer is the First Amendment, you dipshit.
01:05:08.000You wouldn't voice with me if you say that.
01:05:14.000I was on message and I did not, you know, answer the ridiculous questions, but the legal case itself, man, and I, you know, like I went to law school, but I sort of, as you know, sort of went to the business world right after law school.
01:05:41.000It's like they're gonna get to the end of the thing and in summation they're gonna say, and this is what he did, so that you can't actually prep for whatever it is.
01:06:16.000It's like, look, if you think that he committed a paperwork violation in service of some other crime, then tell us what the other crime is.
01:06:44.000But I was in a scene in Green Room, you know, four or five months or so ago, and it was right after the brag thing had come down.
01:06:54.000And it was funny, like, all of these guys, and these are sort of, you know, almost everybody else in that room was like anti-Trump, and they were mad at Alvin Bragg.
01:07:15.000So they were actively mad at Alvin Bragg for being such an idiot and bringing this case.
01:07:20.000And now that all the other cases have fallen apart, and this is the only one where you have a political judge and a political prosecutor, so it's still going to trial, this has become the thing the media is focused on.
01:07:31.000And I kind of just want to talk to these people and be like, you guys recognize this was bullshit a few months ago.
01:07:36.000And I will say, Don, even CNN, to their credit, some of their people are recognizing that this is absurd.
01:07:42.000Yeah, well, one of the clips, you know, I played in the intro is, you know, Anderson Cooper being like, if you're the defense, you better put the witness in a box and, like, make him look like an ass.
01:07:51.000And he's like, and they did that today with Michael Cohen.
01:07:53.000You know, you saw the beginning of that, but even still, I mean, the whole thing, the paperwork thing is that An assistant in the accounting department like Mark next to this expense, you know legal expense like He didn't do that.
01:08:08.000He wasn't having communications This wasn't even a high-level person that I bet he wouldn't know the person's name You know in there and yet they're still trying to make that link But then you have you know, two days of Stormy Daniels on the case and none of it is about accounting It shows that it was just they're just there to try to embarrass We're just gonna talk about all these things that aren't germane to any case that we'd be making or otherwise, but we have a free venue and a hometown media that will just try to use this to, I guess, hurt Trump's credibility.
01:08:44.000These are not people that talk about Joe Biden or the Hunter Biden laptop or the umpteen millions that the Bidens have made from foreign governments, our adversaries and enemies.
01:08:56.000They won't have that conversation, but it seemed very much like that.
01:09:02.000So today's Thursday, yesterday was Wednesday.
01:09:05.000We actually did a fundraiser for your dad in Cincinnati.
01:09:07.000And it was sort of, I think, the only day that week he actually had, at least during the work week, to get out there and campaign.
01:09:13.000And when you realize, to run a national campaign in this day and age, you need 750 million, maybe a billion dollars to actually run a competitive national campaign with all the grassroots and organizing and the TV ads and everything that goes into it.
01:09:30.000And, you know, you just realize like what an unbelievable advantage this is for Joe Biden to have the leader of the opposition stuck in this courtroom for three or four days a week, right?
01:09:42.000He gets one day to go out there and fundraise, one day to get that out there and go engage with voters and actually gin up enthusiasm.
01:09:51.000And, you know, again, the case is so absurd.
01:09:55.000It makes you realize it actually has two purposes.
01:09:57.000Again, one is the psychological torture and the other is the election interference.
01:10:13.000Oh yeah, I think without question, because each one of these cases has so much shade around it, right?
01:10:17.000It's not like one's legit, and this guy's a prosecutor with a great record who's beyond reproach.
01:10:22.000It's like, you would choose Jack Smith because he had questionable dealings in the Hague, right?
01:10:28.000You had, you know, during Mueller you have Andy Weitzman because he was a scumbag and they knew that he would do anything he could to win even if it meant, you know, violating the law or breaking norms of, you know, decency.
01:10:40.000You have it with Fannie Willis down in Georgia.
01:10:43.000You know, you have two cases with Jack Smith.
01:10:45.000I mean, you may, obviously, this is Alvin Bragg, but, you know, they don't point out that, you know, Matthew Colangelo is Biden's number three in his Department of Justice, the same Department of Justice that thinks, you know, Catholics are terrorists and concerned mothers at PTA meetings are domestic terrorists, but actual domestic terrorists aren't.
01:11:01.000That person gets sent to Alvin Bragg's office.
01:11:04.000Alvin Bragg himself and the prior DA turned down this case.
01:11:09.000But Biden's number three shows up, and then two weeks later, all of a sudden, they're prosecuting it.
01:11:14.000You know, I think people get it, but do you think the jury understands that, like, you know, again, whether it's Stormy Daniels, whether it's Michael Cohen, you know, that these aren't exactly credible witnesses.
01:11:26.000I mean, these are not people that you would choose to defend yourself in any way, shape, or form.
01:11:33.000Do you think they get that, or does it even matter in New York, because it is so lopsided?
01:11:38.000Yeah, well, so Don, what are my grandmother's most important bits of wisdom to me?
01:12:39.000But maybe that's like, maybe I still have too much faith in humanity,
01:12:43.000at least in the jurors of South Manhattan. But man, it is such an absurd case.
01:12:48.000Well, because I can see where you could be like, I agree with Trump.
01:12:53.000Trump's right, but I'm not willing to not be able to show up to my kid's school because I'm the guy that hung a jury that could jail Donald Trump.
01:13:02.000It's not worth the social stigma, which I feel like it's clear.
01:13:07.000All these places, they were designed this way.
01:13:11.000Even the Florida case, the grand jury happened in D.C.
01:13:14.000Because you know you're gonna get an outcome.
01:13:16.000In New York, you could have a couple people on that jury that are like, you know, Trump's totally innocent, this is insane, and yet, I don't know, I'd like to be able to go out to dinner again in New York, and you may not be able to do that.
01:13:27.000You can't stack a jury when it's 95-5, you know, ultra-liberal to conservative.
01:13:32.000You know, you only get so many people that you can strike on our side, and you do that long enough, eventually you run out, and you could have a 100% stacked jury, and you know, That was a made-to-order jury in a made-to-order venue with a made-to-order judge.
01:13:45.000You know, it's all by design, but it may not matter.
01:13:50.000It reminds me, one of the great sources of power that the left still has, right?
01:13:56.000I mean, I think most people roll their eyes at the craziness and the alphabet people and the purple-haired pro-Palestinian protesters on campus.
01:14:05.000Um, but like the one thing that the left still has kind of going for it is they're able to exert incredible social stigma.
01:14:13.000And it's less, I mean, it's less frankly, uh, thanks in large part to your family than it was six years ago, but it's still very much there.
01:14:20.000And I, you know, I have this like buddy in Silicon Valley, you know, he's, nobody really knows who he is, younger guys, but sort of has made a fair amount of money.
01:14:27.000And, you know, he's like having this internal debate and I think he's, he's going to come out on the right side of it where he's like, Should I come out publicly for DJT and give the campaign a lot of resources?
01:14:37.000And he's like, on the one hand, I'll lose a lot of friends.
01:14:40.000On the other hand, like screw those people if they're not your real friends.
01:14:43.000I'm sure you're friends with people who don't share your politics.
01:14:51.000But some of these people are that crazy.
01:14:53.000And that is the dynamic I worry about with that New York jury is, you know, you can't go to your kid's soccer game anymore, because you voted to acquit Donald J. Trump, even if it's the right thing to do.
01:15:04.000So, you know, let's be honest here, it will take some courage from the jurors to come down on the on the right side here.
01:15:10.000But I still am somewhat optimistic because the case is so bad.
01:15:33.000Then I had the friends that were like, texting me like love what you guys are doing it's great but then they're posting on Facebook like the woke like these guys are fascists it's like like wait a minute like what like what do you mean so for me it was cathartic because it's like that guy was out of my life and then he called like hey man you know the obligatory like you know once a year lunch like hey we haven't caught up in a while like yeah i'm good
01:15:59.000It's the, you know, the people who may not even believe the stuff but are still willing to virtue signal because, you know, there's enough, you know, social credit Attributed to that in New York, you know, that's at least still a big deal, although you're right.
01:16:12.000I think people are sort of waking up to it.
01:16:13.000There's, you know, the things that were cancelable a few years ago, people are having those conversations.
01:16:18.000They're saying those words that were verboten, you know, not all that long ago.
01:16:22.000And I think that's a step in the right direction.
01:16:24.000I just don't know if we're getting to a point where the critical mass is there to overwhelm the amount of bullshit that's in there.
01:16:31.000Yeah, I feel like the scale is close to tipping, but it hasn't quite tipped over yet.
01:16:37.000But yeah, I think it's really important, Don, for those of us who have achieved anything in our lives, to just say to that entire social pressure, social credit system, you put it well, like, screw you.
01:16:52.000I don't care if you vote against the guy that I'm supporting, but if you're not going to be somebody's friend over politics, Uh, or if you're going to say one thing about them publicly and another thing privately, you're not a good friend to begin with.
01:17:03.000And we, we really, I think this is maybe the most important thing that we can do is just to push back against this like left wing narrative that you're a good person if you share their politics and you're a bad person if you share somebody else's politics.
01:17:39.000There's a new war in nearly every continent in the world, but the thing they still have is, well, we're the good people.
01:17:45.000Well, hell, if you guys are the good people and it produces higher inflation, you know, on the verge of world war and a ton of other bad outcomes, then give me something else.
01:17:54.000Yeah, good people don't produce poverty and death.
01:17:57.000That's not the outcome of good people.
01:18:01.000I'll take mean tweets and world peace literally any day because just because a tweet is mean doesn't mean it's not also accurate.
01:18:09.000And us pretending that that's not the case doesn't do anyone any favors.
01:18:16.000This is just something that, you know, Our country's really lost this, where we need to be comfortable actually disagreeing with one another.
01:18:24.000And there's no way to solve a real dispute if you just pretend that you agree with somebody.
01:18:29.000And I'm sure you saw this in Manhattan real estate world.
01:18:32.000I certainly saw this in Silicon Valley tech world, which is what I did before I started to get into politics.
01:18:41.000You are allowed to actually have a difference of opinion, right?
01:18:45.000And different people are going to have ways that they express it, but you shouldn't fall all over yourself pretending that you agree with somebody when what they're saying is obviously crazy because that's how you end up disservicing the country and going down this weird spiral we're in right now.
01:18:59.000Yeah, the Wuhan Lab League, clearly, it didn't come from the lab.
01:19:02.000It came from two feet outside of the lab that studies the exact virus in question.
01:19:08.000I feel like you sort of do yourself a major disservice if you're the boy who cries wolf every time because it's like why would you have any faith in your government?
01:19:15.000Why would you have any faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect you when they fail to do so and it's so flagrantly obvious like you didn't need to be an epidemiologist to be like yeah that makes no sense whatsoever like of course it came from the lab like there's there's literally no other plausible answer but It didn't matter.
01:20:31.000How about we rebuild our own industrial base and rebuild our own country, and then maybe the Chinese won't be so aggressive because they'll be afraid of us.
01:20:40.000And then you get peace on the one hand, and prosperity on the other hand, and you have options.
01:20:52.000But so I guess, listen, hey, you and I agree a lot on this stuff when we talk, you know, foreign policy.
01:20:56.000Like, I love that you're one of the few guys in the United States Senate actually talking about this.
01:21:00.000But like, let's say, you know, speaking of just the utter lack of credibility, you have our Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken over in Ukraine.
01:21:08.000You know, he's jamming out on a guitar, you know.
01:21:14.000Don't make me watch the Anthony Blinken rock and roll.
01:21:17.000Let's just say he goes to a bar in Kiev and he's playing like rock and roll guitar.
01:21:20.000I mean, it's nice that he plays guitar, but like, you know, this is the same clown that got on a world stage after the Afghan withdrawal and said that he's shocked and dismayed that the Taliban didn't install a more diverse and inclusive government in Afghanistan.
01:21:34.000So like, I guess my question to you is like, if you're shocked, That the Taliban didn't install a more diverse and inclusive government there.
01:21:42.000If you're jamming on a rock guitar in Ukraine when you're on the brink of, you know, World War III with the world's largest nuclear superpower, you know, 160 billion dollars, you know, with nothing to show for it.
01:21:55.000Uh, in this administration's ability to handle these things.
01:21:58.000We were told the adults are back in charge, and it feels like, like the morons are in charge.
01:22:03.000Like, it's not, there's not an adult in the room.
01:22:06.000It's just, you know, again, either virtual signaling or like, well, you know, the electric guitar is wonderful.
01:22:11.000I mean, I, you know, shit, I wish I could play classical rock guitar, but like, I don't know, doesn't seem all that relevant to ending the war.
01:22:20.000These people, they don't have any governing success to go on, so it's all vibes, and they'll put the Ukraine flag in their bio, and they'll talk about defending freedom and democracy, and it's like, oh, by the way, you guys have gotten millions of people killed with nothing to show for it.
01:22:36.000The Ukrainians, by the way, it looks like wanted to sort of negotiate a year and a half ago.
01:22:41.000The Biden administration stopped them from doing it.
01:22:43.000That was when Ukraine was actually at its strongest, right?
01:22:46.000Like if you want to help the Ukrainians as much as possible and preserve their territory,
01:22:52.000you would actually say, well, let's let the Ukrainians negotiate
01:22:57.000from a position of strength rather than from a position of weakness.
01:23:02.000But look, here's the craziest thing about our posture in Ukraine, Don,
01:23:07.000is you talk to these guys and you realize that they're listening to all of the rejects
01:23:15.000who left the Republican Party when Trump became president, And like, you sort of know my background.
01:23:21.000I was like a Trump critic back in 2015 and sort of... I heard a little bit about this in the past.
01:23:27.000Listen, I'd say, great turnaround player, but maybe the best turnaround player.
01:23:32.000You know, when I was talking to DJT about, hey, we got to go in for JD, like he's become a friend.
01:23:38.000You know, I got to hear some of those clips.
01:23:46.000I was like, hey, this is the one guy in the United States Senate.
01:23:49.000Quite literally, the one guy that's conservative in the United States Senate that'd be like, I want to fight with this guy because he gets it.
01:23:56.000He's doing what his constituency wants and no one else does.
01:24:00.000Yeah, and look, let's take Bill Kristol and everybody who was wrong about everything for 20 years and put them in the Democratic Party, and it's like, what are you guys doing?
01:24:12.000You know, when you're sort of like recruiting for a football team, it's like you don't recruit the rejects, right?
01:24:18.000You recruit the smart people who have actually gotten some things right.
01:24:22.000And the entire Biden approach to foreign policy, man, is listening to, like, take the 10 most wrong people for the last 30 years, put them in positions of power, and that is like who the Biden administration takes as their foreign policy advisors.
01:24:39.000You know, the thing that I kept coming back to, Don, when I was talking about the Ukraine conflict was, okay, like, set the moralisms to the side, right?
01:24:52.000Like, we're not making a moral judgment about the Ukrainians being bad by saying we shouldn't write these guys $160 billion in blank checks.
01:25:01.000They do, by the way, have a corruption problem.
01:25:03.000nothing they were ranked more corrupt than Russia like prior to you know prior to Zalinsky becoming
01:25:08.000like you know the modern day deity of the left right he became like god i guess he replaced
01:25:13.000Fauci who had replaced Greta Thunberg as like the high priestess of the left. The holy trinity.
01:25:48.000I mean, they're, you know, one of these towns, they lost one of these towns because the money that was designated to defend the town was stolen by the general in charge of the town.
01:25:57.000It's like, well, I'll pocket the money and you guys can have the town.
01:26:03.000Yeah, so I made a comment, Don, that really pissed off the left a while ago.
01:26:08.000And most of your colleagues on the right in the Senate, because let's say 40 over the 50 are probably pretty much in line with the left on this one.
01:26:39.000Well, because yeah, because a couple of weeks before I made that observation, we were talking to
01:26:45.000an energy company that does a lot of work all over the world
01:26:49.000and they told us this story of corruption in Ukraine where I was like, what is this?
01:26:53.000How is this not like the biggest story in the world?
01:26:55.000But like basically they were talking about bidding for various energy contracts.
01:27:00.000And these energy contracts of course are being paid a lot of them with American taxpayer dollars, right?
01:27:05.000Because so much of our money is going to the country.
01:27:07.000So these energy contracts are going to...
01:27:10.000People, not who are providing the lowest, highest quality bid, but to friends of the ministers and the government, right?
01:27:18.000It's the definition of corruption is you do these contracts, paid for with American dollars, and then you charge more money and give the contracts to your friends, right?
01:27:28.000So everybody gets rich, of course, except for the Ukrainian people, who are the ones who are actually suffering because of the conflict.
01:27:35.000And then I was like, okay, so let's look at some of the energy conglomerate oligarchs in Ukraine, and a couple of them are people who are literally buying superyachts.
01:27:45.000So I'm like, wait a second, our taxpayer dollars are funding corrupt energy oligarchs who are then You know, putting that money to yachts.
01:28:23.000I mean, the underlying other aspect of that is that it's those elites, whether they're American elites that are part of the sort of industrial military complex, big war, so to speak, or the elites in Ukraine that are those cabinet ministers.
01:28:40.000They're getting rich, but the people that are dying are not those guys.
01:28:44.000Zelensky's not at risk of anything happening to him.
01:28:48.000Uh, they're sending, you know, the people that they view as, you know, the peasants to go die.
01:28:52.000I mean, it's hundreds of thousands of, you know, young men sent to a front line as cannon fodder.
01:28:57.000Uh, and no one's even talking about that, right?
01:29:30.000Let every, you know, peasant Ukrainian that's sent to the front lines, oftentimes against their will, because half of them are ethnic Russian anyway.
01:29:38.000Why is it okay just to perpetuate the death there?
01:29:42.000But, you know, you go a little bit, you know, further to the west, in the Middle East, and all of a sudden it's like, well, that's different.
01:29:51.000Yeah, and I'm going to steal somebody's line.
01:29:54.000I forget who said this, Don, but they were, I think it was one of my maybe Senate colleagues who was talking about, you know, when the Biden administration, when the Democrats talk about Russian lives, they're like, you know, they're, they're like real tough guys.
01:30:06.000It's like, they've all taken, you know, like, like a bunch of steroids because they're like, oh, we're going to kill every single Russian.
01:30:16.000We'll, you know, we'll bleed these guys dry.
01:30:18.000And yeah, a lot of Ukrainians are going to die, but it's worth it to bleed the Russians dry.
01:30:22.000And it's like, okay, well, aren't we supposed to be like helping the Ukrainians and you're talking about bleeding them dry so that we can bleed Russia dry too?
01:30:28.000Like that doesn't make a ton of sense.
01:30:30.000But then they talk about Israel and Hamas, and all of a sudden,
01:30:35.000these guys turn into big humanitarians, right?
01:30:37.000Every drop of innocent blood that is spilled is a tragedy.
01:30:41.000And I actually think that every drop of innocent blood is a tragedy.
01:30:45.000I can just hold that principle consistent across different wars,
01:30:48.000and also recognize that like, yeah, when you hide behind innocent women and children,
01:30:54.000as the Hamas terrorists are doing, it is unfortunate and terrible
01:30:59.000I just tend to blame the people who are hiding behind the children more for that than anybody else.
01:31:05.000Yeah, no, I mean, they sort of have, you know, for Hamas, it's almost, I don't want to say perfect in that I agree with it, but they have this sort of perfect excuse because they're made to be the victim somehow, you know, in the mainstream press.
01:31:16.000So when you've won the PR war, you can actually do that.
01:31:22.000But then if children are unfortunate collateral damage, when you're going after literally people who would, you know, killed and murdered children and raped them in the streets, I mean, it's sort of the perfect cover.
01:31:35.000It's totally irrational, but that's the environment that today's media has created that sort of lets them get away with that entirely.
01:31:45.000And it's, again, it's a total double standard.
01:31:47.000And I think the basic answer here, Don, is the left is so obsessed with this oppressor versus oppressed narrative, and everything gets fit into that box.
01:31:57.000And if you're the oppressor, according to the left, then it doesn't matter what you do, you're always the oppressor.
01:32:04.000And poor little innocent Hamas, they're always the oppressed.
01:32:08.000Even when they murder women and children, they're still the oppressed.
01:32:10.000And I think that that is like the dynamic.
01:32:15.000Because I think that like a classic American understanding of the world is that, you know, yeah, sometimes you can get dealt a crappy hand in life, but you still try to persevere and do something with whatever, you know, make lemons out of lemonade, right?
01:32:42.000And when I think about watching these college protests or just watching university students in classes and talking to people, there is this weird desire to just overstate how hard and how bad your life has been.
01:32:58.000So my theory on this, in the same way that you have a bunch of politicians who lied and said that they served in Vietnam and they really didn't, because that was the thing to do.
01:33:06.000Yeah, Don Heng, Dick Blumenthal, I guess.
01:33:11.000It wasn't really there, but it sounded good at the time.
01:33:14.000The thing to do was to serve your country.
01:33:16.000Set aside whether the Vietnam War was a good idea, of course it was a terrible idea.
01:33:20.000People were proud to serve their country.
01:33:22.000I'm telling you dude, in 10 years, Washington is going to be filled with congressmen and senators who talk about how if they grew up in like a one-room shack in the in the in the basement of you know a Hamas encampment and it's gonna turn out that they were like the son of the Sultan living in Qatar flying around on a private jet like this is people are so warped by this by pretending to be a victim that I think that like the next generation of Americans
01:33:52.000The smartest thing you can do, the wisest thing you can do is break free of that and not see yourself as a victim because it's going to screw with your whole psychology.
01:34:00.000Yeah, I mean, listen, you have an incredible story about that.
01:34:03.000I mean, you wrote, you know, the New York Times bestseller, Hillbilly Algae.
01:34:06.000I mean, talking about like growing up, you know, in that sort of, you know, Appalachia and having, you know, a, let's call it, you know, fairly broken family and how the opportunities that you had and took got you out of that mindset.
01:34:19.000You know, you wrote a book about how you got out of it, not how you perpetually maintain, you know, Maintain that victim status you actually achieve and that seems to me like to be you know That's the American dream is you know being born into that and being able to get out of it Not permanently sort of resort to this is this is who I am to try to leverage some sort of other nonsense
01:34:42.000And the other thing, Don, is like, yeah, you know, I didn't always have the easiest life, but I feel incredibly grateful for all the good stuff that's happened to me.
01:34:51.000And I'm sure you've seen this and you've seen it with rich people and poor people.
01:34:55.000Like to me, like one of the biggest differences from whether somebody is a piece of shit or not is whether they have a sense of gratitude.
01:35:02.000And if you've got a sense of gratitude, man, like that is just such a powerful way to walk around is feeling like, you know, like, like people helped you.
01:35:11.000You shouldn't just constantly look in the mirror and whine about how terrible everything is.
01:35:14.000Yeah, no, I sit there and listen, I bitch a lot too.
01:35:17.000But like, you know, I constantly try to reinforce how I understand how blessed I've been and I want to make sure that that exists for other Americans because the American dream is real.
01:35:27.000The people who oftentimes bitch about it most, whether it's some professional sports player who's worth a billion dollars and somehow still manages to be super oppressed.
01:35:37.000You know, it feels sort of nonsense, and I think, you know, the whole idea of why we fight like this is to preserve, you know, the ability for others to be able to do that in America, because I think it's probably the only place in the world where you can still do that with regularity, and that's such an important foundation for what we all stand for as a country.
01:35:56.000Absolutely, and it's one of the things the media says about your dad that really bothers me.
01:36:00.000It's like, if you know Trump, right, and you talk to him, he talks about his dad, and he talks about his mom, I guess your grandparents, he talks about his kids, and all the workers that he dealt with, union workers, non-union workers, and there is just this sense, and he talks about the country, right?
01:36:18.000He's grateful for all of these various forces That have been there, that have made this such a good country to live in, that have made it possible for him to build this real estate empire.
01:37:20.000I see, you know, there's guys in Congress that fight.
01:37:23.000There's so few in the Senate that don't just get absorbed by the swamp, don't become, you know, oftentimes probably the thing that they hated about Washington, D.C., but they get there and it's like they get enveloped.
01:37:35.000What is it about the Senate that you've noticed that happens there?
01:37:41.000I just came from lunch a few hours ago, and I was talking with Ron Johnson at lunch, and one of the things about Ron Johnson is when he talks about Wisconsin, when he talks about the plumbers and the electricians and the manufacturers, because he has this sort of business background, his face lights up, right?
01:38:00.000He's kind of like a grumpy guy on the one hand, but on the other hand, he has this real sense of passion and affection for the people of Wisconsin.
01:38:08.000I think the biggest problem in Washington, man, especially in the Senate, is that not enough people feel any attachment to the people who actually elected us, right?
01:38:17.000This is fundamentally a service business, right?
01:38:19.000You are sent to Washington to do a job, to save the country, to try to fix the problems that exist out there, and you're sent there by people who have very real issues.
01:38:31.000It doesn't mean they're victims, it just means they have problems and they want their government to address those problems, and there's not enough of that recognition.
01:38:39.000And I think a lot of people, you just think about like, Why is Washington broken?
01:38:44.000The fundamental question, it goes back to the social credit issue on the left, is whose opinion do you really care about, right?
01:38:51.000Ask yourself, and this is, if I could give you or anybody else advice, in who goes Native, corrupt in Washington, and who actually, like, stays true to the state that sent them, it's whose opinion do they care about?
01:39:07.000Because if they really care about the opinion of the people who sent them, they might be wrong on some issues, or I might disagree with them on issues, but they will always have that inner core, because they're always going to listen to the voice that they should be listened to.
01:39:19.000Whereas the people who care about, you know, what they say at Davos, or what they say at the Munich Security Conference, or what they say at all of these, like, summits, and journalists and everybody else who has influence in this town, if you care more about what those people think about you, you will eventually stab your voters in the back.
01:39:36.000Yeah, because it is one of those things.
01:39:37.000It's like, at least the Democrats, when they're doing this crazy stuff, it's like, well, you know, if they're from Manhattan, it's like, maybe that's where those people actually are.
01:39:44.000But it's the Republicans where I see that just that huge dichotomy between, you know, those who elected them to represent them in D.C.
01:40:01.000And I know because I've spoken to more Republicans across the country than Mitch McConnell has ever in his entire 476 year career in the United States Senate.
01:40:10.000I literally do a survey every time I speak in front of a large group and it's like 55,000 people I think I've probably done it to in the last 18 months and it's like One, the guy who happened to be from Kiev.
01:40:23.000So I was like, okay, it wasn't even a top 10, it wasn't even a top 10 issue.
01:40:27.000Sorry, it wasn't even a top three issue.
01:40:33.000There was another guy that was from DC that, you know, presumably he was a military contractor, but like 55,000 people, two people, actually it was three people, but the one guy, he heard the question as a double negative.
01:40:42.000So he changed his mind, you know, so two out of 55,000.
01:40:46.000In terms of polling, that's a very large sample set.
01:41:54.000Do we- I mean, we're paying Ukrainian pensions, you know.
01:41:58.000I don't know, I'd say unfunded pension liability in the United States is a real problem, whether it's for the people of your home state in Ohio, you know, car workers, steel workers, you know, teachers, whatever it is, it's a serious problem that we have no answer for, but we're funding pensions in Ukraine, so they're taken care of.
01:42:15.000I'm like, it's lunacy, I've never seen anything like it.
01:42:19.000Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, and you're exactly right.
01:42:21.000Nobody's identified how long does this go on, how much money does it actually cost, and this is what's interesting, Don, is to get a little bit into the weeds of political polling.
01:42:31.000Tony Fabricio, who's my pollster and he's your dad's pollster, he's a really, really smart guy, You can't ask people, well, what do you just think about this issue?
01:42:41.000Because that doesn't tell you what they're motivated by, right?
01:42:44.000You gotta ask them the issues they're motivated by.
01:42:45.000And right now, what people are motivated by is, you know, if you're a young person, good luck buying a home because mortgage interest rates are through the roof.
01:42:53.000Good luck going to the grocery store and actually staying in budget for a middle-class family because food is crazy right now.
01:44:22.000You know, we're like the piggy bank of the world for like the dumbest things, and yet You know, this is an unlimited thing, and not a single person in DC has said, what's a win look like?
01:44:33.000And by the way, or what's a win look like even within the realm of reasonable?
01:44:37.000Meaning, it's not like, you know, Russia doesn't have the upper hand right now because we let it go so long, we didn't get to the table when we could.
01:44:47.000The sanctions that we put on have jacked up energy prices so much that Russia's basically net neutral.
01:44:51.000They're paying for it with this while simultaneously building their economy, because that's what happens in war, especially when you're selling oil to others.
01:45:02.000At this point, it's almost like a win for them.
01:45:05.000And I don't see that stopping anytime soon.
01:45:08.000And when I talk to my colleagues, I do ask this question, I do have conversations, and I like most of my colleagues, right?
01:45:14.000I'm a pretty friendly guy and I get along with most people.
01:45:17.000The thing that they will tell me is...
01:45:19.000Well, we don't necessarily know what a win looks like, we just know that Ukraine will definitely lose if we don't write this additional check.
01:45:27.000But that logic is going to have you writing a $60 billion check in a few months, and then a $60 billion check a few months after that, and it's just going to get us further and further down this rabbit hole, and a lot more people are going to get killed, and eventually an adult is going to have to stand up and say, What are we trying to accomplish?
01:45:48.000And I think when we get to that point, what we're going to realize, Don, is what the Ukrainians realized two years ago, which is negotiate a peace, accept that it's going to suck, but that we stop the killing, we stop the risk of escalation into a broader war.
01:46:02.000I mean, these people, they say that they care.
01:46:07.000Ukraine is like the most important issue in the world to them.
01:46:11.000And yet, they're pushing Germany to adopt green energy policies that's turning Russia into the distinct energy superpower of the world.
01:46:19.000Like, you can't on the one hand say, we've got to fight the Ukrainians, or fight the Russians to the last Ukrainian, and with the other hand say, we're going to pursue energy policies that make Russia one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
01:47:11.000It's totally crazy, and here's the thing.
01:47:14.000The Germans will say, on the one hand, that if you guys don't stop the Russians in Ukraine, they're going to march all the way to Berlin.
01:47:24.000And then you go to Berlin, and it's like, they're sure as hell not acting like they're about to be invaded by the Russians.
01:47:29.000There's no sense of urgency, and they're still, to this point, not at 2% of GDP.
01:47:37.000If you really thought the Russians were about to invade your country, you'd be spending 10% of GDP on defense, not us begging you to spend 2% of GDP.
01:47:48.000And I mean, all of this stuff is built on a house of cards and contradictions that doesn't make any sense.
01:47:54.000We want to fight the Russians, but we want to empower the Russian economy by our ridiculous energy policies.
01:47:59.000You know, we need to manufacture more weapons so that we can take a bigger role in our self-defense.
01:48:03.000But Germany is de-industrializing because this green energy stuff, Don, you can't make anything.
01:48:08.000You can't manufacture stuff with like energy generated by solar panels and wind farms.
01:48:18.000But again, you have to kind of repeat the lie.
01:48:21.000You know, it almost would have been easier to walk this back six months ago or two years ago.
01:48:27.000Now people are so invested in it, they have to just keep on repeating it.
01:48:32.000And I fear, unless we get your dad back in office, this is going to totally go off the rails.
01:48:37.000Yeah, but they're trying to make it harder for him, right?
01:48:39.000They're trying to say, well, if we commit this amount of money for the next three years, if you try to roll that back as president, you're going to be impeached.
01:48:46.000And I'm like, wait, the one guy that they know that could actually create peace there, that could actually get both sides to sit at the table, they're trying to take away the ultimate leverage he has, which is the money.
01:48:57.000Because if the money goes away, Ukraine's at the table in about 0.2 seconds.
01:49:05.000If the people are making decisions, they're not at risk, and they're buying their yachts, that's never gonna happen.
01:49:10.000And, you know, again, you're just literally creating death and mayhem.
01:49:14.000Yeah, and you're eliminating negotiating leverage from the one president who's actually, to your point, delivered some measure of peace in the world for the last 20 years.
01:49:25.000He's the only president who hasn't started a new war, by the way, in the past 20 years.
01:49:30.000And he's the only president who actually successfully dealt with guys like Putin and Xi.
01:49:36.000So, okay, here's like a pet peeve of mine, Don, about your dad's foreign policy.
01:49:40.000People always said, and this is right, right?
01:49:42.000They would always say Trump is strong.
01:49:44.000And Trump was strong on foreign policy, right?
01:49:46.000There was a certain amount of respect.
01:49:48.000But the more important thing is that Trump was smart.
01:49:51.000He actually recognized that when you're sitting across from an enemy or an adversary or a competitor, whatever word you want to call them, you have to recognize, well, they have interests.
01:50:02.000They're trying to accomplish something.
01:50:35.000That doesn't mean he doesn't recognize who he is exactly.
01:50:38.000It just means that it serves no purpose to demean him on a world stage, because then one day when you do have to make that phone call, you do have to have an uncomfortable talk.
01:50:56.000Like, you know, these guys were doing Einstein's definition of sanity, you know, doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result.
01:51:02.000And strangely enough, it never happened.
01:51:04.000Trump comes in, changes the game, actually accomplishes something.
01:51:07.000It's like, well, he's doing it all wrong.
01:51:08.000I'm like, based on your total lack of accomplishment, it makes no sense.
01:51:13.000Yeah, Biden called Putin the worst names in the book and then Putin invaded Ukraine anyway, right?
01:51:18.000Like, this is not what matters in foreign policy.
01:51:21.000You have to have a strong country and you have to have a leader with some wisdom and intelligence in negotiating these things.
01:51:30.000We also have a complete dimwit as president and that is a big, big problem, man.
01:51:35.000And I think, you know, this is like, this is where You know, the neocons get on my nerves is they talk like it's all about strength, right?
01:51:42.000You know, there's the Reagan Doctrine, the Roosevelt Doctrine, the Trump Doctrine.
01:51:47.000All of these people were strong, yes, but they were also intelligent and they recognized like, you know, Kissinger, love the guy or hate the guy.
01:51:55.000Kissinger was a smart dude and he was one of the most successful diplomats we've had because he wasn't an idiot.
01:52:29.000You know, as much as the media is reported on this, I mean, I think you certainly know more about this than I do.
01:52:35.000Because I, you know, I saw your dad yesterday.
01:52:36.000I was with him all day, or half the day, and we didn't talk about vice president once.
01:52:40.000And I've never talked with him about the VP thing.
01:52:43.000And so, you know, my assumption is like, this is a little bit of media speculation.
01:52:46.000Maybe it's a little bit real, but He'll make his decision.
01:52:50.000I'm sure that whoever he picks will be a good vice president, and I'll cross that bridge if I have to.
01:52:56.000But look, man, I want to help him because, as you know, I think he did a good job, and I think that we really need somebody who is both strong and smart.
01:53:04.000And if we had that for four years, I think we could have it again.
01:53:06.000Well, listen, I've advocated for you for all the reasons you're not afraid to take this on.
01:53:14.000Vance Kamala Harris vice presidential debate because, like I said, you know, there's some other nice people that could be vice president, I guess, but, like, I'm like...
01:53:22.000There's not many, especially when they're trying to hold him up in court, right?
01:53:27.000They're keeping Trump off the playing field because they know Trump on the playing field is bad for Joe Biden.
01:53:32.000They'll keep Joe Biden in a basement because you put him in front of even a teleprompter and it's an abject disaster.
01:53:38.000So while they're keeping him on the sidelines, I think we need someone like yourself who can actually go out there and fight, not just take the... Well, Jake Tapper said January 6th was an insurrection.
01:53:48.000It was, I guess, kind of the first unarmed insurrection in the history of the world, but I'm going to accept your premise, Jake.
01:53:55.000I mean, what I love about you, J.D., is you just give it back to them in their face.
01:53:59.000You do it respectfully and calmly, much more calm than I am with these lunatics.
01:54:03.000But, you know, I think that's an important thing that we need out there right now.
01:54:29.000So, you know, I don't know if I want to take that on.
01:54:34.000You're so afraid you actually wanted to go on for 24 hours so that we can give yourself some runway to build up and maybe be able to come up with a good one-liner somewhere in there to be able to take it on.
01:55:05.000Protect yourself against Biden inflation with the Birch Gold Group by texting Don Jr., D-O-N-J-R, to the number 989898 to learn more.
01:55:14.000And if you're wanting to gear up for the best in firearms accessories while supporting patriotic values, head over to publicsquare.com slash gunnergear or find them on the Public Square app.
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