00:03:33.860Um, the Democrats also stood and applauded on, on both of those lines.
00:03:38.680So they at least rhetorically are trying to back away from their extremes.
00:03:42.400But he doesn't acknowledge that he keeps appointing people to the Justice Department that are leading advocates of abolishing the police.
00:03:49.380He doesn't acknowledge that he appoints as federal prosecutors people who are Soros-backed DAs and releasing violent criminals.
00:03:57.440So, so it really is a gaslighting, like I'll give you a tiny bit of rhetoric, but with no willingness to change the policy.
00:04:06.560Right, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, they say.
00:04:10.500And so I think you certainly saw a lot of that.
00:04:12.300Even there was a moment, it was so bizarre, where the Democrats stood up and they chanted USA as if they were, I don't, it seemed as though they were doing an impression of a Republican or something in that.
00:04:25.700These are people who have been denigrating the country, protesting the flags, saying America's a racist, awful place.
00:04:32.340You know, it was an odd, so the Democratic pollsters clearly told Biden, number one on Russia and Ukraine, pitch that the world is united and you've united the world.
00:04:45.040That is the Democratic narrative, it's what the corporate media is echoing.
00:05:14.820So at another point, he said, we shouldn't shut down schools.
00:05:17.820Again, Republicans all stood and applauded.
00:05:19.720Now, mind you, when last year I introduced an amendment to say no federal funds, no new federal funds for schools that are shut down, every single Senate Democrat voted against it.
00:05:31.200So the people who are standing saying don't shut down schools aren't actually willing to support policies that do that.
00:05:37.160But I think they've decided, let's give a tiny rhetorical nod to the other side, but not even an inch on policy.
00:05:46.860So this did strike me, and I couldn't tell if this was just my inner partisan coming out.
00:05:54.340The divide here between what the Democrats have done in the last 12 months and even before that and what they were saying they supported, the clearest example being defund the police.
00:06:18.300You know, politicians, they say one thing, they do another.
00:06:20.840Or is that unique to this administration, to this year, to this state of the union?
00:06:26.340I think there's a degree of mendacity that we're seeing from Democrats that is brazen even among politicians.
00:06:33.100Right after saying don't defund the police, Biden used their talking point, which is in their massive spending, trillion-dollar spend-a-palooza, they had a little bit of money for police.
00:06:44.500Republicans voted against it, so they're saying, aha, it's Republicans who want to defund the police.
00:06:49.340And it's asinine, but they stand there and say it with a straight face.
00:06:55.000And they realize this polls badly, so let's do it and then blame the other side for it.
00:07:01.620I don't think anyone really buys it, but it is – they're scared of the rhetorics.
00:07:32.240I was talking to some of the House members afterwards, and they said they were asking Pelosi, well, what are you going to do with senators?
00:07:41.200And she said, well, I'll find them or I'll have them removed.
00:07:44.520And I had one of the House Republicans who were like, Cruz, I really wanted you to show up without a mask and to see Pelosi try to have you removed.
00:07:56.820Because I'm not sure what I would have done if I would have gone to the State of the Union and not worn a mask or if I would have just not attended.
00:08:05.380But then I think their pollsters realized, oh, my goodness, if people turn on the TV and they see all these Democrats wearing N95 masks, it's going to make clear what a disaster that it is.
00:08:17.420So in the last couple of days, California rescinded their mask mandate.
00:08:20.980All these blue states are rescinding their mask mandates.
00:09:06.080One thing I noticed about the State of the Union compared to others that I've watched is and especially including the Trump States of the Union were.
00:09:16.120So we're State of the Union addresses, rather.
00:09:40.620But the question that I had was, unlike previous addresses that we've heard in this one, Biden wasn't able to really point to any accomplishments.
00:09:52.020And so when he said the State of the Union is strong, he would he would point to things that he's going to do next year or in five years or into the future.
00:10:00.700At the very end of the speech, he said the State of the Union is strong and it'll be stronger next year.
00:10:05.720And I thought, is that not an indictment of your first year in office that everything has to be in the future because nothing's happening now?
00:10:37.120But when you look at major accomplishments for the American people, I don't think there are a whole lot of folks that consider it that.
00:10:44.420You know, one of the things that's strange.
00:10:47.540So, look, anyone fairly assessing where Biden is, his poll numbers nationally are below 40 percent.
00:10:56.580I mean, the wheels have come off and policy area after policy area is going really badly.
00:11:01.780A State of the Union, this is the last major opportunity Biden had to try to change course, to try to recalibrate going into the midterms.
00:11:10.120And Democrats now all but accept that the midterms are going to be a train wreck for them.
00:11:15.520They all acknowledge they're going to lose the House and more and more they're getting worried they're going to lose the Senate as well.
00:11:20.780I think they have reason to be worried.
00:11:22.940What I found amazing is that Biden didn't try to pivot to the center in any meaningful way, that he didn't try.
00:11:28.540You know, in 2020, when he was running in the Democratic primary, he stood up to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and he said, I'm a reasonable moderate Democrat.
00:11:37.520And there was no moment where he took on his left.
00:11:41.160There was no moment where he changed his policy one iota.
00:11:44.520Everything he said he wanted to do were all elements of his so-called big Build Back Better bill, which the rest of us call Build Back Broke.
00:11:52.880And I got to say, look, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema made clear that isn't going to pass.
00:11:58.500Manchin was sitting with the Republicans on our side of the floor.
00:12:02.720He was the only Democrat sitting on our side.
00:12:04.440I thought that was just weird to not even acknowledge, OK, their big signature legislation that got voted down and has no prospects for passing.
00:12:17.720That's what he's going to talk about as his major accomplishment and do nothing to try to pivot in the direction of reasonableness headed to the election in November.
00:12:29.500I think this White House has decided they're doubling down hard left and see what happens on Election Day.
00:12:36.120Now, what was your take if you had the opportunity to speak to many of your colleagues, you know, actually at the Capitol tonight?
00:12:45.120What was what was the temperature in the room after the speech?
00:12:48.500Oh, I think there was a pretty partisan divide.
00:12:51.660You know, Schumer was positively giddy, eager to jump up and down and jump up and down.
00:12:56.400And one of my favorite games that I play at every state of the union is is watching the Democrats try to figure out when to stand and when not to.
00:13:04.040Schumer seemed to get it wrong a little bit tonight.
00:13:24.300And it was I don't know if you could pick it up on the TV broadcast, but at least the folks around were brought were cracking up laughing because it was there's always the sort of with the applause.
00:13:34.540Because the the other party has a chance to highlight things the president says that inadvertently the other side agrees with.
00:13:47.140I mean, we're not going to keep you here all night, but I don't want to end without going back to the first part of the speech for the first 10, maybe 20 minutes of the speech.
00:13:56.680I was wondering if he was ever going to mention America because he was focused entirely on the war in Ukraine.
00:14:04.960We know I mean, we've talked about the war in Ukraine quite a lot.
00:14:38.900We have fewer jobs today than we had before covid.
00:14:41.580And that's that's sort of an inconvenient fact on the way to the Democratic narrative.
00:14:46.500The other Democratic narrative, and it really is amazing.
00:14:49.600Secondly, we're facing the first major land war in Europe since World War Two.
00:14:57.980By any measure, that is a monumentally bad screw up.
00:15:02.820And yet the Democrats have convinced themselves of this narrative that Biden has unified NATO and the world like no president before, that he's forged together.
00:15:15.880This is his moment of presidential leadership that all of Europe is holy crap, Putin's really bad.
00:15:22.080Yeah. And it's a weird you're seeing Democrats really leaning in and invested in this and you're seeing the corporate media trying to spin it like crazy like this is they're already awarding Biden the Nobel Prize for losing Ukraine and surrendering to Putin.
00:15:40.720I mean, it's the most bizarre, you know, on that reasoning, Neville Chamberlain was an incredible leader by appeasing Hitler and letting the Nazis invade.
00:16:00.720I think it's an it is a very beltway narrative.
00:16:04.980It's a narrative that elites in Washington who go to the Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings and and and, you know, we we refer sort of jokingly to the pocket square coalition, which are the folks in D.C. that all are wearing little pocket squares.
00:17:18.680I think maybe look, his numbers are so underwater that maybe their plan was let's try to shore up their base a little bit because they're Democrats who are demoralized by what they're doing.
00:17:33.540And so he hit lots of Democrat hot buttons.
00:17:36.320You know, he went an entire speech and he didn't talk about China.
00:18:03.380That's the first foreign policy, first day of the union address I can think of where the president didn't mention Israel in any way, shape or form.
00:19:08.000I don't think there was any self-awareness in the speech.
00:19:13.740There was no acknowledgement of any mistake, no acknowledgement of any policy that might have been even slightly off and no course correction.
00:19:23.400That's the most curious thing is is particularly when a presidency is in trouble.
00:19:29.500And by the way, Bill Clinton did this masterfully when he was in trouble.
00:19:32.760He'd get up in the State of the Union and wow, everybody.
00:19:36.640And listen, I was not a fan of Clinton, but damn, he was he was an effective politician.
00:19:42.340He he could he could give a speech that even if you disagreed with him, you found yourself agreeing with a lot of the stuff he said.
00:19:49.440And. And. Biden was not, I suspect you, neither you nor I were nodding along in agreement with very much and what little we nodded, we're sitting there going, you've got to be frigging kidding me when he says we should secure the border.
00:20:09.240I mean, the problem was the few things he said that you agreed with.
00:20:13.700Weren't remotely credible because he wasn't actually proposing any substance to it, he was just giving empty rhetorical nods.
00:20:20.940Right. You were waiting for that moment of Bill Clinton getting up there saying the era of big government is over.
00:20:27.200I have heard you. Right. Things have gone wrong.
00:20:29.820I'm actually going to make a course correction.
00:20:31.740And there was no grappling with reality.
00:20:34.260The things that really, really, really went wrong under under Biden's reign so far, he just completely ignored, as you mentioned, the things that have sort of gone wrong.
00:20:45.000He tried to twist and make it seem like a net positive.
00:20:47.800And then he said, don't worry, we're going to turn everything around in the future.
00:20:50.860See you next year. He ended the speech and said, go get him.
00:20:53.900I've never heard a State of the Union end on the phrase, go get him.
00:20:56.540I will say one other dynamic that may not have been as clear watching it on TV.
00:21:01.220It was really hard to hear him like he mumbled.
00:21:04.960And like a bunch of us where he was police and you're like, what it's so a lot of times the Republicans are like, we can't even tell what he's saying.
00:21:15.120And it was it was a a bunch of us had that reaction that it was just he was not enunciating clearly.
00:21:22.620And and it was really difficult to understand what he was saying.
00:21:26.280That that is true. Even when he's on the microphone on TV, I suspect we could hear it much more clearly than you could in the room.
00:21:32.640Well, I'm glad that at least everyone there was was as confused as the president was.
00:21:38.860And perhaps that could help you stay awake. You were on your toes.
00:21:41.880Now, what was that word? What was that syllable?
00:21:43.500So overall, Senator, you're saying an unremarkable State of the Union for an unremarkable presidency.
00:21:51.240The State of the Union, not as strong as it could be.
00:21:54.120Well, I think the country is strong, but I think the State of the Union is in real trouble under failed Biden policies.
00:22:01.720But I will say the 13 year old kid was cute. Yeah, I was glad he was there.
00:22:08.240I kind of wish we'd all sung him happy birthday.
00:22:10.560Yeah, that that that was sort of a moment, you know, a moment.
00:22:16.040And and the woman who's who's the widow of the soldier who died.
00:22:21.360And that was also those were both nice moments where you saw some bipartisan.
00:22:25.480All right. We support you. And the Pittsburgh steelworker, he didn't say enough for us to know.
00:22:31.460I think we all wanted to support him, too.
00:22:33.240But we're trying to hear like, all right, what's who who is he and what's he here for?
00:22:36.800What are we applauding? Right. You know, there is an element.