00:00:54.720We're going to tell you where things stand right now.
00:00:56.520We're going to tell you where each of the players are.
00:00:58.640And we're going to tell you what's likely to happen next.
00:01:00.920We're also going to talk on today's podcast about D.C.
00:01:04.140And when President Trump federalized the police department in D.C., pursuant to his authority under the Constitution, his authority under the D.C.
00:01:12.560Home Rule Statute, the Democrats freaked out.
00:01:26.760We're going to break down the results of that and the attendant freak out from the Democrats.
00:01:31.560This is yet another week of real, meaningful successes for the Trump presidency and its differences that are making a difference for Americans across the country.
00:01:40.020Yeah, it's certainly going to be very interesting to see what happens with all these others, as you mentioned, all these other cities.
00:01:45.680And if this is so successful, how do you then say we don't want help to save lives in our cities?
00:01:59.160They don't want help in any city in America run by a Democrat mayor because they'd rather crime be high than actually allow the police to arrest the violent criminals.
00:02:08.840That's spoiler alert, but we're going to get to that in the second story today.
00:02:24.080Literally tonight, I'm doing my show from a hotel on the road, and I have had phenomenal service because they operate on the three largest major networks in the country.
00:02:33.320Now, why did I switch to Patriot Mobile?
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00:02:38.020But two, they're actually giving back to causes I care about.
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00:05:35.880So let's talk about this, the implosion of the media over what we just witnessed.
00:05:41.720So let's just go back a couple days ago.
00:05:43.920They said, like uniformly the media, that a guy by the name of Vladimir Putin played Donald Trump, that this was a disaster, the meeting in Alaska.
00:06:12.100Some said it looked like a 10-year-old after they get their first suit at JCPenney's, the way he was dressed up.
00:06:16.460It is kind of funny if you saw that meme going around, because it is exactly what I looked like when I was smiling when I wore my first suit when I was like 10 years old.
00:06:23.220It was one of the best memes I've ever seen.
00:07:32.420That was part of the mandate is that I think the American people are done with a blank check with sending billions of dollars to Ukraine with no limit, just on and on and on for nonstop war.
00:07:45.620The American people are ready for this to be over.
00:07:47.560Now, what I've advised the president, what I've encouraged the president is it needs to end.
00:07:52.400It's going to end in a negotiated settlement.
00:07:54.420But it needs to end in a way that is a clear and discernible loss for Putin.
00:07:58.980That is a loss for Russia because Russia is not our friend.
00:08:02.500They are our enemy and we want them weaker and not stronger.
00:08:05.560Now, the media tried to say the meeting with Putin was a disaster.
00:08:50.060I think in the past two weeks, we've probably had more progress in ending this war than we have in the past three and a half years.
00:08:58.960And I think the fact that we're around this table today is very much symbolic in the sense that it's team Europe and team United States helping Ukraine.
00:09:10.760Well, Ben, that's exactly what you and I said on Monday's pod, which is that we made more progress towards peace in Ukraine in the last couple of weeks than we have in three and a half years.
00:09:21.300But when you and I were saying it, the media dismisses it.
00:09:24.160You've now got the president of Finland saying that.
00:09:31.880I think this is such an important meeting.
00:09:33.720As a group, I think we've had a discussion on the phone a number of times, Mr. President, that we'll be able now to be around the table to take it forward.
00:09:41.040And I really feel that we can, I think, with the right approach this afternoon, make real progress, particularly on the security guarantees and your indication of security guarantees of some sort of Article 5 style guarantees fits with what we've been doing with the Coalition of the Willing, which we started some months ago, bringing countries together and showing that we were prepared to step up to the plate when it came to security.
00:10:05.060With you coming alongside the U.S., alongside what we've already developed, I think we could take a really important step forward today, a historic step, actually, could come out of this meeting in terms of security for Ukraine and security in Europe.
00:10:20.080I also feel that we can make real progress towards a just and lasting outcome.
00:10:28.240Obviously, that has to involve Ukraine.
00:10:31.320And a trilateral meeting seems the sensible next step.
00:10:34.620So thank you for being prepared to take that forward, because I think if we can ensure that that is the progress out of this meeting, both security guarantees and some sort of progress on trilateral meeting of some sort to bring some of the difficult issues to a head, then I think today will be seen as a very important day in recent years.
00:10:58.620In relation to a conflict, which has gone on for three and a bit years and so far, nobody, nobody's been able to bring it to this point.
00:15:25.400And I think Zelensky had spent too much time with the New York Times and with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and believed their talking points.
00:15:33.740And I got to tell you, look, in this, no U.S. president would allow a foreign leader to come into the Oval Office and address him the way Zelensky did the last time, and especially not Donald Trump.
00:16:27.100We've talked a lot on this podcast about how Joe Biden caused the war in Ukraine, that his weakness, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, emboldened Putin and all of our enemies, and also how Biden's waiving the sanctions on Nord Stream 2 caused this war.
00:17:00.840In this settlement, what I think is very important, I would like to see Ukraine and the rest of Europe sign an agreement to buy their energy, buy their oil and gas from the United States.
00:17:17.080That's good for America, but they should not return to buying oil and gas from Russia.
00:17:23.900When I meet with European heads of state and foreign ministers, this is the number one question I ask them.
00:17:30.120When this war is over, are you going to go back to buying Russian oil and gas?
00:17:34.940Are you going to go back to sending billions of dollars to fuel the Russian war machine?
00:17:39.920Or are you going to use this as an opportunity to pivot towards a friend and ally?
00:17:44.500And I think leaving, resolving this war with a major energy agreement for Ukraine and Europe to buy their energy from America, I think that is a powerful America first outcome.
00:17:58.540And it's also an outcome where Putin will not have scored a major victory if that is the resolution.
00:18:05.840And I hope very much that's the direction the president takes this.
00:18:08.780All of you know that I am a pro-Second Amendment guy.
00:18:12.200I've shared on numerous occasions how carrying my firearms saved my life from a gang-related attack.
00:18:17.760But for those of you out there with family members who may not be comfortable having a gun, by their side, you still want them to be able to protect themselves and others in times of danger.
00:18:27.020And that's where the Berna launcher comes in.
00:18:30.080Berna is a handheld pistol that fires both kinetic rounds and chemical irritants to separate you from an attacker.
00:18:36.480And I'm here with Josh Sherrard from Berna to share the true story of how an avid hiker uses Berna to stop an attacking mountain lion.
00:19:22.400He was able to strike the mountain lion all four times in chest and torso, at which point that mountain lion tears off, never to be seen again.
00:19:30.020These guys make it down the trail, but back to their car and back to home safely.
00:19:34.680Fortunately, this is all it took to make sure and get this family back home safe off a hike that could have taken an obvious turn for the worst.
00:19:42.680And I'm going to guess that Berna has been used to stop other types of animal attacks as well.
00:20:35.260They really cannot afford for this war to go on much longer.
00:20:39.080Part of the reason why I'm guessing you're saying you believe this timeline that we're going to end this war by the end of this year is the financial impact this is having on Russia.
00:20:47.680And Vladimir Putin does not want to get to the point where there's a revolt in his country because they're so gone economically.
00:20:53.360There's also he needs to start selling oil because that is what gives life to his, you know, being in charge of this country.
00:21:04.880It makes the people kind of sit back down and just go along to get along, in essence, which is the way of life, unfortunately, under Vladimir Putin in Russia.
00:21:13.480But if he doesn't get this done soon, he's in trouble economically.
00:21:17.960You mentioned this agreement with the U.S. and these other countries.
00:21:55.580And Russia, and Putin in particular, has a long history then of jacking up prices when he wants to extort Europe or cutting off energy supplies when he wants to get concessions from them.
00:22:09.300Look, if you're in Europe and it's the dead of winter and you're relying on gas to heat your houses and Russia can shut you off,
00:22:15.220that gives them enormous leverage and Putin has demonstrated he will use that leverage to engage in economic blackmail.
00:22:22.440So it's not in Europe's interest to be dependent on Russia for energy.
00:22:27.040Now, right now, Russia is selling the bulk of their oil and gas to China and to India.
00:22:32.920And this is one of the lever points President Trump has, is that he has threatened or imposed sanctions against both India and China if they continue buying Russian oil and gas.
00:22:43.380And that's one of the things I believe that's bringing Putin to the table, is that if President Trump cuts off his market in China and India, Putin is in a world of hurt.
00:22:53.580And so that's an incentive for Putin to come in and say, all right, let's reach a resolution.
00:23:24.720In contrast, Trump is pulling off unprecedented diplomatic feats to advance serious negotiations that has a reasonable chance of being successful.
00:23:50.580And the press coverage of it has been ludicrous.
00:23:55.460If Obama had pulled off these meetings, it would be hailed as a tour de force rather than downplaying and naysaying every move we see in the press.
00:25:14.260And it deals with the next steps for people that don't know.
00:25:18.040What we're looking at is, by the way, Donald Trump apparently walked out of these meetings by himself, went to the Oval by himself, made a phone call to Vladimir Putin and said, let's let's get a meeting.
00:25:29.320Apparently, meeting number one would be between him and Zelensky.
00:25:34.420And then there would be a trilateral meeting where he would, in essence, be the negotiator in the room between Zelensky and Putin.
00:25:42.480I found that very interesting that he said, you guys meet first.
00:25:46.960I'll meet the next meeting and said the other way around.
00:25:50.760What did you think about that strategy?
00:25:52.960And why do you think he decided to do it that way?
00:25:56.340Look, I think he believes he's got the leverage to try to push through a deal.
00:26:01.380And there's no doubt he's got enormous leverage over Ukraine because the United States has been the major funder of this war.
00:26:09.400And he's got enormous leverage over Russia because the ability to impose sanctions, to shut down their ability to sell oil and gas anywhere in the world, that is powerful.
00:26:18.460And those two together, and listen, I just think force of personality.
00:26:22.940I've got to say, some of my favorite things watching the last couple of days have been the memes and everything that has come out when Trump and Putin were walking together and the B2s fly over.
00:26:33.820And you see Putin do a double take as he literally buzzes Putin with American military might.
00:26:41.240I think Trump is trying to use every tool he has to resolve this.
00:27:03.740And Hillary Clinton may well regret her tongue-in-cheek comment that she would nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize if he resolved this.
00:28:00.620And everyone that said the president was like being a dictator and a tyrant by sending in the National Guard, actually trying to fight crime.
00:28:07.700They said this was just him being a bully.
00:29:55.340They do not want crime to go down because if crime goes down, it vindicates President Trump exercising his constitutional authority concerning D.C.
00:30:05.760and exercising his authority as explicit statutory authority under the D.C. Home Rule Act.
00:30:32.500The president doesn't need to do this.
00:30:34.480Everything's moving in the right direction.
00:30:35.800Well, it may have looked like crime was down, but now the Justice Department is investigating whether D.C. police purposely, willfully manipulated the crime data to basically fake people out, lie to the citizens of D.C.
00:30:50.120And they say, oh, no, no, everything's getting better from last year when it's really, really, really bad.
00:30:55.640And apparently they may have manipulated the numbers, including a whistleblower that they've settled with.
00:31:00.740Yeah, look, I can tell you from someone who works in D.C.
00:31:03.820So most weeks I am in D.C. in the Senate when the Senate's in session.
00:31:08.520And in the last four years under Joe Biden, the violence in D.C. has gotten much worse.
00:31:15.220We've seen Rand Paul had a staffer who was stabbed on a public street at like four in the afternoon, stabbed in the gut.
00:31:22.080There was a guy who served in the first Trump administration who was shot in the head and killed at about 5 p.m.
00:31:30.240sitting in his car on a street in D.C.
00:31:32.860This is not two in the morning in a rough neighborhood.
00:31:35.840This is in a major metropolitan street.
00:31:39.280We had, you know, not long ago, we had two Israelis murdered by a radical pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian leftist zealot from Chicago.
00:31:50.940And D.C., as someone who works there, you know, it used to be when I started in the Senate, you know, I would, as you know, I love movies.
00:32:00.100We've done a couple of podcasts where we talk about movies.
00:32:02.740When I started in the Senate, I used to sometimes if there was a night that I was done, let's say I was done at 8 or 9 o'clock at night, there's a movie theater about five blocks from my house.
00:32:12.140I used to routinely walk up to the movie theater and just go see a movie.
00:33:05.940Look at the D.C. police evening chairman, what he said about it.
00:33:08.800Yeah, the reporters that are honest, who are interviewing D.C. residents, many of whom, most of whom are African-American, the residents are saying, thank God, we think this is great.
00:33:21.280Look, the D.C. residents don't like living with the risk of drive-by shootings.
00:33:25.160Henry Cuellar, who is a Democrat congressman, was carjacked again in the early evening.
00:33:31.340He was coming home with dinner to his apartment.
00:33:33.480It was an apartment building apparently five other congressmen lived in, carjacked right out in the front of it.
00:33:38.840And here's what Greg Pemberton, I want you to listen to Greg Pemberton, who was the D.C. police union chairman, what he said about the security of D.C. under Democrats.
00:34:10.060They have destroyed the way that the courts are allowed to operate.
00:34:12.480And they've destroyed our ability to sentence criminals to sentences that are commensurate with the crimes they've committed.
00:34:17.920And so the only way to fix this holistically is to go back and look at all of this legislation that the council passed back in 2020 when there was all of this anti-police rhetoric and work to undo that.
00:34:31.520Council will never do that on their own.
00:34:33.620And so what we're hoping over the course of the next 30 days is that whether that's the White House, whether that's these federal law enforcement agencies, whether that's Congress, that people get an insight into exactly how the system got so broken.
00:34:45.140Because the only way to fix it is if we can get rid of that legislation.
00:34:48.840And my main concern is that 30 days are going to go by.
00:34:51.860All of these folks are going to go up about their merry way.
00:34:54.320And we're still going to be stuck with all this bad law.
00:36:26.280If we see violent crime numbers continue to go down and stay down, that demonstrates we can solve crime in other cities, too.
00:36:35.280And the reason residents of your city are being murdered is because the Democrat mayors and the Democrat city councils care more about the radical leftists who hate the police,
00:36:46.060who want to defund the police, who want to abolish the police, than they care about your family and your children.
00:36:51.520Look, it spoke volumes when China's President Xi came to visit San Francisco a few years ago and Gavin Newsom came in and cleaned up San Francisco and took out the homeless people and took out the drug addicts and the streets were sparkling.
00:37:06.860And I got to say, even if you are a left wing Bolshevik in San Francisco, a tiny voice in the back of your head must have said, wait a second, if they could clean up the streets today, why didn't they clean up the streets last week?
00:37:24.200Why do my kids matter less than the president of China?
00:37:30.300And so this is an existential threat to Democrats who want to say, we're helpless, we can't stop crime.
00:37:37.040And by the way, part of their message is the only way to stop crime is to disarm law abiding citizens.
00:37:43.360That gun control doesn't solve it, but locking up violent criminals does.
00:37:48.880And spoiler alert, that is what works in stopping violent crime.
00:37:52.540Then the Democrats have a massive challenge.
00:37:55.480And I want you to listen to Caroline Levitt talking about some of the results we've seen in just one week in D.C.
00:38:01.500President Trump's efforts to make D.C. safe again are working.
00:38:04.940There have been a total of four hundred and sixty five arrests since the start of this operation on Thursday, August 7th.
00:38:12.540Last night, there were a total of 52 arrests, including the arrest of an illegal alien MS-13 gang member with convictions for DWI and drug possession.
00:38:22.460Thanks to President Trump's leadership in the outstanding work of both federal and local law enforcement, dangerous gang members like the one picked up last night will not be allowed on the streets of our nation's capital.
00:38:34.400Other arrests last night included assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing, parole violation for robbery, murder, outstanding warrant for attempted murder, assault on federal law enforcement officer and felony assault.
00:38:47.680Four more homeless encampments were also removed during yesterday's reporting period.
00:38:51.680To date, a total of 48 homeless encampments have been cleared in Washington, D.C. by multi-agency teams.
00:38:59.080MPD patrol units are actively working with city officials to locate and clear additional encampments and remove homeless residents off of Washington's streets.
00:39:08.300And despite fake narratives from the media, again, a significant number of the arrests have been in high crime areas of D.C.
00:39:15.000In fact, nearly half of all of the non-illegal alien-related arrests have occurred in Wards 7 and 8, the two wards that have the highest number of violent crime, as well as homicides and assaults with dangerous weapons last year.
00:39:30.280So while Democrats continue to coddle violent criminals, President Trump and this administration are focused on putting them behind bars and unapologetically standing up for the safety of law-abiding American citizens.
00:39:42.660And the White House will continue to provide all of you with the results of this operation in the days ahead.
00:39:47.720By the way, this goes back to the narrative.
00:39:52.020When this was announced, the president was going to do this.
00:39:54.860That night, I was doing Abby Phillips' show on CNN.
00:39:58.880And all of the panelists were losing their minds saying, Donald Trump, this was going to do nothing.
00:40:04.200They said he's putting them on the National Mall where there's no crime.
00:41:10.000But when it comes to actually protecting black lives, understand that a very significant percentage of the murder victims from these violent criminals are African-Americans.
00:41:21.680And so Donald Trump and Republicans are stepping in and saving black lives.
00:41:27.240And the position of Democrats in the media is those black lives do not matter.
00:41:31.760They'd rather they be victims of murder than actually have law enforcement put violent criminals in jail.
00:41:39.760And, Ben, when I say that, that sounds unbelievably harsh.
00:41:44.760But I want to ask you seriously, give me an alternative explanation.
00:41:49.620If the explanation is not that the Democrats do not give a damn about whether Black Lives Matter
00:41:57.620and whether they're saving African-Americans from being victims of homicide,
00:42:01.700then why are they so adamantly opposed to supporting law enforcement putting violent criminals in jail?
00:42:08.000Yeah, no, this is the Democratic Party now.
00:42:09.900They'd rather see Donald Trump fail than actually save American lives.
00:42:13.640Don't forget, we do the show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.