Why Did Dem Politicians Storm An ICE Prison? Arrest Details Revealed
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- They just like criminals. Like, I don't know how else to say it, but I watched some of the cell phone footage of these criminals being moved into the facility by members of ICE, and you have all of these liberal white women shouting at the police officers being like, "Have you shown him a warrant?"

Have your rights been read? And it's like, what the hell is wrong with you? These people are convicted criminals. You know, it's just like, what is it? Also have no right to be here in the first place. And they care about them the most. They don't care about their fellow citizens. They don't care about the people in North Carolina, the people in California. What really gets their hair on fire is convicted criminals from foreign countries being deported.

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Good Tuesday to you. Welcome back to the Ruthless Friday program. We've got an awful lot for you today. I'm Josh Holmes, along with Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook. Left or right across your radio dial, we're going to get into an awful lot here. We've got Dems in Disarray.

which in large part explains why Trump continues to dictate the pace of play on almost everything. We're going to give you an update on all of the things that we talked about last week in terms of trade deals, taxes, all of those. It turns out we're right. Weird. We love being right. Weird. Happens so often. Oh, my gosh. Strange.

We've got all that. Some fun new stuff. The new Air Force One, all that. We're going to put that into context. A little House Freedom Caucus issue that we will take in variety. Tim Walz, still around. He's got some stuff that we're going to talk about. And there's a woman. Well, she's a lesbian, obviously.

who has had an encounter with her lover involving nacho cheese that I don't think you're going to want to miss because...

Well, we didn't want to miss it, so you're not going to want to either. We also have a great guest, Joe Concha. You'll recognize him from Fox News, all of his writings. He's written a new book. It's terrific. He's going to talk a lot about that. All in one show, folks. You've come to the right place. This is just fantastic. I think we should start with Dems in Disarray. It's always the best news, and we've been getting a lot of it lately.

We really have. And I think one of the things you've been seeing on cable news that has played out here over the last 72 hours or so is

which we now have clarification on for you for the first time here on a Tuesday morning, is exactly what it is that Democrats have chosen to fight about. And we know that, according to Fox News, printed up this helpful piece about Newark mayor arrested as Dem Congress members storm New Jersey ice prison.

meaning, you know, their Border Patrol folks, to conduct a quote-unquote oversight visit. Now, you've seen an awful lot of this on Fox over the last few days where they're trying to add context to this. I think we've got, you know, somewhat of a definitive view. You recall that we've talked about one of the reasons why Democrats have been so ineffective at opposing Donald Trump is because they choose all the wrong battles.

Every time. Given the choice between an 80-20 issue, they take 20 every single time without fail. It's insane. And this one is particularly egregious.

In that, you know, you've seen them, El Salvador, right? What's his name down there? Abrego Garcia. Abrego Garcia and Van Hollen. They're trying to spring this guy who I think very clearly at this point has been identified as a MS-13 gang member. Human trafficking gang member. Right. So that like wore off a little bit and they're like, well, I know.

They house them in New Jersey. So we're going to go. So 75% or more of these have been of people that are incarcerated in this ICE prison in New Jersey have been convicted, convicted, convicted of violent crimes, violent crimes. So naturally, they're going to head on up there. It's a core constituency, the Democratic Party. Criminals. Let's play a clip to just get this started. Can we play clip one, please?

Okay, these are members of Congress trying to storm in to this facility. A chaotic scene. There is pushing and shoving with law enforcement officials. Federal law enforcement. You can see members of Congress actually throwing elbows and trying to get through. And look at this nonsense.

You've got a woman in a red coat. She's allegedly a member of Congress. I can't believe anybody elected this person, but she's allegedly a member of Congress who is not having it.

Very upset. Far be it from me to provide a description, but it appears they are obstructing an official proceeding. Wow. Interesting. Interesting. Well, that could be an interpretation in one regard, but...

Perhaps there's local officials that could expound upon that. Do you think so? No, I do. And, you know, I often wonder how people might react to this sort of thing. And, you know, there's a mayor involved in this situation. And it was just wild to me to watch these Democrats rough up federal law enforcement in their effort to try to draw attention to themselves. Yeah.

So why don't we play clip two just to get an explanation from the mayor who was, I guess, arrested during all of this. Nobody stormed anything. Those folks, when I got there, they were already inside, escorted inside by GEO and ICE to a booth to wait for Homeland Security folks to come and give them a tour.

So they were escorted inside to receive a tour of a federal facility. Where have I heard this before? You know, guys, do you remember anything in the last few years? Kind of sounds like January 6th. Oh, my God.

So you've got an altercation with pushing and shoving, as we see on our screen, with elbows being thrown and somebody very, very upset, of which one of the people who were arrested was saying, well, we were escorted inside and simply given a tour. Amazing how that worm turns, isn't it?

It's wild to me, dude. It is wild to me. And now you have Democrats going on their favored network, CNN, to plead their case that they are the victims.

that the law enforcement is not the victim here. And it is just a full turnabout. I mean, Smug, I know you agree with this. That's the thing is I always say that Democrats don't care whatsoever about hypocrisy. Like you can point out 100% that, boy, you know, I was told that attacking law enforcement officials, assaulting them was a bad thing. You know, interfering with official proceedings. I was told that was a bad thing. I was told this is an insurrection.

It doesn't matter how frequently you point it out because Democrats don't care about hypocrisy. I saw a really funny tweet about this. I can't remember who tweeted it out, so my apologies. But, you know, one of these Democrats that was involved with the scuffle with the ICE agents said,

was Rob Menendez Jr. Oh, yeah. And the joke on Twitter was that he wasn't going in there to free ICE prisoners. He was looking for his dad. Of course, that's in reference to his father, Bob Menendez, who after, I don't know,

seemingly dozens of different indictments at a federal level, was finally convicted over the last year. Had to give up his Senate seat and now resides somewhere in one of those facilities. And my takeaway from this whole thing is...

We don't need to point out any longer that, wow, can you believe that Democrats are doing this? The time for pointing it out is over. I want Kristi Noem to throw these people in prison. I want President Trump to throw these people in prison. I don't care if they're members of Congress. This is clear-cut. They're attacking police officers. They're attacking ICE agents. They're storming a building. They're trying to lie about it. I mean, this is like when we had, what was it, Jamal Bowman-

caught red-handed on video pulling the fire like if the more you give the message to Dems that lawlessness is okay the more they do it. I mean that's to me perhaps the greatest lesson from the Biden years is

All the left wants is lawlessness more than anything. They want lawlessness and they want to be allowed to do whatever they want, whether that's legal, whether that's illegal, whether we point it out as being hypocritical or not. They're going to do it until when you hit people in the face with consequences. That's when behavior changes. It's important, Smug. And I learned this from Joe Biden and all those Democrats when they were charging Donald Trump with all those indictments and for jurisdictions in 2024. Yeah.

No one is above the law. Bingo. That's what we were told. And we intend to prove that. That's exactly right. And Rachel Campo, stuffy with Fox News, was at this facility on Monday morning and she saw posters where there was an announcement

number that anyone inside of the facility could call to receive $1,000 and a plane ticket back to where they came from. They don't have to stay in there. There's an opportunity funded by the taxpayers to go back to their home country. That's all you got to do is just get out. It's not asking a lot. Just get out. You came here illegally? Get out. To put a finer detail, so Rob Menendez, the son of Bob Menendez...

along with Watson Coleman and LaMonica McIver. McIver was the one throwing bows in there in the red. I mean, she looked actually like she could move some furniture. Yeah. Right? I mean, she looks like a first-round edge prospect. Yeah, no, she's an undrafted free agent. You see her as a swing guard, and like as a linebacker, you're going to probably get low. Get low. Yeah. In the free technique. She's got a lot coming at you.

Anyway, all of it is to say that they entered Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, according to Fox News, and were held up inside the first checkpoint. The Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, told Fox News.

In a press conference later, Coleman said the ICE was out of control, quote unquote. Certainly appeared that way from the video. I didn't think it was the congressmen who were out of control. Well, or the polling guard in the red jacket. McIver said the three lawmakers had waited for more than two hours to gain access to the facility to conduct a trial.

So they were gathering outside of the federal facility before they went out. Because it's really important. You notice that all of these people have conducted oversight visits for people who commit murders and rapes and things like that. It's only when illegal immigrants do that where we've got now all of a sudden an oversight capability. So here we are. They're going to do all of that. They waited for more than two hours. She said all three of them were also assaulted.

They are the victims. Now she is the victim, along with her two colleagues, are victims by ICE, who decided in the best interest of not only them, but the prisoners and all of it, that maybe people just running through the gates of a federal mass prison was not a terrific idea.

I'm just a locker up. I'm so tired of this. I am so tired of this. The thing that really strikes me

I don't know. We talk about it a lot, but just for emphasis here, I saw a lot of the cell phone video footage of all of this, and I think it bears mentioning that what these protesters did is waited for a bus or some sort of caravan to leave, and then they basically broke through the chain link fence to get in. No, it was for a full Shawshank. But they like...

They just like criminals. Like, I don't know how else to say it, but I watched some of the cell phone footage of these criminals being moved into the facility by members of ICE, and you have all of these liberal white women shouting at the police officers being like, have you shown him a warrant? Have your rights been read? And it's like...

What the hell is wrong with you? These people are convicted fucking criminals. You know, it's just like...

Who also have no right to be here in the first place. In the first place. And they care about them the most. They don't care about their fellow citizens. They don't care about the people in North Carolina and the people in California. What really gets their hair on fire is convicted criminals from foreign countries being deported. That makes them mad. I understand an argument that we've had in the last few years. I understand. I don't agree with it. But I understand an argument where...

the over-incarceration of America and you want to go into these prisons and figure out like, you know, which is a lie, redeemable component. And like, we ought to make sure that we have a rehabilitation system or whatever. That's an argument. Sure. I don't think so. I don't subscribe. I think we, I think we've lived through that argument. We've seen the results of that. We have a serious under-incarceration problem. Serious, serious, serious under-incarceration. But like, as a baseline, you're talking about Americans, right?

That's not what we're talking about here. And that's the thing is the left has captured on this idea that, well, justice is a nebulous thing. Truth is nebulous. It's my truth, my truth that I'm sharing, you know, my lived experience. The more you try to bring people out of the reality of black and white and you try to create these gray areas. Mm-hmm.

and make morality a nebulous thing and there's no longer any right or wrong, that creates a vacuum where they have their control and their power. Because all of a sudden they're like, yeah, listen, the guy quite clearly entered the country illegally. That's black and white. But is he a criminal? Is it an imaginary? Just because he's committing assaults here in America, didn't the Statue of Liberty say you can come here and stab people up? His tattoos don't mean that. Yeah.

Let me interpret those tattoos. It says murder across his neck. He could be a nice guy. He could. You never know.

Well, listen, if you feel like the Trump administration is driving an agenda day after day, it's in large part because of things like that. They can't get their act together. When we come back, we're going to talk about the other side of this, about how Democrats are now demanding that Joe Biden go away. Yes. And if you didn't see the view at the end of last week, boy, oh boy, do we have a treat for you. Frustration grows around.

the Democratic establishment, shall we say. And it's like infiltrating the Democratic establishment in a lot of ways. We're going to get to all of that right after this. The Biden pill penalty is crippling the development of life-saving drugs for cancer, Alzheimer's, and other deadly diseases. It's already slashed funding for pill-based medicines by 70%.

Thankfully, President Trump is leading the fight to end the Biden pill penalty. President Trump's plan will unleash innovation, lower costs and save American lives. Call Congress. Tell them to stand with President Trump and include a repeal of the Biden pill penalty in the budget reconciliation bill. So Politico wrote a piece entitled, quote, It's time for Joe Biden to go away.

Quote, unquote, Democrats are triggered by Biden's return to the spotlight. OK. All right. Well, is it for the right reasons? I just love it. I don't know. But let's play. Let's just set this up with clip three, if you don't mind, just to give a little flavor. There's nothing to sustain that. Number one. Number two, you know, think of what what we're left with. We're left with a circumstance where.

We had an insurrection when I started. The nonsense of civil war. We had a circumstance where we were in a position that we, well, a pandemic because of the incompetence of the last outfit. Ended up over a million people dying. A million people dying. And we're also in a situation where we found ourselves...

unable to uh deal with a lot of just basic issues and uh which i won't go into mostly because he doesn't remember them and we got it done and uh you know one of the things that that well you know one of the things i think is that the people who wrote those books were not in the white house with us i mean dude so if you didn't

If you're not up to speed on this, we did an episode with Megyn Kelly last Thursday where we talked in detail about all of this, about it like a place for mom and hospice care and all these things. And how weird it was. This was an expanded clip that ultimately Jill Biden got into where she was basically sitting there talking next to the patient as if he didn't care.

exists as a president of the United States. Joe Biden's inanimate object. Here's Dr. Joe. Shut up. I have power of attorney here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was the wildest thing. And it turns out, like, even Democrats in their sort of altered state in many ways came to similar conclusions that this was not their best stuff. And so this piece by Politico was basically like, this is not good. Like, the line that I'll...

highlight here is if he was expecting a warm reception, he is not getting it. Many in his party are desperate to turn the page on Biden's presidency, craving new leaders, fresh faces as Democrats look to find a way out of the political wilderness. I think it's a good jumping off point in a lot of ways because

Look, they have no identity. You've got this young group of folks that we just covered, the New Jersey contingent,

And also many others going to El Salvador and everything else. They were picking, like, every wrong battle. And so now you've got this guy who's supposed to be sort of a statesman, as, like, ex-presidents typically are. They're usually held in higher regard than your rank-and-file House member. Right. In many ways. And he shows back up on the scene of The View, and they're like, uh, no. Like, not that either. Like, that might be worse than the insurrectionists at the New Jersey prison. Mm-hmm.

And so it like the identity of Democrat opposition is so compromised because, A, they picked the wrong battle and B, the folks who are sort of like the spokespeople and the old guard when they show up completely compromise any ability to sort of counteract a Trump administration message. Yeah.

And I find it very interesting that Politico is writing this story because let me read you a headline from July 15th of 2024 entitled Biden defends, quote, pretty damn good mental acuity in testy interview. Yeah, I think...

I think what Ashbrook here is highlighting is important, is that there is a tension between the turning the page and preserving the legacy. Right? Like, that's the thing, is the reason why Joe Biden is out there is because he knows all these books are coming, and they have come already, and everybody knows that his brain is applesauce. Yeah.

But he has to be out there to defend the legacy of who he was as president. And the Democratic establishment also – They don't want to even talk about it. Yeah, right? They don't want to talk about it. They just don't even want to sweep it under the rug. And meanwhile, you have these people trying to blaze a new path, get a new identity for the Democratic Party. They're like, I know, I know, I know. I'll storm an ICE facility. You know what I mean? And so they're entirely rudderless. But that is the tension in this is the preservation of legacy and trying to blaze a new path.

I think that's 100%. What I find very funny about all of this is that time really is a flat circle. We began Joe Biden's administration saying, fuck Joe Biden. And now at the end, it's the Democrats saying it. Let's go, Brandon. Let's go, Brandon. But here's the thing. The rewriting of history that the left is trying to do with Joe Biden is the same thing that the left tried to do.

during the COVID pandemic. You know, they're trying to pretend like, oh, well, we never wanted to close schools. Oh, well, we never wanted to shut down businesses. We always thought Joe Biden was bad. And now we're telling people the truth. Right. Like the left is trying to rewrite history once again, and nobody's buying it. But there's no there's no cohesion in that there is no leader and no followers. Right.

Like they're just splintered. You've got people going to El Salvador, people storming ice facilities. You've got folks like David Hogg who are out trying to primary older Democrats. The message that he's had for his very young political career stands in stark contrast to what he's talking about now. And like...

There's no two things that are similar. And I think this, you know, part of the vacuum of leadership in the Democrat Party, I think, can be explained by looking at Joe Biden right there. Like, yes, it's apparent that the man is,

you know, probably has dementia or, you know, whatever elderly kind of affliction has affected him. It's extremely clear. He does the crutch thing of where he's like, well, you know, I won't get on Twitter. He says like, I don't want to say anything too bad. And then like now, because he's got Jill right there on his side, that's the cue for her to like, okay, save me. She starts talking. But more importantly, the motivation Joe Biden has to do this, the reason he's doing this, when it's incredibly clear, he's incapable, he's physically incapable

Mentally incapable. He can't do it. He just can't do it. So why is he being brought out there? It's because he's surrounded by these greedy, greedy people. And that's the problem is Biden Inc. is a group of grifters. And that's apparent. That's that's why there's so much tension between the Obamas and the Bidens. Well, this is what we were told was all a ruse. Yeah. But now there if there ever was proof that it's not a ruse.

It's you're dragging an old octogenarian out of bed long past his prime to try to be relevant again when it benefits him politically or his party, not even a lick. That's the thing is there's no benefit to the party for Joe Biden to get out there anymore. It's clear. I mean, he was harmful when he was running. When he was a candidate, he was hurting the party. There's no benefit to the party. There's no benefit to the left's causes whatsoever.

The only benefit is Biden Inc. They are trying to grab some money. They're trying to save some face. They can't. You think you think Joe Biden, he has speaking engagements. The guy can't finish a sentence. They're not going to pay him to speak anywhere. So one of the things he said in the view interview was that he thinks he could have won the 2024 election. He understands that Kamala couldn't win. And I want to ask you guys, do you agree?

No. No, he couldn't have. But I do recall, Holmes, when we did that episode, this was the Black Swan media event, right, where everybody was starting to percolate about, I don't think Joe can do the job. This is after the debate. And I think it was just me and you that did the episode.

And the one thing I said to you is the greatest part about this, the greatest part about Kamala being the candidate will be Joe Biden claiming he would have won if she loses. Yeah. And that's 100 percent this because he's just this old dementia patient Irishman who can't help but have a chip on his shoulder and think I would have done it. He never would have done it. Obviously, she she couldn't close the sale in large part because she was because of him. Right. To him. Yeah. Yeah.

But she never would have been in the position to make the sale. If not for him. If not for him. Right? There's no way that she ever would have been in the conversation as the Democratic nominee if not for put it on the ticket in 2020 by Joe Biden who limited himself to, I don't know, a black woman and there would happen to be only one standing on stage. She was it. She got on it. And then she was a disaster throughout. And like...

This conversation from the Democratic side has been a disaster of their own making from the very, very beginning. And now he's trying to get out from underneath that and pretend like, you know, I probably would have won. Now...

Could have like a 2012 version of Joe Biden won this election? Foreseeably. A lot of more relatability there in the center of the country than she ever had, who stood on a stage and said, you know, open the borders and give everybody free health care. And I'm for socialist medicine. I'm for, you know, all these sort of things that disqualified her from the electorate in and of itself. And then she couldn't talk herself out of a paper bag.

during the last 30 to 60 days and said she would do nothing different. You know, I mean, this is like a worst possible candidate. But it is what it is. Like, this is what they're left with. And then you have these like little insurrective pieces within the Democratic Party who've got different ideas. What I find so fascinating is that some of them have like a brief moment of reflection where they're like,

maybe this was a bad idea and then they say it despite like their entire record of being part of the problem beforehand but they're trying to like steer the party in a different way let's take Hogg show me your Hogg number four

So what I'm trying to do with this initiative, with Leaders We Deserve, the organization that we're working with, is to challenge Democrats that we feel like are failing to meet the moment in safe congressional seats that don't risk us losing the House, and say to them, look, nobody is entitled to their position of power, because ultimately, the

The positions of power in this country don't belong to any member of Congress that is out there. They belong to the people that vote them into office. And the people are showing us right now with our record low approval ratings that they're not happy with us. And what I'm trying to do here is show that we're trying to bring in a new generation. Okay. Okay.

Hey, listen, show me your hog, buddy. You're kind of not allowed to say he said it. He said it. The guy was being honest. He's spitting over there. I mean, he's not he's not lying, right? Yeah. But immediately Dems are like pissed off. Also, also coming from a guy who's neck deep in the Biden. This is what I was going to say. What he's saying now is very.

very different from everything he said leading up to this point. He was like, Joe Biden's brilliant. You should see Joe Biden behind closed doors. He's doing backflips and pirouettes. And now all of a sudden he's like, no, we need a younger generation. These old guys got to go. Okay. All right. So he shifted personally. What else has he got? That's...

Real quick, just one second. Hopefully none of the Democrats listening to this pay attention to it because we just explained why they have no credibility. It's because they already spent all of an election lying to the American people. It doesn't matter if your candidate's younger or older or if you get a black woman on the ticket or if you've got David Hogg on the ticket or who David Hogg likes. You guys spent an entire election cycle lying to people and they don't forget that shit. But also, David Hogg himself is lying. He is. The very premise to it is a lie. Like,

It's one thing to come up with the right message, which he's trying to do. And you'll see this in this next clip. It's quite another to have an authentic take that you can actually believe. It's nonsense because they've worked against that the whole way. Let's see the next clip, please.

Right now, what I think happened last election is younger men, they would rather vote for somebody who feels, who even if they don't completely agree with, they don't feel judged by, than somebody who they do agree with, that they feel like they have to walk on eggshells around constantly because they're going to be judged or ostracized or excommunicated. What a revelation. What's interesting about this moment is it feels like the two parties in some senses have flipped where, you know, Republicans used to be the judgmental assholes.

in many ways and sense of many democrats despite us i would say for most of us coming from the right place of wanting to do the right thing we've created a culture where we say well if you say the wrong thing to excommunicated and that's just not how human beings work nobody's perfect but ultimately what we have to do here is figure out how to bring people back in and work towards the bigger goal of advancing future this country helping young people specially get by so that they're able to focus on their lives in

getting with a young woman or something like that instead of how are they going to pay their rent, for example, or how are they working their two jobs? Young people should be able to focus on what young people should be focused on, which is how to get laid and how to go and have fun. How to get laid and have fun. What a sensible message out of the young man if you weren't part of the Me Too movement.

What a sensible message of somebody who didn't dedicate his youth basically to try to get rid of freedoms for the very population that it is that he's talking about. Like this is a guy who's just sort of flipped. I'm not saying that his message is wrong. If you listen to that,

Makes some sense. What was the name of the influencer kid that got in trouble? The one who was the Navy SEALs concubine? I don't remember. Because here's the thing. In secret, Harry Sisson. He got in trouble for exactly that. Because the thing is that they... That's the thing is...

uh, with the Democrats, the hypocrisy is one thing. It's the hierarchy thing. All the folks at the top, like Bernie, he's taking PJs. He's going to tell you to like, go read marks. It's good stuff. You know, like the rich are getting away with too much. Now I'm hopping on my PJ, but don't worry about that folks. The same way that Harry sits in like all these kids who are towing the line, who are like, I stand with women, you know, uh, stop being such a toxic masculinity, like, uh, you know, uh,

attacking Republicans for being like, you don't stand with trans rights and you misgender people. And behind the scenes, man, they're doing exactly what that kid is saying. They're just trying to get laid. He was using his TikTok and Twitter just to get laid. Yeah, it's the same thing. But that's where you know where the true bankruptcy is in a political party. When you've got young folks like that who are smart enough to figure out where their true deficits are,

but yet have dedicated much of their adult life to work against that bankruptcy. Where they talk about how there's a war on women within the Republican Party, in large part because you're not monolithic on abortion up to the ninth month. And then they show up and they're like, oh, yeah, we should probably listen to young people.

Yeah. Young dudes who want to get laid. I mean, it's not about getting laid. It's about young dudes being canceled from the Democratic Party from from moment one. But there's people like David Hogg who've literally dedicated up to this point a substantial part of his life in trying to do just that. This is an entire political party that just makes things up to achieve power. That is their intent.

from start to finish, oh, this is not a man. It's actually a woman. We're making that up so that we can get power. You know, like they lie and lie and lie and everybody's going to see right through this one. But it's also a very conveniently

lie to do when you're in a position of power and can tweet out you and Harry Sisson can tweet out how you know we got to re-elect Joe Biden right and like when you exist within that power structure but now he's going to stand up and he's got a new voice oh a new voice right and we got to change things we got to turn the page and all of those sorts of things inspiring in many ways yeah I guess what I would say is like safe now super safe now to say that and like

Where the fuck's Dean Phillips? That's what I want to know. Yeah. Like the one guy in the Democratic Party who actually stood up, put his name on a ballot and was like, I don't think this guy can do the job. Yeah.

How did he get rewarded? He didn't get rewarded. No, Kamala Harris got to eat shit and fucking lose. And now you've got this dipshit Zoomer millennial who wants to take all of our guns away being like, I want to turn the page and make a new Democratic Party. Go fuck yourself. As he was a part of the very base of all of the lies that the American people ultimately made a decision about. Deed Phillips excommunicated this guy, the future. Yeah, yeah.

Well, listen, when we come back, we're going to get to your comments. But I do think it's worth a question of the day here.

Yep. Because you've heard a whole bunch of messaging. Yeah. None of which makes any sense. And you've heard about, you know, sort of the end of the republic as it is in terms of the economy and like what Trump we're going to get to all of that. But like that's an additional piece of our question is what message will Dems ultimately come to? Like, what's the message? If you were a political strategist, what is it that you think they're going to land on?

that has any hopes in the midterms of garnering them majorities. And when we come back, we're going to read your responses to last week's questions about trade right after this. You did all the right things. You worked hard, you worked your way up, and you invested your money in a 401k or other retirement plan. Your future is all set, right? Wrong. The retirement system as we know it is currently under attack from misguided policymakers in DC. The Trump tax cuts are set to expire this year.

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Okay, so our question of the day from last Thursday was which country will be the first to announce a trade deal. Now, the funny thing is, well, there's a lot of action over the weekend. And I'll remind you that the Variety program talked in great detail over the last couple of weeks about tariffs, about the Trump strategy.

and about our reluctance to come down one way or another because it may be a part of a larger plan. We recalled that there was on one side sort of a Peter Navarro articulated argument that tariffs are good and that they will create wealth here in the United States. And then there was what seemed to be a larger contingent within the Trump administration that said they were a tool to try to get us a better deal with a whole bunch of countries of which we subscribe to.

And it seems like the president has subscribed to it as well. Your answers are coming up. We always start with the voice. First comment comes from Jim Doc USA. And Jim Doc writes this.

QOTD, the news today already shows a deal with the UK, so I will refrain from saying the UK and try to guess the next one. I believe it will be either India or Japan. And the chairman commercials make— I'm sorry, the shaman. Sharman commercials. Yeah. Okay, the shaman commercials— You got your toilet paper right, too. Okay, the shaman commercials make the dad look like a complete moron who doesn't know how to wipe his own ass, so I have boycotted that brand of toilet paper.

toilet paper. Pepper, father doesn't know how to wipe his own ass. It's very important. People don't realize this, how many negative portrayals there are of fathers in media. It's ridiculous. I don't appreciate it. It's been going for 40 years. We hate it, but the point is a pretty good one. The UK one came down at the end of last week. Very, very important to this country. I think the one thing...

that we may not have fully understood is that the China talks, which I think we were hopeful that it would be an understanding and a de-escalation, turned out to be more of a deal than an understanding in that it substantially reduced things, which is important. Comment two, please, Dunks and Runks. This is from Brock Hendrickson.

Well, the U.K. is first, but I think the next will be Japan, then India. Japan needs income for factory growth to keep pace with other East Asia countries, and India needs the income for their Pakistani conflict. Thankfully, Donald Trump has also solved that with a ceasefire between Pakistan and India. So we're going to get to that, too. Yeah. We're going to get to that, too. You've got a great show. But great point. But here we have multiple listeners suggesting Japan or India was next. Mm-hmm.

I don't think in anybody's wildest dreams they would have thought China. Well, because everybody considered that a part, right? Like everybody considered that as like the great white buffalo. I know we're going to get to that in the next segment, but I think it's noteworthy. Yeah, no question. All right. So my...

This comment comes from The Homestead Journey. They write, my hope is that the first trade deal is with the Hurt Island and McDonald Island. Yes. Damn penguins have been taking advantage of the U.S. for far too long. Exactly right. Yes, this is the uninhabited island. Well, not uninhabited. Well, it's inhabited by penguins. Penguins. Yeah. Those little tuxedos, smug tuxedo. Smug tuxedo, rich cat, fat cats. They've taken advantage of the United States for too long. That's exactly right.

Right. Exactly. Every one of them should be on a plate next to potatoes and asparagus. I wonder what a penguin breast... Do you think it tastes good? It's gotta be. I think so. It's gotta be a little gamey. Can I give you my pitch on it? Yeah.

They spend a lot of time just standing there over eggs. Oh, so you think it's like a high-fat content? They have to have a high-fat content. And to survive in the cold. The whipping wind and the cold and everything. So a high-fat content, not a lot of movement, a lot of standing. Probably something you want to do over a slow cook. Yeah. You've got to melt that. Well, you want to render that fat. Yeah, you've got to render it. Render it right on up. Yeah, no, it's important. I mean, you have to think about that. A hot grill, probably not great. Smoke them and have some pulled penguin? Mm-hmm.

Do you think you're... Old penguin. That sounds good. You can do that in the green egg? Oh, yeah, we can get that done. You think so? We can get that done. Can we get penguins? No. There's got to be a way to get penguins. Think so? Do we eat penguin? That's what I'm saying. We smoke that thing. Do we know if penguin is something that's impossible to eat? Is that like a...

Something that's off limits? No, it's not like eating brains. It's not like you're going to get cooted from it. It's a felony? Are you kidding me? I think it's an endangered species. No, it's not. There's too many of them. They're all over the place. They're all over this island. Yeah. For starters. I don't know. We should look into that. Anyway...

Listen, when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit about that historic trade deal with China that we told you was something that you ought to keep your eye on. I mean, let's just listen to the variety program. You get the mainstream news. You get this corporate press that's like, oh, my God, the economy's over. Like, bury your savings in the backyard. Yeah, because they're rooting for America to fail. They are. And then we're like, ah!

I don't know. Like, there's a couple important meetings here. Like, you need to check out this stuff and maybe the dominoes start to fall. Well, we're going to tell you all about that right after this.

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Okay, so late-breaking information on the penguin front. Much like marijuana, illegal to acquire, not illegal to eat. Oh. With the penguins. So...

If you have it, enjoy it. But if you have to acquire it in any form or fashion, very illegal. That needs to change. I mean, put simply, that needs to change. It's a food source. There are people who are hungry and they deserve to eat penguins. I don't know how else to say it.

A penguin coat, like a tuxedo made of penguin would be something. Yeah. I would love to see Smug in one of those. I would too. How big are they in real life? What's the average height? Bigger than you think. Like the emperor. Emperor penguin? That's got to be like a yard tall, right? I think they're probably three and a half feet.

I mean plump and ready to ready to cook if someone is listening to this like, you know in Alaska or something Smug's ready for a rug. It's illegal to buy or sell. It's a rug. It's a rug play. You throw this thing with some dried ice and you ship it here Because it you know, there's no transactions allowed. It's one of these ridiculous kind of like laws You're trying to make people commit crimes for us to eat. If you bag it, you put it in some dried ice and you ship it here I say we just smoked the thing Please don't do that

Well, we're going to find out here shortly. Thank you for indulging all of that. Listen, here's the trade deal. I think we suspected there was a very important meeting in Switzerland over the weekend of which Treasury Secretary Besant was sort of a lead to discuss with China this escalating problem that we've had where we increase tariffs, they increase tariffs, we increase tariffs, where it became basically an embargo.

which is not something anybody voted for or wanted and it had a major impact on the economy. You could see the stock market reacting as a result.

But they achieved somewhat of a historic deal. The United States and China will each lower tariffs by 115% as a result of the discussions over the weekend, while retaining an additional 10% tariff. Other U.S. measures will remain in place. Both sides will take these actions as of May 14th. So it's happening imminently.

China will remove retaliatory tariffs it announced yesterday.

since April 4, 2025, and will suspend or remove the non-tariff countermeasures taken against the United States. Channel will suspend a 34% tariff on the United States. It announced on April 4, 2025, for 90 days, but will retain a 10% tariff during the pause. I mean, I think the bottom line is, if you just look at what we got out of this thing and what they got out of this thing,

It's a net positive. It's a net positive, but also something that...

President Trump's critics said was an impossibility. Yeah, but on the Ruthless Variety program, we pointed toward this all week last week. I mean, if you look at the way that this president has used tariffs, he's used them as leverage, as a way to get something out of these trading partners we have never gotten before. And right now, it seems like he is making progress. And who responded yesterday? The market.

1,000 points on the Dow, nearly 1,000 points on NASDAQ. These semiconductor companies based in Taiwan went through the roof. So if you look at what has happened as a result of what this president is doing

on these tariffs, it's actually working out pretty well. I think the only loser in this entire deal is the American media that rooted against Donald Trump in the United States. We were told, shells are going to be empty, folks. It's all over. Your retirement accounts are hitting zero. Everything's ending. It's over for all of you. I don't think I've seen anything so insane since COVID. Like in those early months of COVID when the American media was like, actually, you know what? I think China...

China has beat the virus and you need to wear three masks forever. And they really did say that. They're like, you know, actually, I think China beat this virus. But it's funny. I mean, if you look at the discussion that's been happening here, I mean, there is the element of rooting against any policy.

that has a setback in the market. Only when Republicans do it, by the way. You know, when Democrats do it, it's like, oh, well, you know, I mean, look, the market doesn't respect the working man. That's it. You know, but when President Trump does it, it's all about like, well, he's ruined. I mean, you had Tim Walz out there talking about Tesla stock. Like, yeah, it got really unhinged fast. It got really unhinged fast. But if you look at where things sit, it's

It seems as though they took all of this very seriously from the China perspective, wanted to de-escalate it themselves, which they have now, and we're in a position that is much more advantageous than we were going in. Again, flashback to the last four episodes of the Ruthless Variety program where we said there is an inherent debate that's going on that I understand why you're confused by because

Because you get the Peter Navarro side that says tariffs are good. It's going to make American workers and everybody else a lot of money. And then you had a whole bunch of folks who were like, it's a tool that we use to get a better deal for the American worker and the American taxpayer. And our take was I think the latter is what they're working with here. And you just have to let this –

Take some time to sort of work its way through the system and ultimately could see a scenario where that and tax reform were cooking with fire. I think that's what we said. One other thing. Am I missing something like that? One other thing I would say on this is hate Donald Trump, love Donald Trump.

At least he's fucking trying. Yeah. At least he's fucking trying. I, you know, I say this Republican administration and Democratic administration. Nobody has really tried to tackle China in the way that Donald Trump has. And I appreciate that. I just do. And I hope we get a better deal here in the end. And I hope it's greater for American workers and everything. He had a conversation with China that no American president had previously tried to do.

And that's just a fact. Yeah. It's ongoing, too. I mean, this is the opening salvo. I mean, the important part about all of this is that everybody sees it as a static conversation where you believe in isolationism versus international marketplaces. We all know you can't grow as an economy, as a static isolationist economy.

He understands that. And that was our point on the variety program. Like, I don't know where this thing's going to go, but give the guy a little bit more credit than like your Navarro talking points that are like, yeah, if we just build big walls around.

around the American economy, it's all going to be okay. Like nobody thinks that. There's not a single person who thinks that. Donald Trump has properties in foreign countries. Like he knows the importance of international markets. Like you have to be able to take our power and our economy out into the world. That's how it works. And listen, I think that he's well-served, you know, in this sense, Besant.

I mean, talk about some good work over the weekend. Put in work. Put in work. Guys. Good stuff. Just incredible. All right. So another big thing that's kind of roiled the Washington, D.C. situation, which, you know, I think we've got like a – we'll have to see how this whole thing plays out in terms of what he's trying to do with pharma and most favored nations.

We're going to have to see exactly. He's given 30 days to have a negotiation with big pharmaceuticals within the United States about getting to a place where, in his view, the American people are afforded the same price for prescription drugs than is being offered internationally. A lot that goes – this is a very, very complicated issue. It has everything to do with –

intellectual property, research and development, a whole bunch of things that, and not to mention just the outright theft of the international community into all of this stuff. But that's what the negotiation is about. So I know there's a nuance taken. There are great points. It's like you want to make sure that domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers are motivated by having their IP the number of years until their patent expires so that they charge whatever they do in

I don't care. I don't care anymore. I don't care. We should get the cheapest price. I agree with Trump. I don't care about hearing any nuances of any argument. Why is it cheaper for any other country to get the pharmaceuticals that Americans are paying more for? And here's the thing is, for so long, America has taken this position as a benevolent angel

for the entire planet of like, oh, you know, we come up with all these life-saving technologies. We come up with these life-saving drugs and we come up with everything. And you know what? We'll sell it to every country for cheaper. And all the world has done is just abuse us. We've taken, every country has been sending the drugs, prisoners to this country, has abused the United States, taken advantage of the United States, has dumped their cheap goods on our shores, has dumped their drugs on our shores. And meanwhile, just taking...

taken and taken and taken and lived under the Western hemispheres, lived under the umbrella of America's might as like, well, we know there's not going to be a war. People aren't going to be slaughtered. We're safe because America is here. And I'm done with it. I'm done with it. They've abused us. They've had the benevolent angel. Let them have, you know, the superintendent who's like, okay, now you got to pay me. You got to pay me. Pay me. I think the issue is that what happens when

these foreign countries rip off all of the investment that the United States has put into pharmaceuticals and they just take it. What do you do? We've bombed their factories. We've bombed their factories. We've done it before. We've erstriped pharmaceuticals. But honestly, what you're talking about is a big hang-up. It is the thing, right? On the thing. It's the whole thing. You can come up with life-saving, life-enhancing prescription drugs...

that people get that they're willing to steal if you have an administration who's willing to enforce the intellectual property which we might for the first time be discussing like all this stuff again for the first time under trump it might be worthy of a discussion now it's very complicated very complicated and i think we're gonna get into that but here's what's not complicated the way of trump framing this thing can we play this clip please

I mean, I'll tell you a story. A friend of mine who's a businessman, very, very, very top guy. Most of you would have heard of him. A highly neurotic, brilliant businessman, seriously overweight. And he takes the fat shot drug. And he called me up and he said, President, he calls me President. He used to call me Donald. Now he calls me President. So that's nice respect. But he's a rough guy, smart guy.

Very successful. Very rich. I wouldn't even know how we would know this, but because he's got comments. President, could I ask you a question? I'm in London, and I just paid for this damn fat drug I take. I said, it's not working. He said...

He said, I just paid $88. And in New York, I paid $1,300. What the hell is going on? He's a national treasure. He is. He is a national treasure. And he finds a way to put color on an issue that people...

find so complicated. You know, there's a data point that the White House has said over and over again that Americans represent 5% of the world's population, but they pay 75% of pharmaceutical company profits. And the way that he said that put so much color on it that has really just like, I think he's hilarious. But like, put it in the context of this show, right? Like, let's look at it like this show.

Right. So 75 percent of the profits of pharmaceuticals are paid by Americans. What if what if somebody ripped off our show? Ruthless. Right. And they put it on a Chinese version of YouTube or whatever without the ads, whatever. We don't see a dollar for less handsome individuals. Right. But they still showed the thing. And they're like, well, people in China get to get this for free.

They'd still be ripping off our R&D. They'd be ripping off the cost of these lights and these cameras and all of these sorts of things, and it'd be paid by everybody who's watching in here and still has to watch the ads. I'm sorry you do, but that's how we pay for all of this. That's sort of a microcosm of the problem with American pharmaceuticals. It's not America. It's the rest of the world is ripping off the cost of these pharmaceuticals, and we pay the freight.

Yeah, we is the royal we because a lot of people pay that freight. But I mean, Josh's point, I think, is the right one that like if if the president is going to be so tough on so many things, you've got to think he's going to be tough on enforcing intellectual property. Can I point out one thing real quick that's so critical here is you see Trump. I mean, we're all witnesses to absolute truth.

Like, this guy is a legend. There will never be someone who can drop a press conference like that. Never again are we going to see anything this good. You know, I hope everyone gets to watch as many of them as possible. We're never going to see anything like this again. The fat shot. He's pretty overweight. And that's the thing. It's like...

So, like, he takes a hard line in the fats, which we appreciate here at the Variety program. Like, the fats are, you know. It's a little bit of shaming. Yeah. It's good for all of us. Well, we need to have a conversation about the fats. That's part of how you make America healthy again. But, like, you have David Hogg who's, like, trying to figure out that, like, how are we going to make Dems relatable to people and be like, well, you know, we got to get dudes back and we're going to act like this to try to get dudes back to vote for us.

Donald Trump, to a guy who's like a billionaire, calling him, he's like, so I started taking the fat shot. To his buddy. Trump's like, well, it's not working, bro. It's not working. That's how dudes actually act, you know? Yep.

You cut on your buddies. That's so natural how he drops it. He's like, it's not working. This is like a billionaire calling him talking about farmers getting owned. But he's talking about it the way real people talk. That's exactly right. You know, this isn't some esoteric thing.

And neither is this next one. This is hilarious. So you may have read an awful lot over the weekend about this ABC News story where all of a sudden Donald Trump is accepting a $400 billion gift, some airplane that he's going to be – and by the way, the way that they phrased it even in the questioning in this press conference on Monday was like a luxury plane.

luxury plane that he's accepting. And they made it seem as though he was getting it personally. And they made it seem, and this is from a gift from Qatar, right? Qatar, very controversial situation, has had many ties to Hezbollah, terrorism over the years. Like, difficult. Been an ally in many ways.

been an adversary in many ways. It's a work in progress. It's a very, very difficult conversation from international diplomatic standpoints. But they offered to give him one of theirs. And you look at that just sort of

a precipice. Like, just what do we think about that? Like, Qatar is giving a very big plane that could double as a Air Force One to the United States. Well, it's sort of offensive. Yeah.

in some ways. Like, why would you take a country that has had ties to terrorism, anything from them as a gift? Well, the backstory, which was not reported by ABC, was that Donald Trump and I remember I was in the Oval Office not long after he made this order and he was talking all about it. In fact, he had a model that he showed me and a couple of others who were in the Oval Office. Right.

of this plane that he'd ordered from Boeing in 2018. He said, this is going to be the new Air Force One in 2018. Well, here we are in 2025. It's not showed up.

Now, as Donald Trump explained at his press conference, the previous administration had made a whole bunch of different changes, none of which made sense. The delayed production, whatever. That was part of the delayed production. But the fact of the matter is, is that they told Donald Trump, they being Boeing, there's a chance that you're not going to get AT&T.

a delivered Air Force One that you ordered back in 2018 before the end of your term in 2028. That's a 10-year cycle for one fucking plane. And, like, that's an insane thing. Now, the other backdrop of this is...

I don't know how many of you knew this, but the current Air Force One was George H.W. Bush's airplane. This is a 40-year-old airplane. Beautiful. No question about it. Flies quick. It's got all the bells and whistles. But it's 40 years old. In comparison to the modern technology that is in all of the aircrafts that many American adversaries use,

have basically conditioned for state leaders. It's like an, it's like a flying model T. And so his whole point was, I don't know if they're going to give us that, give it to the department of defense, not him, by the way, not him, give it to the department of defense and,

give them some time with it to make sure that there's no, like, espionage components, that there's nothing that's involved in the airplane that has any way of spying on America, and then retrofit it for our specifications to make sure that it does all the things that an Air Force One should do, which is obviously very different than what they would do for Qatar. And that takes several months. But if they're going to give it to us, I'll take it. And the moment that Boeing...

actually gives us the plane that they said that they were going to give us in 2018, I'll decommission the thing. They'll go out of service. And the way they reported it by ABC was he's getting this plane like for his personal use. Yeah, like a birthday present. Yeah. And he's just going to fly around on it. And so you have to question his motives and his alliance with Qatar or whatever. Right. Which...

The best part about this is that the story in and of itself about what he was intending to do with this plane that Qatar was offering to give him was reported by the Wall Street Journal three weeks earlier by Josh Tossey that provided all of the context that we're talking about. And then broken news over the weekend by ABC under the auspices that he was just getting some like,

massively inflate, like incredible jet for his personal use. I mean, this is what's wrong with media fellas.

Yeah, no, they miss it. They always do. And I will tell you that ABC focusing in on the gift aspect rather than the security aspect shows you everything that you need to know about the organization. They are a Democrat run and Democrat staffed organization that thinks that it's their job

to provide a counterpoint to what the Republican president is doing, not to question in a normal way the way that other people who are not necessarily partisan would question something. They're trying to get to him rather than get to the actual issue. I think...

It's valid to question the safety. It's valid to question the Qataris are sending this over. The Qataris have funded terrorist organizations that killed not only Americans but our allies. What are they trying to get out of this? The answer to that question was no.

presented in the Wall Street Journal article that Josh Dossi wrote, that the Defense Department is going to go through it with a fine-tooth comb and make sure that their terrorist allies are not going to be able to get into the plane. My point is that ABC missed it yet again. I think the only real story out of all of this is that Boeing can't deliver a plane for the President of the United States. Ten years.

In 10 years. What does that say, dude? That's crazy. Dude, it's wild. It's wild. Do you just care about the United States and the president of the United States? How do you not put that on the front of the line? It's a great question. That's it. I don't know how long it takes to make a 747, but how is it that this is not the first and the last thing that you do every day until you get it done?

It's a shoddy company. It's a horrible company, horribly run company. But it's because they are a greedy little pig at the trough of the taxpayer. No one ever asks, you know, why is Boeing allowed to get government contracts before they have an actual finished product to show? They're like, oh, you know, we're going to have a new fighter jet or a new missile program, right? Here's what you're going to do. The U.S. government is going to pay us, let's say, a trillion dollars and we'll have it in five years. And without fail, they're going to pay us a trillion dollars.

Five years later, we need another trillion. It's going to be another five years. And they get away with this over and over and over and over again. And this is like such a glaring example of it. And to me, it feels like Boeing sent their PR people out to have this story be like President Trump accepts a birthday gift of a Qatari PJ to get away from the truth that Boeing is failing America yet again.

When they're not falling out of the sky with these shoddy planes, they're failing the president of the United States. At least they're not giving him a 737 MAX. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. But we have a little interesting callback from segment one and two about the Democratic reaction, how they handle these things. If we can put up graphic number one, please.

Okay, so this is Ruben Gallego, newly elected senator from Arizona, who said this is pay to play, plain and simple. Trump isn't making decisions on what's best for you. He's selling out U.S. policy to whomever gives him the biggest jet. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Well, you're a new member. Like maybe you don't have a full set of circumstances. But you were in the House of Representatives. What did you do then? Graphic two, please.

Oh! Who is that? Okay, well, here's a shirtless Ruben Gallego along with Eric Swalwell in a photo of

In Qatar, riding camels. Two Democratic congressmen, as according to Business Insider, shirtless and smiling with their wives, sat atop camels in March in a Persian Gulf, shimmered behind them, photos obtained by the insider. Can I just say something? They're very lucky their wives were there because this is not a heterosexual post. Can we put up that picture one more time? Put it back up.

What is that? Look at these fucking dude-house. You look like a fucking cheerleader. It says here, this is the other thing, is while they were both advocating to shut down all U.S. businesses, they did this during the pandemic. It says a pandemic-era excursion. It was a trip funded by the U.S. Qatar Business Council, a trade group that spent more than $84,000 on that trip. A little bit of a junket. He said he was worried about pay-to-play. Fact.

Fact-finding mission. They were just there to find facts, as you can tell from that photo. He said he's worried about pay-to-play. Yeah. He's going to root it out there on that camel. He's going to snuff it out. Well, I don't know if there's any Chinese spies, but that would get seriously weird, you know, if Swalwell's involved. I mean, Jesus. Anyway, so that'll give you a little sense. Again, the disarray.

The disarray. There's a lot of it. They don't even know how to talk about this stuff. They're just completely insane. All right. So here's a transition for you. A tax bill has come out. We've talked a lot about the importance of the domestic agenda intersecting with what President Trump is trying to do internationally in terms of the economic agenda to ensure that taxpayers and workers get a better deal.

We've talked a lot about how they need to get one done here. A couple of concerning anecdotes. Well, first of all, they released base text out of the House of Representatives. It is what it is. It is what it is. Like it's redoing, you know, an awful lot of the TCGA, the 2017 tax cuts, and they had stuff that Trump talked about in the campaign trail. Fine. It's fine.

They're trying to deal with salt state and local tax deduction of people who reside in states that tax the shit out of their people and their ability to actually deduct all that. I've got firm opinions, but it is what it is. They're trying to get to a point where they can pass this from a majority standpoint. There is a basic problem in the way that the House of Representatives is looking at a tax bill. This, by the way,

Everyone's talking about this in terms of tax cuts. If they don't act, it's just a tax hike. There's no tax cut in any of this shit. It has everything to do with whether or not you have to pay higher taxes as a result of inaction. But somehow these dudes have wrapped their mind around all of this to say like, current policy needs to be paid for.

Now, I'm not saying that spending doesn't need to be cut. It does. But wasn't that the whole point, Duncan, of Doge? The entire point of Doge. We found hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in this government. We did this the whole first hundred days of the Trump administration exposing all of these things. And then there are members...

of the House of Representatives and a Republican majority who are talking about raising taxes. I mean... Which is just fucking wild to me that you could have the entire exposition of the failure of government for the first hundred days of Trump's administration and turn around and ask for more money from the taxpayer. It's a fucking absurd proposition. I just don't understand it. It's completely crazy, embodied perfectly by clip eight.

Tell me about this 40% tax bracket. So what we would do is, as you know, Maria, before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the highest bracket was 39.6, and it was less than a million dollars. Ideally, what we could do, again, if we can't find spending reductions, is say, okay, let's restore that higher bracket. Let's set it at maybe $2 million income and above to help pay for the rest of the president's agenda, which is, of course, no tax on tips and potentially other tax cuts.

This is 100% a Democrat trap that they would love. It's a Democratic talking point. How are we floating this? It is such a Dem game plan to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't find any more cuts. Yeah, right. We just went through Doge finding how much USAID alone, how much taxpayer money alone at USAID they were lighting on fire. But setting this trap of being like, well, you know,

we'll just have to raise taxes on some folks. Raise taxes? We can't find more cuts. You can't cut any more of our sweet little government programs. For a Republican to go out there and say, well, we can't find any cuts to the federal budget. He's the head. That guy is the head. The most conservative caucus. They're the people that hold the right side down. Right. And what they're saying is that the conservative position on taxes is to raise them.

raise them to spend for the welfare state. That's what they're saying. Because they don't want to address the welfare state. They actually just want to try to find spending cuts to sustain it. You know, and like, to...

To accept the argument that Democrats have made for 20 years, by the way, that every tax cut results in a negative revenue to the American government is belied by every single tax cut Republicans have done. It's belied by TCJA, where CBO said it would cost $1.5 trillion to...

And they were wrong. It raised revenue into the federal treasury that we cut taxes. I hope every Republican who's listening to this House Freedom Caucus, I hope you're listening. We raised revenue into the federal treasury when we passed tax cuts. And not for nothing. You don't need CBO to tell everybody that the money does not belong to the government. Yes, yes, yes.

This entire government runs on the consent of the governed. It belongs to the people who earn it. And the government steals it at gunpoint every April 15th. And now you have a Republican saying he wants to take more. It's outrageous. I mean, so we won little one little battle at the end of last week. And I think the variety program contributed to this and that President Trump said, like, I think it's a bad idea to raise taxes. Right. Right.

I think it's a bad idea to raise taxes. You did. So in the draft that they submitted, it didn't include the tax cut that these guys are talking or the tax hike that these guys are talking about. My bigger problem is in the negotiation that goes on, it's a symptom of a larger problem.

In that you think that reducing taxes on the American people is somehow a net-net with preserving the welfare state. That somehow your obligation is to the welfare state as a Republican, as a conservative Republican. We've got a party that's cut taxes at our DNA right from the very beginning, at least since Reagan. Mm-hmm.

And their view is that that is a net-net proposition. We have to preserve the welfare state at some level. And we have to make sure we balance the books on you, the American taxpayer. Outrageous. And then what makes it even worse is that what they're targeting is they say people making a lot of money. It's the rich. We're not taking it on you, the middle class taxpayer. Right.

We're taking it out on the rich. Okay. Well, let's talk about that for a second. How many rich people do you know that paid W-2 taxes? How many people? It's actors, athletes, and small businesses.

They pay W-2. Everybody else who has any money, it's because they already have money and they're paying investment income. They pay it at a 21% rate. They don't give a shit about marginal rates. And one of the promises that you have in the United States of America is you can be born into absolutely nothing.

And with a commitment, a work ethic, smarts, and just a drive, you can change your lifestyle. I'll tell you how that happens. That happens of people who work in that marginal rate environment.

It's not like everyone who grew up and shows up post-college is Henry Ford or Thomas Edison or Zuckerberg or everybody. Not everyone is going to revolutionize the world. There's plenty of people who are going to work their ass off to provide society with meaningful good and change their family's standpoint as a result.

As they're going to do that, they're going to do it within the confines of a marginal rate discussion. You're not taxing the rich. If you're interested in taxing the rich—

You're talking about investment income. Right, the 21%. Not the small business owner that you're talking about that's already paying like 47%, 48% of their money into taxes. Right, a guy who runs an HVAC company in the Midwest. Right, right. But that's particularly, the guy who runs an HVAC company

in the Midwest is a perfect example. You scale it to size. You manage it well. People are happy with their product. You make a lot of money as a result. You're thinking of expanding beyond the one city that you're in to maybe a regional deal, but you're still paying that tax. You can't do that.

When you're spending 53% of your income in federal and state taxes. And then Congress says, thank you for your work. We're going to rob you because we can't find any more cuts. We can't find the cuts. We love our government programs. Doge put out all these things we should cut and we can't put that in the law. The judge says we have to keep funding the trans in Tanzania. Therefore, we need to raise your taxes. Beat the judge for crying out loud. But also that guy who's looking at the trans studies in Tanzania.

is also looking at the people who are actually rich, aren't considered, like they're not concerned about this at all. They don't give a shit because they're paying 21. Nobody's even talked about that. You know, I mean, like it's the, if this is about, if the American dream ultimately is about fundamentally changing your family's status within this country,

That is the biggest prohibitor I can think of. And the fact that you have Republicans discussing this as if it's a revenue raiser, as if this is something that has to go pay for another round of Medicaid hikes or to supplant whatever the Obamacare thing that we've now ingested into our fucking system is.

All of that shit. Like we've got to go do that. That's what we, you don't have to look at that. You don't have to look at the expansion of the entitlement state. You don't have to look at now the baseline of Obamacare. You don't have to look at any of that stuff. What you have to do is make sure that the most productive people who are actually trying to change their lives and invest back into their communities are paying a higher tax rate. Like where the fuck does that go through your head? How do you get to a point where,

where you're a conservative Republican, get the fuck out of our party. Like, how in the world can you think of yourself as a conservative at any level if you think that 50% of the income of people who don't have money to invest and pay a 21% rate

are people that you want to raise taxes. You've got to squeeze them. It's just not conservative. There was a time when the Freedom Caucus and when conservatives in the House would pull the majority of Republicans to the right.

And that time has come and gone, apparently. Like, I think we need to get back to the day where the conservatives in the House are actually pulling the body of Republicans to the right rather than towards Democrats. And by the way, you're going to be you're going to get no matter what you do here. If your concern is, oh, Republicans are going to pass tax cuts for the rich.

I'll be honest with you. If you just did tax cuts for the people already paying 0%, which is the bottom 40% of American taxpayers, if you were to just say they're paying zero and just codify that, they would still say it's tax cuts for the rich. You're not going to avoid their argument. Just be a man. Just do your job. You were elected to reduce taxes. You were a Republican.

And this tax package, I'll be honest, pretty modest, pretty modest. In my lifetime, I dealt with 01, 03. We had to try to figure out how to save those in the 2010, 2013 standpoint with Obama and a Democratic government. And then 17. Like those are those are my all of them. When you had a Republican government, drastic reductions in both the rate, the marginal rate.

In Trump's case, the corporate rate and then huge components to like child tax credit and other things that benefited a whole bunch of people. This doesn't it just renews basically what's in 2017. And these guys are like, oh, I got an idea. Let's let's raise taxes on the quote unquote rich to pay for what we've already done. Yeah.

Seven years ago. It's insane. Like they're going to have to get this done. But if they're looking for aid and comfort out of the Ruthless Variety program for just doing your fucking job, you're not going to get it. You're just not going to get it. Do your job. Do your job. And stop pretending as though the American taxpayer is somehow responsible for your inability to cut spending everywhere else. Like it's not our fault.

that you have just decided that all the entitlement state of America is off limits or somehow redefined what it means to be middle class in this country. Like that's not our fault. Like do your job. - Well said. - That felt good. I like that. - I just, you know. - I like it. - Makes me really mad. - I like it. - Last story. There's a woman

This is according to Como News. Yes. In the variety piece of this. I've been waiting for this. Yeah. Can we put up our mugshot in graphic, too? Oh, boy. Does not look happy. Don't want her digging in my pants. Yeah. You might have to get it. So late night snack turned into violent...

It turned to violence. It did. In Port St. Lucie, as a woman allegedly shoved cheesy nachos down her wife's pants. Oh my goodness. Are you kidding me? Where's Port St. Lucie? Is that? It's in Florida. Florida. Just north of Tampa. Isn't Como the San Francisco ABC or something? Como News? I don't know. Smug.

Yeah. Well, it's not good. I mean, either way, what happened to according to a police report, according to the Como folks, is the incident began when a woman who was on her phone with a friend heard her wife physically assaulting her. And upon arrival, officers reported contracting Allison Swan, the suspect. I think that is that the woman we saw? Well, that's Allison Swan.

who insisted that everything was fine and claimed that her wife was in a drunken rage. Whose wife? I mean, it feels like there's multiple wives going on here. There's a lesbianic confusion. The lady who is in the mugshot is claiming her wife, the lady in the mugshot, the one who I guess was hitting the other woman, is claiming that the other woman was drunk.

Lady in the mugshot is being accused of shoving the cheesy nachos down her wife's pants. Yeah. But there was another woman on the phone who somehow wife was attributed, but doesn't seem to be applicable here. But anyway, upon arrival, officers reported contacting Allison Swan is suspected.

who insisted everything was fine and claimed that her wife was in a drunken rage. Officers spoke with the victim who shared that while she was preparing nachos in the kitchen, Swan, 39, made comments about her eating late and her weight. A weight comment. A weight comment. Well, I can see where the rage ensued. This led to a heated argument during which Swan allegedly grabbed a handful of nachos and shoved them down her wife's

The affidavit continues to state that the victim left to change her clothes, and the report claims that Swan pulled her wife to the floor by her hair in addition to the nachos. Yeah. So it was nacho first, then hair pull, and forced... Oh, boy.

I don't know. Can I get into that? She slammed her head into the floor multiple times. This is a bit much. This is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Police noted the victim had nacho cheese in her pants. My God. There was nacho cheese in her pants. That much we know. And officers... This is a horrific situation. So, Swan has been charged with battery and causing bodily harm.

Listen, these things happen. They really don't. They really don't. They really don't, Holmes. I've heard of hot wax as a bit of foreplay, but not hot nacho cheese. Oh, my goodness. Well, the nacho cheese down the pants, I mean, you could see where it was going one way and perhaps going the other. It seems like an argument ensued. Perhaps she was inviting a meal. Jesus Christ.

You never can tell. We live in a dynamic society, ladies and gentlemen. You decided to read the story. So I'm just providing commentary. Smoggy, any takeaways on this? I mean, it's Florida, first off. So it's like, okay, that's like your baseline. You knew it was going to go ham right off the bat. And to me, the surprising thing is that it's the lady who remarked on the other woman's way, being like, why are you eating nachos so late?

Who then goes on to attack. You'd expect it the other way around. That like if you told somebody, hey, you're looking like you're gaining some weight while you're eating those nachos, you'd think the lady you said that to is the one who like goes off. But no, clearly there's an aggressor here. I guess she's the one that's locked up. It is what it is. Hell of a story. Let's get to our interview, Joe Concha. Well, you've heard him here before, folks. A good friend of the program. He's written a new book. We want to hear all about it.

Joe Concha, how are you, sir? I love being back in D.C. as a former Terrapin.

It's going to be an I street, which is spelled I-E-Y-E and I. And I. Yeah. Both ways, because it can look like a one. Yeah. If you just put it on an envelope. So sometimes you have to spell that out. It's like before the pronouns thing was she and her and he and him. There was I and I. So go figure. Thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of the... Can I ask a question? I know you're supposed to be asking questions. No, let's start with that. Where does program come from? Great question. We're a big fan of affectation. Uh-huh.

It started years ago where we felt like there was like a certain class of Americans that deliberately mispronounced things. And like John Kerry, Genghis Khan. Right. And then but like it extrapolates itself out into a whole bunch of different words.

around the country. But then it narrows down. Like program, for example, it's a southern college football

Yeah. SEC kind of thing. Yeah, they call it a program. A program. So we started with that, and we were hijacked, by the way, by McAfee on that. Yeah, stole it. Really? Well, I don't know if he actually stole it. He did. It might have been parallel thinking. I got to defend him because he's from Indianapolis. Oh, here we go. Okay. A Viking spunter stole a program. He's jacked.

Anyway. I mean, I would have thought he would have some hometown allegiance there. But, you know, it is what it is. Listen, you've written an incredible book. And this is not your first. You are a bestselling author. Yeah. New York Times I made this time. Go figure. How about that? Yeah. Trump endorsed the book. That kind of helps. It does help. Yeah. It does help. But, you know, a lot of you recognize Joe from his work on Fox. And been one of the few people who have understood from the very beginning what media is doing and what –

sort of this jacked narrative that everybody's trying to extrapolate upon the American people. Like you kind of got it from the very beginning. We're speaking truth to power, even when it was unpopular. Fox gave you a voice for that. But now you've written a great book, The Greatest Comeback Ever, Inside Trump's Big, Beautiful Campaign. I wanted a longer title.

Did you? Yeah, because you don't have Moby Dick anymore, you know? You have War and Peace. It's got to be a whole paragraph. So I wanted the greatest comeback ever inside Trump's big, beautiful campaign, Ellipsis, unburdened by what has been. And they're like, we don't know if we're going to be able to fit that, Joe. It's a little clunky, so I just call it that anyway. You just write it around the...

Yeah, yeah, I should have gone around. I said we could put it on the back. You know? So that was that. But the back of the book is the best part of the book. All right, great. So everybody usually puts in the back of the book like all these accolades from people. Buy this book. It's awesome. Even though no one actually read the book, but they'll say it anyway. Right? Here I take all the predictions from Democrats and Republicans as far as how the election was going to go.

So this one was Rick Wilson, who was a big part of the program, obviously, a winner many, many times. Trump's going to lose. He's going to lose badly. He's going to get wrecked.

Nikki Haley. I love this one. Donald Trump will not win the general election. There will be a female president of the United States. It will either be me or it will be Kamala Harris. That didn't age well, like milk in a sauna. This is my favorite. Nancy Pelosi. Trump can't last as president for four years with his brain deteriorating at the rate that it is. My God, she said that. You got the wrong guy, Nancy. Oh.

And the best part of it is that she herself was like a primary instigator of the ultimate brain deterioration. Exactly. She shipped Biden off the cliff and she said that. But Bill Kristol, also another favorite of the program, I'm sure. You know who's not going to get the credit they deserve? Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, and tens of millions of women who were responsible for defeating Trump.

Read the last prediction on there. The last one is from Joe Concha. Yes. And he says, Trump wins this quite easily. Save the tape.

Play it back if I'm wrong. This is how it's going to end. Boom. Yeah. Thank you, Media Matters, for letting that up, saying I was just pushing propaganda. I didn't know what I was talking about. And the reason why I said that on Hannity, it was October 2024, is because the Teamsters, and you guys talked about this, there were two polls that came out. One was Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. This is rank and file. Biden's up 10 points on Trump. Okay, he's Mr. Union Scranton Joe, whatever, fine.

They put Kamala in, Soviet style, installed, boom. They do another poll, rank and file, Trump by 30 over Kamala. I'm like, they don't have the Teamsters. They don't have United Auto Workers. They don't have U.S. Steel. They don't have restaurant workers. Black voters are leaving. Latino voters are going to Trump. How is she going to win? Base Democratic constituency. That's the three parts of the stool. The only part of the stool that's left where the child is, you know,

Ladies. Can I say that now? Is it cool? Yeah. All right. With Chardonnay, I might add. Yes, yes. That's an important piece to that. So that was the whole ballgame. Once I saw that, and then you saw Trump was leading in the early vote, which was so smart that he pushed people to do that this time. I didn't see how she won. And sure enough, there we are. Popular vote I didn't see coming, though. I mean, that...

A regular Nostradamus. Huge. Yeah, he saw it from the beginning. And I know you got a lot of vignettes in this book, and it is a very, very good book. But I wonder if you will talk about your favorite. Oh, when I interviewed Trump—

I want to know more about the first assassination attempt because I got to know – I know myself. If I'm hit and I – blood on my face and five guys and a girl are on top of me, right? I'm like, oh, this is like College Park. But no, I'm actually shot now at this point. So what do I do there? I'm going to jump onto a stretcher probably and just say, all right, get me out of here. I'm going to stay low. Get me in a car, right? Yeah.

And I asked Trump, I go, what made you want to re-expose yourself when you don't know if there's a second shooter? Yeah. You know, and he's taller than all the Secret Service people. So he was above them. And that's why he did fight, fight, fight. And he said, well, I knew my son was watching. I knew that my wife was watching. The family was watching. The country was watching. And that if I just stayed down, then that would look weak. And I wanted to show everybody that, no, we're going to keep fighting. We're going to keep moving forward. It's not how hard you get hit. It's how fast you get up and keep moving forward. I think he took it from Rocky VI. That's fine. No, it's not a problem. Yeah.

And I just wanted to show the country that this was a movement that was not going to be stopped no matter what. I'm like, I wouldn't be thinking that way. So part of it is just assuring his family, hey, I'm fine. Especially Barron. He specifically said Barron. I knew he was watching and I wanted to make sure. He's a 20-year-old kid, right? So he was thinking unselfishly in the moment, but he always knows where the camera is too, even in a moment like this.

that. I know. And then I got to watch about the media before MSNBC two days later. Right. I literally said on the air, I told Ari Melber to go to hell. Right. Which I don't talk that way very often. Provocative. Look for the soundbite from, you know, to get a media type of thing. And but they were talking about how they weren't sure whether Trump was shot or not. It was Michael Steele and it was Ari Melber. And then they're talking about how Trump was really just wearing an ear bandage because it was a prop.

Because he wanted sympathy. I remember that. Maybe the guy just got shot. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And no fact check found a teleprompter, shards of glass, none of that sort of thing. But even after the second assassination attempt, then we heard that Trump really needs to tone down his rhetoric or else he's going to- Oh, it's Trump's fault. It was Trump's fault. Yeah. Yeah. How short was his skirt? You know? Right? It's like, let's go ahead and blame the victim for what happened to them. Yeah. The most incredible thing.

One thing I want to do, though, is take you back because the assassination attempt, of course, the fall campaign and all that, the switch out with Kamala. But like...

I don't think this greatest comeback starts there. It starts at the lawfare component of all of this. There were many times where I remember reading all the headlines, looking at all the charges and all these different cases and thinking to myself, there's no possible way. How is he going to get out of this? How is he like with all these different jurisdictions and these Dem prosecutors, you know, convinced that they had a case that was dead to rights and

You know, what was going through Trump's head during all this? I can only imagine. Ninety-four felony charges, right? We're not even talking about the civil cases as well, like E. Jean Carroll. And you think about where all these trials were supposed to take place. One did take place in New York, but one would have been here in Washington, D.C. Or another one down in Florida, another one down in Atlanta, Fulton County, right? So I was with you. I said, I don't know how he survives this, because all it takes is one of these cases, you would think anyway. Right.

The weakest of the cases ends up being the one that he gets charged the 34 felony counts on. It was first out of the gate. I actually did him a –

hell of a lot of good favor. Yeah. He came out every day to the cameras and they made the case for him that the justice system is being weaponized to go after your political opponents. And there are played out in real time. And people saw that case and they said, wait a minute. He said that Mar-a-Lago was valued at eight. No, no. They said Mar-a-Lago was only valued at $18 million. The parking lot is valued at $18 million. I was there. Trust me. So yeah, that made him the victim somehow. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? And then I went with the McDonald's

photo because great photo because everybody thought what what photo you're supposed to go with fight fight fight right I'm like that's almost out there too much yep so I'm like McDonald's that's the whole that's the whole race well that was I mean for those political observers who've spent time in the game there's genius and then there's real genius and this was a moment in time where he obviously was beginning to get a codlock and working class America yep

And, of course, the backdrop of all of this is the Democratic Party trying to coronate somebody they'd castigated for three and a half years. And she was now, you know, hopefully weaning in on that working class. He shows up at McDonald's. I truly believe that is a...

Seminal moment. Completely. Because he accomplishes two things. A, at last check, Hitler never worked the fries or the drive-thru. Right. At McDonald's. So there goes that caricature. But then he knew, like we all knew, Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's. Right. And the reason why you know this is she wrote two books about her life, memoirs. There is not one mention of McDonald's. No, never. Yeah. Ran for president five years ago. Never mentioned that. Ran for the Senate. Never mentioned it. Never mentioned it while she was vice president. Yeah.

And you're telling me, let's put it this way. If I became president or something big, my manager at Friendly's, which is kind of like a McDonald's except with ice cream, would say, oh, yeah, I remember Joe worked for me. And Barack Obama, when he worked for Dunkin' Donuts, he had a pay stub. The manager said, oh, yeah, he worked for me. Right. He had proof. Not one person came forward. You remember if someone worked for you who went on to become vice president of the United States. You're talking about it. It's something that, you know, I think you would recall.

Yeah, you'd raise your hand and be like, no, trust me. I remember working with no one could. So it simultaneously highlighted a made up story. Yeah. That she and re-solidified his ability, which he looked totally comfortable doing, by the way. Oh, yeah. Happy warrior. And he had all those people coming through the drive-thru talking about how great he was. And Trump did like my favorite part of the whole McDonald's thing was Trump.

he's obviously in control and all those scenarios. And like, you, you'll see all those clips on social media when he stops by a diner and all this sort of stuff. And he's great. And he's like, Hey, I'll buy everyone food. But like,

The McDonald's component of it was fantastic because he did all this commentator Trump stuff where he's like working the fries and he's like, never touches the human hand. Look at it. Look at this. Never touches the human hand. Can you believe it? The guy, like if he wasn't president of the United States, he could be on QVC selling anything. Literally anything. Yeah. And then at one point he says, now I've worked 15 minutes longer than Kamala Harris ever has been. Yeah.

I think one of you guys said it. You said, you know who's winning by who's having a good time in the campaign. Yeah. Right. And it was so true with him. And then the Al Smith dinner completely encapsulates that. Right. And that's in New York. And that's, you know, obviously the bluest of the blue. And Kamala Harris decides, you know, or at least her campaign was just run by Obama people. David Plouffe, Steph Cutter, General Malley, so on. So now we're not going to send her because, hey, we know she can't do comedy. It humanizes him. And.

And they just decided that it wasn't a big deal, the Catholic vote. So they, Molly Shannon, who said, the real Molly Shannon, not Mary Catherine, who, you know, wipes the armpits and everything, said that Catholicism is a cancer in our society that needs to be eradicated. And that's the person you choose who was relevant 30 years ago, right? And then Trump had the best lines. People always remember Kamala didn't go, but the lines he had that night, he says, you know, Democrats are trying to convince me that there are two genders, and I didn't believe them until I met Tim Walz. Yeah. Yeah.

It's great. It's the first time I've been to Manhattan in years where I wasn't served a subpoena. You're like, is there a two-drink minimum in this place? It's incredible. What's going on?

So that's when you're like, it's over. Nobody dunks like he does. No, dude, my favorite joke he told when he talked about white dudes for Kamala. And he's like, that's okay. Your wives and your wives' boyfriends are all voting for me. Boom. Or they told me I got to say something self-deprecating. So here it goes. Nope, nothing's coming to mind.

So we own the news cycle for like three days. And she's doing like, you know, speech at the ellipse that people forget in five minutes. She's going on Oprah. But Oprah is worth over a billion dollars. And her production company still charged a million dollars for the interview. If you're trying to defeat Hitler, doesn't Oprah say, hey, this one's on the house? Yeah. Good enough for the cause. Totally. But my favorite was the Washington Post headline after Trump was shot on July 13th.

Trump leaves rally after loud noises erupt. Oh, right. Was that really the headline? The Post and the Associated Press. Like, even here, guys, you can't just let it go. Ridiculous. These are the authors of, what was the, when we killed the terrorists, it was like a... Oh, oh, Austere Scholar. Yeah. Played soccer as a child. Yeah, yeah, an austere scholar. So listen, you get involved. You interview people. You talk about...

A whole bunch of things as it relates to the campaign. A big part of this is issue selection. Right? And the fact of the matter is, is that Trump, when you presented the electorate a set of choices in October...

There was not a one of them that Kamala Harris was on a 51% footing on. You're right about that. Give us a little sense. Okay. So she's asked, remember, after she is coronated, for six weeks she doesn't do one interview. Like even the view calls, no, we can't do it.

Rachel Maddow, uh-uh, sorry. They kept her completely behind a teleprompter for all that time. And then finally she does an interview with Dana Bash, which was very interesting. It was at a cafe in Savannah, Georgia. Bad lighting. Dana Bash, if you've met her, not very tall. Kamala, not very tall. Then they have the goofy 80s sitcom dad Tim Walls there for some reason, and it looks like a parent-teacher conference. He doesn't speak. He's just kind of towering over everybody. Yeah.

And Dana Bash, of all people, has to ask twice, what are your plans to fix the economy? And Kamala keeps going with this, well, it's going to be an opportunity economy where we're going to give a $25,000 tax credit to first-time homeowners, which...

applies to 0.004% of the population. And plus it's a giveaway. So she never had an articulate thought as far as how she was going to fix the economy. But the best part about the book, I think, is the fact that The View did take down Kamala Harris, ultimately, because they asked her, what would you do differently from Joe Biden over the last four years? And she looks to the sky as if...

She never prepped for this question before. The one question. So no, nothing's really coming to mind. Which everything up to that point was about how she was going to distinguish herself from the administration that she served. And then she shows up and she's like, well, it's all the same, same. I found it fascinating that last week when Biden, they pre-preface the question. He's like, I wouldn't have told her to say that. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. The one lucid thought he had in the entire conversation was distancing himself from her answer. Yeah. And the best part during the campaign, there are a lot of best parts apparently in my head, but when Ron DeSantis handled once again, a hurricane that hit Florida perfectly, like no governor we've ever seen before. And, and,

Kamala's about to do a speech in Nevada and Biden decides for the first time ever he's going to go to the James S. Brady briefing room and just walk up to the podium and talk about how they're singing from the same sheet of music. They're in lockstep with everything, which is the last thing that Kamala's campaign wanted to hear. And then when he's talking about DeSantis has done a great job, I gave him my personal number. He never sounded more lucid.

And he was 2012 Biden all over again, just for like a minute, just to shiv Kamala. An extra B12. Yes, B12! And then Dr. Jill Biden on election day wears the reddest of MAGA you could possibly wear. All the colors in the color wheel, on the rainbow in the Trix Bowl, and she chooses red. So I asked him about that. I go, you think they voted for you? He goes, I wouldn't be surprised. Let me ask you this. Just...

Sort of 50,000 feet. Yeah. You've reported this book. It's great. You ought to buy it anywhere you can because it's very entertaining and very accurate. How much of Trump is just Trump himself? Right. I mean, we have this whole host of issues that we litigate in a partisan way and everything throughout the country. But how much of Trump is just distinct in volumes? And like nobody can replicate.

he works a room like nobody I've ever seen. And he makes it feel like he knows you and knows you for a long time. And I'm not saying this is like sycophantic by the book type of thing. He invites us down to Mar-a-Lago after I interview him, my wife and me. That's not an invitation that you turn down. And besides, I needed some photos for the book, right? As far as like standing with him because when I interviewed him, it was by phone. So we get down there and they say, all right, you're at table 72. We're like, I'm at table 72. We go back. It's all the way in the back of the room. Like, hey, at least we're in the ballroom. That's nice. So

Somebody comes up to my wife and me and says, you're at the wrong table. We're so sorry we gave you the wrong number. You're actually at table 25. I'm like, ooh, table 25. Let's go. We've got 50 up. Yeah, let's go. 50 up. It goes 24, 26. I'm like, am I being punked? Like, where's 25? 25 is the Trump table. Oh, wow. So imagine this. Like D-list cable news guy. Wife across from me is Mrs. Musk. All right. Jordan Peterson. Then Melania Trump. Donald Trump. Elon Musk. Trump.

Usha Vance, J.D. Vance. Hilarious table. Joe Concha, right? Hilarious table. So then during it, and I sent over to Lee, your producer, video of this, and I'll be happy to show you after we're done. Trump at one point is doing the YMCA, right? And then Elon looks over like, oh, maybe I should do the YMCA too. So he stands up and then Trump looks over at my wife, not me, at my wife, and blows a kiss like I've never seen before. Yeah.

How do you feel about that? I'm just like, honey. She's just like, you would allow it. I go, yeah, probably. That's all right. I've got a European model type of thing. Hey, Spaghetts, do we have that clip? Let's play this clip. Bring this thing to life. All right, good. This is awesome. So that's from my phone.

Now watch Elon. He's like, yep, that's kind of cool. He looks back. Oh, okay. I'm going to get up. Oh, here we go. And Lonnie's like, I guess I got to get up too. There was a kiss. Yeah. Did you see the kiss? He saw, yeah. President doesn't miss. Nope. But that was a big one. It was like...

He's a big one. He really pursed to the lips. Yeah, I think so. But to answer your question, when he met my wife, he remembered during the interview, we brought up men playing against women in sports. And my wife ran track at Georgetown, Division I, hard, right? And she never was involved politically all that much. But that, once she saw Leah Thomas. Yeah, killed her. University of Penn. Yeah. And she's like, can you imagine like Division I, how hard it is to get there? Then I'm in the blocks and I look down and I see somebody who has legs like Saquon Barkley.

I know I'm going to lose. And she goes, that pissed me off to no end. And I'm just, wow. And I bought that up to him. He's like, oh, what did she run? I'm like, oh, she ran the 600 and the 800. So when he met her, he goes, is this the runner? I go, interview.

The interview was weeks ago by phone. He's done a thousand things since. And he remembered. He's like, I wouldn't want to race against you. Looks like you still run every day. I'm like, all right, enough. Okay. This lady's getting a blown kiss. No question about it. You're like, all right. That's good. It's a good photo. It was a good photo. And we got on the plane also, which was cool. The Trump plane. Oh, wow. And you sit down and I hadn't eaten breakfast. I'm like, what are they going to serve? Like steak, lobster tips? Yeah.

Wendy's. Oh, yeah, Wendy's. Did you get the triple stack? I got, it's a pre-selected meal. Oh, okay. Cheeseburger, tater tots, french fries, diet coke. And you're eating more of a spicy chicken guy. Oh, you are. Okay. That is a good meal. It's delightful. It is. I was hoping for a fish filet, but they didn't have that.

Joe, listen, go out and buy this book. The greatest comeback ever. It is, it's full of different vignettes, all kinds of stuff that you would know and enjoy, but also for people who know you watch you on Fox. It's fun.

It's fun. Exactly. We have some fun with it. Yeah. And my son asked me, he's nine years old. He goes, why will anybody buy the book when they know the ending? I'm like, boy, he's good. I'm like, I better be able to answer that question when I go on Riffless. And the answer is, okay, we all watch Titanic too. Yeah. We know the ship goes down. We don't know the hows and the whys necessarily and the behind the scenes. So.

Which is why Joe at the end is doing the full Titanic at the top of it. Yeah. But it's a good point. It's like that's kind of what our show is in so many ways is, you know, we talk about politics and it's tough and it's difficult. We have difficult conversations. But you got to enjoy winning sometimes. You got to do it. Yeah. You know, and sometimes it's nice to take a little break and be like, boy.

And laugh. Let's have a good time. Have a couple yucks. Because things move so fast. They do. You forget a lot of the things until you read them in the book. So thanks for the promo and everything. This is awesome. I've got to go coach my kids' Little League team now. You've got a Cubs jersey on? Yeah, they're just a band of bananas, though, so I've got to go into my yellow bananas. We're TikTok followers from the Yankees. Go figure. I love it. Joe Concha, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us. Thank you, gentlemen.

Man, that guy is so funny. I absolutely love him. His book is just going to be so good to read, and I can't wait to do it. Can't wait to do it myself. Fantastic interview. Good guy. Glad to have him on the program. With that, Smog, I think we did it. I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much to Joe Concha. Thank you so much to our listeners. Remember, if you have not yet subscribed,

Go to the YouTube. Hit that subscribe button. It's more fun and video. So until next time, minions, keep the faith. Hold the line and own the lid. We'll see you Thursday. Stay ruthless.