Jason Willick on the Media’s Latest Constitutional Crisis Panic and Henry Olsen Breaking Down Trump’s Latest Polling Shifts
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I say this every election cycle, and I'll say it again. The 2024 political field was intense. So don't get left behind in 2025. If you're running for office, the first thing on your to-do list should be securing your name on the web. With a yourname.votedomain from godaddy.com, you'll stand out and make your mark. Don't wait. Get yours today. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Moran. I'm Sam Stone.

Jumping right into it, our first guest today, Jason Willick, is a friend of the show. He writes a regular Washington Post column on legal issues, political ideas, and foreign affairs. You can follow him on X at J.A. Willick. Jason Willick, welcome back to the program. Good to be back. So, Jason, let me ask you the first question regarding your career. Yeah.

What do you decide to ride on with the flurry of activity going on in Washington since January 20th? That's a good question, because you have to be able to sort, you know, what matters and and the things that sometimes everybody is talking about that that don't matter. And I've actually thought a fair bit about this because Trump, you know, with the new administration is

is so, so disruptive and people are in such, you know, people's tempers are running so high and people are in such a, so agitated, you know, I don't, I don't discount the idea that sometimes there may be something you need to be really agitated about that Trump is doing, you know, maybe, maybe, but, but it can't be every single thing. No, no. So, so it's, it, you know, I try to look into things individually and try to distinguish. Well, you know, so,

You wrote a great piece, The Anatomy of a Constitutional Panic, and basically panic's uncontrollable fear and anxiety. And Democrats seem to have that about every single solitary thing he does, also not realizing that he does things just to poke them continually as well. I mean, I think he finds great –

My staff says I like to call people's bluff a lot. I think he just loves to poke people a lot. So go for us through your article, The Anatomy of a Constitutional Panic, and how they really aren't helping their cause for things that they may need to really go and take legal measures on with Trump.

Yeah, so I mean, constitutional crisis is the new sort of buzzword around Washington. It was autocracy last time that Trump was going to create an autocracy. Now he's creating a constitutional crisis. And the way it seems that what really made that a big deal for people was a dispute around some of these court cases, and in particular,

There was a court case around Doge where state attorneys general sued and they said, you know, Elon Musk is accessing this information and the Treasury Department that he should be accessing. And a judge in sort of a midnight order, literally, I think it was around 1 a.m.,

in an ex parte order, it's called, which means without an opportunity for the Trump people to be heard just sort of saying this is an emergency, I'm going to go based on the complaint. He issued a restraining order against Trump

political appointees in the Treasury Department accessing certain data. And people were like, wait a minute, that seems to ban the Treasury Secretary from accessing Treasury Department data. That's crazy. And then you had some, in my view, sort of intemperate responses on Twitter from some Republicans, maybe culminating in J.D. Vance saying the executive doesn't need to

you know, or judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power, something along those lines, which, you know, taken literally is true. Judges agree that they're not supposed to control the executive's legitimate power. But, you know, he was purposely kind of provoking people, I think, with that tweet. And then everyone went wild. And then

you know within a few days the the court in new york that it issued that order sort of carried it back by sort of that you know this is how it's going to go to the kind of cycle that can happen from gonna do something that makes people upset a judge is going to overreact uh... republicans are gonna pile on the judge people are gonna say we're in a constitutional crisis and i don't rule out that we could be in a constitutional crisis but

That's not, you know, this is just kind of a lot of tempers flaring and panic happening. So let's talk about that issue for a minute that we may get to a constitutional crisis. So, you know, when Trump was vehemently fighting the 2020 results, you know, many of the cases went to judges he appointed and they ruled against him. OK, I mean, so he didn't take the government. There was no coup.

Biden willy-nilly ignored court orders all the time. So is there an example here for our audience where Trump truly ignored a court order? Because they're saying they won't ignore court orders. Now, they're saying the court's wrong, which everybody has a right to say that. They have a right to appeal. Yeah, and they have the right to appeal. We have processes here. But I have not noticed –

You know, it's sort of like we interviewed Congress people on the show. And for some reason, the right at this moment, unless you yell all the time, you're not conservative, right? You can't just be a temperate conservative that has real conservative values. So is there an example that America should really pay attention to that shows Trump ignores

court orders? I'm not aware of an example. I mean, there's a lot of sort of dispute right now because, again, these are getting to courts in such an emergency posture where there aren't really facts and the allegations are vague and the judge is going to issue kind of a vague order against the administration. There's some dispute

what does the administration need to do to comply with it? You know, are they complying with it? But they're always saying, look, we're trying to comply. And there's further litigation on what exactly that means. I mean, if they say you have to keep spending all the money you're spending, you were spending, they say, well, what about can we review grants under this other authority? You know, they're not trying or saying that they're defying any court orders, even if some people will dispute the scope of a court order. I would correct you on the Biden thing. I don't think

that there is an instance where Biden actually defied a court order. Student loans? Hold, but student loans? Well, so he said, so the Supreme Court, you know, invalidated his student loan cancellation, and then he famously said something like, you know, the Supreme Court tried to stop me, but I did it anyway. But in that case, what he did was he tried to use, you know, another, you know,

He tried to forgive student loans in another way, in a way that wouldn't run afoul of that Supreme Court's order specifically. Now, you can say he went against the spirit of the order. He did. And a court did strike down his second attempt as well. And I think you could see the Trump people doing that, too, by the way, saying, OK, you've blocked us from stopping the funds this way. We're going to try doing it this way that you didn't block yet. You know, so there's sort of wiggle room around these kinds of things. Yeah.

Jason, which of the cases – the one that jumps out to me is birthright citizenship. But which of the cases do you think Trump and his team have the least legal standing on that some of these lawsuits may be successful?

Yeah, that's a good question. I think birthright citizenship is very complicated. It's sort of prompted some interesting legal arguments by some people, including Randy Barnett and Ilhan Warman, who are some serious conservative scholars, saying maybe Trump has more of a leg to stand on here than you think. I think he's going to lose that one, but I think it may not be laughed out of the Supreme Court the way some people might think.

I think one of his things about funding, NIH funding, and saying it's not going to pay overhead to the universities, I think that's really...

pushing the limits of what he's allowed to do with spending because I my understanding is that Congress basically has said look they're going to pay the over in the 2018 bill and he's trying to get around the bill that he himself he himself signed so I think that one's probably going to be weak I think I think the strongest ones are often the ones where he's firing people yes I think the um I think that NIH funding one might be might be on the weaker side you're you're based in DC is that correct

Yeah, in Northern Virginia, but Washington Post in D.C., yeah. So how panicked are people really out there about this rash of executive orders and so forth? I mean, do the skies falling? What is the attitude? There's a thing online about all the million-dollar homes going up for sale. What's the attitude really out there?

I mean, there's, of course, Republicans in D.C. and, you know, conservatives in D.C., but I would say, you know, the Beltway attitude, I mean, the sort of groupthink panic is quite activated. You know, the narrative of constitutional crisis was really, you know, neamed into existence in the last few weeks. Right, right. And, you know...

So I think I think he is. And I think, you know, that serves him and that served because it makes it look to him. It makes it for Trump and his support, like he's doing a lot and he's really got the opposition on the back foot. And and for the opposition, it's good because they can say this is a crisis. Give us lots of money, you know. And so I think that may kind of work for everybody. But I have been, you know, surprised because we're not, you know, we're not, you know,

Reducing the autonomy of USAID, a foreign aid agency within the State Department, is not a constitutional crisis. We can debate how many grants, how much discretion the Secretary has to control the grants and foreign aid and so on, but these are... I do think we approached a constitutional crisis after the 2020 election trying to get Congress to block the certification of the election results and so on, but so

So far, we're seeing, you know, aggressive firings and, you know, moving, you know, changing the way agencies operate, but we're just not there. Yeah, we're with Jason Willick of The Washington Post. You can follow him on Twitter at J.A. Willick. We have about two minutes left here in this segment, Jason, then we'll bring you back. How did the Trump Justice Department basically bungle the Eric Adams case? That is a real interesting story.

thing going on. Yeah. And I still don't think we know the whole story, but, but basically they decided to drop, they ordered the Southern district of New York, uh, the prosecutors there in New York who are known as some of the most sort of aggressive and, um, you know, think, you know, prosecutors who think very highly of themselves down there in the Southern district of New York. And they ordered them to drop this case against the mayor, this bribery case,

against the mayor of New York. And that caused a bunch of resignations and a bunch of upset and a bunch of accusations that the Trump administration was favoring a political ally. And I think the way that they screwed it up was because it was never a tremendously overwhelming case. And there's a good legal argument that the prosecutors should not be really aggressively, you know, trying to, um,

trying to use these public integrity statutes to go after elected officials because it's often really subjective what's just normal politics versus what is criminal, and it should have to be a really severe example for there to be a federal criminal case. And the Supreme Court has been batting down a lot of these aggressive

uh... prosecution so but instead of saying look we don't think this is the strongest case in the world we think the case law is going against us the president you make this case vulnerable they sort of said well we want eric adams help on immigration and we think the bind justice department weaponized so you have to just drop the case and so i think that that giving that sense of pure political

consideration was what really rubbed people the wrong way and created more resignations and more blowback than they had to create, you know, making the defensible, frankly, decision to drop the bill. Yeah, having worked at Phoenix City Hall...

I can tell you Eric Adams would not be the first politician who has accepted campaign donations from someone who wants to build something. And then had it had it happen. Nor will he be the last. No, no, absolutely not. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back with more from Jason Willick here in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We're talking now with Jason Willick, friend of the program, writes a regular column for The Washington Post on legal issues, political ideas and foreign affairs. You can follow him on X at J.A. Willick. When we went into the break, we were talking Eric Adams and New York politicians moving across the water. Jason, you have a great piece on the Ukraine-Russia war. 2022 was still the time to negotiate on Ukraine.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because obviously that situation seems to be coming to a head pretty quickly under the Trump administration. Yeah, I mean, I basically think that there was a...

big group of people in D.C. and elsewhere saying, you know, we need to give Ukraine what it takes to win and we need to have victory in Ukraine. And it always seemed to me like that was quite a long shot. But but people are really committed to it for for ideological reasons so that when some Democrats said in the in 2022 or 2023, you know, we want President Biden to

start negotiating they had to withdraw that and say oh we're sorry we didn't mean to undercut the administration we would never call you know we didn't we we apologize for calling for a negotiation mark milley the the the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who who's a big enemy of president trump uh was saying in 2022 sort of when ukraine had just repelled um a big

repelled Russia a lot, like thrown them out of Kharkiv and Kherson. He was saying, look, this is their moment of strength. This is their time to negotiate. You don't want this to be like World War I, where we just fight and fight and fight for years, and then we end up negotiating something that could have been negotiated much earlier. But it was really taboo to say that for a while in D.C., and I wrote a couple of pieces sort of, you know, it just seemed

like it was taboo to talk about negotiating. So now here we are, you know, Trump has come in and he's just kind of brutally and in his normal rude way,

way, you know, demanding negotiations and insulting Zelensky. But it seemed to me that this was inevitable, that there was going to have to be negotiations, because the only way, really, it seems to me, to drive Russia out of Ukraine entirely is the United States Air Force and NATO armies, you know, fighting Russia in Ukraine, which there's not the appetite for. That is a great point, which people seem to miss. So my question for you is,

How long – if Trump's not in office and he's trying to force a peace deal – and he is. He's literally trying to force a peace deal, right? And at the end of the day, Ukraine still has to agree to it. I mean that's one factor everybody keeps forgetting about. It doesn't matter if Russia and the United States think this is a good deal. Ukraine has to agree to it. But my question is because of General Miley's comment.

How much – I mean how long do you think Europe would keep thinking this is OK where it's at, where they're just losing generations of people? I mean I don't see a scenario other than the one you expressed where the US gets in that they take that territory back. And look, I –

I mean, I'd fight to the death if someone was trying to take territory from us. Well, they could have New Mexico. But besides that, you know. There's no other military on Earth that could step in and do that. So my question is, how long do you think Europe would keep doing the status quo there? Let's just keep giving them money, you know, can in hand, and just, I mean, how long do you think they'd keep going about this if Trump wasn't there? Yeah. It's a good question.

It's a good question. I mean, one of the arguments is, well, we give them enough to keep going but not enough to win, and that's a complex military argument. If we gave them more of this and more of that and more F-16s and more attack them, would they have enough to win? I don't really think – I don't really think – but I think you fundamentally need – Ukraine can't do it on its own.

You need soldiers they don't have, the numbers. Yeah, they're running out of people. You need soldiers and you need technology that we can operate ourselves. We're already doing everything but pulling the trigger in many of these cases with these weapons that we're training the Ukrainians on. So I guess there's also sort of the cynical view, and I'm not totally unsympathetic to this, that look,

we can use Ukraine to grind down Russia. Russia is ultimately a threat to NATO, and Ukraine is going to, you know, funding Ukrainians is going to weaken Russia's military. You know, one problem is Russia has continued to, you know, throw more and more into its military. It's spending a lot more in its military than it was at the beginning of this war. So, you know, and it has, like you said, a manpower advantage against Ukraine. So whether that's going to work was unclear. It's going to be...

you know i guess you can keep going and hope that something happened in russia like the purgation attempted mutiny you know maybe something will happen the regime will will collapse that was sort of the hope but i hope you know as they say is not a strategy and so it didn't seem like this was really getting anywhere basically you had russia's initial thrust into ukraine then you had a right out ukraine repelled that that the russians initial thrust in early twenty twenty two

Ukraine repels that in late 2022. They're in their best position. They feel like they have the momentum. And since then, here we are in 2025, the lines have not moved. Russia's still there in those eastern... Well, it's World War I trench warfare. Sam's got a question, but I want to ask you this. There's two ways of viewing this as far as I'm concerned. So there's me.

I guess you would call me a neocon who believes Russia is a threat and I don't care if they lose a million people, right? But then there's also me who likes to think I care about humanity thinking we are wiping out a generation of two countries. When does it stop? And that's the point. So I view it very calculating and cold for those saying –

Well, just keep killing Russians because at the end of the day, you're killing a bunch of Ukrainians who's going to have a true demographic crisis and wipe out generations of people. Sam, go ahead. Well, in terms of Europe and Russia's ambitions, I've actually kind of been heartened this week by the sort of outrage talk in Europe about how they need to take their own security more seriously. Yeah.

I mean, fundamentally, is that the one good thing that could come out of this Ukraine war is for Europe to step back up in their own defense? Yeah.

It could. It could. I mean, I think that's what Trump hopes. He just sort of looks at it and he sees they're close by, they're rich, they can pay for it. The concern among people who say, no, we should be paying for it is, well, that gives us leverage over Europe and that's ultimately good for us. We don't want Europe becoming more autonomous and making its own deals with Russia or China. That would be bad for us. But I tend to think you're right. I tend to think

And, you know, and basically everyone in D.C. agrees that Europe needs to do more for its defense. The question is, do you do it politely or do you do it Trump's way? And some people worry that Trump's way will be more destabilizing. And we'll just have to see. As we're seeing with Elon Musk, people say, well, you have to reform the government, but you're supposed to do it, you know, slowly and with a lot of forethought. And then Elon Musk is, you know, just carrying a chainsaw at CPAC. Exactly.

Exactly. So this whole administration is going to be a big test for the incrementalists versus the people who say, no, if you're going to do it, you just have to do it right away. Here's your stat for the week. The Telegraph reported, and we've got a minute left here, the Telegraph reported that the current British Army has 78,000 troops. They have not been that low since the Napoleon era. I mean, that's like a real problem. Yeah.

Yeah. And Germany, of course, being the richest country in Europe, and that's sort of the dilemma at the heart of this, right? That we've sort of created this post-World War II security situation in Europe in part, you know, the idea that Germany, we don't want Germany to rearm. Well, now we kind of do want Germany to rearm. And in some way,

Correcting that is the heart of this problem. And we want Japan, too. Absolutely. Jason Willick, thank you so much. We always love having you on the program. Look forward to having you back on again shortly. Folks, you can find him at thewashingtonpost.com or on X at J.A. Willick. Stay tuned. Our next guest, also a friend of the program, Henry Olson, coming right up.

Support American jobs while standing up for your values. OldGloryDepot.com brings you conservative pride on premium, made-in-USA gear. Don't settle. Wear your patriotism proudly. Visit OldGloryDepot.com today. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, news came out just last week that China is still embedded in all the major U.S. telecom systems and the mobile phone systems.

They are everywhere, but they are not at 4FreedomMobile. That's why we encourage you to go check out our friends at the number 4FreedomMobile.com today. Learn how you can get a phone with real digital security and privacy. Keep and protect your information secure. Again, 4FreedomMobile.com, and when you use code BATTLEGROUND at checkout, you get 10% off. Well, we have Henry Olson with us today, claim columnist.

understanding of data across the country. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. So how are you enjoying the Phoenix weather? We have you in studio today versus D.C. Yeah, well, you know, what's to complain about? Seventy-four, cloudlessly sunny, no humidity. It's a tough life out here during the winter, that's for sure. Yeah, no, it's just, it's always been hilarious to me that when you come out here and it's 60 in January, somebody apologizes because it's too cold.

Major storm last weekend, and I had to pick up the patio chair afterwards. It was terrible. So let's talk about something very important. You're a Yankees fan. Yes, I am. So the Yankees altered their facial hair policy. What are your thoughts on this? My first thought is, does Alex Bregman have a beard, and was this the reason he went to the restaurant? Does he have a beard?

Facial hair? I think he does actually have facial hair. Yeah. And if they're sitting there saying, yeah, we'll pay you $40 million a year to go shave the beard, and he says, boom, up to Beantown. I mean, I would change my policy too. He's not going to sell his soul to shave. Well, look, I mean, that's actually kind of one of the funny things I was thinking about when I first got into Sal DeCiccio's office at the City of Phoenix. Almost everyone in the city was clean shaven. I was like the rare person with facial scruff.

At the Maricopa County now, almost every guy has facial hair. Yeah. The trend has changed since you first started. The trend has totally changed in the last decade. I think J.D. Vance making beards cool again. Let's make beards great again. He does look great with a beard. And by the way, Ted Cruz should never go beardless. Well, neither should J.D. No. Or Vice President Vance. Okay. Okay.

So, Henry, is it possible to balance the budget unless you make spending cuts? No. I love the brevity. Well, I mean, it's a no question, right? I mean, so what if you were – if they were asking for your advice on Dodge –

Was there something you would handle it differently, how they're doing it? I mean, it just seems like it's a machine gun fire every day. But what would you do differently if you were in charge of it? If I were in charge of Dodge or Doge, I would – I think I would be more attentive to the question of law.

which is it's not clear to me how many of these things they actually have the administrative authority to be canceling. I would be more circumspect about what I say in public, like Elon Musk says, we've discovered all these people who are 200 years old. And then they say, well, actually, we know how many people are receiving the benefits. You know,

Dot your I's and cross your T's. Yes. And they seem to want just get the news out quick instead of like, we need to dare to go over this. Yeah. Well, look, I don't think Elon Musk ran X or Tesla or SpaceX the way he's running Doge, which is to say getting out ahead of his skis with, oh, my gosh, look at what we found. You know, think about the Twitter files, you know, going back to the old company's old name.

He had people come in, respected journalists, and look over and let them control the news so that it wasn't just a gotcha game. But yet here with Doge, he is seemingly not doing the same thing. And I would say treat –

The United States government's fiscal news in the same way you treat your company's fiscal news. Well, and it's something that I've experienced now in the Maricopa County Recorder's Office. You have to be very careful when you're talking about anything elections to –

be accurate with the information you're putting out. Much more so than, for instance, as the chief of staff for a council member at the city of Phoenix. It's a higher standard. And he's dealing with a much higher standard still. And I think you're right. That's the one thing I've been annoyed with him about is...

Know what you're talking about before you talk now and make sure it's correct when you put it out. Well, they're almost acting like the boys when someone heard this girl likes me, I'm going to tell everybody. I mean, it's just immediately I got to tell everybody about it. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know what boys you ran around with if a girl liked me. I kind of keep it quiet. I'm a grade school boys. Well, oh, well, grade school boys. Once you've crossed the line over to, ooh, icky, you know.

We're with Henry Olson. He's the senior fellow at Ethics and Public Policy Center and the host of Beyond the Polls, a weekly podcast. When we come back, Henry, I want to talk to you a little bit about your podcast. Okay. And what polling numbers we should be looking at. Trump had good numbers, and this week they show some numbers underwater, which I think is going to happen when you're literally taking a bulldozer to the establishment. Right. And you're supposedly creating a quote – I'm using air quotes, folks – a constitutional crisis, end of quote. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it matters a lot more where his rating is a year and change from now when we're heading into the midterm elections than it does today. Oh, absolutely. But, you know, as we'll talk about it later. But the thing is, this all sets up where it's going to be a year and a half. Absolutely. Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back with more from Henry Olson here in just a moment. Stay tuned.

Support American jobs while standing up for your values. OldGloryDepot.com brings you conservative pride on premium, made-in-USA gear. Don't settle. Wear your patriotism proudly. Visit OldGloryDepot.com today. I say this every election cycle, and I'll say it again. The 2024 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2025. If you're running for office, the first thing on your to-do list should be securing your name on the web.

With a yourname.votedomain from godaddy.com, you'll stand out and make your mark. Don't wait. Get yours today. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. In studio with us today, Henry Olson, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and host of Beyond the Polls weekly podcast. You can follow him on X at Henry Olson EPPC.

And if you're not already, make sure you're going to be subscribing and downloading the podcast portion because Kylie's got more murder and mayhem on the way. Do we have the jingle set up? We have the jingle. Oh, jingle will be out today. It's a very exciting moment. You don't want to miss the jingle too. We are upgrading the Kylie corner portion of this program. So stay tuned for that. Uh, continuing on with Henry Olson. When we went into the break, we're talking to a little bit about Trump's polling and some of those numbers. Um,

There seems to be a little bit of slippage kind of right at the margin of error at this point. What do you see coming for him the next six months? Because Democrats are going all out nuts right now about everything he's doing.

Is that going to take effect and take hold and are they going to be successful in pushing back in a way that damages his credibility? What the American voter wants, the median American voter, the person who goes back and forth, the person who gave him the victory this time – well, they gave Joe Biden the victory four years before – wants to see successful leadership.

There's no doubt they see leadership from him. They see leadership in a drinking from the fire hose style of leadership. But that hasn't seemed to bother them so far. The people who voted for him wanted dramatic change, but it has to work. So I look less at the Democrats' attacks, which are definitely of the spaghetti against the wall variety, and more to –

He's making lots of big bets simultaneously. He's walked into the casino and he's putting – it's like playing 10 roulette wheels at once. I'm putting it on the numbers rather than on the colors and stuff. And some of those bets aren't going to work. He needs a lot of them to work. So –

Six months from now, if the Democrats have said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you get, well, inflation's coming down and there's peace in Ukraine and America's got a new relationship with Canada, this is going to be water under the bridge. Donald Trump will be positive because his bets will have been viewed as paying off. And if they are not, then the criticism appears more credible.

Chuck asked earlier what you'd do with Dodge, and my answer is not get rid of the V8 Charger. Yeah. But for Dodge...

They're talking now about this $5,000 or some sort of kickback basically to the American public from their savings, which I think doesn't make much fiscal sense when you're talking about trying to address the deficit this way. But does it make political sense in the way you were just talking about? Well, you're talking about the 20% of what they save, right? Yeah, because if Americans start getting checks from their cuts, boy, that makes the cuts real pretty quick for most people. Yeah, it does. On the other hand, it's the source because –

they're not going to balance the budget. It's the sort of inflationary direct influx of money that was criticized under Joe Biden. And

I understand the politics of it. I don't think if it ends up stimulating inflation on the margin that the long-term politics will be very successful, is that people may appreciate the checks, but if the price of milk is still going up and inflation's at 4% a year, they won't connect the two.

and they will be angry that one of the things they wanted was inflation to come down, and if inflation isn't coming down, Donald Trump is going to be held responsible for it. So I would not be doing anything that might stimulate inflation. Especially when you say I'm going to solve it the first day, you know.

Trump's exaggerated tones on everything instead of saying, look, it took him years to put us in this holes and take me a bit to get it out. I mean, I've been what a normal person would have said. Let's talk about the deficit for a minute. Then I'm going to go up polling, other polling and so forth. So Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant has a 333 rule. And one of the three rules is three percent. The budget deficit is three percent of GDP. Right. Right.

So I was listening to a vice president of Bank of America today. Now, I'm not a big lover of big banks because, you know, whatever. But that being said – Well, they all threw you out. Yeah, they all threw me out. But –

He said to get to that 3% GDP, you've got to do one of three things. You've got to get economic growth at 10%, which is not possible. Right. No. You have to raise a trillion dollars in revenue, which means tax increases. Right. Or you have to have a trillion dollars in cuts, which he says, all due respect, Elon Musk groups is the most relatable and realistic way of getting this done. What are your thoughts? Yeah.

When we're talking about a trillion dollars in cuts, we're talking about a trillion dollars in cuts in the one-year budget, not in the expanded 10-year budget window. No, you're not going to get a trillion dollars of cuts using DOGE. There may be a trillion dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse, but a lot of it is going to be –

legislatively authorized ways in the sense that you look at this and say I think this is a stupid program. Well, the Congress appropriated money for it. And

We know that the president wants to challenge the Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974, which prevents the president from not spending money that Congress appropriated. That will go up to the Supreme Court, and this may be the test case that gets there. But no, you cannot cut a trillion dollars from administrative action. So we have a March 14th deadline for a spending bill, right? Right.

Do Republicans just say we're just shutting it down until we get the cuts we need? I mean – and just say if we lose seats, we lose seats, but this is the future of the country.

Well, they better darn well have a realistic cuts program. I mean, realistically planned, but is that literally where... I mean, if you're going to do it, now's the year. Yeah. Well, one, now is the year and now is the time, and that means getting the budget because what you can do is not shut anything down then. What you can do is have some sort of a reconciliation bill that passes in the next three weeks. Now, no one thinks it's going to move on that. I suspect that what you will get is...

actually more of a let's roll it over and solve the problem in the next fiscal year rather than a shut it down. But I think there will be some people who will say exactly that and they'll say, no, let's shut it down. And I think while the pressure from the base might be to do that, I think you'll end up seeing another

big spending CR that avoids the shutdown and that they will try and solve the problem through the reconciliation process because they don't need Democratic support. To get something in the past fiscal year, they need Democratic support. In the next fiscal year, they don't need Democratic support because of the budget rules.

One of your recent pieces, an op-ed, A Time for Choosing, you talked about how U.S. conservatives need to look at increasing revenue, and you had a couple of good ideas in there. One thing I think I particularly was interested in was that you are perhaps less tariff-averse than other pundits. Yes, I am. I just think that tariffs are not an article of faith.

that they are a government intervention. And just like here in Arizona, you've got people willing to put subsidies behind tech plants or chip plants, and that's considered an investment, not a violation of free market principles. Tariffs are the same thing.

They're exactly the same thing. And one of the things I think a lot of people don't understand is how the tariffs impact American exports in a lot of these countries. Canada has very significant tariffs in a large number of areas. China obviously is perhaps the most aggressive tariff and regulatory exclusion regime. If the RNC were bright –

they would be advertising what other countries charges on tariffs. Right. I mean, you can flip this script. If they were bright. If they were bright. But that's what they should be doing. That's what they should be going down and saying, we're going to do a national campaign on what other countries charges on tariffs. And that's why the reciprocal tariff idea that Trump has advanced is actually brilliant, because it's not a new idea. It's something that McKinley adopted after the protective tariff as a way to

reduce tariff rates but not unilaterally disarm. It's something that Franklin Roosevelt argued for in the 1932 election. So Trump is borrowing from a well-worn playbook. And the idea is if you really want free trade, let's have two-way free trade on a good-by-good basis because like the free trade that we're supposed to have right now with Mexico and Canada is actually managed trade. There are some areas where they are allowed protection.

And what Trump is saying is, no, we're going to change the rules. And if that means your agriculture sector or your lumber sector, Canada, gets hit, tough patooties because you've been hitting us in other areas. I have a bit of a crazy idea on this. I think Trump's favorite president is Jack Ryan.

Because if you read the books... The fictional Jack Ryan. Because some people will believe there was a Jack Ryan. No, yeah. I suppose we should be clear about that. But if you read the books, which I did...

A bunch of his ideas, including what he's talking about with Gaza and including the reciprocal tariffs, are major policy platforms. Do we know if he read the Jack Ryan books? I don't know, but I'm starting to wonder because he does seem to be following the – Sam may be onto something. I think this is a great – like you've got –

The New Orleans Times-Picayune did something a few years back. Who said it? Senator John Kennedy or Foghorn Leghorn? I think you've got it. Who said it? Donald Trump or Jack Ryan? Who do you think has been the star so far in the Trump administration, taking Trump and J.D. out of it? Oh, gosh, I think it's too soon to be. Right now, I'd have to say that the star has been Elon because Elon's in the news all the time and he's striking, you know,

70% of the time he's hitting the ball and getting a hit to continue the spring training baseball analogy. After that, I'd say Rubio. Rubio is somebody who has been artfully diplomatic in...

keeping the allies from going even more crazy than they have been while supporting the president's message. And I'd say Rubio is really, again, 30 days in, I'd say Rubio has really been outstanding. I would put Sean Duffy in that. Yeah, I mean, Duffy just seems to be hitting out of the park all the time. Yeah, he really...

He's bringing the clarity that – and friend of the program Lee Zeldin has been good with EPA. But I think he's trying to do the Duffy and he hasn't quite managed to do it as well as Sean Duffy. Yeah, I mean Duffy's – yeah, I mean you usually don't see a treasury secretary –

Transportation secretary. Transportation secretary. Handled things the way he's handled it. But I guess compared to him to Mayor Pete, who was a complete disaster, he's really doing well. I mean, I love what he did yesterday about the high-speed rail in California. And he just went after him. He goes, you should be talking to the governor of your Democratic legislature about this, why this is a failure. His clarity has been fantastic. Yeah. I do think that's one thing.

Trump, because of his background and because of his priorities, are picking people who are excellent communicators. And I would agree that Duffy has definitely been up there with that. You know, Noam's been not bad, obviously.

Certainly there's no meth. I'm on it. Screw up like you did as governor of South Dakota. No shooting puppies out there on the border. Puppies live to see another day. We've got two more minutes in this segment, and then we want you to stay on for the podcast portion. Sure. We'll talk a little bit further. But let me ask you, we had our guest before, Jason Willick. We were talking about Trump's pushing for a peace deal in Ukraine, right? Right.

But it doesn't seem like anybody in Europe is pushing for a peace deal. And so, I mean, how long do you think they would have been happy to keep going status quo?

Well, Europe doesn't speak with one voice. No. And that's one of their problems is that they want to be treated as if they had one voice, but they do not speak with one voice. And will never have the ability, frankly. Well, this is going to be – I have thoughts on this. What is it that created the American Constitution, the inability of the Articles of Confederation to deal with foreign powers and to deal with disorder?

what is going on right now, the inability of the current structure of the European Union to deal with the mortal threat from Russia. If they're thinking, they should be thinking of a revamping of the European Union structure. But, you know, look, the fundamental thing is Ukraine needs to have, as Trump and Rubio have said, sovereign independents.

That doesn't mean a NATO membership necessarily. That does mean a recognition that they're not going to push back Putin from the territories that they've taken. It does mean that what you have to do is look at the long game and say the long game is to give the remaining portions of Ukraine the opportunity to join the West.

And that, I think, Trump will find Putin doesn't want to give. And I am not at all sanguine that we're going to have peace in Ukraine because...

One of the first things that Putin did when he was president was poison the pro-Western presidential candidate. All of this stuff that people on some areas of the right say, oh, it's all a dispute about language and territory. No, Putin has been trying to get all of Ukraine since he took an office. If he's not going to give sovereign independence, Trump should walk away from the deal like he walked away from Kim.

Absolutely. Stay tuned, folks. You want to download the podcast, hear more from Henry Olson. We're on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, anywhere you get your podcasts, we're there. And definitely you're going to want to download this one because as I said earlier, we have a big upgrade to Kylie's Corner coming up.

She's looking pretty proud over here, folks. You don't want to miss it. Bring Battle Rounds back next week. In today's digital world, standing out is more important than ever. Whether you're running for office, leading a cause, or hosting a vote for the cutest pet in town, you need a web domain that's simple, memorable, and action-oriented. You need a .vote web domain. It's clear, impactful, and establishes a lasting presence for your campaign.

Don't wait. Head to GoDaddy.com or Name.com, type in your name.vote, and get started today. Because after all, every pet deserves a web address that's as special as they are. All right. Welcome to the podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds with yours Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. And Jeremy, are you ready?

Hit it. Here's the jingle. So come and take a spin and listen in.

We're here for the true crime. I know. We're listening in. Many will be shocked that's not my voice, but it's a lovely intro. I love the dichotomy between the jingle and the content. Exactly. I don't know. I got a Yellowstone feel out of this. Like you're that country singer that is at the funeral. That lost her dog and husband on a...

Trip? Lost them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have some murder in me. She has a dog and a husband, so we probably shouldn't give her ideas. No, no, no. No, I was actually, I was in Key West last week and it was funny. I saw two women on the plane reading different murder books and I was like, this is just so great. That's what we're into. We need to give her cards or something to hand out. First of all, Henry, why do you think women are so into these documentaries on murderers?

Oh, gosh. Any answer to that would get me in trouble. Just a no comment. No comment from Henry Olson? I'll just say I'm not qualified. I'm going to look into that and see if there's actual studies that are being done. It's planning. What do we got? So this one's kind of on the...

on one end of it, a little bit of a happier story because last week on Wednesday, the FBI got a tip from a high schooler in Indiana about a potential school shooter at Mooresville High School on Valentine's Day. So she had said that there was an 18-year-old Trinity Shockley, who is a transgender going by the name Jamie, who was Snapchatting friends saying that they were going to commit a mass shooting at lunchtime on Valentine's Day.

The tipster said that Trinity was Snapchatting saying the words, I've been planning this for a year. Parkland part two. I'm buying a bulletproof vest for more days, which was posted on February 10th. I have this staring at me, which was a photo of Dylan Roof, who shot and killed nine people in a South Carolina church in 2015. She Snapchatted.

AR-15 magazines, about 10 rounds of them. So the FBI took this serious, ended up raiding Trinity and her dad's apartment, and they found Trinity's room was covered in photos of mass shooters and school shooters. She had posters of a

from a movie zero day, which is apparently about a school shooter. Um, she had a heart shaped locket with the Parkland school shooter, Nicholas Cruz, who also, by the way, had about three to four tips to the FBI and local law enforcement that he was going to commit this crime and they did not take it serious. Or they said that they couldn't find any reasonable stuff against him to stop him prior. But, um, she also had a backpack with photos of school shooters on it, like little pins with the shooters. Um, and,

And they ended up – it was true. They found the AR-15. They found the bulletproof vest. They found the rounds of ammo. So she was arrested. There was a counselor at the school that had said she had been since freshman year trying to get into school counseling, but her dad kept denying it. So when she turned 18, she did get into the counseling. But I think at that point it was obviously too late. But the dad kept denying? The dad was denying it, yeah. Henry, you're an attorney. The dad keeps denying to put her in counseling, and she was planning a mass –

shooting, is he liable? I would have to know the law and the state that this took place in. That's a legal question. Was it Indiana? It was Indiana, yeah. I don't know what the law is in Indiana. I mean, certainly this is gross parental negligence, but whether he's legally liable as an accessory in some way, I would have to defer to the law of Indiana. Yes, she...

I would assume he probably walked into her bedroom and that might spark some concern as well. Well, that's the thing that jumped to mind is that literally what that means is the father never goes in the room. Yeah. Or never notices. It's like the backpack you're talking about. Does Trinity wear the backpack outside of the room? Yeah. It wasn't clear if she wore that backpack to school or not, but –

Well, and if your kid's this obsessed with death in one form or another, and you're not doing anything you're going to be— This counselor had also said she expressed sexual attractiveness to Nicholas Cruz and was naming their children that they were going to have together. Good grief. Well, they dodged a bullet on this one. They did indeed. Literally dodged a bullet. She will not make bail. She's—her—

Her attorney wanted the bail to be at like 10,000. The judge is like, no. If she had been in New York, she would have gotten it. Yeah, I know. That's the crazy part. Am I wrong? Her own recognizance. Yeah, you're kidding. All right. So this other story, this one's really sad. This ends tragically. This is why we should take mental health seriously because this is about a murder-suicide of a mother who ended up killing four of her children. This is the Wyoming one? This is the Wyoming one. Yeah. Yeah, sounds good. So...

This mother on February 10th at 1.30 p.m. called the Bighorn County Sheriff's Office stating that she heard gunshots in her home. And when the dispatcher continued, kept her on the phone, continued getting more information out of her, she said that her daughters were shot.

She explained where she could find the victims. There was two two-year-old daughters that were in their crib upstairs and then a seven and nine-year-old that were in their bedroom downstairs. She went on to say that she was going they could find her body in her bedroom upstairs and she was going to do the same thing to herself and the dispatcher tried everything was pleading to keep him on the phone could not keep her on the phone and law enforcement arrived a couple minutes later.

And she was still alive along with a two-year-old and a seven-year-old. So they rushed them to the hospital, tried to keep them alive. The two-year-old and the mom ended up dying pretty quickly after. The seven-year-old was alive for about five days and then ended up passing away. But I think the sad thing about this is her husband... So the two older daughters were with another man and he was trying to fight them for custody. He wanted full custody of them. So that was...

her husband said that was taking a lot of toll on her but also um she had the two two-year-old kids within the same year so they're not twins they were she had the baby and then within weeks got pregnant again oh my gosh so she was fate so he was saying he ended up taking off work because she was overstimulated feeling claustrophobic postpartum yeah and so he was off of work all of winter and then february 7th he was like it was time for me to go back to work he worked in natural gas and um

he's like, I just remember holding her being like, better days are ahead. And then three days later, because he worked out of the state, and so three days later, she had done this. Unbelievable. That's grim. Very grim. Well, that's why we have Kylie's Corner. Yeah. And it's happy jingle. That's why. We just have a sunshine moment that got rid of. We got to bring the sunshine moment back after you. Yeah, that was kind of sad. That was really depressing. Henry, what do you think Europe is?

should be expecting from the United States, not only the next four years, but the next decade, because they have really been in a lot of ways living on our

largesse on military of NATO and so forth. What do you think is reasonable for them to expect and still acknowledge us and realize we're an ally of them? We want them to be free. We don't want them to be, you know. Yeah, well, I think what they need to recognize is they need to be largely responsible for the ground naval and air forces that will keep them free from Russia.

And I think they also need to recognize, as I wrote in a column for European publication, Brussels Signal, that they can't look down on the half of America that votes for Republicans. It's been no secret that European elites don't like the values that Republicans in the United States, in fact, the European Parliament, passed a resolution condemning the Dobbs decision. Yeah.

What business is of this, of Europe, except to say we don't like you? You're icky. And if you want America to be your ally, you can't just be allies with the people that you want to have a cocktail party. Your allies are the Democrat Party. For a continent...

that has stricter abortion regulations than half the states in our country. Yes. I mean, you can't get an abortion past 15 weeks without going through a lot of hurdles. In many European countries, that's correct. And in Poland, it's in fact illegal. Yeah. I mean, so it's funny they make that comment when they –

They're more restrictive. Well, again, what Americans know about Europe is often inaccurate and what Europeans know about America is often inaccurate. I don't think they knew all of these things. But the thing is that what Europe has to – I think Europe now understands –

that despite what they've been told for the last 15 years, this time it's real. Yes. That I analogize it in my column to a long simmering marital dispute that's been under the

Kept under wraps. And then one partner says, I've had enough. I've been hinting. I've been talking. We either make the change or it's over. And I think that's what's happened. And then the question is, does Europe want to make the change? And the signs are, I think, that...

They may very well do that. Denmark has already moved. They're under command. The prime minister is a social democrat. Before the invasion of Ukraine, they had agreed over a 10-year period to get defense spending over 2% of GDP.

After Ukraine, they moved it to 2% very quickly. This week, they've said they're going to move to 3% as of next year. Right. And now their goal is to get to 5%, but they've gone to 3% on it. Right. And this does not include additional monies to defend Greenland. So the point is the Danes got the message. The front-line states –

have already got the message. Sweden's got the message. Sweden's got the message. The question is, are the Germans, the Italians, and the French, and the Spaniards going to get the message? And we'll find out in the next few weeks. The real key is... Are the Spaniards even hearing the message? Because they seem to be entirely missing from all this discussion. They are. Well, it's nice in Spain. It's like Phoenix in the winter all the time, right? Yeah.

No, I mean, we'll figure out they really get the message if you see Germany, who has the economy to really put some muscle into this. Do they have the economy, though, now with what they've done to their energy sector? Well, they've destroyed it a lot, but they're still the largest in Europe, right? So can they do it? It's interesting to see what they'll do. I am...

Part of this ties to the green policy stuff, right? Like to really build up your militaries, you're going to have to be a lot more flexible on their green agenda than they have been. Right. And that's one of the things. They've got their election on Sunday. The Christian Democratic Party and their leader would be the biggest polling shock in German history if they weren't to finish first. And then the question is, how hard of a deal does he strike? I think what he has to do is say, you know, you social Democrats –

Your failed chancellor said that it was a turn in time at site, Venda, and then got cold feet. And what we need to do is be serious. I think what will happen is the Social Democrats will get rid of their leader. They will place it with the defense minister, Boris Pistorius, who's very hawkish. And I think they will find some way to accommodate the defense increase and –

Merz, the Christian Democrat, will have to accommodate some of their desires for more social spending. And the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, has been saying, well, why don't we exempt military spending from the deficit requirement, you know, that they are required to have a deficit of less than 3%. That would be a fabulous subsidy.

to defense spending if that were to be approved. And I think if that were to happen, you would see a lot of countries increase rather quickly. How much longer can these European countries continue to accept immigration unabated? I mean, for example, London's 15% Muslim now. It will probably be 20, 25% in the next 10 years, right? Because obviously original English countrymen are not having children, right? Muslims have children. So...

Sweden is a country I've been paying particular attention to because they seem to be waking up a little bit. But as we were talking about before the show, there are 60 areas in Sweden that ambulance will not go without escorts because of rocks and protests and so forth. And police do not patrol them at all. They're their own nation. So what do you think they – I mean I think –

We talk about Ukraine. I think one of the biggest things we have besides our defense spending is just how we view illegal immigration versus how they view it. Yeah. Well, the thing is for them, it's not illegal. It's asylums. But millions of people have been manipulating the liberal asylum rules to basically come to the European Union in search of work.

And, of course, as we know here, what happens is maybe 80% of these people are law-abiding, but some of them are not. And they come with the intention of crime and theft. They have to get extremely tough.

They have to deport people. They have to close down. The left doesn't want to do this, but you're going to have to say to legitimate asylum seekers, no, the well has been poisoned, so the door is now closed. And once they start to do that, I think they also have to be giving intense, if you want to be here, you have to become Western.

Which means you have to find a way to accommodate your Muslim faith with Western values. And if you can't do that, you need to go back. Mm-hmm.

And I think eventually what they'll have to do is have some sort of employment for EU citizens. Because if you're a citizen of one country within the EU, you're actually a citizen of all. So, you know, which is say we'll give employment preferences to EU citizens, but we will not give employment preferences to non-citizen asylum seekers. And the ratchet down, the support that they get to stay, they have to have people leave.

How do you balance that, though, where, frankly, they need to pay far more attention to these Islamic communities where radicalization is happening with their already sort of problematic push into censorship and surveillance state territory? Well, I think there's a lot of

difficulties with what they've been doing, what you call the censorship and surveillance state. But I'm not convinced that what they have to do is surveil more. What they need to do is use force more. It's a flip side of the problem with Russia, which is that there was a large sense in the European elite that the fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in an era where force would no longer be needed.

no longer be needed overseas, no longer be needed domestically. And what they're seeing is it's not true on both sides. You have to be very tough with criminals who have nation states, and you have to be very tough with criminals who have gangs and cartels. Well, it's amazing for a bunch of elites who are probably well-educated that they haven't read history.

because they thought they'd ended it. Yeah, right. It's a pipe dream. One last question here. We're with Henry Olson. He is also the host of the weekly podcast Beyond the Polls. Henry, what do you think, say you're back here in 2028, what are the two or three things that you think Trump has to accomplish to view his presidency as successful?

In no particular order. We have to have a growing low inflation economy with expanding opportunities and wages for native born Americans who do not have a four year college degree.

That's number one. That's a great one, yeah. Two, all of his foreign policy gambits have to result in a safer world, not a more dangerous world. The fear is that if he gives away the store in Ukraine, you won't be talking about peace. You'll be talking about deterring Putin somewhere else. That cannot happen. Yes. Cannot happen. And the third thing he has to do is –

help to heal the social divides, which is that religious Americans, traditionally religious, mainly evangelical, but also traditionally religious Christians and Jews need to feel safer in the country to express their viewpoints without endangering the deserved gains that people who are not of that variety have won in social acceptance of their viewpoints over the last 40 years.

And, you know, things like focusing on parental rights, focusing on wokeness, on the divisiveness that race prejudice under the guise of DEI has been creating, fighting on all of those while also creating a balance. And this is not going to be.

1950s default, you know, de facto Christian America, but neither is it going to be what people fear, which is it's going to be a place where you can say the word, talk about your beliefs in the privacy of your home, not around your children. Um,

But nowhere else. And that is actually a belief that many Christians have who are Orthodox, and that needs to stop. But it needs to stop in a way that also does not mean that people who are not of the Christian faith feel that they need to be second-class citizens.

Well, Henry Olson, thank you for joining us in studio today. Well, thank you. Thanks for coming out to Phoenix. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And Kylie makes me want to go get an AR-15 for protection. We're going to make her start doing the sunshine moment. We have very open gun laws here in Arizona. Great opportunity. Yeah, you can just go today. You can just go today. A good business to be in the next four years is a therapist for those on the left. I mean,

That industry is going to boom. Anyway, folks, thank you for joining us today. For our guests on BreakingBattlegrounds.vote, we want to thank Jeremy, of course, Henry in studio, Kylie and her new theme song, Sam and myself. You can join us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote, Substack, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great weekend.