How To Respond To Riots W/ Speaker Johnson
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We have dangerous criminal, illegal aliens. They emptied out jails in Central America. All the things President Trump was saying were right, and everybody knows it, and they can see it. And so we represent, the president does, our party represents bringing stability and order back. And the

The fact that he had to send troops to L.A. was, of course, appropriate. I mean, I've been asked about this a thousand times this week and all of the press and they're hounding me as I walk up down the halls of the Congress. And I said, listen, if the local and state officials in California or elsewhere are unable or unwilling to keep law and order, to uphold the rule of law, then the president must. That's called leadership. That's called leadership. We have to do it.

Thank you.

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Welcome back to the Ruthless Friday program. I'm Josh Holmes, along with Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook. Left or right across your radio dial, except we added one here. You may recognize him, Speaker Mike Johnson. On the far right. On the far right. Yeah, far right. Now, you indicated this was your preferable position here. Listen, you've got a pretty difficult job these days, but it seems like you're getting things done.

Yeah, a lot of prayer and a lot of patience. You know, they've written my eulogy ten times. They've said that the Republican majority cannot deliver, but we keep doing it. We keep defying the odds. Democrats and the media trying to divide us, we're not going to allow that to happen. This is undeniably true. Duncan and I were having a conversation on the way in here, and you were saying he's got to be the most underestimated. Yeah, I mean, it seems like since you got the gavel, you've been doubted. You know, from that vote on the budget and then, you know, BBB and all of these things. And I'm curious...

going through all that and listening to all the media noise. How does it make you feel to prove him wrong over and over again? That's got to feel good.

I mean, you know, it's an advantage to be underestimated sometimes, you know. And we're working with one of the smallest majorities in history. We had the literal smallest majority for a big chunk of the first hundred days. You know, we worked so hard to win that majority in 2024. We defied expectations to do that. I mean, there were articles the night before the election in November saying we were going to lose the majority. I mean, I never believed that. So we just charged through and we wound up with 220 Republicans, 215 Democrats.

And then the president started culling my herd. One, this one, this one, taking them to the admin. I call him, Mr. President, we're down to one vote. What are you doing? I'm so sorry, Mike. Did I do that? Yes, you did.

So we had a one-vote margin. So, I mean, there's no margin for error. And it just takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, a lot of prayer. You sit down with everybody and work through their issues and get them to yes. And I'm so confident that we're going to do that because we have an opportunity to save the country. And everybody knows that. So the stakes couldn't be any higher. Yeah, no question about it. I want to get to BBB and everything associated with it. But let's start with the riots.

I mean, look, the American people delivered what is an unquestionable mandate on the issue of illegal immigration, one of the principal issues of the 24 campaign. The administration is going about the work of delivering on their promises. And all of a sudden, L.A. erupts into riots. Now you see Seattle, Atlanta. Chicago. There's a Chicago. There's a big plan this weekend for all around the country. What's your take on this?

It's crazy. It's no question the border was the number one issue in the election. I mean, there were a lot of issues, but that in every poll across the board, that was it. And we made a promise that we would bring order to the chaos. And the president has done that in record time. And by the way, demonstrated what we had been saying all along. We had existing federal law. The president had the authority to do it. Biden tried to argue with us. He never had the authority. It was all just absurdity.

a big lie. They opened the border intentionally. We think the number is about 20 million illegal aliens came across the border in four years. So we'll be dealing with the fallout of this for the rest of our lives. I mean, you can't flip a switch and fix that. But he secured that border. It's more secure than it's ever been. The one big beautiful bill, one of the biggest components of it, one of the most important, is to

provide the funding to make sure that that border stays secure. We're going to hire 10,000 additional ICE agents. We're going to give bonuses to Border Patrol and Customs agents and money for new facilities and deportations and all the rest. But that's...

But that's what has the left in a full-out panic. They hate ICE. What is ICE? It's Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They don't want to enforce federal law. Don't get lost in the acronyms, I tell everybody. These people are on the wrong side. They're defending dangerous criminal illegal aliens being in the country. Yeah.

If that's your political angle, go for it, right? Like, I mean, they are doing this to themselves, and I don't understand it. I do not understand it. So on that very subject, politically, it would seem like, especially after, you know, the election we just had in November, that wake up...

The American people support a strong border. They want to get rid of the illegal aliens who are here. Just now with the polling shows that 60 to 40 Americans support the troops being sent to Los Angeles. I brought up the point last week, and now it's starting to echo all over the place, that Democrats support this because of apportionment. They know that every census decides where the House seats go, and illegal aliens get counted everywhere.

That's right. In that census. So when you're talking about 20 million illegal aliens came in under Joe Biden and roughly 750,000 per representative is what apportionment comes at.

That's the majority right there for the Democrats that they're hoping for. That's exactly right. That was the whole thing. It is their avenue, they think, to hold on to power because they can't win on their policies. They're so unpopular, right? So they've got to bring in more people, and that was the idea that they would be able to swing elections and they would be able to change the apportionment through the census. It's dangerous stuff, and it's diabolical because they didn't care about all of the untold damage they've done to the country. Mm-hmm.

in their quest for power. I mean, fentanyl, just one metric. I mean, it's the leading cause of death for Americans age 18 to 49. And they knew that it was flooding over the border and they did not care. We have dangerous criminal, illegal aliens. They emptied out jails in Central America. All the things President Trump was saying were right and everybody knows it and they can see it. And so we represent, the president does, our party represents bringing stability and order back. And

And the fact that he had to send troops to L.A. was, of course, appropriate. I mean, I've been asked about this a thousand times this week and all of the press and they're hounding me as I walk up and down the halls of the Congress. And I said, listen, if the local and state officials in California or elsewhere are unable or unwilling to keep law and order, to uphold the rule of law, then the president must. That's called leadership. That's called leadership. We have to do it. Are you astonished? I know we are.

At just how much bait your Democratic colleagues take on this particular set of issues. I mean, you got like, you know, Senator Chris Van Hollen down with the Abrego Garcia thing three weeks later. Boy, oh boy, does that look pretty dumb. You got riots. You've got, you know, all these protests out in front of ICE facilities or federal detention centers.

But they're literally just ironing in a political problem that they've got. And it's like they can't help themselves. They have an uncanny ability to do exactly the wrong thing at every turn. I mean, they don't. It's really stunning to me. You know, I got asked about the call to arrest Gavin Newsom, you know, yesterday in my press conference. And I don't know where that came about. But I was sitting next to the president at the Oval Office when he said, yeah, maybe it's deserved.

So they asked me about it, and I said, look, I'm not going to get in. I'm a constitutional law attorney. I'm not going to get into the legality of whether or not he should be arrested, but he ought to be tarred and feathered. And, of course, the media quoted me literally. Oh, yeah. And so there was like a dozen stories yesterday. Right. Speaker wants to torture Gavin Newsom. Yeah.

It was a metaphor. I'm saying they ought to be politically tarred and feathered for this nonsense, and they were in the election, and they're going to be again. Listen, that's why we're going to win the midterm elections in 26. We have to defy history to do it because there's only two times in the last 90 years that a sitting president has picked up seats in their first midterm cycle. Lots of reasons for that, but...

The last one was George W. after 9-11, so that's kind of an anomaly. You've got to go back to the 30s to FDR. But we are going to do it this time. We're going to make history because these guys are so bad at what they do, and we are delivering for the people. And that contrast could not be any more clear. I couldn't agree more. When we come back, we're going to talk to you about the big, beautiful bill. Yes. Some rescissions packages and everything that you're hoping to get done here in the next couple of months. Right after this.

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Put simply, manufacturing depends on rail. Freight rail is America's engine, built on private investment, driving the nation forward. Learn more at AAR.org. All right, back here with Speaker Johnson. Big, beautiful bill. Obviously, this is the cornerstone of the economic agenda that President Trump had promised in his campaign in 24, and it's now kind of like, oh, we've got four. If that's the president, interrupt us. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. We're very professional here, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I know. I like that. This is... I apologize. He heard you talking about the big beautiful bill and he called it. Yeah, that's right. He named it, by the way. Do you know that? Well, I guessed. I mean, it wasn't... But I did have one small victory because I convinced him that we were not going to put an exclamation point on it.

I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. We debated it. Did you tell him that was like the Jeb thing? Is that the way that he got it? Oh, I should have thought of that. We can consult on things like that. We should do that. He said, Mike, it's so powerful because everybody knows. And I said, you're right. One big, beautiful bill because it's got everything. I mean, it's all of our priorities in there. I mean, everything from the border that we talked about to –

you know, we've got regulatory reform in there. We've got returning peace through strength and making sure we're properly funded the military industrial base. We, of course the tax piece is huge. If we don't get this done, we're going to have the largest tax increase in U S history at the end of the year. All of this is, is going to have a,

It's going to be jet fuel to the U.S. economy because we have pro-growth policies in there again, incentivizing U.S. manufacturing, keeping tax rates low and making them permanent for people. That's a huge thing to job creators and entrepreneurs and risk takers. And it's also got, you know, extending the debt limit in there, which is a huge thing because that cliff is approaching quickly. And so we have to do it on our own. Democrats are not going to help us do any of this agenda. Right.

And that's why reconciliation is so important, because you only need 51 votes in the Senate, not 60 as the normal course of action, as you all know well. So that's why we've got to get it done and no margin for error. The Senate is dabbling with it right now. OK, I went to their lunch a couple weeks ago, two days before we passed it. And I told them it was that was on a Tuesday. I told him we were going to pass it on a Thursday. I think half the senators didn't even believe me when I said that. But I said, I'm going to send you over a package and it is.

very delicately balanced. I understand how this works in the House of Lords and you want to put your finger where it's at. Well, we'll see about that. It's all important. I said, please, I am crossing the Grand Canyon on a piece of dental floss. You cannot load me down on either side because we're all going to fall together. And so they get that. But there's a lot of bluster. They're going through the five stages of grief on it.

that we did. It took us 14 months. You worked everybody through all five. Yes. They got to do it in four weeks. We did it in 14 months. How frustrating is it that you're not able to sell what you just talked about, right? The core of this is delivering on huge promises that the American people overwhelmingly said, yes, we want all of that. Right.

that. And you have to, it seems like not only talk about process more than you'd like because of this process, but also seem just the under education. It's not, I'm not just blaming your, your members, but the media outside, uh, sort of pontificators. You have to like educate people on the basics of what it is that you're trying to accomplish. Right. I mean, there's people talking about discretionary spending cuts and all these things. And you're like, well,

I actually have to go and now explain the reconciliation process. Which is no fun. I mean, it's no fun for anyone. That's the challenge because there's so much misinformation out there. The difference between Congress right now and Congresses in previous generations is we have a 24-hour news cycle. We have social media. We have podcasts, all these other outputs, avenues for information.

And the social media thing is toxic to politics because every single member has their own comm shop and they can go every two minutes, 30 seconds online and say what they're disgruntled about in a piece of legislation. That was not a thing that previous generations had to contend with. So in the midst of all that, you have all this false information that's put out and people go off on these tangents that aren't true. And so I'm constantly having to put out fires all the time.

I can't even imagine poor Johnson sitting in his office having to see something online from one of his members about something that quite obviously can't go. I don't sit in my office. I pace nervously around the floor. It's like head and hands. But now it's not just your own members. You were talking about the Senate and how delicately balanced things are in the Senate. And I know that you've been in touch with them. And nobody knows how to count votes better than you. You've demonstrated that over and over and over again. So I just wonder –

Some of these changes are talking about on SALT or, you know, Cassidy was talking about opening up Medicare. What sort of changes scare you to death about Medicare?

What could they do to actually take votes away from the moderates in the House? Well, there's a lot of concern. Every time I see a senator on an interview or something say, you know, open a Pandora's box that we can't close, I try to call them immediately, reach out and say, let's talk this through. You're like running a hotline. Right, right. I mean, we did all this. I mean, 14 months. We began the process in March of 2024.

countless hours of listening sessions and whiteboard sessions and, you know, meeting with this caucus and that caucus and getting the caucuses together. And, you know, we've been through all that. So I know every argument that'll come up and already know the answer that has been reached in the House. And so I'm trying to short circuit those, you know, tangents and make sure they don't happen. You know, the SALT thing is a good example. I mean, it took us a year to negotiate the point of equilibrium on it. And no one in this, no Republican senator likes the SALT argument.

raising the salt cap. I don't either. I'm from a red state. But I told them the reality is our majority runs through states like California and New York. I mean, I explain this to people in layman's terms. We can elect Republicans in red states. Everybody's seen the election map. It's all red in the middle and then you've got the coasts that are blue. Right.

I have to have Republicans in the districts in California, New York, New Jersey, or we don't have a majority. And I mean, it's down to a handful of seats. So I'm trying to tell my Republican senators, we can't do what we prefer. We have to do what is possible. And I'm telling you, it's a fun message. Yeah, right. I mean,

And I tell my members, look, I'm never going to ask you to compromise a core principle. But you have to give in on your preferences. This is a deliberative body. We have 220 of us. We've got to come to an agreement. So finding consensus between the disparate caucuses is a – it takes a lot of work. And we did that in the House. And I told them in the Senate, please don't send over –

you know, your perfect product that you prefer because I won't be able to pass it. I mean, it's going to be down to a couple of votes. Look, it drives us nuts that people talk about debt and deficits in the context of the big, beautiful bill because, of course, what they're talking about is a failure to raise the taxes on the American people from the rates they played last year. That's what they say. We used to be, as Republicans, all on the same page about that. Right.

of what constitutes debt and what doesn't, but apparently that's part of the conversation. But secondarily, you're also moving a rescissions package. - Yes. - Which, where do we see all that? - Look, we got five steps to fiscal sanity here, okay? And the reconciliation bill is just the first of a series of events that will take place. We're the team that's gonna restore fiscal responsibility,

but you cannot do that overnight. I mean, people walk around with this assumption that, oh, we won the election, let's flip the switch and go back to sanity. It doesn't work that way. I use a metaphor of an aircraft carrier. My son just finished his first year at the Naval Academy, and I was...

That's awesome.

is this reconciliation bill. We're going to cut $1.6 trillion in spending. There's never been a legislature on the face of planet Earth that's ever done that. Is it enough? No. And I told my good brother Ron Johnson over in the Senate, no, but this is the first of many steps. Rescissions comes next. Russ Vogt at OMB is putting together all these packages. Great guy. Great guy. I mean, he's a total budget hawk, fiscal hawk.

The first rescissions package is $9.4 billion. It'll be the first of several that we're going to process. Then we go to the appropriations process, which is the actual spending. And we're going to spend less, carve it out, continue to downsize the federal government, size and scope. And then we're going to do another reconciliation bill for the next fiscal year and a third one. We're going to try three reconciliation bills in this Congress for FY26, FY27.

So you're going to see a series of events that take place where we gradually and methodically and with great stewardship

Turn the trajectory. That is critical information. We were speaking about how on social media you'll hear things that are just completely wrong. Stephen Miller has been wonderful. He's great. Wonderful for going out there. If you want to get an actual source for truth of what this does, Stephen Miller, who's been pointing out exactly the reconciliation package and how this cuts the deficit. And the assumptions are being made by OMB that like,

oh, growth will be at 1.8% when the last time... Or CBO. Or CBO, my mistake. By CBO, that growth will be at 1.8% when the last time this has passed, it rockets to 3%. And CBO's been wrong at every time. Every time, yeah. CBO does some calculations okay, but...

Every time they project the effect of tax cuts, they're off. It's tax. Dramatically. Okay. We did the tax cuts in Jobs Act in 2017. They missed it by $1.5 trillion with a T. Okay. So we're supposed to believe that's the Bible right now? No, I'm not lying. So they don't give any credit for growth assumption. They're saying 1.8% growth over 10 years. Never in U.S. history have we sustained less than 2% growth over 10 years. It's not even real. And so it's just kind of a joke.

And the fact that some people are grasping onto that and claiming that we're not really cutting is just simply not true. Stephen Miller has been great on trying to help dispel some of the false information. I mean, people said, oh, you're not doing enough of the doge cuts. Well, doge cuts is discretionary spending, not mandatory spending. We can't do it in restaurants.

reconciliation, literally. The other day I saw Elon Musk apologize to President Trump. I always think that an apology is one thing. Making amends is how you actually do it. He needs to get out there and be like, so I was wrong. I was wrong about reconciliation. I don't understand. Rescission is where the doge cuts are. Because, I mean, the work that you guys are putting in, that's for the American people, what we voted for.

And he has such power and influence to be able to get the message out and say, I was wrong. This is great. He's got the biggest platform in the world. And I've come to love and respect Elon. We became friends through this whole process, and we've traveled together. And he's a genius. He knows things that I can't even fathom. But I told him, I said, I don't argue with you on how to build rock.

Don't argue with me on how to draft and pass legislation because there's a nuance to this, and it's not a field that he ever spent any time developing expertise in. So step by step for the last year, I'm going to explain it to him. I've got to imagine last Thursday, I know you don't drink, but I bet you were tempted. I almost started. I'm trying to be a peacemaker in the thing because these two titans cannot be at odds, and it looks like it's resolving now, and I think that's great for the country. A level-headed speaker. Mm-hmm.

One thing I got, it's very close to your heart that I got to hit, your baseball team down there. Yes. LSU Shreveport. The LSU Shreveport Pilots, okay? It's a small, I graduated LSU, big LSU down in Baton Rouge, four hours north to the northwest corner. My hometown is the branch campus. Well, their baseball team went 59-0. That's incredible. It's the greatest college baseball season in history. And they won the NAIA title.

Just a flawless performance by some guys that just really worked hard and defied the odds. Are you trying to work them into the parade on Saturday up here? They should be. I wish I had thought of that. No, but I did get them an invitation to the White House. There you go. They're going to come celebrate with the president, and I got to announce that over the loudspeaker at their big rally thing. Oh, I bet they love that. It's awesome. It's well-deserved. And they're great guys, great character. They just pull together as a team, and I'm using that as a metaphor for the House of

Look at my Shreveport pilots, man. If they can do it, we can do it. Very funny. You get a well-adjusted guy, just a guy from Louisiana. All of a sudden, you're in charge of all this mess, and you're trying to make the best out of it. I imagine team mentality goes a long way in the Johnson office. We have to do it. Yeah, exactly right. And look, I genuinely love all my colleagues, and I know what makes them tick, and I know the dynamics of their district, and I know where their red lines are. And so...

The challenge of the modern speakership is to get all these disparate groups together to the point of consensus. And we'll do it. We're going to keep doing it. We're going to keep defying the odds. Well, underestimate Speaker Johnson at your own peril because this man has delivered time and time again. Thank you so much for joining us. So good to be with you guys. I love it. Keep going. Thank you.

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I also noticed you changed outfits for the second half of our recording. Yeah, well, I mean, if it's just you guys, what do I care? Yeah, yeah. It's so good. There's nobody that could have that happen to who would be bothered by it more than you. Yeah. I mean, again, I mean, that was such a tremendous value add for our audience. It was unbelievable. And what a dude. Like, only that dude could get it done with the slim majority we have. Yeah, and look, we're sympathetic, obviously, to...

A couple of us served in leadership capacities in Congress, so we're sympathetic about what they deal with on a day-to-day basis. We understand there's an awful lot of anxiety about not getting exactly what you want out of everything. But you've got to understand the role.

of somebody like Speaker Johnson, which is to try to preserve everything you can, try to pull everything as far right as you can with figuring out where you can get to a majority status in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and actually pass something to law. There's so many people that are involved in politics that dedicate their lives to telling you exactly what it is that you want to hear.

That aren't ever a part of actually delivering it. And that is a problem from my standpoint. Yeah. Right. I mean, look, there's so age of social media. Like I love social media. I think it's fantastic. Best thing to happen to us for sure. But there's a lot of armchair punditry involved of people that don't know.

what 215, 216 members have to deal with in their own districts, that guy does. Yeah, and I thought one of the best points he made is an important reminder that if you're going to have a majority, it will be made up of people from different parts of this country who represent different types of constituencies. A California and a New York constituency doesn't necessarily look like a Tennessee constituency. But if you want a majority, you have to have all

All of them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, getting something done doesn't mean that you roll out to, you know, all of our favorite shows and tell an audience exactly what they want to hear. It's about finding the balance that gets as much as you need and want to get done with actually getting it into law. Because as he said, look, the difference between success and failure here is magnificent. Yeah.

I mean, one is $1.6 trillion of budget cuts. It either gets done or it doesn't. You have $3.5 trillion of tax increases. They're either levied on the American people or not. There are important border reforms, securing the border, ensuring— Build the wall. Build the wall. All that stuff either gets done or it doesn't. Right.

Right. It's in there currently. Senate's still working on it. We're going to see what reserve judgment until a final product comes out on that. But that's what he's working for. Right. So for those of you get frustrated with the process, I understand it. But having served in it, I can tell you it's tough.

It's hard to find where your votes are in comparison to what you need to get done. And once you find that balance, it's a special skill set. And I think Mike Johnson has done an incredible job.

at trying to figure out what that balance is, preserving as much as you possibly can and delivering President Trump's promises to the American people. I know they're going to get it done, but I really think he deserves an awful lot of credit for doing it. Yeah, how do you describe it? He said it's like walking floss across a Grand Canyon. I was like, yeah, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good. All right, we got an awful lot of show in front of us. We're going to do a lightning round. We're going to get to your comments. We got a question of the day. Our question of the day, after you listen to all of that,

Because I found myself basically asking myself this. Like, how long would you last in that job? Yeah. As Speaker of the House, like, knowing your own personality? I wouldn't last a day. Duncan, you'd be a toast. I wouldn't last a day. The first time somebody came to me and was like, but I've got a concern about me. Yeah.

Tendering my resignation. I don't want to deal with this. I'd love to see like Thomas Massey and the old man in a room for one second talking about what's achievable versus what the reality. Hey, I'm realistic. And, you know, a true man knows his own limitations. And I know what I can't do. And it's heard those cats. Yeah. I mean, having served Ashbrook and I in a leadership capacity, I can tell you it's a very nerve-trying job.

It's very difficult to listen to everybody sit on a couch basically and tell you all their problems. And you try to fix them on an hourly basis and they come back to you with more problems after you solve them. So the question of the day is for you as a listener. As you're listening to that and you're hearing what it is that this guy has to deal with, how long do you think you would last?

As a Speaker of the House, maybe some of you feel like you're well-situated for that kind of thing. Maybe you have tactics that you deploy that are unconventional. And if so, we'd love to hear about them. Like and subscribe to the Ruthless Variety program. And when you do and you leave your comment, we'll read them all and we'll get back to you next Tuesday with your answers.

But we always like to read the last episodes. And our question of the day was, should Trump send in the Marines? Prescient in many ways. We've been on a roll with that, by the way. Like, if you listen to our show, guess what? You know what's going to happen in the next 36 hours. Tomorrow's news today. Yeah. It's crazy. Do you think maybe Trump listens and he's like, that's a great idea? Potentially. Potentially.

Potentially. We know a lot of their people, but the L.A. riots and everything else, the big question was how do you secure these people when you've got local law enforcement that are hemmed in by political leadership that don't want to do their job?

And what do you do as president of the United States? Are you sending the Marines or not? That was our question to you. This is how you commented. We start with a voice. First one comes from Jimmy Major. And Jimmy writes, question of the day. I was 11 years old and living in Washington, D.C. when Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Understandably, black Americans flooded into the streets in angry protest. Soon after, rioting and looting broke out. Within a day, Lyndon Johnson ordered 13,000 National Guard troops deployed into the city and imposed a citywide curfew. Uniformed soldiers were on every single corner. Over 6,100 arrests were made, and within four days, the rioting and looting had stopped.

Quick, decisive action and overwhelming force prevented a bad situation from devolving into chaos, Jimmy Major writes. It looks like Trump may have learned some lessons from the, quote,

Summer of Love, and taking a page from the Lyndon Johnson playbook. The best response to civil unrest is with maximum counter forces. Let's hope the American public doesn't go wobbly when we see it unfolding. Jimmy Major with a historical reference that is very interesting. I'm curious, Ashbrook, do you agree with his assessment of Martin Luther King? Because you were alive back then, right?

What was it like? Yeah, what was the Selma March like? He was just buzzing with some Buddy Holly on the radio. Ashbrook had just had his first kid. Not going to respond. The country still remembers Kennedy being shot recently. Not going to respond to that. Raising kids in such an environment, it was tough, Ashbrook. You got it done. Thrill of the prospects of Medicare and Social Security coming to fruition. Michael, if you need help reading that next comment, I'm happy to help you read it.

No. This is a transition. This is a transition. Comment two here. Question of the day. If Rockstar would just release GTA 6, we would not have to deal with these protests. POTUS should pick up the phone and call Rockstar and the FBI should investigate what caused the delay. If fall 2025 was the original planned date, then

then the beta may have been out by now. Release the GTA 6 beta. I love this take. Great take. Number one, I think a lot of these riots have to do with these college kids who are out of school with nothing to do. Yep. As we said, six months of Marxist theory, and now they go out and they practice. But I think the other thing here is maybe if they could digitally burn down cities, they wouldn't have to do it in person. Right.

So I just love nothing. That's a thought. They could get it out, you know. Yeah. You know, they could steal a cop car, you know, maybe beat up a prostitute. Yeah. You know, that's what you do in that video game. Maybe some, like, LED lighting on an inside, you know, something to really flash bang it. Well, they have Molotov cocktails in GTA. Like an immersive experience is my point. Right. Yeah.

Oh, like maybe get some VR to these kids. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, I love that idea. That takes care of it. Yeah, we're going to take this right to the top. Thoughtful, thoughtful. A riot at every corner just inside a local drugstore or somewhere you can check yourself in and work things out. Mm-hmm.

I love it. All right, comment three, Smuggles. This comes from Robert Spitalnik. Robert writes, to the question, Trump sending in the Marines is a win-win. The rioting must be stopped and the message must be sent that there's a new sheriff in town. The nation cannot afford to let this keep happening. It's also good politics to humiliate Newsom and the rest of the left. I agree, Robert. Nailed it. Nailed it. Robert, you are a wise man. Yeah. That is exactly our take on this.

And to that point, we have a clip at what's happening here. If you don't mind, Spaghet, it's clip one. These are, in fact, our United States Marines conducting a sustainment training in the L.A. area ahead of a deployment. See, I've watched Mighty Ducks, and what I saw there was a flying V. It was a flying V. Which I appreciate. With perhaps a little bit more sustainable force pattern behind it.

They're operating on a soccer field, which is something Michael's very familiar with. However, they are operating with some force and strength, which you don't see in soccer often. I'm wondering, Michael, when you were playing soccer, how scared would you have been if you saw men like that coming your direction? I don't even know how to answer that. If I saw guys in riot gear on a soccer field. It's a lot more American.

than you typically see on a soccer field. It certainly is. We're hosting the World Cup. Have some goddamn pride. Did you hear that? That might not happen. Oh, bullshit. No, the mayor of L.A. There's too much graffiti. If you can clean up San Francisco for she, you should be able to clean up L.A. for our World Cup.

I'm glad we're hosting it. We have French restaurants in this country. We have sushi and vegan restaurants in this country. And so, of course, we also are big enough to have the World Cup. Yeah, no, we're cultural like that. Also, let's not act like the dumps in Europe that they've hosted this thing at are like free of graffiti. Right. Great point. Yeah. I remember the Olympics in Paris where like people were getting, you know, bacteria infections by swimming in the water. Yeah. Yeah.

My take is sending the Marines to the World Cup. Make it stop. Now we're talking. Oh, yeah.

Force them to play NFL football on their field and have every soccer player watch it. There's two O's in football, not a U. You know what I would love? Yes. Is you get some of these guys in riot gear and anytime somebody flops on the field, they get the billy club. You get the flying V. The flying V comes out in the billy club. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. I like that. Great idea. Wonderful idea, Michael. Coming up, Mexico wants to build that wall. And plus, Katy Perry loves colonialism. Yeah.

A little different take on colonialism. You're going to love this. Katy Perry. I mean, Jesus, this lady, she's just not, well, she didn't make her way all the way through school. I don't think because she's got some things that we'd love to comment on. We're going to get to all of it. Ready for this.

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I think we had discussed at some level, and I forget exactly how you framed it, Dunks, but it was basically like these students...

Yeah, yeah. These are the grad students who did six months of Marxist theory. Right. And then all of a sudden they're... Now they're doing praxis, as they say in Marxist literature. And I think it's important for us in the Ruthless Variety program. We've shown you the violence. We've shown you the cars on fire. Let's see the lighter side of the left's reaction to these riots. I just love it. Because they just force themselves into these logical pretzels, and it's very hilarious. It's so good. Let's go to clip two, Spaghetts.

So they're confronting these cops. I'm in college.

An imperialist. So he's lecturing. A cop. A cop. Right. Who is kind enough to have a discussion. The cops are sitting there with a full front line. They could have mowed these guys down in two minutes. The guy's screaming at him. The cop's entertaining the conversation. I would say the generosity of his heart. Yeah, I would have advanced that line of shields. I would have advanced fast. Like I'm the 300 at Thermopylae. Yeah, but he starts talking about the imperialists.

Yeah, the racist imperialist. Yeah. Yeah. And like I noticed there was both a Mexican flag and then I think I caught wind of some Palestinian action in there, which I mean, look, you've got to work hard to figure out the nexus there. Yeah. Other than that, it's the modern left. And he says he don't even know what that means. He's like, yeah, bitch, I'm in college. I'm in college. It reminds me of this great bit from South Park.

where like all the boys are like, they're at this music festival and these like burnouts come up and they're talking about like capitalism, how evil it is. And he's like, we just got back from our first semester of college. Our professors opened our eyes, man. It's just like, so,

South Park is a show that's just always been way ahead of its time. Totally. Well, the faux intellectualism of the modern left is fantastic. And it's really, really apparent in like this younger generation, like finds himself in the middle of a gay pride rally with Palestinian flags. And they're like, they don't under, they don't get the mutually exclusive nature of what it is that they're doing, but they're absolutely certain that the imperialist racist forces are to be battled wherever they are. Mm-hmm.

And like they don't understand the nuances of all of these things. But it extends not just like to this dumb shit. Also to people who are making tens of millions of dollars because they're entertainers have no higher education than these folks. Katie Perry. Dunks, will you mind setting this thing up? Yeah. So Katie Perry –

Do we have the graphic one up here? She puts this status up on her Instagram story. She says, Los Angeles, a place that literally began as El Pueblo, Dinestra, Sonora,

Yeah.

in that intersectionality of all the bullshit that the left pretends to believe in, they don't even understand when it's not...

There's no continuity. Right. Because like when they talk about Israel and Palestine, they're like, we don't believe in settler colonialism and these Jews shouldn't be here in the Middle East. Right. And they need to go back to Poland. Right. Holocaust be damned. But if you happen to be a Mexican, then settler colonialism is cool by Katy Perry. Oh, it's super cool. Suddenly we're not doing land acknowledgments for the Native Americans anymore. No, because they're not white people. This is the Mexicans' land.

They only care about settler colonialism when it happens to be a white guy who came over on the Mayflower. So let me just get this. Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, just to get this straight, maybe you can put a finer point on this, Smash. What she's saying is basically the land inhabited by, at that point, indigenous groups that were taken over by Spanish settlers. Yeah, right.

That's the thing. So, like, I don't want to completely dismiss her because it was an absolute delvey when Cortez rolled up and stopped the child sacrifices. Like, I think history has shown Cortez, huge delvey. He made the child sacrifices stop.

He saved a lot of people. W for Cortez. That is not where I saw this show going, by the way. I didn't either. No, but you were going to say smash. Well, you know, you were talking about land acknowledgements. And when I saw this Katy Perry story, I wondered, where does she live? And I saw a headline of a story that said she was slammed for suing an 85-year-old veteran she evicted from her $15 million mansion in Montecito. Oh, my gosh. And so I wondered...

who occupied Montecito in this property before Katy Perry. And why is she deporting this elderly person? But also, if you take it back to when Katy cares about land acknowledgements, there's a group called the Chumash People who occupied the land of Montecito. Mm-hmm.

At some point in history. And so I think that if she were an honest person, she would let her property go back to the Chumash people. Give up your mansion. Give up your mansion. Everybody knows the Chumash has a right on that. Yeah. No question about it. In perpetuity forever. She should lead by example. Yes. So her critique, just for those of you who don't follow along with the humor on this, just to put a finer point on it.

Her critique is that we shouldn't be deporting illegal immigrants because it's their land.

It's A, not their land. But B, the people, if you want to talk about original settling of that land, you're talking about the settlers, the Spanish settlers that then took it from them. Right. That she now is acknowledging the first taking. Yeah. The second taking of the colonial, as she would put it.

Well, it's less good. Right. That's the crazy thing about liberals when they talk about colonialism and settlers and all this sort of stuff. It doesn't matter really where they look in the world. They have a selective memory. And there's like – I would just love a liberal to sit down with me and pick a date. Like you pick a date and you tell me when was the world at homeostasis and everybody deserved to be where they are.

You know what I mean? Because it doesn't exist. I don't know. It just seems to me like there's a common thread on their critiques. Well, I'm just going to be honest. What's the common thread? Here's the thing. It's always hypocrisy. They always try to do this of like, oh, well, they want to frame every narrative in that there is the conquered and the conquerors. And that's what they use to wedge to pit people against themselves. This example that you gave is just –

A million in the line of liberals and the left don't actually believe in anything. They just hope they can wedge you. Like when they say that, like, well, you know, Jesus was an illegal immigrant. They're like, I don't believe in the Bible, but I'm hoping I can use your own beliefs against you to do what I want. They believe in nothing. Yeah. This is the dumbest stuff. Cortez didn't burn his boats for this. He worked so hard to save those children. He's still on the Cortez thing. I love it. Cortez.

It just seems to me like the conquering, conquering is sort of an arbitrary situation, provided that the conquering isn't done by anybody with a white skin. Right. At which point that becomes problematic if you're an American progressive. Right. Like it's the most mind boggling thing.

lack of history lack of education lack of logical situation of all time and that these people they have but one goal and it's to suggest that a america is always wrong in b there is only one constituency in the world that doesn't have to be defended yeah

That's it. Yeah. And everything else is problematic. America's always wrong. America's. It's so funny. Like the idea that L.A. belongs to Cortez or to these Mexicans or whatever. It's as silly as like the Dutch sailing up and being like, we want New York City back. Give it back.

It's just so dumb. The New York Times building in Manhattan sits on once claimed native land. Why don't they give that back to the natives who had it? That's right. It's all the corporation has to do. Surely she would agree. There were a lot of people with white skin working in that New York Times building. If they actually cared about what they claimed to believe in, they would give it back.

back. It gets a little bit more dicey when we're talking about Christopher Columbus. A little bit more dicey because, you know, he's Italian. Right. They don't like that. How do we categorize? Anyway, the Mexicans, not surprisingly, see the world very similarly to Katy Perry in this. I think you flagged this one. Clip three, Harunks, if you wouldn't mind taking this one. Yeah, this is the president of the Mexican Senate.

And he's got a diagram up here of Mexico in 1830, where he's just— Relevant time frame. He's just like taking— Relevant time! He's just decided that they still own a quarter of the United States of America, including California, which is just so funny to me. Yeah. And this is where presumably he's making the case— Yeah, the Katy Perry case. Yeah, the Katy Perry case that this was once Mexico. Mm-hmm.

not that there was Mexican-American war fought over it, but because of that, ICE deportations are, in fact, a wrong thing to do. Right. Right? It's just so funny, dude. Dude, it's just... It is. It is so funny. Clearly, the guy has never heard of Sam Houston. You know, General Santa Anna fought valiantly, but he was crushed by the Americans and the Texans. Yeah. But, dude...

We remember the Alamo. But you go back to the first clip of the kid.

And then you look at something like that. And then you look at basically the undergirding of the modern left and all these protests and all. It's this projection that they know more than you about everything, which is kind of the basis of – That's what they – they love to do this. Of progressivism, right? It's like you're dumb. You're dragging your knuckles. We're highly educated and we know what we're talking about. I went to Williams College. I was at Bryn Mawr.

are for crying out loud. I know better than you, state school graduate. Right. I've been opened to the world. Professors opened our eyes. Yeah, whereas you're like some idiot in Kansas. Right. But like if you actually just poke a half centimeter in to any of it, it's the most faux intellectual dumb fuckery you will ever see on any level of a logical argument. None of this makes any sense.

All of it falls on its own fallacy. There's nothing about what it is that they're talking about that makes a lick of sense. And yet...

It's the basis by which they like stand up to the man and they're going to protest in cities across this nation. They're protesting, by the way, on the same day that we're celebrating the 250th birthday of our army. Right. What is to protest about that? Either you're American or you don't. If you don't want to celebrate that, and I understand, Wolf, you've got like a submarine thing, which, you know. It's a submarine.

It's a little, you know, there's a rivalry. But the Hulz of Montezuma are allowed to do that. But surely as a country, we can celebrate the fact that we've had an army for 250 years defending this country. No. And that, in my view, is all you need to know. That's all you need to know. The 250th birthday of the Army of the United States is something worth protesting, counter-protesting against.

They don't like it. They don't like it. It tells you everything you need to know about these people. And like the idea that they're so much better educated, you really hit the nail on the head. They look at this credential from a Northeastern university like it's something to fly like a flag. And the rest of the country sees it as a punchline. And they don't understand it. And I think that shows you exactly who they are and their EQ, which is not very high. Not high. Not high.

It's not high. Well, this was fun. We've got one more clip that we want to show you. I think this is the best clip of all the clips, in fact. Because it's basically the apotheosis of this entire conversation. Oh, is it really? Okay. All right. Hold on. Just set it up a little bit here. You've got these – I mean –

These two white liberals, you know the type, the people who look like they're homeless but clearly have a trust fund. I call them the professional poor. The professional poor. Yeah. And they decide to have a confrontation with an African-American woman. And we'll just take it from there. Let's go to clip four. Clip four.

Look at that guy. Wow.

Look at this line that you guys are causing. I'm not causing no problems. I'm not trying to. We're just trying to leave. Guys, the guy has never worked a day in his life. Trustafarian. That is the most trustafarian take of like, oh, no, not work. This guy and his man bun. This woman's just trying to go feed her family. She's like, I got a light bill to pay. Yeah. I don't know that there's anything. And I'm trying to calibrate myself.

I'm not sure that there's anything in modern society that makes me more angry than that. Yeah. I'm with you. Aren't you glad we saved it for last? Yeah. I mean, the idea that you have two of these, these two good for nothing fuckwits standing out in his man bun.

Giving a lecture to clearly a young – I don't know if she's a working mom or if she's – what she is, but this young African-American woman who just wants to get to work and they're lecturing her about why they're going to stop her from going to work. And then when somebody asks the question, why are you stopping these people from going to work? It's like, oh, no, work.

Yeah, dude. Hey, fucko, do you have any idea what this country was founded on? No. Like, no clue. They're just anti-capitalist. They're anti-American. People are Marxist. They don't care. They don't care. They want the system destroyed.

But it's – I mean look, for those of you listening, I think you'll immediately understand what it is that I'm saying in that in the neighborhoods that you grew up with, in the era that you grew up in, in your parents and everybody, you wouldn't be listening to this if you didn't agree at some point. That American exceptionalism is something but it doesn't exist just simply because it exists. It exists all the way back to the founding of this country where you had a bunch of redcoats saying get in line. We're like fuck off.

We're going to do it our own way. Yeah, I'd say what is it that Reagan said? Freedom is one generation away from extinction. Yeah. And that's true. But every generation of Americans up to this point has figured out how to do something a little bit better than the rest of the world.

It's why the economy grows. It's why the rest of the world at some level has to deal with the United States. Obviously, there's a big turning point post-World War II when you really had to deal with the United States because they were willing to throw it around to make sure the world order was copacetic with peace. And to listen to that, it's like, no, like –

We need to do nothing. Nothingness. I can go home to my Soho apartment and cook whatever shitty meal I've got going on and not worry about all this trouble afterwards.

Because I'm preventing people from doing things and I've done a good thing. Like you haven't actually internalized what it is that you're doing. You're preventing American greatness. And that woman going to work, she's not only trying to provide for her family and do all the things like that. That's the small stuff. The larger look at it.

You're preventing people from working harder than everyone else that makes America better than everyone else. That separates us from the people taking fucking siestas in Mexico and the four-hour naps in Italy and all the other shit that's happening across this world. That's what makes us different. In their defense, pasta makes you sleepy. Well, and if you know...

It's a lot of carbs, you know? Plus they've got, you know, what did the rap on the Chianti? It's just, it's alluring. Yeah. But for real. Yes. I mean, that's a thing. No, it's a great point. Right? Well, they've been indulged. I think a lot of us are at fault with this. We got okay with letting these people block bridges and we're worried that like, oh God, if we send the cops out to crack skulls, we're going to look like the bad guys. That could hurt polling. Yeah.

You know, Nixon didn't care about polling. When he got elected, crime was running rampant. Nixon now more than ever, go look at those ads. Because this country looked like what it looks like now. And what did he do? He sent in the National Guard. He cracked down on that crime. The journals were all crying about like, oh my God, look at the National Guard. There's been a shooting. Two years later, he won a 49 state landslide. Yeah.

America's worth defending. And our first comment came from a guy saying that Lyndon Johnson did the exact same thing. And there are Democrats who have sent in the National Guard. There are Republicans who have sent in the National Guard. Today's Democrats are captured by the global elites like Hans Borgweiss, who's a guy you talk about all the time, who want to destabilize and ruin our country because they think it's better for them. There are tactics like sending in the National Guard.

or enforcing law and order and things, and all of that's important. It's equally important for us as a society to absolutely extinguish the point of view that that man-bun idiot has, which is like, oh, work, work. It's because it's like mold. It's been a lot fester. It's been a lot fester.

You got to get rid of it. It's time to crack skulls. Enough is enough. We don't have to deal with this. This is America. People are done with this. They're done going to the drugstore and everything's locked up. Oh, because, you know, we don't want to have the security guard get sued by a lawyer because he stopped someone from stealing. Like every American is having to jump through hoops because we stopped caring about this country. Yep. Enough's enough. L.A. is a prime example.

A president has been elected by the people in popular vote, electoral vote, tremendous success, specifically because the American people want law and order. We were tired of what it became like under Joe Biden, lawlessness. And now you're seeing a president who's actually taking action on what he was elected to do.

Do it. If you're raising your kids with responsibility, integrity, commitment to this country, you're doing your job and you look down the road, somebody else hasn't put an arm around that kid. I'm just telling you, it's going to take a lot. Because if that's the mentality, like we all have to do something about.

Listen, let's lighten things up and let's play a game. What do you guys think? Yeah. Let's play a game. King of the Hill is back. King of the Hill is back. I believe I'm a champion. You are a champion. And I think, Ashbrook, you're the challenger. You're a champion. You have Jen Rubin. Yeah. And the challenger you're bringing. Joe Walsh. Smug is judge. And I'm going to be a very active and supportive bailiff. So let's go ringside.

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. It's time for King of the Hill in the red corner fighting from his living room somewhere. Smoking Joe Walsh. And now, in the blue corner, fighting from a cat-filled living room somewhere in Washington, D.C.,

And current champion of the world, the queen, Jennifer Bahrain warbs Ruben. The best part about the Ruben thing is I feel like it's added a full. Yeah. I got like a 20 seconder. We got like three stanzas now. I love it. She deserves it. All right. She puts up such good content. All right.

All right. So as the champion, I'm going to start. And who am I addressing? Who is the judge? You're the judge. I'm addressing you. I'm going to start with Exhibit One, please, Spaghetts. Trump is turning us into a police state to detract. I think she means distract. But detract from X is mindless political insiderism.

The story is Trump turning us into a police state. I'd like to deconstruct that if you don't mind, just for a minute. What she is getting at, first of all, wrong word, wrong spelling. There's also a couple of...

grammatical issues involves the sentence doesn't read like a sentence. For all I know, what time of day was this? Well, so it is at 3.36 p.m. It's a bit early to be in the song. I don't know. Chardonnay rolls early when you have nothing else to do. Anyway, it was on June 10. What she's getting at here is the whole Elon thing.

Trump dust up from last week happening June 10, four days later, she's gotten to that. But her suggestion is that she's he's sending the Marines into L.A. to distract the nation from his Twitter spat, the ex spat that he's having with Elon, which in and of itself is funny, but then a total misuse of the Internet.

In many, many ways. Misspellings, run-on sentence. Doesn't even capitalize anymore. No, I mean. Lowercase, the story, like. No, no, but she. Man. But she did manage. She was at the Washington Post, right? Losing that job was tough. She did manage. She's out of practice. Has not bounced back. She did manage to all caps, Trump turning us into police state. Trump turning us into police state. Okay.

That's tough. Man, it's brutal when the take is bad, but it's like a cry for help. What do you got, Ashbrook? Okay. Your Honor, if it please the court, exhibit number 11, please, spaghetti. Joe Walsh writes, fuck you, Donald Trump. I have a constitutional right to protest your stupid Kim Jong-un parade. I dare you to use the military to try to stop my First Amendment rights, you ignorant coward. This is a former Republican congressman. Okay.

I mean, that's an absolute banger. This guy is so unhinged. He's like, please give me attention. I want it so badly. Seriously. I mean, he is, to be clear, folks, this is an army parade on Flag Day. This is like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. 250th birthday. He's like, fuck you, Donald Trump.

He's like, I'm entirely irrelevant. Please do something to me so I can raise money or complain on the Internet. I mean, that was a great pick. And I mean, I'll also say, I mean, honestly, that Jen Rubin tweet just made me sad. Like, it's like sent from like, there's stale Chinese food and like the cat's not been fed in days. She's in a she's in a bad place.

Round one, Joe Walsh. Wow. Okay. Wow. All right. All right. Will we see? It's not fun. It's like, man. A two-round knockout from the challenger. You know what? Like, every once in a while, he'll show you a little new piece of his precedent making, making him sad. We need a wellness check on Jed Rubin. Her cats are waiting to feast on her. Who would have thought that Smug had a heart? Yeah. Not me. Don't make him sad. Don't make him sad. Those cats are looking at her like we're getting ready to eat her. Oh, jeez.

Okay. Now I'm sad. That's the take. Wow. The cats are like, you've only got a few more days, lady. Don't run out of food, lady. Yeah.

Order in the court. Order in the court. Okay. Spaghetti. Exhibit number eight, please. Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh in the form of a poem, maybe? What is this? He stood in front of our troops today and gave a mean-spirited partisan speech. He stood in front of our troops today and attacked Americans by name.

He stood in front of our troops today and goaded them into booing their fellow Americans. Never become desensitized to this. So it is...

Sort of like an anti-war Vietnam era. Not exactly Maya Angelou. No. And he said something different. So he's, my guess is referring to at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. That's probably it. President Trump gave an awesome speech. I mean, the cheers that were going up, I mean, he crushed it. So I guess Joe Walsh is crying about the troops having a great time. All right, I'm going to blow that out of the water. Can we get Exhibit 3 up, please?

This is Jen Rubin, who says she can't wait for Jake Tapper's book on how the corporate media conspired to cover up Trump's dictatorship.

by falsely hyping violence in LA and recirculating White House media talking points. Okay. That is pretty awesome. She's been on one about the Jake Tapper book because she doesn't feel like Biden was actually brain dead when the rest of the world has come to consensus on this issue.

The irony being, of course, she has much culpability in the Joe Biden problem of him not stepping down. That's sort of the backdrop of this tweet that I find so hilarious. Evidenced as our game Claim to Fame, where she wrote claims, tweets in long form for The Washington Post. Anyway, she's taken that grievance, smashed it into the next grievance, which is what you're watching on television with the burning cars and the beating of police and stuff like that.

That's corporate media that's trying to fool you into thinking something's happening in L.A. I could not be happier than when you're seeing a game where you hate both the teams and you're just rooting for injuries. It's like, we're going after Tapper. I'm there for it. Popcorn is out. Round two to Ruben. Hell yeah. Wow. Astute analysis. Yep. Yep. All right. So...

Look, part of the problem with Ruben is that she's got so much shit going on. Clearly. Because it's blue sky. You know, this was a landmark decision that we did here.

And so she's unfettered by the confines of Twitter of being able to. No accountability. No one's like, hey, you're actually crazy. The only people that are on there are clinically insane. Well, that should be good for you. I don't know what you're complaining about. Well, there's just a lot to work with. You know what I mean? And it's not all. I like the concise insanity. And there's just a lot. Yeah. There's just a lot there. So you kind of have to work through it. So here's what I've come up. Exhibit five, please. L.A. is quiet. Wow.

That's how you start. Nice. Notice the capital H there. This is tough. Can you imagine what's going on with the keyboard and all this stuff? It seems like a thing. Anyway, the attempt to provoke is failing so far, period, so far.

Police officers and deputies from several agencies maintained a large presence across downtown Los Angeles, she's quoting, on Monday morning. But no protesters have been seen in the area. A cleanup effort has begun to clear debris from the streets. All right. So she's quoting from something, but she's not sourcing it. Right. Which is plagiarism. Oh. At some level. I mean, she's quoting, but there's nothing there. Right.

It's not linking. It's blue sky. Yeah. You know, so I don't think that they abide by the same rules. But so her comment in some instances, L.A. is quiet. Yeah. She's trying to roll with the whole like Brian Stelter take. Like it's like my friends in gated community say there's no problem. It's 9 a.m. None of the protesters have woke up, woke up yet. The streets are empty.

When we saw that tape, we were like, work? Yeah. What's coming on here? Yeah. I mean, they literally shut down the 405. Right. And she's like, it's quiet.

Because I'm subjectively quoting an unnamed source that talk about how they're cleaning things up. Well, I did notice that they instituted a curfew in L.A. Yeah. So apparently the Democratic leadership of L.A. seems to think they do have some problems. They do have some problems. Just maybe not in the morning. There are still Marines training on a soccer field. It's just so wild. They're really trying to run it back. It's like with the whole like actually Joe Biden is healthy. This like no, L.A. is calm. It's like.

Really? Yeah. You guys can come up with anything better than that? Yeah. Yeah. Also, just picking the paragraph where it ends in an effort to clean up the debris. Yeah. Yeah. But it's quiet. Yeah. We're not going to talk about the debris as burned cars. I mean, I remember in 2020, we had journos here in D.C. being like, there's no riots here in D.C. Oh, yeah. We're having it outside of our door. We're burning cop cars in front of our building every single night. Every night. Yeah.

I would just like to say to Jen Rubin, Waymo would like a word. Yeah. All right. That's what I got. All right. Smash. I have a similar tweet with Joe Walsh saying that they're not riots, but I won't play it. I'm going to ask for exhibit number nine where he's quote tweeting a description of President Trump's speech to our troops once again, and he declares Donald Trump is America's enemy. Wow.

Man, this is tough. Troops were reacting to his speech, and the former Republican congressman concluded that because of the troop reaction, Donald Trump is America's enemy. Wow. I don't think there's a whole lot of context that needs to be added there. The context I'd provide to Joe Walsh is look at the scoreboard. Dude won a landslide. Dude took a bullet. I mean, wow.

What a take. That was a tough matchup. I got to give it to Joe Walsh. Yeah, I don't disagree. What a wild take to come down with. This is what I was talking about with the difficulty with Jen Rubin is that now she's on Blue Sky. I don't get the four-word thing. That's my preference. Particularly dealing with Judge Smug. She used to have an...

Like an office. She used to go to a workplace. Now I really feel like this is like a – you've got to have a wellness check situation. It's just her and the cat staring at each other. Miscapitalizing. Yeah. I mean there's stuff going on. I mean the cats are cheering for it. They're like, drink more Fanzia. I see what you're saying now, Holmes. The cats are talking to each other.

They want it. You think now that she's not the Washington Post and now that she's posting on Blue Sky, she sort of lacks the focus in the material. I think the knife's edge has dulled. Yeah. Right? She gets to the same point. It just takes like three or four sentences. Like on Twitter, you're in it. And it reads like a ransom note from the fucking... Like some...

Broadway killer. You know, we should go back and see all the missed capitalizations and see if it spells something out. Oh my gosh. That's interesting. Maybe she's got a secret message and all that. That's very interesting. Help. Maybe she's the Zodiac killer. It just says help. I do think there's something to what you're saying. That if she's not sitting in the newsroom and people aren't challenging her and the biggest thing in her day is standing in the aisles at PetSmart looking at the fish. Oh shit.

She's already for delivery. She's not getting outside. The blinds are closed. The cats are like, she's our foie gras. The franzia is going to make her liver more delicious. She's our foie gras. Smug, you keep making this sadder and sadder. Parody, parody, we're laughing. Parody, we're laughing. Parody, we laugh.

Yeah. But he makes a point. But there's also, like, for those of you who have come to appreciate King of the Hill over the years, everybody has their eras. Like, she's really stood the test of time, been a competitor since the very beginning. She's a champion. But, like, if you look at, like, Sherry Jacobus, the isolation has done her good.

Yep. In terms of being a competitor on King of the Hill. Great comparison. Right? Yep. So that is improved Hurricane. Yeah, but Sherry's just built different. Yeah. She's just built different. She is. She's one of one. Yeah. She's Michael Jordan. Totally. And like, Jen Rubin is sort of like LeBron out there now. Oh, wow. It's like, it might be time to hang it up. You know? Oof.

Listen, that's King of the Hill for this week. Hope you guys have enjoyed that. Hope you've enjoyed all of this. Thanks to Speaker Johnson coming on in here early in the morning to give us a whole rundown of what's happening with the big, beautiful bills and riot talk.

And just sort of what his plans are. I think he may have broken some news on that four-step thing that he laid out. Multiple reconciliation bills. Like three reconciliation bills. Appropriation process, all of that. And that's the important stuff. It's easy to tweet and be like, why didn't we solve the national debt in this one bill? But actually having a leader who knows

I've got a vision here for the next nine months of what I have to do to actually accomplish those things is good to know. Yeah. Well, and also it's working with others to try to get it over the finish line. It's not enough to talk about it. Right. Like, sure enough, we know over the last 40 years talking about shit doesn't get it done. Like he's he's working to try to do this. But the plan is in place. I really appreciated that. I think that is news. Listen, fellas, it's been a hell of a week.

I think we did it. I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. John, again, thank you so much, Speaker Johnson, and thank you to the listeners. Remember, if you have not yet, go to the YouTube, hit that subscribe. It is more fun in video. So until next time, minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the lid. We'll see you Tuesday. Stay ruthless.