Ep. 2144 - More Trump WINS: Joy Reid GONE!
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Well, folks, nature is healing and nowhere is it healing more apparently than at MSNBC. Now, I have to say, I have mixed feelings about this news. Joy Reid is apparently losing her show at MSNBC. And that is a loss for, I think, all of us considering that approximately 11% of the content of the show was simply provided by Joy Reid and her asinine commentary on politics, on

On Sunday, Variety and The New York Times reported that Reed's 7 p.m. weeknight show, The Readout, is being canceled and will air its final episode this week. Apparently, she is leaving the network completely as a result, which, of course, is not a shock. She's not going to want to stick around and play second fiddle. Perhaps she'll join Jim Acosta at a brand new network. Ooh, maybe Jen Rubin. There's a lot of options out there for Joy Reed, who is the kind of psychotic leftist who helped run the Democratic Party directly into a ditch.

MSNBC, by the way, insists that they are going to continue with their progressive move. They are not, in fact, going to move toward the center, which, again, genius level stuff from the leadership over at MSNBC, apparently.

They're going to move Jen Psaki, who is the former White House press secretary under Joe Biden. They're going to move her to anchor one of the primetime hours during the week. She could be named anchor of MSNBC's 9 p.m. hour, where Rachel Maddow currently is. Maddow might be moved as well. Alex Wagner will remain with the network as a correspondent. So...

The people who are apparently going to replace Joy Reid in that 7 p.m. slot are Simone Sanders-Townsend, who, of course, was a press secretary originally for Bernie Sanders before becoming a press secretary for Kamala Harris, Michael Steele, the former RNC chairman who has moved far to the left, and Alicia Menendez. They are currently the co-hosts of MSNBC's weekend program called The Weekend. So they are moving into the 7 p.m. hour. According to MSN.com,

Sanders Townsend, formerly a spokesperson for Harris, was hired by MSNBC in 2022. Meanwhile, the leadership over at MSNBC suggests that they are going to add Politico's Eugene Daniels and NYU law professor Melissa Murray to the network's lineup as well. So they are continuing to move over to the left. And this reflects a serious problem for the Democratic Party. They do not know which way to move. They are stuck because of identity politics.

and largely because of immigration. They are now stuck in a rut of their own making, and it is very difficult to break out of that rut. And so you're seeing Democrats struggle against the box, thrash against the box of reality. Former Bill Clinton pollster Mark Penn points out the Democratic Party is more unpopular than they've been any time in his lifetime. Here he is running down the polling data. Frankly, the Democratic Party is falling off a cliff. The ratings, which were in the high 40s, are going to be like 35%.

And I think the basic question, who's doing better job as president, Biden or Trump? Trump is winning that with 57 percent. I think you're seeing a retrospective assessment of Biden and the direction the Democratic Party was going. It really a lot more negative than it was on Election Day.

And they're looking at the contrast on immigration, on economic policy, on some of the social policies. And boy, they're reevaluating. And the Democratic Party, I have never seen anything like this. This is a record low for the Democratic Party in terms of favorability.

So Democrats are trying to figure out exactly to whom they turn in the wake of Donald Trump's victory and the fact that he's now steamrolling through his agenda. So do they turn back to the supposedly moderate types, the Joe Biden types? Biden advisor Tom Donilon says they should never have gotten rid of Joe Biden. They shouldn't have moved over to the identity politics brand of Kamala Harris. Lots of people have terrible debates. Trump had a terrible debate against Harris.

Reagan had a terrible debate. Obama had a terrible debate. Lots of people have terrible debates. Usually, the party doesn't lose its mind. But that's what happened here. It just melted down.

OK, so should they turn back to a sort of more moderate type in Joe Biden who turned out not to be moderate? Or should they double down on Kamala? Kamala is still wandering the landscape. And remember, she has a couple of assets. One, she's black and two, she's a woman. And the Democratic Party, these are the things that apparently still matter most. Here was Kamala Harris back in the headlines over the weekend. I know you forgot about her, right? You didn't even remember she ran for president at one point, but she did and she lost. And here she is receiving an award from the NAACP.

Some see the flames on our horizons, the rising waters in our cities, the shadows gathering over our democracy and ask, what do we do now? But we know exactly what to do because we have done it before and we will do it again. We use power.

We organize, mobilize, we educate, and we advocate.

Wow. Remember that sort of beat poetry that she used to do on the campaign trail? Well, if you want more of that, Democrats might do it. She might run for governor of California. Democrats themselves are sort of torn between how to approach the Trump administration. On the one hand, they want to go back to resistance style anger. They really want to just scream at the wind a lot. The problem for them is that they can't find a point of consolidation because many of the stuff that many of the things that Donald Trump is doing right now are actually quite popular.

And so they're stuck in a weird in-between. On the one hand, they want to preach that Donald Trump is non-empathetic, that what you really need is more empathy. But people don't see the Democrats as particularly empathetic. Jane Fonda tried to make this case over the weekend. It is amazing that they are now having to trot out 70-odd-year-old people who once rallied for the Viet Cong

as their sort of ideological thought leaders. This is a lady who literally went to North Vietnam and declared that the Viet Cong were the victims of the Vietnamese war and was posing next to an anti-aircraft battery with the Viet Cong. And now they're trotting her out as some sort of moral voice talking about empathy. Here was Jane Fonda over the weekend. Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.

Back to empathy. A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way. And even if they're of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge, but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent. Because we are going to need a big tent to resist successfully what's coming at us.

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Yeah.

And meanwhile, Democrats are touting an anti-Trump rant. They got a standing ovation in a rather blue area of a red state. This happened over the course of the last weekend or so. This is in Roswell, Georgia. But the people who are attending this particular town hall event in Roswell, Georgia are largely Democrats. Here is a town hall rant that was getting a lot of attention from the left over the weekend.

It's clear from all the writings of our founding fathers that our great republic was never meant to be ruled by a dictator nor a king. So you can imagine my shock and pure horror when I woke up to find that our president had given himself unprofessional

unprecedented executive powers and then within a few days named himself king to his followers. Tyranny is rising in the White House and a man has declared himself our king. So I would like to know, rather the people would like to know, what you congressmen and your fellow congressmen are going to do to rein in the megalomaniac in the White House.

Now, here's the thing. All this rings rather hollow. It does. It is a sound and fury signifying almost nothing at this point because the Democratic Party does not know for what it stands. On the one hand, they want to say that they are for everyone. On the other hand, they want to push woke identity politics. On the one hand, they want to talk about no dictatorship. On the other hand, they want government to control every part of your life. On the one hand, they want to talk about Donald Trump is breaking down foreign policy. On the other hand, they want to surrender pretty much everywhere. So which is it?

The answer in the end for Democrats is going to rest on Donald Trump's failure. If Donald Trump fails, they win. It's that simple. They don't have anything else. The only point of consolidation is if Donald Trump and his administration fail at making America succeed. That is the only way that they have a pathway back to power. James Carville basically acknowledged as much. He just thinks it's going to happen quickly. Here was James Carville over the weekend. What I've said very publicly, Democrats need to play possum. This whole thing is collapsing.

It doesn't need Elizabeth Warren and somebody screaming to pacify some progressive advocacy groups in Washington, which, by the way, I wish these people were just useless. They're actually worse than useless, that they're detrimental. And they never, ever learn to shut up. And so, Dan, this is what I believe. I believe that this administration in less than 30 days in the midst of a massive collapse, in particularly a collapse of

in public opinion. Okay, so again, Democrats are betting that it's all going to fall apart for President Trump.

And Carville's suggestion is rooted in the fact that President Trump's approval ratings have slid from the mid-50s in some of the polls down to the mid-40s in some of the polls. That was always likely to happen because, again, the country is indeed quite polarized. But massive collapse doesn't appear to be on the horizon unless, unless there is some sort of serious economic problem. And that is why the central focus of the Trump administration right now must be on bringing down inflation. It must be on economic growth. That's what the central focus has to be on. Yes, we want to see President Trump keep all of his promises, and he will with regard to immigration.

Sure, we would like to see President Trump bring an end to the war in Ukraine in a reasonable fashion. But the thing that Americans care most about, this is true of the election, it's true of nearly every election, is their economic well-being. And there are some blinking red lights that are on the horizon here. One of those blinking red lights comes courtesy of Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett is now holding an extraordinary amount of cash. Warren Buffett

His Berkshire Hathaway is holding $320 billion in cash and treasury bills. And the reason for that is he's looking at all the various areas of possible interest

And he's saying they're already overvalued. Essentially, what he's saying is that we are in a bubble right now. And it is hard to look at, for example, the stock market where the price earnings ratio is way out of whack. The price earnings ratio just means the price of the stock as opposed to the earnings of companies. Right now, the average in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is 26 times. The price of stocks are 26 times the annual earnings of those companies. A normal distribution would be like 16 times.

18, 26 is way out of whack. And at the very top end of the spectrum, those top seven companies that everybody talks about,

Those companies are at a P.E. ratio of something like 46. So those are overvalued. So Berkshire Hathaway is saying we're not going to sink more money into that. At the same time, the real estate market is also inflated because the interest rates have been high for a while. And there are a bunch of people who are holding on to their houses because they don't want to sell them and then get into a higher interest rate mortgage. And so what that means is a sort of artificially limited supply while demand remains at sort of even keel.

Now, when that happens, you end up with a real estate bubble because fewer people are selling their homes and the demand has remained the same. So you have a bit of a real estate bubble, which is likely to break at some point. You have a stock market bubble, which is likely to break at some point. These are the worries the Trump administration has on its mind.

And beyond all that, inflation is driving both of those things because the currency was inflated so much over the course of Joe Biden's tenure because of the velocity of the money that was injected into the economy under Joe Biden. And in the latter days of the Trump administration, because of that, there's so much money chasing goods and inflation remains at 3% right now, which is 50% higher than the Federal Reserve generally seeks. And that means that the interest rates are unlikely to come down.

which means that it's tougher to get a loan. At the same time, even if you got a loan, you wouldn't actually want to spend your money on inflated assets. And so you have a bit of a sticky patch here for the American economy. And the only way to truly unstick it is with productivity gains. That is the only way to truly unstick this, is more competition, less regulation, more investment in newer things. The productivity gains of AI have not actually made themselves manifest in the generalized market as of yet.

There are tens of billions of dollars chasing AI. The problem, of course, is that aside from using AI for kind of everyday searches on the internet, most people aren't using AI yet to make their businesses more efficient and more effective.

There's a sort of gap between the quality of the technology and the adaptivity of that technology to your normal everyday business working. Most people aren't using it in their businesses as of yet in a major way. So productivity gains have not matched the investment. It's one of the reasons, for example, why companies like NVIDIA have a massive valuation right now because people are pouring tons of money into the semiconductors produced by NVIDIA in order to build up AI. But again, the productivity gains from AI in the general workplace are not apparent as of yet.

If they make themselves apparent, then we can outgrow all of this, or at least a large part of this. But in the meantime, what can the Trump administration do? They need to take a hammer to the regulations. And this is where we need to talk a little bit about Doge. So what Doge is doing right now is wonderful in a large number of ways. You all know I'm a big fan of the Department of Governmental Efficiency, as well as what Elon Musk is attempting to do. And one of the things Elon Musk is attempting to do is he's really targeting personnel in a very serious way inside the executive branch.

So over the weekend, Elon Musk's Doge sent out an email to 2.3 million government workers asking that they justify their work. He basically said, give us five things you did over the course of the last week. And if you can't, then we may fire you. A bunch of the various agencies, again, run by Trump appointees, are saying, you know, you really don't have to do that. Some of these departments probably have to do it, but other departments not. So, for example, in HHS, RFK Jr. has instructed his people that they probably should, in fact, respond to Elon's email.

They put out an email suggesting, quote, this is a legitimate email. Please read and respond per the instructions by Monday. And HHS is the largest single department inside the federal government. But there are other parts of the federal government, particularly in the intelligence community or the defense community, where it's not clear they're going to answer those emails. Why? Because it turns out that if you have a bunch of sort of long term projects in the intelligence community, you can't just write that in an email and send it to Elon's team.

This is why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has instructed personnel in U.S. spy agencies not to respond. According to the text of an email she sent to the workforce on Sunday, citing the agency's sensitive and classified work, Defense Department employees were given similar instructions not to respond. And again, what Elon is focusing on is breaking the pipeline of money that moves between the federal government and a bunch of sort of blue areas of the economy.

But it is very important at this point to recognize that when it comes to Doge, Doge alone is not going to solve the fiscal problems. Doge is not changing the regulations. That's not what Doge is doing. Doge is going in and finding waste, fraud, and abuse. But as I've been saying for literally months, waste, fraud, and abuse amount to a negligible, a very small percentage of actual federal spending.

Unless you're talking about the giant wasteful programs that are, for example, means-tested welfare programs, and you're talking about absolutely restructuring those programs in a more beneficial way, you are just cutting around the edges. And even the sorts of things that we like to see, even those sorts of things are not, in fact, going to materialize into gigantic cuts. The Wall Street Journal did an investigation into what Doge has actually cut at this point. And again, there's been a lot of talk about what Doge has cut, how much they've cut.

Doge has suggested that they've cut $55 billion in federal spending, citing canceled DEI and climate contracts. And again, all of that is good. First of all, $55 billion as a percentage of the American national budget every year is a very, very small percentage of America's budget every year. Like in the last year of the Biden administration, we spent approximately $7 trillion in

$55 billion would represent one 127th of that. It's a very, very small percentage of the federal budget. But beyond that, it hasn't actually cut all of that. So the Wall Street Journal looked at what the contracts actually are cutting. And what they found is that the savings from contracts amounted to about $7 billion. And the Journal projects the actual savings could be closer to $2.6 billion over the next year if the spending levels remain consistent.

Only about 2% of those funds would have gone to contracts related to DEI. So you're talking, again, about very small amounts in the end. Now, it's very good to talk about waste, fraud, and abuse. It's good to change in sort of public perception the meaning of what government spending is. But the really big things that need to happen if you actually want to unshackle the economy, if you actually want to see productivity gains, if you want to see business growth, if you want to see the economy, boom. What you actually need to do is target precisely the kinds of programs that no one is politically willing to target.

Listen, in this informational environment, there is a lot of information floating around. Some of it's true, some of it's not so true. How many times have you heard somebody spout off opinions as if those were cold, hard facts? The media tend to spin, politicians distort, social media amplifies, and somehow the truth just gets lost somewhere.

It's pretty frustrating. We live in a world where narratives often matter more than reality, but here's the thing. The data don't lie. And if you want the data, you need usafact.org. USA Fact isn't about narratives. It's about data. Real, nonpartisan, verifiable data straight from government sources. Whether it's taxes, healthcare, or the economy, USA Fact gives you the numbers you need to cut through the nonsense and make informed decisions.

And make it easy. Go to USAFacts.org, sign up for their free weekly email that you can rely on to get the data behind the news. It's like a personal briefing on the state of the nation, delivered directly to your inbox. No spin, no bias, just the facts. Look, you care about how our government money is being spent, where taxes are going? This is for you. Go to USAFacts.org right now and get clear, contextualized facts on the issues that matter. It's time to know the facts because data don't lie. That's USAFacts.org. Check it out today, USAFacts.org. Also...

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By House Budget Committee Chairman Jody Arrington and former U.S. Senator Phil Graham.

Back in September of last year, and it talked about what is actually driving America's systemic national debt. What is driving our national deficit? And the answer, believe it or not, is not even Social Security and Medicare alone, because the vast majority of Social Security and Medicare are actually paid for by payroll taxes. Doesn't mean that they're not a huge drain on our economy. They are because taxes are a giant drain on our economy and Social Security and Medicare in and of themselves are wildly inefficient.

If we took the money that people are putting into payroll taxes and instead put it into the Dow Jones back in 2006, when George W. Bush was suggesting, the stock market has risen times four since then. But the actual systemic drivers of the debt, as Arrington and Phil Graham pointed out back in September,

are actually the means-tested social welfare spending programs. And precisely the things that neither party actually wants to touch. Things like Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, supplemental security income, temporary assistance for needy families, federal housing subsidies, and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold. And one of the points that Graham and Arrington make in this op-ed

is that since 1967, defense spending has fallen from 68% of unobligated general revenue to 37.2% in 2023. So we're just spending way more on these means-tested welfare programs. As defense spending plummeted, they write, swords were not beaten into plowshares, which would have increased economic growth and wages, but instead were used to fund welfare payments.

Today, the United States redistributes a larger share of its GDP, 29.4%, through transfers and taxes than any other developed country on planet Earth except France at 30.1%. And in fact, this is an unbelievable statistic. After counting all transfer payments as income to the recipients and taxes as income lost by taxpayers and adjusting for household size, the average households in the bottom, second, and middle quintiles all have the same income. And so we are such a redistributionist country.

That if you're in the bottom 60% of income earners, you're all basically making the same income because so much money has been redistributed from the top 40% to the bottom 60%. And if you're in the bottom 20%, you're actually making the same amount of money as a guy who's in like the middle quintile of income because of all the transfer payments. It's driving people out of work. It's ensuring that the massive national debt gets larger.

We are now paying more interest on our national debt than we are paying for our actual defense budget every single year. Something that Neil Ferguson has pointed out is a mark of a declining empire, right? These things cost things, but these are the hard things. What's actually gonna bring long lasting success is not gonna be cutting around the edges. It's not gonna be posturing. What's actually gonna bring long lasting success is the politically difficult thing. And if nobody's willing to do it, then basically we're just gonna end up in this sort of progressive, this progressive populist horseshoe.

Where despite all the talk about innovation, government just continues to grow and eat up an increasing portion of Americans' earnings and savings. Where a smaller and smaller percentage of the population is actually working while the government continues to spiral out of control in terms of growth. And where productivity does not actually outpace all of the spending of government and the taxation of government.

That is the problem that is faced by President Trump. Now, the easy thing for Democrats is that when things fall down because of all these giant programs that they themselves have enshrined, they just claim capitalism failed. This is the magic of being a Democrat. The magic of being on the side of the blue is that when government screws up the economy to the point where there's a collapse, they immediately turn around and blame capitalism. This is exactly what happened in 2007, 2008 during the real estate crisis. Bill Clinton.

And the Democrats rammed through particular government mortgage programs that were designed to allow people with bad credit or no credit to get into homes at subprime rates in order to make home ownership more equitable. And in the end, all of that went bust and then capitalism got blamed. Well, the same thing could easily happen right here and it could take free markets right along with it. That is the big danger. And so at some point, Congress particularly is going to have to pick up the bag here.

And President Trump is going to have to start pushing for some real systemic change on the regulatory side. He's going to have to push for some real systemic change when it comes to these means-tested welfare programs. Again, the kind of stuff that populists like, but that actually is eating up a giant chunk of the American budget every single year. If the premise of the current American political moment is that we are in a moment of scarcity, which is true, that we have scarce resources, that we are in danger of being outproduced by countries like China,

that the American budget is too large, that our tax burden is too high, that we're spending too much money. You have to look at the right places, because if you look at the wrong places, you're not going to solve the problem, and then things will go bad, and then James Carville's predictions will start to come true. Now, meanwhile, over in Germany...

fascinating election, and this seems to be the pattern all across Europe, is that the center-right party wins and then refuses to make common cause with the actual right-wing party in its respective country. You see this over and over and over, that fear of the quote-unquote far-right is leading center-right parties to join with center-left parties and then undermine their own credibility, which leads concomitantly to the rise of that supposed far-right. So right now in Germany, the results are pretty fascinating.

Friedrich Merz is the clear winner of the German election, according to The Wall Street Journal. The question for the conservative leader is how fast and with whom he can cobble together a government and whether the United States will seek to influence the process. Despite a historically strong showing by anti-establishment nationalists in a ballot that extended Europe's recent lurch to the right, Merz's Christian Democratic Union scored a comfortable victory once all ballots had been counted.

This means that Merz this week will start talks on forming a government, at the end of which he's likely to become Germany's next chancellor. But the way there could be really, really rocky because basically the breakdown was this. The CDU and its CSU sister party in Bavaria obtained 28.5% of the vote. Coming in second was the Alternative for Germany.

This is the party that Elon Musk has been pushing, among others. AFD came in at 20.8%. And actually, if you look at an electoral map of Germany, it's absolutely fascinating. Basically, every province that was a part of East Germany voted for AFD because they hate the communists so much. And every province that was in West Germany voted for the CDU because they're sort of moderate right. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party absolutely collapsed. They scored 16.4%. That's the worst score since the late 19th century.

The question for Merz is how he's going to put together a coalition because Merz originally said he didn't want to side with the AFD. The AFD has been slandered, in my opinion, as a quote unquote neo-Nazi party. I see no evidence that the party itself is a neo-Nazi party. Its platform looks very much like the platform of the Republican Party in the United States, although more populist on economics and probably less free market oriented, which is weird because when it was founded, it was founded as a libertarian party.

The AFD, of course, has people who are hangers-on and associates and people who are involved with the party who have expressed neo-Nazi tendencies, but those people are both rare and not in positions of high leadership inside the AFD. The AFD's success is being driven in large part by opposition to immigration, which originally was led by the CDU. Originally, that was Angela Merkel's proposal to let in millions of Syrian refugees into the country, and it completely wrecked the entire body politic in Europe.

Well, the CDU has now turned on immigration, not in the same way as the AFD. The AFD has turned on immigration in a much more public way. So the question is going to be whether the CDU will sit with the AFD or whether they're going to turn back to Olaf Scholz and try to get together with Olaf Scholz. So if the CDU decides to try and side with the center-left, this will be very much reminiscent of what has been happening in France, where Emmanuel Macron's party refused to form a coalition against

With the Marine Le Pen National Rally, the supposed far-right party in France, which again has a program very similar to AFD. And instead they decided they were going to try inside with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who's a nutcase socialist crazy person. And Macron has destroyed his own popularity in the process and the right is rising again.

Here is the reality. If in a coalitional system in Europe, your party, your center right party sides with the left, it will not be perceived by the public as a move toward right wing moderation. It will be pursued. It will be perceived as a move toward the left and away from the actual principles for which people voted. The truth is that the mandate in Germany is for there to be a right wing government in which the AFD is a partner.

AFD co-leader Alice Feidel said, quote, our hand is extended to implement the will of the people. Again, very hard to imagine a neo-Nazi party led by a lesbian who's in a relationship with a Sri Lankan woman. That's who Alice Feidel is. She said the CDU just needs to take it. Otherwise, a change in policy in Germany won't be possible. Merz has already said he would under no circumstances form a ruling union with the AFD. Suda David Wilp, the vice president of external affairs at the German Marshall Fund in the United States, said, quote, Friedrich Merz would be loathe to work with the AFD.

Pressure from the United States is unlikely to sway him. The problem, of course, is that the Olaf Scholz party is now saying they don't want to side with CDU. So it may be that if Olaf Scholz rejects it, then that will give MERS the possibility of opening up again back to AFD. It'll be fascinating to see because here's the thing. If there is no immigration crackdown in Germany, AFD will continue to gain ground and they should.

Meanwhile, in other international news, obviously tragic things happening with regard to Pope Francis. Pope Francis has been in the hospital for several days at this point. As you know, I'm not a fan of the Pope, but everybody should pray for his health nonetheless. Pope Francis remained in critical condition on Sunday. Blood tests showed early kidney failure. He remains alert, responsive, and attended mass, according to the Vatican. The 88-year-old pontiff is battling pneumonia and a complex lung infection. Of course, he is quite ill and he's quite old.

And, you know, everybody in the Catholic Church is aware that these are probably the last days of Pope Francis. Unclear exactly who is going to take over. Obviously, there will be a conclave. I assume it will not be, spoiler alert, an intersex person like in the idiotic movie Conclave. But it'll be fascinating to see which direction the Catholic Church swerves toward. Pope Francis has led the Catholic Church in a very left-wing liberation theology direction. I think it has been not beneficial for the Catholic Church. I think it has undermined its raison d'etre.

I think that he has sidelined many of the key causes of the Catholic Church in a modernizing left-wing world in favor of conciliatory positions on some of the most controversial issues in the international community. And that has been an idiotic move, I think. The Catholic Church, if it's going to represent anything, ought to represent the eternal values upon which it was based. And those are largely social values, and they have a lot less to do with, say, redistributionism

and environmentalism and putting cathias on baby Jesus, all things that apparently Pope Francis was in favor of. So obviously prayers for his health, despite our disagreements, but we will see in very short order in which direction the Catholic Church

to move. Joining us now on the show to discuss is the host of the Michael Knowles Show, and you know, a Catholic who I know, Michael Knowles. So let's start with, you know, what actually happens if Pope Francis should pass? And despite all of my disagreements with Pope Francis, obviously all our prayers are with him in a time of travail, if he should pass, then the conclave begins. I assume, according to the movies, we select an intersex pope, is my understanding. But what is the actual sort of process? Who

Who's making up the College of Cardinals at this point? Who are sort of the likely frontrunners for the possible papacy? I think some people are a little mixed up on this because we're trying to map left and right in the American context perfectly onto the College of Cardinals. And that doesn't really work. There are some cardinals who are hard leftists who...

probably want to change doctrine, who want to do things that faithful Catholics would probably say it is not possible to do, actually. You know, doctrine can develop, but you can't change doctrine. The Pope is not permitted to just, like, make stuff up. You know, that's not how infallibility works. So there are some who are legitimately leftist.

Likewise, there are cardinals who are traditionalists, and they're real conservative, and they love the traditional Latin mass, and they enjoy pre-conciliar rites and liturgies and all that sort of stuff. I myself am an attendee of the traditional Latin mass, and so these are really wonderful cardinals, but they don't have huge numbers. And then there are all the cardinals in the middle who are kind of conservative, even with some of the news reports out of this pontificate.

The Catholic Church remains a rather conservative institution. For all that's been said about Pope Francis being a leftist and soft on LGBT issues and whatever, you know, Pope Francis also said that gay marriage is no mere political issue, but rather a machination of the father of lies that seeks to deceive and confuse the children of God.

Okay, when he was asked about gay marriage, he said, God can't bless sin. Okay, the most famous phrase he used last year was this phrase, which means there's, I actually can't even say it probably on the air, but there's too much, um,

homosexuality. It's a slur for homosexuality. So, you know, don't believe everything you read in the newspapers. But that means that in the middle, you got the people who are kind of a little bit conservative or kind of want to maintain the status quo of Francis, which is a bit more liberal, or even just cardinals who want to be left alone and want to be able to control their own areas and, you know, just not have to deal with interference from Rome so much. So the top candidates,

Right now. And who knows? Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, he is a progressive. So he would be in the Francis Lane or further than the Francis Lane. You've got Cardinal Peter Erdo in Hungary. He's viewed as much more of a conservative. I was just with the Hungarians the other night at CPAC in D.C. Great, wonderful conservative country and could be a real great

Real good choice. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, he is the Vatican Secretary of State. He would probably be a continuation of Francis. So definitely a little bit more on the liberal side of things. Some that the conservatives are hoping for would be like Cardinal Burke.

who is an amazing, wonderful, faithful cardinal, uh, very orthodox, has raised certain questions about Francis's pontificate, uh, from the more traditional side of things. Uh, Cardinal Sarah is a, is a big favorite of conservatives. He would be the first black Pope, uh,

And it's kind of funny because the progressives would all hate the first black Pope and the conservatives would all love the first black Pope, which, which, you know, just goes to show you how the Catholic church continues to mystify, you know, many people around the world, but probably Cardinal Sarah is a little bit,

too old. He's 79 years old now. It seems unlikely. And then one candidate who is really interesting, he's been talked about, and he comes from a really hot part of the world that's been important to the church from the very beginning, and certainly today, is Cardinal

Pierre Batista Pizzabala, who has a delightful and whimsical last name, Pizzabala. Also, he is the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, and he is considered more conservative. He seems to be open to the traditional Latin mass, which is so important, especially to many young people in the West. But

He's dealing with the most difficult, complex area in the entire world. So he also has great skills at diplomacy, and he could be a really interesting choice. Those seem to be the candidates right now. But then, of course, you know, who knows? The Holy Spirit might surprise us.

So how does the process actually take place? Because obviously we all know about sort of the black smoke that's rising from the conclave and then the white smoke when they finally figure out who exactly is going to be the next pope. But how does it actually take place on sort of a day-to-day level? And actually sometimes, Ben, as you saw after the conclave that followed the death of Pope Pius XII, sometimes you get the white smoke, but then the black smoke comes up again. And, you know, it's kind of unclear. Do we have a pope? Do we not have a pope? So it's all very confusing. If...

If this is the end of Pope Francis's earthly sojourn, and we're getting reports, you know, he has bronchitis. He only has one full lung. He has reportedly received a blood transfusion, at least one. He's been on oxygen, seems to have mild kidney failure. You know, the man is 88 years old in ill health. We all shuffle off our mortal coil at some point. If that happens, the conclave will kick off. So a lot of people...

especially who are hoping that the papacy might move in a new direction. They notice that Pope Francis has appointed the majority of the cardinals. He's been a pope since 2013, so that's a really long time. However, a lot of the places that Pope Francis has appointed cardinals are the New World. And these New World cardinals are

They ain't leftists. You know, the German cardinals at this point are so far left, it's hard to recognize them as Catholic. But in the new world, these are pretty hardcore Orthodox traditional people in many ways. So the conclave will kick off and all the people in the red hats will go into the room. And there's no politicking officially, no campaigning officially, but I've never been inside one of these rooms. So, you know, who knows? I'm a little skeptical. And this could go on for days, maybe.

could go on for weeks. We just don't, you just don't know. And there will be, at that point, obviously the funeral for Pope Francis, those rights have already been put into place. They've been planning this for some long time. I'm seeing mixed reports that the Pope has received last rights. So even that is a little bit unclear. But if I were a gambling man,

If it be not now, you know, it will come. It seems that Pope Francis has lived a good long life. And so whether this is tomorrow or weeks from now or even months from now, this is probably happening soon.

Well, Michael, I really appreciate the insight into all of this. I now know more than I did at the beginning of this conversation, a rarity in our conversations. Really appreciate it. Good to talk to you. Good to see you, Ben. See you next time. Coming up on the show, continued controversy over the Trump administration's approach in Ukraine. Plus, President Trump fires a bunch of top military brass. First, Daily Web Plus members are getting the news today. There will be headlines.

Meanwhile, controversy continues over President Trump's approach in Ukraine.

It is unclear exactly what the vast gap is actually between what Trump wants and what is likely to be achieved at this point. President Trump has made very clear that what he would like is presumably for Russia to retain control of the Donbass and Crimea and for the Ukrainians to be given security guarantees, but not NATO membership.

He's been ripping on Vladimir Zelensky. It is very unclear at this point why he has been ripping on Vladimir Zelensky. I understand there are a lot of people who believe false things about Zelensky, such as that he is a dictator. He is not, in fact, a dictator. He is the legally elected president of Ukraine during times of martial law, when like half your country is occupied by another country. Many of your people have actually run to other countries as refugees, and many of your people are actually, you know, on the front lines fighting. It turns out very difficult to hold an election.

Zelensky has been called that. President Trump suggested there needs to be a new election before some sort of peace deal is held. That doesn't seem to make a whole hell of a lot of sense. For his part, Zelensky came out over the weekend and said, listen, if me resigning would create peace, I'd be happy to do it or give me security guarantees and do something and then I'll resign. Happy to leave as soon as the war has basically come to some sort of conclusion that actually guarantees Ukraine's safety and security for the foreseeable future.

If you really need me to leave for the sake of peace, I'm ready to do so. I am focused on security for Ukraine today, not in 20 years' time, and I'm not going to hang around in power for decades. It's important, I think, to put some context around Zelensky's remarks about him resigning. He said that if it brought peace to Ukraine or gave Ukraine NATO membership, he'd be willing to step aside.

Now, the truth is, if Zelensky himself stepped down today, presumably the person who picked up the baton, because there wouldn't be an election, would be somebody who very largely agrees with Vladimir Zelensky's approach. The Ukrainians have lost hundreds of thousands of people dead or wounded.

They're not simply going to allow a situation in which Russia can walk through the front door and into Kiev in the very, very near future. And here's the thing. I don't think the Trump administration wants that either. I think a lot of this is a distraction. I think a lot of the talk about the controversy between Trump and Zelensky has nothing to do with sort of the on-the-ground reality. And you keep seeing that from various members of the Trump administration. So, for example, Pete Hegseth, who is the defense secretary,

Secretary, he says, listen, President Trump, you know, he's made comments about this sort of stuff, but we know who invaded whom. And we're not interested in watching Ukraine just turn into effectively a Russian territory.

We know who invaded who. We understand the stakes of this game. America, more than any other country in the world, has invested in helping Ukraine defend itself. Now it's time for peace, and that's what the president is dedicated to. So standing here and saying, you're good, you're bad, you're a dictator, you're not a dictator, you invaded, you didn't, it's not useful. It's not productive. And so President Trump isn't getting drawn into that in unnecessary ways. And as a result, we're closer to peace today than ever before.

OK, and he's right about all of that. This is a a line that was repeated by Mike Walz, the national security adviser. He said, listen, President Trump has said that Russia invaded Ukraine under Obama. Russia invaded Ukraine under Biden. Russia did not invade Ukraine under Trump. So I mean, it's a tacit acknowledgement that Russia invaded Ukraine under under Joe Biden, obviously. So here is Mike Walz saying that.

Who would you rather have and go toe to toe with the likes of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi or anyone else? Joe Biden or Donald Trump? He's the dealmaker in chief. He's the commander in chief. And it's only because of his strength.

that were even in this position. And President Trump's own words have been that Russia invaded a neighbor under Bush, under Obama, and under Biden, but not him. It didn't happen his first term, and he's going to bring it to an end his second term.

Now, again, does this sound like surrender to you? It doesn't sound like surrender to me. There's a lot of controversy, again, over sort of the verbiage surrounding the Ukraine war. But is this like a total shift in American policy? It doesn't really feel like that. Democrats are trying to make it that way. And this is where, again, I start to get a little bit annoyed. You guys had your shot.

This conflict should have come to its terminus back in 2022. And then you had three subsequent years to do something about it. And you did nothing. Instead, you slow walked aid to Ukraine so that they couldn't actually go into Donbass and Crimea. And at the same time declared that the war should continue. You wanted it both ways. And now you're stuck. So when I hear you guys talk about how Donald Trump is surrendering to the Russians, you guys, what was your plan? Do you have an alternative? This is the thing about Democrats. What's the alternative?

They do the same thing with Gaza. Trump provides an alternative plan for Gaza, the only realistic plan I've ever heard about Gaza that actually accords with, you know, actual factual on the ground reality. And they start screaming about it. Same thing with regard to Ukraine. Here is Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

Essentially, this is President Trump surrendering to the Russians. No surprise. In Afghanistan, he sat down with the Taliban, excluded the government of Afghanistan in Doha through his emissaries. And they essentially said, listen, don't bother us for a year and we'll be out.

And now he's trying the same thing, which is basically we're going to undercut the Ukrainians. Oh, and by the way, we're going to get their precious minerals at bargain rate prices as a threat to do even worse. This is not a statesman or a diplomat. This is just someone who admires Putin, does not...

believe in the struggle of the Ukrainians and is committed to cozying up to an autocrat.

Well, Jack Reed right there, he mentions these mineral contracts in the United States has actually suggested the Ukrainians. And Zelensky is pushing back. He's saying, you guys want too much from me. Let's make a different deal. All of that is perfectly rational and within the realm of reality. If Zelensky can negotiate a better deal with the Europeans or with the United States for those rare earth minerals, great for him, good for him. And that would be good for both the United States and Ukraine because as the Trump administration has openly suggested, an economic relationship with

with Ukraine enshrines American security interests in Ukraine, much the way the United States has security interests in Taiwan, for example. None of that is out of the box. None of that is crazy. The road is calling. Embrace the thrill of the drive with the all-new fully electric Audi Q6 e-tron featuring effortless power and advanced Audi tech. The next chapter of Audi starts now.

Listening to Democrats who blew up the world suddenly complain about Donald Trump coming in and trying to fix things is really bizarre. It's hard for me to think of anyone who is a worse advocate in favor of the United States than the former Obama, U.N. ambassador and then policy advisor to Joe Biden, Susan Rice. She says that Trump on Ukraine is going to embolden China to invade Taiwan. What was it exactly when Joe Biden withdrew from Afghanistan utterly and left it to the tender predations of the Taliban? But what was that exactly?

What message does it send to Xi Jinping when Donald Trump says to Ukraine that they are the aggressor, they who are in fact the victims of an invasion, are somehow the ones who started the war and that the price for ending the war ought to be that Ukraine gives up territory, has no security guarantees. And oh, by the way, give over 500 billion dollars to Donald Trump in the United States for nothing in return.

If I'm Xi Jinping, I'm looking at that going, great, now's my time to invade Taiwan. Well, I mean, again, you guys set up the predicate for all this. Now, I don't want China to invade Taiwan. And one of the things that I hope the Trump administration is pursuing, and they've talked openly about this, I assume they are, is a pivot from places like Europe, where Europe should be able to take care of its own business. Again, Europe, the EU is much larger than Russia as a collective.

We can pivot from there to China and help protect Taiwan. Because if Taiwan were to fall, that would have some grave consequences for Japan, for Australia, for the supply chain.

for the future of pretty much all sophisticated manufactured goods. Now, all of that matters an awful lot. So the pivot, I think, is something that the Trump administration has openly talked about. But it is amazing to watch Democrats and the left-wing media freak out about Trump's foreign policy. And they're so delusional about what foreign policy even is. So Michael Birnbaum at the Washington Post has a piece called, quote, in first month, Trump upends century-old approach to the world. So what is the century-old approach to global affairs? Quote,

Trump has gone further than he did in his first term to redefine whom the United States embraces and whom it combats, surprising fellow world leaders who thought they knew Trump's playbook and had been working to please him. Instead, the president is spurning a post-World War II international system built to block global aggressors, embracing far older ideas of allowing military powers to build regional spheres of influence and exert dominion over their neighbors. Okay, let's just be clear about this. That was also the system after World War II. The Soviet Union had a very, very, very large sphere after World War II.

And President Trump is not interested in not allowing any blocking of global aggressors. If that were the case, he would, in fact, just withdraw from Ukraine and not try to broker a peace deal at all. This is my favorite sentence in the piece from The Washington Post. Quote, Trump appears to be turning back the clock to a time in world history when countries with the biggest militaries constructed empires, demanded tribute from weaker nations, and expanded their territories through coercion.

Do you mean like all of human history? Is that what we're talking about? That the bizarre interregnum in which liberals thought that they could magic China into being nice to us, for example, or they could wheedle Russia into being kind, that that was always a facade and always a nonsense? As Rosa Balfour, director of the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says, quote, this is classical geopolitics, actually. Influence on the areas that are closest to you geographically.

Now, again, that doesn't mean the United States wants to abandon the Far East. That would be a huge mistake. Or the United States wants to abandon Eastern Europe. That would also be a huge mistake. But a reshifting and realignment of interests such that the people who are closest are spending the most on the thing makes an awful lot of sense. And Democrats whining about it should have thought about that before they decided to sink billions of dollars into a quagmire in Ukraine of their own making.

Meanwhile, President Trump is taking serious action inside the Pentagon. He abruptly fired Air Force General C.Q. Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday. This is all part of his campaign to feature merit instead of diversity.

The ouster of Brown, only the second black general to serve as chairman, is sure to send shockwaves through the Pentagon. His 16 months in the job have been consumed with the war in Ukraine and the expanded conflict in the Middle East. By the way, terrible job on both, sir. So thanks for that. If you wonder why exactly he's gone, the answer might be, you know, the quagmire in Ukraine and the fact that the Houthis now run the Red Sea. That might be the thing.

According to the AP, Brown's public support of Black Lives Matter after the police killing of George Floyd had made him fodder for the administration's war against wokeism in the military. Trump said he's nominating retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Raisin-Kane to be the next chairman. Kane is a career F-16 pilot who served on active duty and in the National Guard. He was most recently the associate director for military affairs at the CIA. So that seems like pretty well qualified, actually.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced the firings of two additional senior officers, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Jim Slythe. Franchetti is the second top female officer to be fired by the Trump administration. He also fired Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan just a day after he was sworn in. Now, again, this is not just a quote unquote purge of the diverse. This is an attempt to reorient the Defense Department toward the priorities of the president of the United States.

This is the point that Hegseth is making. Let's put in place people who actually listen to the president. Here's the defense secretary. I gotta ask you about this rumored list of people that you allegedly put together that were all gonna be cleaned out. Is there a list? Is there anybody left on the list if it exists? There's no list, Shannon. I've heard that, I've seen that very rumor. Although we have a very keen eye toward military leadership and their willingness to follow lawful orders. This is all about defending the Constitution.

Joe Biden gave lawful orders. A lot of them are really bad. And it's unfortunate how they eroded our military ideological covid mandates. President Trump has given another set of lawful orders and they will be followed if they're not followed. And all these orders are in keeping with the Constitution and norms inside the military. If they're not followed, then those officers will find the door.

So, again, this seems like a perfectly plausible explanation for what's happening at the Pentagon. One of the things that is hilarious about this is Democrats freaking out about this. So, historically, presidents have always fired generals, like top generals. Barack Obama famously fired Stanley McChrystal for the great sin of making comments in a magazine profile about Barack Obama and his handling of Afghanistan. By the way, McChrystal was totally right about all of that. Most famously, Harry Truman fired General MacArthur.

when MacArthur wanted to move more harshly during the Korean War. None of this is the end of the world, but Democrats keep claiming that everything is the end of the world. So you have Susan Rice again saying that Donald Trump is putting politics in our military. He did it? I feel like you did it, madam. We have always had an extraordinarily apolitical professional military. It's one of our greatest strengths as a democracy.

We have civilian control, but we have men and women in our military of all backgrounds who are super highly qualified and who serve with honor and serve with integrity and without politicization.

And now suddenly Donald Trump is bringing politics into the process of determining who should be our military leaders. That is dangerous. It's unprecedented. And it does not bode well for our integrity as a democracy. I was just hearing Democrats about the integrity of democracy after they centralize all power in the executive branch and then complain about it. Yeah.

Again, all of this is within the realm of the perfectly normal and everybody pretending that this is a threat to democracy is, you know, over their skis at the very least. Alrighty, guys, coming up, we'll get to the trans story of the day, a famous actress, meaning, you know, an actor, like a dude who thinks he's a lady, complaining about passports.

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