Ep. 2180 - IMMIGRATION FIGHT: Will Salvadoran Illegal Immigrant Return?
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Well, folks, as always, tons in the news. We're going to get to all of it first. Quick shout out to everybody in the live chat right now at dailywire.com and the Daily Wire Plus app. We see you. I appreciate your comments. Thank you for being here. If you're not in the chat, what exactly are you doing with your life? Join the conversation real time unfiltered with me, the team behind the show, and thousands of people just like you. Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe to become a Daily Wire Plus member right now and chat with us.

All righty, so the Trump administration is in the middle of a very hot fight with regards to this deported Salvadoran migrant. The deported Salvadoran migrant, whose name is

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, you'll recall, had a deportation order on him. He was an illegal immigrant. And then there was a withholding order that suggested that he could not be sent back to El Salvador because he claimed that he had fear for his life, that he'd be killed in El Salvador because he's a Salvadoran migrant. And maybe he had gang ties and maybe he didn't. The court said that the executive branch of the United States government had good cause to believe that he might in fact be

a gang member, a member of MS-13. President Trump then declared MS-13 a terrorist organization. And so the idea now is that sort of retroactively, he becomes a terrorist because he was suspected of being a member of MS-13. Well, he was sort of accidentally deported. He was not supposed to be on the plane because of that withholding order that said he was not supposed to be sent back to El Salvador. He was sent back to El Salvador. A district court found that

that the government had to facilitate his return from El Salvador back to the United States so he could have due process before we deported him again. That case ended up going to the Supreme Court. And in a 9-0 order, the Supreme Court stated that the district court had the power to say that the United States government, the White House, ought to facilitate his return to the United States, but they didn't define the term facilitate. So here is what the actual court order said.

It said, quote, the application is granted in part and denied in part subject to the direction of this order. Due to the administrative state issued by the chief justice, the deadline imposed by the district court has now passed. To that extent, the government's emergency application is effectively granted in part and the deadline in the challenged order is no longer effective.

The order properly requires the government to facilitate Abreu Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been properly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term effectuate in the district court's order is, however, unclear and may exceed the district court's authority. The district court should clarify its directive with any due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.

For its part, the government should be prepared to share what it has, what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps. If that sounds vague to you, that's because it's incredibly vague. So the government apparently under the Supreme Court order has a duty to facilitate his release from custody.

But how exactly it's effectuated, how that doesn't infringe on the executive branch's ability to do deportations, that part is unclear. So that's left the door open to the administration claiming, well, when you say that we need to facilitate, we asked the Salvadorans and they said no, so I guess that's us facilitating. And the opposite case would be, well, you do have a contract with the Salvadoran government

To keep these prisons filled with illegal immigrants being deported, they are criminally illegal immigrants. And so you could do more than ask. You could basically demand in the Salvadoran government under the terms of the contract would have to return this person to the United States, not permanently. But while this person had a hearing before, presumably that person was then deported again.

Well, now things are getting very hot because as the case you heard was remanded back to district court for clarification, that very often happens. The higher court will say the district court, the lower court needs to look at it again and clarify what exactly they meant before we decide whether it was right or whether it was wrong. Well, now that case, which has been remanded back to a U.S. district court judge, Ampola Genis,

That case is again in the news because Gines ran out of patience with attorneys for the DOJ at a hearing on Tuesday regarding the deportation and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia.

Eviscerating their efforts to redefine the word facilitate from a Supreme Court ruling and instructing them to cancel their vacations to comply with a two-week inquiry into the matter, this is according to Mediaite. Abrego Garcia came to the United States illegally as a minor around 2011. His legal team says he was fleeing gang violence. He was living in Maryland with his wife and three children. He was then sent to that maximum security prison in El Salvador.

In at least three court filings, Trump administration officials have concluded that he was mistakenly deported. Now, the DOJ officials who said that have now been fired. So the Trump administration didn't like that they admitted in court filings that it was a mistake to send him back to El Salvador. Junius had ordered the administration to arrange his return. The Supreme Court ruling then said what we said it said, that they had to facilitate. But what did it mean by facilitate?

Well, now the White House is insisting that a Perico Garcia's arrest, deportation and imprisonment were justified. They called him a gang member and a terrorist. And they say that they have no power to actually get him back from that Salvadoran prison. Well, Gina said that you're not doing anything to facilitate that.

They said, you're not even giving us answers. Quote, to date, what the record shows that nothing has been done, said the judge. Nothing. She then added the court would have no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding to thwart getting the answers it sought and scolded the lawyers to clear their schedules. She said, quote, we're going to move. There are no business hours while we do this. Cancel vacations. Cancel other appointments. I'm usually pretty good about things like this in my court, but not this time. I expect all hands on deck.

The judge then granted the attorneys for the illegal immigrant the ability to subpoena documents, send interrogatory requests and subpoena up to two additional people to collect evidence about where exactly this guy is, what the government has done to secure his immediate return for more due process to the United States, and the rest. And then in the order...

There's a specific section talking about what facilitate means, quote, notably to facilitate means to make the occurrence of something easier to render less difficult. Merriam-Webster defines the term as to make easier or less difficult to free from difficulty or impediment. Defendants remain obligated at a minimum to take the steps available to them toward aiding, assisting, or making easier Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and resuming his status quo ante. The record reflects defendants have done nothing at all. Instead, defendants obliquely suggest facilitate is limited to taking all available steps to

to remove domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien's ability to return here. The fallacy in the defendant's argument is twofold. First, in the immigration context, facilitating return of those wrongly deported can and has included more governmental efforts. Thus, the court can't credit that facilitating the order relief as limited to just domestic action. Second, defendants appear to have done nothing to aid his release from custody. So this raises a couple of questions. One is sort of the legal question and one is the political question.

So the vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance, went on X and put out the following statement related to due process, because there are people right, left and center who are saying, listen, this guy isn't going to end up in the country, nor should he end up in the country. But you do have to go through a process. And if you do the process wrong and the court says you did the process wrong, you do actually have to facilitate his release back to the United States immediately.

not into the general population, but back to the authorities of the United States for more due process so we can check the boxes and then the guy can be deported again. And then again, that's not a political thing. There are people who are right and left and center who are all saying, yeah, this guy has to go, but you do have to actually fill out the boxes. You can't just randomly deport people. And then if you admit you made a mistake, then go, oh, well, no harm, no foul, whoopsie daisy. So Vice President Vance,

is taking the position that the administration is totally right not to facilitate due process in this particular case, essentially due to hardship. And this is one arena where I think that the administration would be that two things can be true at once. One, the administration should, in fact, deport this guy. They should deport anybody who's connected with MS-13, anybody who does not have American citizenship, who's engaged in sympathy for anti-American views, engaged in action that is anti-American.

The administration should absolutely deport all those people. We don't need more of those in our country. It doesn't matter your ethnicity. It matters your belief system and your activity. Those are the things that matter when it comes to deporting people. And this administration has pledged to deport vast numbers of illegal immigrants on the basis that they're not here legally.

That does not mean, on the other hand, that there shouldn't be due process because due process is something that is spelled out by the judiciary. And the argument that's being made on the sort of legalistic right is, well, if due process can be curbed for non-citizens, then due process can be curbed for citizens as well. And maybe that's not true. Maybe that's something the administration is not interested in doing. It doesn't help when the president says that he'd love to deport Americans to El Salvador because that is giving, I know he's trolling, I get it.

And the president loves to troll. But if you're making the argument that, sure, due process might be able to be a bridge for cases of necessity by the executive branch for non-American citizens, then you really should draw a hard line between, you know, American citizens and non-American citizens. Here's President Trump talking about the idea of sending Americans to El Salvador to go to prison there. Well, again, if you're going to make that case, you actually want to do that. What you'd have to say is they would remain under our jurisdiction such that we could get them back if a mistake was made.

What you don't want is the situation of this Abrego Garcia fellow now applied to say an American criminal who ends up in El Salvador and we quote unquote can't get him back because the Salvadoran government says no. Anyway, here's President Trump. I call them homegrown criminals. I mean, the homegrown, the ones that grew up and something went wrong and they hit people over the head with a baseball bat.

We have and push people into subways just before the train gets there, like you see happening sometimes. We are looking into it and we want to do it. I would love to do that. Now, again, is that trolling? It for sure is trolling. Caroline Leavitt at the White House, though, has a rule. And that rule is the president is never trolling. Take what he says completely seriously from her position. And that's her position. It's what she's there to do. Here she was explaining that she's looking at ways to maybe jail Americans in El Salvador.

I know you said that President Trump is looking at it, but can you explain to us a little bit more about how that might be possible? We're looking at it. And when I have more for you to share, I certainly will. OK, now, in reality, that's not going to happen, obviously. What's she going to say? She's not going to reject what Trump is saying out of hand. The reality is there's no legal basis for taking Americans and shipping them down to El Salvador if we don't have control of the prison system in El Salvador, at least contractually in some way.

Now, that's the legal side of this. And the question here is whether that legal fight is the fight that the administration wants to have. Maybe this goes back up to the Supreme Court and maybe the Supreme Court says, you know what? It's quite possible that the executive branch does have the power to curb due process here. But by continuing to fight the judiciary sort of every step of the way, as opposed to facility, I mean, this is very easy. Just tell Bukele in El Salvador to return the guy, give him his day in court and ship him out again.

But the administration takes the view. I get it. I get it. This administration and the entire right has been conditioned to take the view that ever admitting a mistake or a course correcting is some sign of weakness. And I get it because the legacy media are willing to attack on any basis. Listen, I get why President Trump and his team don't want to admit any mistakes. I'll tell you what would be a mistake.

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Sometimes it is better to just do the quick and easy thing and then move on to the actual priorities, because especially with regard to immigration, there are actual priorities. However, here's what the vice president said on X, quote, Consider that Joe Biden allowed approximately 20 million illegal aliens into our country. This placed extraordinary burdens on our country. Our schools, hospitals, housing and other essential services were overwhelmed. On top of that, many of these illegal aliens committed violent crimes or facilitated fentanyl and sex trafficking. That is the situation we inherited.

The American people elected the Trump administration to solve this problem. The president has successfully stopped the inflow of illegal aliens, and now we must deport the people who came here illegally. Okay, now again, I agree with every word of that, every single word. He continues, to say the administration must observe due process is to beg the question, what process is due is a function of our resources, the public interest, the status of the accused, proposed punishment, and so many other factors. To put it in concrete terms, imposing the death penalty on an American citizen requires more legal process than deporting an illegal alien to their country of origin.

Again, all of that is legally true.

He says, when the media and the far left obsess over an MS-13 gang member in demand, he'd be returned to the United States for a third deportation hearing. What they're really saying is they want the vast majority of illegal aliens to stay here permanently. And here is where things start to go awry. Okay, he is right on the politics of this. He is right on the politics of this. And again, that's a separate question. Two things can be true at once. The administration can be taking a legally dicey position and also a politically popular position. Those two things can live in perfect harmony, legally dicey and politically popular, but

are constant aspects of many of the policy decisions made by leaders on both sides. And as we'll get to in a moment, it's a political winner for the Trump administration to say we wanted to deport all these people and force the Democrats into the position of defending illegal alien gang members or suspected gang members. That is a politically winning position. However, if you're setting up a predicate where you actually want to get things done, you should be doing things the right way because it's faster and easier to do it the right way than it is to do it the wrong way and then fight it out in the courts every step of the way.

Vice President Vance continues, here's a useful test. Ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with Biden's millions and millions of illegals. And with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year? If the answer is no, they've given the game away. They don't want border security. They don't want us to deport the people who have come into our country illegally. They want to accomplish through fake legal process what they failed to accomplish politically. The ratification of Biden's illegal migrant invasion, President Trump and I will not stand for it. Well, that's actually not the claim.

This particular human had a withholding order, meaning that he was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of illegal immigrants do not, in fact, have such an order. And you could effectuate the law on them quickly and easily without some sort of subsequent hearing because there's no paperwork on them. The whole problem with this particular guy is you picked a bad example and you should just fix it and then send him out of the country again.

and then continue deporting hundreds and thousands of illegal immigrants. Remember, with Abrego Garcia, same plane. There were hundreds of illegal immigrants who are not subject to any of this controversy because none of them had any sort of withholding order put in place by a court. So you can have both and is sort of the argument that I'm making. You can win legally. You can do the right legal thing, which continues to give people the assurance that due process is carried out, gives the courts the assurance due process is carried out, and also win the political fight. Now, Democrats,

Fortunately for Republicans, are willing to Leroy Jenkins pretty much every political fight, just run directly into the heart of danger. So the Democrats have decided they are now going to visit an El Salvadoran prison. And this, of course, leads to the very wide open political argument. You guys won't even stand and clap for the family of Lake and Riley at the State of the Union address. But you will fly down to an El Salvadoran prison to meet with illegal immigrant gang members

to grant them some sort of American sympathy. What the hell is wrong with you people, right? You won't get up at the State of the Union and applaud for the family of Jocelyn Nungeri, who was a child murdered by illegal immigrants when a national park was named after her. But you will go out of your way to fly all the way down to El Salvador just to do a photo op with people, the vast majority of whom we know are gang members. This is your move? Like seriously, this is your move? It's so politically incompetent as to boggle the mind.

Truly, President Trump has the best of luck in his opponents. It's really amazing. Like if Democrats really wanted to make this an issue, what they really should do is they should stand outside the Supreme Court and they should say this president refuses to abide by the orders of the Supreme Court that threatens due process. It wouldn't be like an amazing political argument, but it's certainly better than flying down to an El Salvadoran prison to hang out with the world's worst criminals.

On the basis that America somehow owes them more. That's just a political fail on every possible level. So Chris Van Hollen, speaking of political fails, Senator from Maryland, here he was getting on a plane going down to El Salvador.

I'm here at the airport. I'm about to board my flight for San Salvador. The goal of this mission is to let the Trump administration, to let the government of El Salvador know that we are going to keep fighting to bring Abrego Garcia home until he returns to his family. I hope to meet with representatives of the government. I hope to have the chance to actually see Kilmar and see what his condition is. But

We are going to keep fighting because this is a miscarriage of justice. The Supreme Court has ruled 9-0, 9-0, that he was illegally taken out of the country and put in a prison in El Salvador.

This is about due process. This is about rule of law. What bullies do is they begin by picking on the most vulnerable. But if we get rid of the rule of law due process, the United States, it's a short road from there to tyranny. God, they pick the worst, the worst friends. It's truly incredible. It's truly incredible. So it's not just that he wants this person to receive due process, which, again, that's a fair argument.

He's making the argument he wants to bring this guy home. He wants to take this guy, get him out of prison and bring him back to Maryland. An illegal immigrant who is credibly accused of being a gang member. We need more of that in our country, according to Chris Van Hollen. Again, they can't stop themselves. They have to go the whole hog. They can't just make the case that the Trump administration is pushing on the bounds of legality in a wide variety of areas. Again, a case that you could at least

facially make. But instead, they are pushing on the idea that this person needs to be freed and brought back to the United States where he can live in Maryland. We're going to bring him home. And I'd love to see the same sort of enthusiasm from Chris Van Hollen for, you know, bringing home American citizen, Idan Alexander, who's currently sitting in a tunnel, thanks to Hamas.

He just doesn't have the same enthusiasm for that. He certainly doesn't have the same enthusiasm for victims of illegal immigrant crime in the United States. But he has a lot of sympathy on a personal level for this person, an illegal immigrant who was deported. And again, by the way, this person is not going to end up in the United States. As a point, Stephen Miller, the deputy special advisor to the president, was making the other day, which is that there's no situation in which this person ends up back in the United States permanently. It's not going to happen.

But they have to make a hero. The left cannot help it. They must make a hero out of everyone targeted by the right, even if that person is not a good person or a person who should not be in the United States.

And it's not just Chris Van Hollen. Democrats are such idiots on this. Man, it's just political malpractice. Axios reported on Tuesday, Representatives Robert Garcia of California and Maxwell Frost of Florida sent a letter to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer requesting an official congressional delegation to conduct a welfare check of deported El Salvadoran and alleged MS-13 gang member Kimo Abrego Garcia. This is just ridiculous. I'm sorry. It's ridiculous. I hope that Comer says yes.

I mean, seriously, do it. Let the Democrats go. Let them go hang out with the illegal immigrants, many of whom are gang members down in El Salvador, and say that those people deserve more from the United States. Really, truly high level political malpractice from the Democrats. Again, two things true at once. The legal stance being taken by the Trump administration, I think is counterproductive in the end. I think it's going to tick off the courts and I think it's going to make it harder for them to do the things they need to do. At the same time,

The politics of the situation play strongly in favor of Republicans because most Americans are not interested in arguments over whether suspected MS-13 gang members ought to be in the United States. And again, one of the reasons I'm saying that the Trump administration should get out of its own way legally here is just bring him back. They should give a do whatever hearing they have to do. Send him out again. The reason I'm saying that is because actual important things are happening on the immigration front, according to The Washington Post.

The Trump administration is now using personal data normally protected from dissemination to find illegal immigrants where they work, study, and live, off with the goal of removing them from their housing and the workforce.

At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, officials are working on a rule that would ban mixed-status households, in which some families have legal status and others don't, from public housing. Affiliates from the U.S. Doge Service are also looking to kick out existing mixed-status households, vowing to ensure undocumented immigrants do not benefit from public programs, even if they live with citizens or other eligible family members.

The push extends across agencies. Last week, Social Security Administration entered the names and social security numbers of more than 6,000 mostly Latino immigrants into a database it uses to track dead people, effectively slashing their ability to receive benefits or work legally in the United States. In other words, they're looking for fake social security numbers so they can bar people from illegally working in the United States. All of this is good and all of this is necessary. Doge is doing a great job of tracking down the misuse of American resources and

And by the way, there are other legal fights that the Trump administration can be taking on that are going to be winners. So, for example, a federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking Joe Biden's migration program for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. A U.S. District Court judge in Boston issued a stay of an executive order

saying the early termination without any case-by-case justification of legal status for non-citizens who have complied with DHS programs and entered the country lawfully undermines the rule of law. But that, of course, is ridiculous. Joe Biden unilaterally declared widespread migration, temporary protected status for entire countries. And the Trump administration is reversing that. Somehow Biden can do it with the stroke of a pen, but Trump can't undo it with the stroke of a pen. That is one that should go to the Supreme Court and Trump will win. So there are lots of wins on the table.

It just seems to me that fighting the due process considerations for Abrego Garcia should not take precedence over the rest of the Trump agenda on all of this stuff. And again, it does play into a narrative that the left is currently trying to build about the Trump administration, that they are lawless. They're attempting to violate the law. One of those issues is, for example, the Trump administration, President Trump directing the DOJ to look into Chris Krebs, who was the

person who oversaw cybersecurity during the 2020 presidential election, an appointee of President Trump. Now, you'll remember just a few days ago, President Trump signed an executive order, basically not only revoking his security clearance, but ordering a DOJ review of his activities as a government employee.

Because Krebs said that he lost the election fair and square in 2020. So Jonathan Swan, who is in fact a very good reporter, he asked Caroline Leavitt, doesn't this appear to be an abuse of power? Like you don't want the DOJ directing, being directed to target President Trump. Why are you using the DOJ to attack President Trump's political opponents?

Last week, President Trump explicitly directed the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs to see if it can find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

How is that not an abuse of power to direct the Justice Department to look into an individual, a named individual? Look, the president signed that executive order. It's the position of the president in this White House that it's well within his authority to do it. Otherwise, he wouldn't have signed it. And he signed it, and that's his policy.

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off your very first order. Again, like this sort of attack angle by the Trump administration gets in the way of real agenda items because some of what they're doing is amazing. Like for example, you have to just admire what President Trump is doing

With the IRS. So according to the Washington Post, the Trump administration on Tuesday named a political ally who raised concerns about Hunter Biden's taxes as the new acting commissioner of the IRS. This is just awesome. Like, this is great. Gary Shapley was elevated in March to become deputy chief of IRS criminal investigations and a senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Besson's.

Soon after his promotion, the IRS acting commissioner, a person named Melanie Krause, announced plans to leave the agency, making her the third IRS leader to step down since Trump took office. Well, now Shapley is taking over the IRS, and Shapley is one of the people who testified to Congress that prosecutors were slow walking the prosecution of Hunter Biden.

And he was basically retaliated against by the IRS. And now in a thing that President Trump loves to do, and it's one of my favorite things that he does, President Trump is now elevating a person targeted by an agency to head up the agency. He did this with Jay Bhattacharya at NIH, and now he is doing it with Gary Shapley at IRS.

Shapley swift elevation alarmed some current and former IRS officials who told The Washington Post they were concerned his roles within criminal investigations and atop the agencies could consolidate Trump's power both over criminal and civil tax investigations and audits for the first time since Richard Nixon's presidency. But I have a question. What's what's wrong with Gary Shapley that you are afraid that he's going to violate the law? He will serve as commissioner until Trump's nominee to run the agency, Billy Long, is confirmed by the Senate.

So good for President Trump. I love this. Like there's good stuff happening under President Trump. That includes, by the way, President Trump's efforts to target Harvard University. So Harvard is not just now being targeted on the basis of its violations of Civil Rights Act Title VI, which says anti-discrimination law applies to those who receive federal funding. Now President Trump is threatening to revoke Harvard's tax exempt status.

He posted on Truth Social, quote, perhaps Harvard should lose its tax exempt status and be taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological and terrorist inspired supporting sickness. Remember, tax exempt status is totally contingent on acting in the public interest. Now, there is precedent for this. In 1983, Bob Jones University had its tax exempt status removed because it opposed, for example, interracial marriage. And the IRS said that that is against public policy. Your tax exempt status is gone now.

Well, the idea of going after Harvard in this way is not only perfectly appropriate, it is a use of the Trump administration, of the laws and the systems created by the left. One of the things that the left is really objecting to is that they created really terrible, censorious and ugly systems. And now all those systems are being turned against them. The answer to that, of course, to the left would be, well, maybe you shouldn't have built those systems in the first place.

Here is Caroline Leavitt at the White House saying that all Trump is saying is that Harvard has to abide by the law. So the president made it clear to Harvard, follow federal law, no longer break Title VI, which was passed by Congress to ensure no student can be discriminated against on the basis of race, and you will receive federal funding.

That, of course, is exactly right. She's exactly right about all this. Now, it's not stopping Chris Van Hollen, who apparently just had he was he was the leader of Idiot Day yesterday between flying to El Salvador to explain that he wanted to bring back an illegal immigrant, bring him home, a person who's a suspected gang member, and then suggesting that somehow it's a violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights to tell them to abide by the law. Man, Van Hollen outdid himself yesterday.

So, Kate, I applaud Harvard's decision not to give in to bullying from the Trump administration. You know, Donald Trump believes in First Amendment rights for himself, but apparently for nobody else. Others they will punish when there's an exercise of First Amendment rights. So it's not about First Amendment rights. It's about violating the actual law. This is the thing that people seem to avoid on the left.

They understand it immediately. If you talked about black people in the way that the Jews were talked about on college campuses, it would be in violation of Title VI. Now, again, you can not like Title VI. In fact, I've had serious objections my entire lifetime to certain aspects, not all aspects, certain aspects of the Civil Rights Act, particularly its intervention into private markets, for example. But the idea that it only applies to certain groups of people, but not other groups of people, is obviously violative of the law.

And the fact that Chris Van Hollen and company continue to defend Harvard. Like these are the people you want to defend Harvard University right now. Really? So your choice of people you are defending does not include the hostages who are American being held in tunnels. And it does not include Americans being killed by illegal immigrants. It does include illegal immigrants in Harvard University. Like slow clap for these geniuses. They're really, really great at this.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to struggle because it's not just that they are picking the world's least sympathetic people to defend. The Democrats also have no leadership, like no leadership at all. Joe Biden is off the stage, but yesterday he decided that he would actually come back on the stage, talk about Social Security. It did not go well. I can't imagine why Joe Biden was ousted for Kamala Harris and then lost to President Trump. So he was speaking in Chicago and he proceeded to call black people colored kids.

Which, I mean, my dude, just like, wow, here we go. I remember pulling in, pulling into the parking lot. And I had never seen, I'd never seen hardly any black people in Scranton at the time. And I was only going in fourth grade.

And I remember seeing the kids going by at the time called colored kids on a bus going by. They never turned right to go to Claymont High School. I wonder why. Ask my mom. Why? So in Delaware, they're not allowed to go to school and public school with white kids, honey. Good story, Joe. So I can't remember. This is the person Democrats thought needed to run up until the point where he actually did this live in a debate with President Trump, looked staring into the maw of death.

He didn't stop there. He then said that he wants to meet 300-year-olds on Social Security. I mean, he's 300 and he's on Social Security, so it's not that implausible. Here we go. By the way, those 300-year-old folk getting that Social Security, I want to meet them because I like to figure out how they live. Hell of a thing, man. I'm looking for longevity. Yeah, man. And then he said that President Trump has taken a hatchet to Social Security, which is weird because literally no one has missed their Social Security check. Fewer than 100 days this new administration...

has made so much, done so much damage and so much destruction. It's kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon. They've taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration, pushing an additional 7,000 employees, 7,000 out the door in that time, including the most seasoned career officials. Now they're getting ready to push thousands more out the door. Already we can see the effects. For example, thousands of people use the Social Security website every single day to check on their benefits and submit their claims.

But now the technology division of the Social Security Administration has been cut in half. And so the website's crashing.

So, I asked our sponsors at Perplexity if there have actually been any actual cuts to Social Security under President Trump. The answer, of course, is no. There have been no direct cuts to Social Security benefit amounts under President Trump. Throughout both his campaigns and during his administration, Trump has repeatedly pledged not to reduce Social Security benefits. There's no evidence of legislation or executive action that has cut the monthly payments to beneficiaries. Official statements from the White House and Social Security Administration have reinforced benefit levels remain unchanged. Now, Perplexity does point out that President Trump and Doge have been

have been attempting to cut staff. Apparently about 7,000 people are going to be cut out of 57,000 people. So again, this idea that no one is working at the Social Security Administration, that this is somehow the end of the world is ridiculous. Yes, the number of beneficiaries continues to rise. Yes, staffing is at a quote, 50 year low. But

But presumably one of the things Doge is going to actually be doing is increasing efficiency at SSA by, for example, not processing forms underneath a mountain using paper. So Joe Biden is not their leader. He's not. So who is? Representative Ro Khanna of California said, we have no idea. I don't know, which is the correct answer, by the way.

Well, the leader in the House of Representatives is Hakeem Jeffries, and he will be the next speaker of the House. He's earned the voice of the Democratic Party. Like, is that who the Democrats should be rallying around, pushing forward? That's who should be driving the message.

Well, I think we've got a whole new generation of talent, people who are speaking out on economic issues. I gave a speech in Cleveland on economic patriotism, our vision of how we're going to bring prosperity and manufacturing back around the country. But the most urgent issue is to stand up against the attacks on the rule of law. OK, well, it's not going to be Ro Khanna, but you know who it might be. I've been saying this for a while. AOC is the most formidable Democrat out there.

This sort of right wing dismissal of AOC very much feels to me like when Republicans were dismissing Barack Obama circa about 2007. They're like, no way. This guy's got no background. He's been in the Senate for like five seconds. He's kind of a he's kind of an empty suit. There's nothing there. He gave one good speech at a convention and suddenly he's going to be president of the United States. And I was saying, because I'd read his book, this guy is going to win and he's going to be unbelievably radical. Stop it. Have you checked lately to see if your home's title is still in your name?

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Go to HomeTitleLock.com now to use promo code Daily Wire to make sure your title is still in your name. That's HomeTitleLock.com promo code Daily Wire. So that's what I'm saying to you about AOC. AOC is a good actress. AOC is charismatic. She obviously is a good looking person. And so those are all qualities that play onto you. Now, she also happens to be, you know, a dunce, but that is no longer an obstacle to higher office in the United States. You just didn't. I wish it were. It obviously is not.

So AOC, she is now, this is a new Democratic primary poll. You ready? I've been saying it. You think I was just making this up? AOC, primary poll from Yale. Kamala Harris, 28%. AOC, 21%. That means she's the leader, gang, because Kamala Harris ain't going to be the nominee.

Every day that goes by, Kamala Harris is more in the Democrats' rearview mirror. She's going to continue to drop. AOC is at 21%. Pete Buttigieg is at 14. He ain't going nowhere. Gavin Newsom is at six. He ain't going nowhere. Josh Shapiro is at five, the governor of Pennsylvania. But he's a Jew, so he's going nowhere inside the Democratic Party. I mean, it's just that simple.

So that means that AOC right now is the leader in the clubhouse. That's just the way this works. And by the way, she is raising money like nobody's business. According to Politico, she raised almost $10 million in the first three months of the year. That is more than double her second highest quarter. She spent recent weeks barnstorming the country with Bernie Sanders. And again, she is his sort of pick. She said in a post on X, the average campaign donation was $21. Apparently 64% of contributions came from first-time donors.

So pretending her way is not going to do it for Republicans. This is why President Trump's agenda better succeed, because if he fails, the progressive left and their sort of economic populism is the next wave. Now, could AOC shoot herself in the foot? Sure. I mean, she's trotting out new accents every day. She was in Idaho the other day and she was trotting out. She's trying out some trying out something with her voice here. I don't know what's going on. Donald Trump is a criminal who was found guilty.

34 felony counts of fraud liable for sexual abuse. Of course, he's lying and abusing and manipulating the stock market, too. When he talks about rapists and criminals, he should look in the mirror. This sort of stuff gets Democrats very excited. I don't know what accent she's trying to do here.

It seems to live somewhere between Cockney and like Lower East Side, New York. I just don't, I don't know exactly what she's going for there. But is that going to be an obstacle to her success inside the Democratic Party? Absolutely not. And AOC is smarter than people give her credit for. She, for example, like, you know, listen, I think she's a dummy, but she's smarter politically than people give her credit for. She sort of kept Nancy Pelosi on side, for example. Nancy Pelosi thinks she's a moron, but she hasn't overtly gone to war with Nancy Pelosi in a while.

And AOC is going to make the case to people in the sort of mainstream of the Democratic Party that she has moderated somewhat. She's de-elevating issues like trans issues and the sort of woke issues. She's putting those secondary to her economic populace, the Bernie Sanders message.

So she is, again, the emerging leader of the Democratic Party and Republicans. This is why Republicans need to do a good job of running the country, because if they do not, what comes around the bend next is going to be something particularly ugly. Speaking of which, the Dow Jones Industrial Average continues to sort of futz around. It isn't really rising. It isn't really falling. Nobody knows what's coming. And this is all just investor uncertainty. It's all just investor uncertainty.

The U.S. dollar has been weakening. It's lost about 10% of its value since Inauguration Day. More than half of that decline came this month after the new tariffs were unveiled. The weaker dollar could have some upward impact on inflation. Meanwhile, President Trump is now unleashing more tariffs on China. He apparently is going to impose on China tariffs up to 245% as a result of Chinese retaliatory action. At a certain point, by the way, these tariffs

percentages mean nothing because beyond a certain point, nobody's going to import paying those tariffs. It's just not going to happen. If you are talking about a product that was $3 now going for 245% that, a $3 product now goes for 735 after tariffs, people are just going to stop importing from China. And so you can say it's 1000% or 2000%. And at a certain point, you've now moved beyond the realm where the imports are actually going to happen.

The problem, of course, is whether other countries are going to participate in our trade war on China. So Ursula von der Leyen at the EU, she seems to be triangulating. She said yesterday that

that there was a positive side effect to the tariff uncertainty created by the United States. More world leaders now want to do trade deals with the EU. She was talking to a German newspaper. She said, I'm currently having countless talks with heads of states and governments around the world who want to work together with us on the new order. Everyone is asking for more trade with Europe. And it's not just about economic ties. It's about establishing common rules. It's about predictability. Europe can deliver that. So the EU is already seeking new ways to diversify trade partnerships, and they're exploring opportunities to deepen ties with China.

So if the Trump administration's goal was to militarize the rest of the world against Chinese economic dominance, then it seems like just slapping really high tariffs on China, driving holes through the middle of tariffs on semiconductors and autos, and meanwhile alienating the people that you need to woo, that strategy needs to be reversed and quick. I'll tell you something else that needs to be reversed. There's a lot of talk right now, properly, and I hope properly,

expeditiously about deregulatory action by the Trump administration. We need radical deregulation. I wish, frankly, that Doge had been unleashed on that rather than employment. I think the Doge being unleashed on the sort of waste, fraud and abuse front, you can get some money out of that. But the thing where you really can unleash the American economy is if you had Doge actually analyze various executive branch regulations for the economic cost of those regulations and then just take a hatchet to them. Because those regulations, once they're gone, they're actually harder to put back in place.

If you fire somebody, then the minute, God forbid, a Democrat gets elected, all those people get rehired. If you get rid of regulatory thickets, it's much harder to put those back into place. And so Doge is turning there next. I have to say, I am concerned about the direction that's being taken by the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. So Mark Zuckerberg's meta is now being sued in federal court. They're suggesting that he might have to sell off, for example, Instagram,

Why? Why would you have to solve Instagram? They're claiming that when he acquired Instagram a decade ago for a billion dollars, it was illegally anti-competitive. What's the case that it was illegally anti-competitive? So there are a couple of different theories of antitrust. One theory of antitrust is that if you have a total market monopoly, that should be broken up because otherwise competitors can't rise.

And presumably that sort of theory of antitrust is consumer directed. If it's bad for the consumer, then antitrust should step in. Then there is the sort of market dominant position, which is we just shouldn't have big companies. And those big companies are scary. And so we should break them up. That particular view was most famously mirrored by Lena Kahn at the FTC, who's constantly stopping mergers and acquisitions on the basis that she didn't want big companies to be able to get bigger or to merge with other companies. And she was constantly stopping

all sorts of action in the business sphere that would have been actually quite good for the consumer. I don't understand the theory behind trying to break up Meta as far as Instagram and WhatsApp. They're trying to make them divest of those things. Are either of those services going to get better if they are broken out? Famously, the federal government did this to Microsoft. They forced Microsoft to break into a series of companies, and it made Microsoft's product significantly worse for consumers. The U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg

is the person in charge here. Boasberg, of course, you will remember from being the same judge who's going after President Trump on immigration. Boasberg could theoretically side with the FTC and that would force Meta to divest itself of Instagram and WhatsApp. There is an anti-tech segment of the right, a bizarrely anti-business sector of the right that could be hampering economic growth. And that, of course, is not going to be good for the Trump administration either. Okay, in other news,

A piece of good news. So I criticized Steve Witkoff pretty heavily yesterday because Witkoff had said openly that he was sort of embracing the Barack Obama view of negotiations with Iran. Well, now he's backtracking on that. That is the special envoy. He's backtracking. He said a deal with Iran would only be completed if it is a Trump deal. Adding, quote, Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program. That is a contradiction to what he said a couple of days ago. And that is a good contradiction.

That is significantly more in line with everything that President Trump has said historically. Again, Witkoff does not understand these issues, and Witkoff is really not the person who should be running negotiations. This requires a level of sophistication and understanding that I just don't see in evidence with Steve Witkoff. Maybe a fine fellow, maybe aligned with what President Trump wants, but I'm having a hard time seeing how President Trump's agenda with Iran is squares with what Witkoff said the other night, which is presumably why Witkoff changed his position.

which is good. Meanwhile, Putin is not actually moving. There's been all this talk about how Whitcough is going to move Putin to the table. And again, I'm not seeing any evidence of that at this point. The Wall Street Journal editorial board points out Trump and his chief negotiator, Steve Whitcough, keeps saying Putin wants peace. President Trump's 30 day ceasefire proposal has now been on the table for longer than the ceasefire would have lasted. Is there any evidence that Putin actually wants peace at this point? It seems not. Meanwhile, in kind of a shocking story,

A top advisor to the Secretary of Defense, Dan Caldwell, who is widely seen as one of the isolationists inside the administration. And I've said before, there are a lot of different foreign policy views inside the administration. There's sort of the J.D. Vance view, which is that the United States should not be involved in pretty much any world affairs so far as he can see. And then there is the peace through strength view, which is that the United States should only be involved where real interest is at stake. And where there is, the United States should put its resources.

Well, Dan Caldwell was sort of of the former group. Well, he was actually escorted from the Pentagon on Tuesday after being identified during an investigation into leaks at the Defense Department. He was placed on administrative leave for an unauthorized disclosure. What exactly was that disclosure? Well, presumably the rumor is that that disclosure was that there were people who had talked to The New York Times suggesting that these strikes on the Houthis were somehow less successful than they were.

which would make sense. Again, Caldwell's position, politically speaking, has been very much the J.D. Vance, we shouldn't be involved in foreign affairs position. So it'll be interesting to see if these accusations are substantiated, who he leaked to and all the rest. And President Trump's agenda when it comes to foreign policy has actually been fairly consistent for his entire career. And people who are trying to undermine that agenda by staffing people who oppose it

I'm not sure why they would do that, but it doesn't seem to benefit what the Trump administration is trying to do. All right, coming up, we'll get into a seminal change when it comes to the trans issue in the UK. Plus, we'll get to the mailbag. But again, you have to be a member in order to watch. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.