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This message paid for by the National Association of Broadcasters. Already, folks, got a lot coming up on today's show. We'll get into the cultural impact of the Met Gala. New Yorker magazine features some of your favorite Democrats in their living rooms. Plus, President Trump's war on Harvard University continues. First, our friend and colleague Andrew Klavan has a brand new book out. It is a must read. It's called The Kingdom of Cain, Finding God in the Literature of Darkness.
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We begin today with the Met Gala. So I know you don't think the Met Gala is all that important. I don't either, but it is very important to the cultural glitterati, the people who make culture. So the theme of this year's Met Gala is superfine, tailoring black style. And clearly, when this thing was originally thought about, people thought Kamala Harris was going to be president of the United States. That is the reason why they did it this way. Last October is when they announced this.
And it was designed as a celebration party for the nation's second black president, Kamala Harris. And then she lost. And so now we are in this weird nether region in which the left continues to whine that Kamala Harris should have won the election, even though she lost pretty clearly and evidently. And the rest of the world wonders why people are dressed up in bizarre outfits paying homage to something or other. According to The New York Times,
Last October, when the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Costume Institute announced its next fashion show, Superfine, tailoring black style, the political landscape looked very different. Kamala Harris, the first female vice president and first black woman ever to top a major party ticket, was in the final weeks of her campaign for the White House. The show, the culmination of five years of work by Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute's curator in charge, to diversify the department's holdings and shows in the wake of the racial reckoning brought about by George Floyd's murder, seemed long overdue. Yes, there is nothing...
that was longer overdue than a fashion show about black fashion. Super, super overdue. That is why George Floyd died. That was for the Met Gala to have extraordinarily rich and famous people wear bizarre outfits worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Clearly, that is what was necessary. However, according to the New York Times,
On Monday, when the Met Gala opened, the starry gas at its signature gala, the splashiest party of the year, it did so in a very different world, one in which the federal government has functionally declared war on diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as programming related to race, especially in cultural institutions.
So a bunch of big names did not show up to the Met Gala who historically had. That includes people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. But the resistance showed up in force. Now, the theme of this year's Met Gala, according to the Metropolitan Museum,
was, again, superfine, tailoring black style. And this was based on an exhibit at the Met Museum that, quote, "...explores the importance of style to the formation of black identities in the Atlantic diaspora, particularly in the United States and Europe. Through a presentation of garments and accessories, paintings, photographs, decorative arts, and more, from the 18th century to today, the exhibition interprets the concept of dandyism as both an aesthetic and a strategy that allowed for new social and political possibilities."
So the goal here is to, I suppose, recreate the mood of outfits that were worn by black people in resistance to white supremacy. According to the Met Museum, together, these characteristics demonstrate how one's self-presentation is a mode of distinction and resistance within a society impacted by race, gender, class, and sexuality. So you will notice that this is not sort of typical starts Oriole splendor for white
black people of the past. And in fact,
If you watch movies and shows that are made about the early 20th century, there was a form of black fashion and it is actually quite cool. I mean, a lot of the stuff that people were wearing in the early 20th century, pretty neat. However, that is not what this was because in order to prop up the sort of intersectional ideology that suggests that being black is equivalent to being gay, is equivalent to being transgender, is equivalent to being transgressive in virtually all of its forms, that
That is how it came out over at the Met Gala. Now, we should always point out that the Met Gala is a bit of Marie Antoinette in the modern American landscape. Every year, a bunch of very rich and very famous people get enormous attention for wearing some of the most bizarre crap imaginable. And then we are told that they are brave and groundbreaking for doing so. Well, the rest of the country tries to, you know, just pay its bills. This year, obviously, it was race-directed.
And this is the backlash that the left is going to have to confront, because in reality, politically, the American people are tired of DEI. They're tired of it. They don't like it. It was one of the main reasons why Democrats lost in last election cycle. Americans are extraordinarily tired of thinking tribally along racial lines. That's manifesting itself in a lot of ways, mostly positive, a few negative.
When it comes to the Met Gala, however, again, you have the world's most rich, most famous people who are focusing in on racial differentiation. It does come with some awkwardness because a bunch of white people went to the Met Gala. And so you do wonder if this runs into charges of cultural appropriation. So many of the DEI traps about race
are catch-22s. So on the one hand, for example, there'll be a suggestion that if historically black area has a lot of investment and people drive up the real estate prices, this is gentrification and wrecking the neighborhood. If white people move out of that area, then that is presumably white flight.
And the same thing holds true when it comes to things like fashion. If white people pay tribute to black people through fashion, then that is cultural appropriation. And if they don't, then that is neglecting the impact of black fashion on America and the West and all the rest. Okay, but...
Let's just put it this way. If the future of the Democratic Party is re-embracing DEI and re-embracing it through a sort of effete fashionista sensibility, good luck to the Democrats. This is precisely the kind of crap that most Americans are ready to end.
This is not a reversion to normality. It's a reversion to bizarreness. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, Pure Talk says, I don't think so to $100 a month cell phone plans. That is wasteful and irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices. Listen to this. Only
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So let's go through some of the things that were being worn at the Met Gala. So we begin with a person named Coleman Domingo. Here he is wearing what appears to be a giant shower curtain topped by the breastplate from Gladiator. And somehow this is super fine black fashion. At least his second outfit, he took that off and then he wore a second outfit that appears to be some sort of tribute to, again, early 20th century black fashion. He's got kind of a checkered coat and baggy pants.
That was not the worst outfit for sure. Bad Bunny showed up. This is the name that his mother gave him, Bad Bunny, his original name. He came out of his mother and his mother said, I shall call him Bad Bunny. And he showed up wearing a kind of normal, cool suit, but then carrying a luggage bag, which I don't particularly understand. A singer named Doshi showed up as well. You can have no idea who this person is.
And she showed up wearing what appears to be a romper, like a child's romper from the early 20th century. So that was rather bizarre. Chapel Roan showed up as well. It was not a particularly good. Does Chapel Roan have any good looks? Chapel Roan is, this is, wow. What is this supposed to be? It's supposed to be like a riff on James Brown circa 1969. Chapel Roan, these are the people that you should emulate. These are your cultural guideposts and landmarks. Cardi B,
was there being Cardi B. She apparently just picked up a velvet rug and decided to wear that around. Again, the disconnect between the celebrity class and the rest of America is nowhere more obvious than when it comes to the Met Gala. And the willingness of the celebrity class, which again, exists in its own class. Hey, Cardi B has much more in common with Tom Cruise than she does with a black person working long hours at a factory in Baltimore or something.
The class differentiation at the Met Gala is the thing that sets it apart. And the attempt to crosscut the class differentiation by reference to race is a giant failure. It's a giant failure. It's why the Democratic Party has failed, because they moved away from their sort of class conscious, soft Marxism, the populism of the Bernie Sanders. And they moved toward a racial Marxism that is incredibly divisive and most people find off-putting and annoying.
Again, these outfits are bizarre and ridiculous. Okay, here's Gayle King straight from the moon. So Gayle King is one of the lady astronauts who's not an astronaut who's put on blue origin. And then the rocket came back to Earth for better or for worse. And she showed up wearing what appears to be a purple gown merged with a jellyfish in some way.
And again, look, I can make fun of the Met Gala all day long because it's ridiculous. I mean, Colin Kaepernick shut up. Colin Kaepernick has not been relevant in American discourse for well over a decade at this point. Colin Kaepernick, who became famous by being a second-rate quarterback who lost his job and then decided that he hated America, is still somehow getting invites to some of the most important cultural events of the season. He showed up wearing a sort of purplish outfit with a cape.
Andre 3000. I don't know who that is. I don't know what happened to the first 2,999 Andres. It's like Mickey 17. He showed up wearing a piano on his back, which, I mean, feels a little inconvenient. If you are feeling the solidarity, the racial solidarity here, raise your hand because I'm just wondering what that is. What is that supposed to be? Doja Cat, who again is named after marijuana and a cat, was there as well.
I don't even know what this is. She appears to be wearing no pants, a jacket, and I can't even see her hair properly here. But it's a look. It's a look. And to me more fresh off her Oscar loss was there as well. Again, there's a bit of awkwardness to white people attempting to cosplay as in black fashion. What is this a sort of Cleopatra outfit?
It's all terrible. It's all terrible. And again, shows the wild disconnect between a party that claims to stand for the lower classes and what they actually wish to do in their spare time. And this brings us to an article from The New Yorker. This article from New Yorker magazine.
is an article about the living rooms of the rich and famous. Quote, what aspects of living are meant to be done in a living room? Exactly. Not eating, which takes place at least theoretically in the dining room or in the kitchen. Not sleeping or having sex, which takes place in the bedroom. What the living room is for, ostensibly, is gathering. Wow, just what an amazing New Yorker. This is the effete liberalism that cosplays as radical?
but actually is just ridiculous. Going all the way back to this sort of mentality in the 1960s, written about by Tom Wolfe in famous essays like Radical Chic, in which Leonard Bernstein, the conductor for the New York Philharmonic, had the Black Panthers over to his apartment where they talked about killing Whitey and how the Jews were bad. And then he sat there and clapped. This is kind of the New Yorkers mentality.
And that happens to be the mentality of the upper echelons of the Democratic Party. So they put out, the New Yorker, these pictures of prominent Democrats in their living rooms. And I have to say, just absolutely absurd. We begin with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who apparently sits on couches and knits. This is what we are supposed to believe, is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spends her evenings knitting on her couch in East Elmhurst, flanked by a bulldog. Oh, boy.
Woman of the people there, AOC. Just the childless energy in many of these photos is extraordinarily strong. These apartments are immaculate. There are no children anywhere to be seen in any of the photos. There are like a couple of people who had their kids as sort of a prop there. So you have AOC. And then we have, of course, Alex Soros and Huma Abedin, the new power couple, because Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner didn't happen, fell apart, and Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton never publicly happened. Alex Soros.
investor and Huma Abedin. So Alex Soros is George Soros's heir and is definitely straight. This is the straightest pose you will ever see with Huma Abedin. They look so happy together in this particular photo, glaring into the camera high above the New York City skyline where Alex Soros hosts every Democratic politician attempting to garner that blue collar. This is just blue collar appeal in extremists. I mean, look at the blue collar appeal of Huma Abedin
trying desperately not to hold the hand of Alex Soros as he crosses his legs in the most masculine fashion possible and glares angrily into the camera. What a charming couple of political influencers in Democrat world. Well, if you don't appreciate that, maybe you will appreciate Ella Emhoff. So Ella Emhoff is the long forgotten daughter of Doug Emhoff, who is the wonderful first husband candidate,
You'll recall him from such hits as Yes, I May Have Punched My Girlfriend in Public and also I'm the World's Best Jew Who Doesn't Know What Jews Do. Ella Emhoff is his daughter and apparently in her spare time, she stands on Ottomans in very crowded apartment quarters flanked by stacks of books she undoubtedly has not read.
With the in an outfit that is sort of a mix, but the bottom half of the outfit is effectively Ella Emhoff wearing what a Wisconsin father would wear before he goes to bed every evening, namely gym shorts and long socks. And she's got to cast as someone observed online of a hockey player and and then a tank top. Well, she holds a dog and again, looks deeply unhappy. None of the people you're in your living room, you're supposed to be relaxing. Why do you all look so unhappy?
Seriously, like the living room, you're supposed to be having a good time now. And all these all these Democrats look so unbelievably grumpy as they sit in their decent apartments in New York City being upset about life. And then finally, Al Sharpton. So my favorite game to play when it comes to political celebrities is do they have a picture of them in a picture of them?
Anthony Fauci famously had this during the pandemic. You could tell that he was the villain because the villain has a giant portrait of the villain behind him, like Biff in Back to the Future 2. So Al Sharpton poses in his apartment in his socks. This is how you know they're casual. He's wearing like a vest and a shirt and a tie and dress pants. And he's hanging around in his socks on the Upper East Side.
Next to what appears to be like a playpen for a child, but there's no child anywhere to be found. So I don't know if Al Sharpton is using the playpen or what. And then behind him, a picture of Al Sharpton. This is your racial fighter, Democrats. This is the person to whom Democratic political candidates have to come to pay obeisance.
Really, really solid stuff here from the Democratic Party. And then they wonder why blue collar has moved away from them. Why blue collar workers of every stripe have moved away from the Democratic Party. This would be the reason because the actual morality that drives the Democratic Party is this snooty elitism that sneers at people who don't have the same aesthetic tastes that they do. And listen, I don't have the same aesthetic tastes as many Americans. I listen to classical music.
I like to dress decently. I wear suits on Saturdays. I'm an Orthodox Jew. My aesthetic cultural tastes are not necessarily the same as a blue-collar worker from Wisconsin, but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily better than the blue-collar worker from Wisconsin, but what reeks from all of these pictures is just a disdain for normie Americans. This
This is why Donald Trump is president. So I pray that Democrats keep on doing this sort of stuff. Met galas and New Yorker spreads all the way up the wazoo. I hope they just continue this forever. And this is one of the reasons why the Trump crusade against our colleges and universities is being well-received by the American public. The reality is that these universities are churning out
Not elites. Every society has elites. Elite just means people who are good at a particular thing, right? They're elite athletes. That means that they are very good at being athletes. They're elite artists. That means they're very good at making the art. There's a difference between elites and elitists. Elitists are people who believe they are better than everybody else because either they are elite or they think that they are elite.
Well, the Democratic Party is replete with this sort of elitism, this idea that their moral standards are better than everybody else's, specifically in rejection to traditionalist religion, for example. And Harvard University churns out these types. So I went to Harvard Law School, and I remember the very first day, orientation at Harvard Law School,
I've told this story before. We all crowd, class about 400, 500 people, we all crowd into a room at Harvard University. It's one of these rich, mahogany rooms, beautiful auditorium. And the dean of the law school, Elena Kagan, who's now in the Supreme Court,
walks up and she explains in the room to everybody in the room that these are the elite. These are the people who are going to be making the decisions for the rest of the world. She says, effectively, you are going to rule the world. We have so many Harvard Law School is the source of this many Supreme Court justices. Harvard Law School is the source of this many CEOs. Harvard Law School is the source of
of all that is good and positive in the world, and those people are going to rule. So if you're here, the competition is over. This is something she actually said. She's trying to explain that the law school is not a place of sort of dog-eat-dog competition a la the paper chase back in the 1970s. Instead, it was a place where the elites come to congregate and to mingle and to make the connections that are going to form the future of America. Well, it is precisely this sort of mentality that the Trump administration is saying is inappropriate at these colleges and universities. Now,
That in and of itself is not a violation of the law. You want to be elitist at a university, you certainly can do that. However, the elitist morality that is being crammed down propaganda-wise at these universities and the willingness in the name of elitist intersectionality to overlook the Civil Rights Act, for example, that is punishable by law. And so yesterday, the Trump administration announced they will not be providing Harvard University with any new federal grants
That is what Education Secretary Linda McMahon told the school Monday in the latest escalation of a continuing battle between the government and the country's most prominent university, according to the Wall Street Journal. McMahon took aim at Harvard students, its academic rigor, and its faculty, accusing the university of violating federal law and losing its privileges to partner with the federal government. McMahon says Harvard has made a mockery of this country's higher education system, which, of course, is true. She says the Ivy League University will cease to be a publicly funded institution
McMahon said, hey, you have a $53 billion endowment, so why don't you tap your alumni? Which, of course, is right. There's no reason why federal taxpayer dollars should be subsidizing a university to the tune of billions of dollars in federal funds. McMahon says, at best, a university should fulfill the highest ideals of our nation and enlighten the thousands of hopeful students who walk through its magnificent gates. But Harvard has betrayed this ideal. The letter accuses Harvard of violating the Supreme Court ruling in 2023 banning affirmative action.
saying it continues to engage in ugly racism in its undergraduate and graduate schools and even within the Harvard Law Review itself. That, of course, is a reference to a study showing that Harvard Law Review was wildly oversampling minority students at the top echelons of the Harvard Law Review. Meanwhile, Alan Garber, who is the president of the university, said the university has appreciated being able to conduct scientific research at the behest of the federal government, but knows the funds have strings attached.
Garber said, we think it's an honor to be able to perform work for the federal government addressing national priorities, but he is not going to cave to the administration. And so the battle will continue. The administration is also saying that the 501c3 status for Harvard should be revoked.
Now, the question is whether they've actually violated the 501c3 charitable donation statute. So 501c3 organizations are nonprofits. If you give to a 501c3, that is tax deductible. Revoking Harvard University's 501c3 status would mean that if somebody gives a multimillion dollar donation to Harvard University, they do not get a tax write-off in the same way that they would not get a tax write-off if they decided to buy a yacht or something.
Well, the 501c3 laws were in fact weaponized by the Obama administration. During his term, Lois Lerner at the IRS used 501c3 statutes to crack down on every right of center 501c3. And now President Trump is basically doing that in reverse, except he may have a better legal basis for doing it. Good Peace by Iris Stoll over at the Wall Street Journal talking about whether it is legally acceptable to go after the 501c3 status of a place like Harvard University.
He says that according to the law, tax exemption applies to a corporation organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific testing for public safety, literary or educational purposes. No substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda and which does not participate in or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. It's been very unclear how to interpret that law.
Basically, the idea here is that Harvard University has become a propaganda outlet for particular types of politics. And so the Obama administration, again, tried to apply 501c3 law in this way against any supposedly conservative-oriented group. The Trump administration is saying, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. And it seems to me that if...
there is to be some sort of bipartisan off-ramp here, then that should be to rewrite the 501c3 law to become significantly clearer about what is prohibited and what is not prohibited, because this law seems to be weaponized by alternative administrations against whoever is in violation of their sort of political priors. We'll get some more on that in a moment. First, I need to make sure that I'm
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is telling universities that the government will be shutting off federal student loan spigots for specific schools if too many of their former students have lapsed on their payments. This, by the way, is a wonderful policy. This is absolutely, in unsullied fashion, a good policy.
The reality is that federal student loans to students that push them into majors that are completely non-compensatory on the other end. You go and you get a degree in queer studies at Harvard University, and there's no way you're going to be paying back your student loans. There's no reason the federal taxpayer should be subsidizing all of that.
Monday's warning, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is a plank in a broader strategy to accelerate repayment. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said, as we begin to help defaulted borrowers back into repayment, we must also fix a broken higher education finance system that has put upward pressure on tuition rates without ensuring that colleges and universities are delivering a high-value degree to students. And this, of course, makes perfect sense because the great acceleration of
of the number of people going to colleges and universities has not been a boom for the country as a whole. It is based on a fundamental category error.
Yes, people who go to college in 1970 are earning more than people go to high school in 1970. But the solution to that is not everybody goes to college. It should be people who are going to college for a reason should go to college. If you just put upward pressure on the number of people going to college and you say getting a degree in nonsense from your local university is in and of itself worthwhile, sponsored by the taxpayer, what you will end with is massive student debt.
people in hock to these universities for long periods of time and universities continuing to increase their tuition. So these are all good moves by the Trump administration. And again, the reason why the American people are going to stand behind this stuff is because of the bizarre elitism exhibited by institutions like a Harvard University, which again is of a piece, same cultural piece as the Met Gala or the New Yorker. These are all cultural institutions that shape how people at the quote unquote top echelons of society think. I know I went to them.
And there's no question that they lead people who go to these places and integrate into these systems to believe that they ought to
operate oversized power against the rest of the public. When it comes to federal student loan debt and all the rest, one of the big questions is where is that money going and what are people majoring in based on the loans that they are taking? So I asked our friends and sponsors at Perplexity that question, what are the college majors of students who receive federal student loan aid by percentage? And unbelievably enough, there is no good federal data on this, which is insane.
That's crazy. How is it that there's no good federal data on, you know, what are the majors of the people to whom you're lending money? That would be the number one question in the private loan sphere that you would be asking. If you're a loan officer and someone came in and wanted some sort of loan to go to college, you would ask them right off the bat, what are you majoring in? Because if they're majoring in music, then probably you're going to think more carefully than if they are majoring in, say, pre-law or in psychobiology or something, some sort of field that is likely to lead them to...
a career that will allow them to pay off the loan, according to Perplexity, there's limited direct data on the precise percentage of students in each college major who receive federal student loan aid. However, available sources provide insight into the distribution of student loan debt by major and general pattern of aid usage across feature of study. So in terms of distribution by major...
Apparently, majors such as health professions, business education and social sciences tend to have higher numbers of students taking on federal loans, reflecting both enrollment size and also program costs. Well, that's not great.
The reality is if you're an education major, what are the chances that as an education major, you're going to be paying off that student loan debt in anything like a reasonable amount of time? Or you're a sociology major. How fast are you going to pay off that student loan debt? How is it that the federal government doesn't even know where that money is going? That's totally crazy.
Obviously, this is something the Department of Education should immediately investigate. What are the majors of the people receiving federal student loan aid? What do they get for their money? Or more importantly, what do we, the taxpayers, get for our subsidization of those loans? And again, as I've said before, the Trump administration is doing deeply important work on everything from DEI to going after the colleges and universities. They're doing deep work in the cultural sphere. All of this is laudatory and excellent. All of it goes by the wayside if the economy tanks. So...
It is unclear at this point, as we've said, what the results of President Trump's tariff war is going to be. Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, is almost single-handedly holding up the stock market at this point. As I said before, President Trump should basically just put tariff and tax policy in the hands of Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, and let him talk, and everything will be well. And he should also fire Peter Navarro, who is truly a...
dotter and a fool when it comes to trade policy. Firing Peter Navarro would shore up the economic health of the country in extraordinary ways. Investors would put their money back in knowing that there was solidity
De-dollarization might itself slow or stop. People are withdrawing money from the American system right now, investors, because they are unsure of what comes next. And they are also afraid that if the economy tanks, you will get a populist left-wing party in power that will then completely destroy the investment environment for everybody who actually wants innovation in the United States. So there has to be a recalibrated policy. Scott Besson has a piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about President Trump's three steps to economic growth.
And basically, he says, we need time. So he says that there are essentially three things that need to be pursued. One is renegotiating global trade. He says tariffs are an effective tool for balancing international commerce. They reduce trade barriers in other countries, opening more markets to American producers, while also bringing back thousands of manufacturing jobs.
Now, again, notice the language that Besant is using. It's the language that I've been using about tariffs, which is tariffs are good if they are used as a tool to get other countries to lower their tariffs. They are not in and of themselves a good. And then he says economic security is national security. We need to shore up our supply chains. That, of course, is true. So the way Besant is talking about tariffs is a way the markets understand. And then he says we need to pass a reenactment, a renewal of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We have to make it permanent.
and adopt the president's new tax priorities. That, of course, is absolutely true. And we must deregulate the economy. And all this is right. And if Besson gets his way, the economy is going to boom. You will get the Trump boom that was promised. However, President Trump still seems to be making the suggestion that patience is the thing that is called for here. And conflict continues to exist in the administration over the proper role of tariffs in all of this.
According to Politico, President Trump and his top aides have settled on a decidedly non-Trumpian message for American businesses and consumers panicked by his trade war. Be patient. However, the problem is that there are long tail effects to policy. If you slap a trade war on everybody and then people stop shipping, it takes months to iron all of that out. The supply line problems that were developed in 2020, thanks to COVID, took at least two years to actually iron out on the other end.
It is a real problem. Well, the Treasury Secretary was asked yesterday if China is coming to the table, and he is still not being particularly clear on whether China is coming to the table. China basically wants the United States to come to the table first. They want to humiliate the United States. President Trump doesn't actually want to do that at this point. But as Besson says, the current tariff rates against China, as currently created and without any of the preconditional work necessary to actually go after China on trade in that way,
They're unsustainable. That's not me saying that. That's President Trump's Treasury Secretary. So they need they need to make more gestures. What is it that you're looking for? And is that happening? Is there a negotiation about the negotiation? Yeah, we'll see over over the coming weeks and we'll see what President Trump wants to accept. Right. I mean, have they offered anything on the fentanyl, for instance, precursor ingredients? They are only what they have said publicly.
Okay, so he's basically saying China has not called. So there's no trade deal with China that is in the works. As far as these other trade deals, I mean, okay, fine. So if he cut a trade deal with Namibia, great, or Ethiopia, all right. But the reality is that there are certain key countries that we should be getting to an off-ramp with. Mark Carney...
the newly elected prime minister of Canada, because President Trump could not stop attacking Canada and helped to sink the candidacy of Pierre Poliev, who actually did win the highest vote percentage in Canada for the Conservative Party since about 2011. The problem is that all the libs came home to Mark Carney after Justin Trudeau resigned and President Trump attacked Canada over and over and over. Mark Carney is showing up at the White House to negotiate tariffs.
The United States should not be in a tariff war with Canada. President Trump negotiated the USMCA that we were operating on before we decided to randomly tariff Canada. Howard Lutnick, there's sort of an inverse correlation between Howard Lutnick's appearances on TV and stock market success. He's sort of the opposite of Besson. Every time the Secretary of Commerce speaks on TV, the stock market freaks out. Every time Besson talks, the stock market gets better. That is not a coincidence. Here was Howard Lutnick enthusiastically endorsing tariffs.
India is at the table really doing extraordinary things that no one else has ever done. Donald Trump will change the way trade is done. You know, it used to be two years to do a little deal. Now we're doing gigantic deals in 90 days. So he's going to open these markets in a way the markets have never been opened before. He's going to help America grow in a way that it hasn't grown before. Okay, well, that is...
all dependent on finding an off-ramp. Ludnick himself says that he feels very good about the tariffs and everything that's going on.
I feel really, really good. Right. The countries. Remember, he came out. The president came out with tariffs that were pretty high. And then he said, look, I'll drop it down to 10 percent. Tell me what you're going to do for America. It's not fair. We have one point two trillion dollar trade deficit. And what people don't really think about much is if you knock that down 25 percent and at a 900 billion dollar trade deficit, that's one percent GDP for the United States of America.
I mean, in what sense? In what sense? The idea that if you eliminate all trade deficits in the United States, that means endless economic growth is unsupportable by the actual statistical reality. And again, I'm worried about this because I want President Trump's agenda to succeed. President Trump is doing many, many important things all across the globe.
Economic downturn. I'm going to keep beating this drum until the policy changes. Already, the policy has changed some. Remember, between Liberation Day and when President Trump decided that he was going to back off many of the biggest tariffs in his Liberation Day sort of framework, there was a massive stock market drop. And then he tweeted in the stock market recovered some. And so we're down maybe 3%, 4% from where we were in the S&P 500 and in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
But that was reliant on people making clear that that policy was not well calibrated. Well, things need to change because otherwise Democrats will have a lot to run on. NBC's Kristen Welker was grilling Representative Byron Donalds from Florida about President Trump's language regarding tariffs in the economy. And she said, is kids should have fewer dolls actually a very good argument.
I have to get your reaction to the president effectively saying that kids can have or should have $2 and not $30. They should have fewer pencils. Do you think that's the right argument for the president to be making about his tariff policy? Look, I think the argument the president is making is that overall, if you look at where we are, prices have come down. Even the GDP read that just came out that showed a contraction, you know why that is? It's because of the federal government contracting. That's a good thing.
Private investment in the economy year over year is up over 20%. Personal consumption in the economy year over year is up over 2%. So individuals are consuming. There's private domestic investment in our economy. The federal government is shrinking. But when it comes to goods, prices are coming down. If people make purchasing decisions on what they're going to do with their own resources, those are their personal choices.
Okay, so again, that is him avoiding the actual question, which is, if there's restriction of supply, is that going to affect the American people? Listen, I hope that everything that Donald is saying comes true. I hope that everything that Ludnick is saying comes true. I hope that we get an economic boom like we've never seen in this country. Good policy is the thing that makes economic booms possible. And there is a reason why just yesterday, Ford...
dropped its first quarter profit estimate by 64% and suspended its outlook for the rest of the year based on uncertainty. The markets right now are being held up by the possibility that President Trump backs off of the Liberation Day framework. That is what's holding up the economy. If it goes the wrong way, then that all changes. Alrighty, meanwhile, the President Trump trollery train continues and the left does not really know what to do about it. So President Trump is now talking about reopening Alcatraz. Okay, wait.
It's funny. It's not a thing that's going to happen. I promise you, we're not reopening Alcatraz and then just sending random criminals to Alcatraz. But the left, they're like a cat with a laser pointer. President Trump controls the laser pointer and they just jump around like crazy trying to follow the laser pointer. Or if you just recognize that President Trump says a lot of stuff, he says a lot of bleep, as I've said before. Here's President Trump on Alcatraz.
Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something strong having to do with law and order. We need law and order in this country. And so we're going to look at it. Some of the people up here are going to be working very hard on that. And we had a little conversation. I think it's going to be very interesting. We'll see if we can bring it back in large form and a lot.
But I think it represents something. Right now it's a big hulk that's sitting there rusting and rotting. Very, you look at it, it's sort of, you saw that picture that was put out, it's sort of amazing. But it sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak. It's got a lot of qualities that are interesting.
I'm sorry, it's hilarious. There's nothing I can do about the fact that the dude's funny, people. Like, it's not my fault. He's funny. I'm sorry. He just described Alcatraz as horrible, beautiful, strong, miserable, and weak, which is just a grab bag of adjectives. I don't even know what to make of that. Horrible, beautiful, strong and weak, miserable, and interesting.
OK. All right. If you guys want to make a big deal over that, I suppose that you can. Then President Trump was asked about his tweeting out of an AI picture of himself as Pope. And President Trump's like, are you kidding me? Like, am I allowed to make a joke now or not allowed to make a joke? How does this work?
Last evening,
Actually, my wife thought it was cute. She said, isn't that nice? My question about it. Actually, I would not be able to be married, though. That would be a lot. I'd have to.
To the best of my knowledge, popes aren't big on getting married, are they? Not that we know of, no. No, I think it's the fake news media that, you know, they're fakers. The fact that it was put out on the White House account, even though it was AI-generated, it was a joke, it was a meme, does it at all diminish the substance of the official White House account to have it go out on that particular channel? Give me a break. It was just somebody did it in fun. It's fine. You have to have a little fun, don't you?
Really, really, guys, that is that is correct. And again, I'm not going to hear about how President Trump's insulting the Catholics from the party of Gretchen Whitmer and bizarre lesbian communion scenes with Doritos and the party of transgender, transgendering the children and same sex marriage. Like, no, it's an on demand abortion. Nope, nope. You don't get anything to say about this. Meanwhile, in global news.
So as I mentioned on Sunday, I flew out of Israel on a Lufthansa flight. I believe it was the last Lufthansa flight to leave before just outside the airport, a Houthi missile fell. The Houthis are, of course, a wonderful, generous group of people.
Islamic terrorists backed by the Iranians with this delightful slogan, quote, God is the greatest. Death to America, death to Israel, curse be upon the Jews, victory to Islam, which is not particularly catchy and a little bit long for a slogan, hard to chant, but is in fact a pretty solid expression of their motivating ideology. They have pledged they are going to try to continue to bomb Israel's airport so as to stop incoming and outgoing traffic. So this morning,
Israel decided that they were not going to be having any of that. And Israeli warplanes then carry out a massive attack on the Sana'a International Airport and essentially leveled it. They said, OK, you're going to attack the the Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. Well, then you just won't have an airport anymore. And that came shortly after they had sent another strike to the port in Hodeidah, basically destroying that as well.
They destroyed a bunch of infrastructure at the port of Hodeidah, which is sort of an importation point for weaponry from Iran. Again, the Houthis are just an Iranian arm. That's something President Trump himself has said. This is perfectly appropriate. Apparently, the IAF, the Israeli Air Force, coordinated this with the Americans. The Americans did not take part in this particular airstrike. Israel did it themselves.
So that is a perfectly appropriate response to people firing missiles at your airport. Meanwhile, Israel is now unleashing a strategy in Gaza, which is something they should have done all along. Israel is saying they are going to retain complete security control of the Gaza Strip and they are going to stay indefinitely, which, of course, there is no alternative that has been offered that is anything remotely plausible or credible.
They are going to continue to ensure that food does not flow into Hamas. Hamas has been stealing the food in the Gaza Strip for a very long period of time. And Israel is going to take direct control over the handouts of food. Why? Because Israel has AI technologies that allow them to actually determine based on their information who is a terrorist and who is not. And if the IDF is actually handing out the food, then it is significantly more likely that food ends up in the hands of civilians as opposed to Hamas, which just works directly with the UN and all other food agencies that were working in the Gaza Strip
According to the Washington Post, Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday described intensified operations in Gaza. He said that the population is going to be moved south so that Israel can actually control the territory. The northern part of the Gaza Strip was the chief point from which the attacks of October 7th were launched and where most of the rockets were being fired from during the years between 2005 and 2023.
The plan will require tens of thousands of reservists to be called up in the coming weeks, and there will be sterile zones secured by elements of the IDF. Meanwhile, Hamas will be fought in these cities. One of the big failures of the IDF plan so far have been these sort of incursions and pullouts and incursions and pullouts in the Gaza Strip with the hope that Hamas would deal with Israel with regard to the hostages.
Netanyahu did say that this is basically the last chance for Hamas to give up the hostages, including American Idan Alexander. I know Idan Alexander's parents. I brought them to meet President Trump during the campaign. President Trump was asked about this. He said, we'll find ways to get the population food, but Hamas has been stealing the food.
We're going to help the people of Gaza get some food. People are starving and we're going to help them get some food. A lot of people are making it very, very bad. If you look, Hamas is making it impossible because they're taking everything that's brought in. But we're going to help the people of Gaza because they're being treated very badly by Hamas.
That is exactly right. And in reality, people who are in a war zone and have been governed by terrorists for 20 years at their original choice, by the way, and many of whom are deeply sympathetic to the terrorists, there are protests in Gaza sometimes against Hamas. Hamas then shoots those people. There have been zero protests calling for the freeing of the hostages, which is the thing that would actually end the war. If Hamas's leadership went into exile and if the hostages were free, that would end the war.
No one so far as I can tell who has been on the side of the Palestinians in this conflict has actually said that out loud, even though that is clearly the case. So that is the latest on the Middle East. Meanwhile...
Democrats continue to try out Jasmine Crockett as the hot new fresh face of the Democratic Party. Jasmine Crockett, of course, a congresswoman from Texas. And she has basically decided that speaking in the most colorful tones is going to win her political support. Again, it's not a bad bet. And the fact that Cory Booker's bizarre rantings on the floor of the Senate to no apparent purpose, Mr. Potato Head popping in the angry eyes, just ranting nonsensically.
and very intensely about President Trump being angry about things. It made him much more prominent. Jasmine Crockett seems to have gotten some momentum for herself doing the same thing. So she was very upset because President Trump suggested that she has low IQ.
And I got to admit, when I see her activities and when I watch her talk, she does not strike me as a particularly high IQ person. I don't think that she's over in the corner solving Rubik's cubes and figuring out how quadratic equations apply to physics or anything like that. Here she was saying that actually it's just it's wrong to call her low IQ.
I'm not sure that it's like deeply a morally wrong thing to say that a person who appears to be kind of stupid is stupid, especially when that person is advocating for some of the worst policies for the American government possible.
So the idea that you are now taking the Constitution and, as I said at the DNC, putting it through a paper shredder is a problem. And I think that this should not be partisan. This should be right versus wrong. A lot of the things that this administration is doing, they don't have anything to do with partisanship. This is right versus wrong. And right now they are consistently wrong. OK. All righty. By the way, she then suggested to students that if people are opposing you, you might want to use a chair against them.
This apparently is the mark of brilliance inside the Democratic Party. Here she was. There are people that are gonna tell you that there is not a table in which there is a seat for you. But I am here to remind you of Montgomery and those folding chairs. Let me tell you that we know how to use a chair, whether we pulling it or we doing something else with it. Let me be the first one to tell you that I know
that y'all are ready to put your boots on the ground. Yeah, guys, apparently it's evil to say that she's stupid, but it's not evil to tell people that if they oppose them politically, you should pick up a chair and use it.
Sounds great. In a moment, the show continues with our discussion of the Georgia Senate race and bad news for Republicans over there. Plus, why is Newark Airport a complete disaster aside from the fact that it's in Newark? First, you have to become a member. And we have all sorts of good stuff behind the paywall. So you want to do that anyway. We've got all access live. You can hang out with me. We've got new series from Jordan Peterson and behind the scenes footage from Matt's movies. 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.