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May 16, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:24:22

Former FBI Director Headed to JAIL for Threatening Trump?!

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	Folks, we've got a ton to get to today.
	Did the former FBI director threaten President Trump's life?
	Plus, the Supreme Court is deciding on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions, and President Trump is finally leaving the Middle East.
	And we interview the probable next president of Romania.
	But first, I was going to do an all-new ad read for my brand new show, Ben After Dark, premiering tonight on DW +, exclusively for our members.
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	Alrighty, so controversy arises from random areas of the political spectrum these days.
	Do you remember James Comey?
	James Comey was the former FBI director.
	He was the FBI director who presented the so-called Steele dossier to President Trump.
	And then that Steele dossier just happened to leak into public view.
	That was the one that suggested that President Trump wasn't just a Russian cat's paw, that he was actually having affairs with prostitutes in Moscow and all this sort of crazy stuff.
	And Comey presented that to Trump.
	And then magically, it just emerged in the press very soon afterward.
	The news being that Comey had presented it to President Trump.
	James Comey, of course, was also the FBI director who let Hillary Clinton off the hook for mishandling of classified documents, a precedent that would then be used for, as it turns out, pretty much every subsequent president who...
	It now appears everyone is allowed to just mishandle classified documents because James Comey deliberately misread a statute to let Hillary Clinton off the hook.
	But then, right before the election, also announced that there was more of an investigation into Hillary Clinton mishandling classified information, leading Democrats to believe that he threw the election to Donald Trump.
	So, needless to say, he was a very, very bad FBI director.
	Soup to nuts, awful FBI director.
	Well, in his post-FBI director career, he decided to become a giant weirdo who wanders around forests.
	I'm not even kidding.
	That's what he does.
	He is basically the world's worst Instagram influencer.
	And so, just as an example, here is a tweet from James Comey a couple of years ago.
	It is a picture of James Comey, who is a uniquely tall individual, by the way, he's like 6 '9", standing among the redwoods of California with the caption, so many questions.
	Wow.
	Deep.
	But we're not done.
	James Comey also had a very weird tweet about Iowa.
	Here is his weird tweet about Iowa.
	This, of course, is circa 2017.
	It says, Goodbye, Iowa.
	Goodbye.
	And it's just him standing in the middle of a road.
	So James Comey is a person who likes to stand in random places and take contemplative pictures of the things around him or himself and just kind of put it out there.
	James Comey also is some sort of novelist.
	I don't know whether any of his novels have actually been successful at any point in the past, but he has a new book right now called FDR Drive.
	That is all about, presumably, some sort of far-right extremist talk show host who's creating threats against the federal government that are turning into people assassinating folks in the federal government.
	And it takes an intrepid investigative prosecutor to go after this particular right-wing talk show host.
	He's a strange person, shall we say.
	And this is a reminder to you that every government agency is staffed with lots of weird people.
	There are lots of weird people on Earth.
	Think about your own personal life.
	Tons of weird people around you, right?
	Everybody has their own brand of weird.
	And those people are also in the federal government.
	And when you give them outsized power and they're big weirdos, weird things happen.
	Okay, so how is James Comey relevant?
	The answer is James Comey yesterday put up a tweet.
	I already put up a post on his Instagram.
	And it was another one of these contemplative posts or would-be contemplative posts.
	Except that this one got him in a little bit of trouble.
	He put this up on Instagram.
	It's a cool shell formation on my beach walk.
	And it was a series of shells that were put in the sand to read 86-47.
	Now, for a moment, you might be thinking to yourself, what are we watching lost?
	What do these numbers mean?
	Why are these numbers important?
	And then you think, oh, wait a moment.
	47 would be like Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States.
	And the number 86...
	Well, that could mean a couple of things.
	Originally, to 86, someone meant to like throw them out of a bar or restaurant or to cancel a password.
	It's sort of like Deep Six, but 86 someone.
	So this could also be interpreted as kill the president.
	That is one way to interpret this shell formation.
	It's as 8647, not get rid of the president, like kill him.
	And this is how Secret Service has taken it.
	They said, um, you are not allowed to threaten the president in public media.
	That is a violation of 18 U.S. Code 871 threats against the president and successors to the presidency.
	Well, James Comey, you know, he put that out there and pretty soon the entire White House came down on his head.
	So Taylor Butowich over at the White House, chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, while President Trump is currently on an international trip to the Middle East, the former FBI director puts out what clearly can be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States, a message etched in the sand is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously.
	Donald Trump Jr. signed in to say, just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered.
	Kristi Noem came out and ripped into James Comey as well, the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
	Pretty much the entire cabinet got in.
	Kristi Noem said, disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of President Trump.
	DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.
	Stephen Miller, of course a top advisor to President Trump, he put out a statement, reading, as the former FBI Director and key leader of the deep state, Comey's call for assassination, while the president is abroad no less, is a chilling escalation of the war against our democracy by a faction committed to its destruction.
	Kash Patel, the head of the FBI.
	Didn't want to get lost in the shuffle, so he put out a statement saying, We are aware of the recent social media post by former FBI Director James Comey directed at President Trump.
	We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran.
	Primary jurisdiction is with the Secret Service on these matters, and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support.
	Then President Trump came out, and he himself commented on James Comey's bizarre post, to say the least.
	He knew exactly what that meant.
	A child knows what that meant.
	If you're the FBI director and you don't know what that meant, that meant assassination.
	And it says it loud and clear.
	Now, he wasn't very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant.
	And he did it for a reason, and he was hit so hard.
	Because people like me and they like what's happening with our country.
	Our country has become respected again and all this.
	And he's calling for the assassination of the president.
	Obviously he apologized and said he wasn't calling for violence.
	But what do you want to see happen?
	I don't want to take a position on it because that's going to be up to Pam and all of the great people.
	But I will say this.
	I think it's a terrible thing.
	And when you add his history to that...
	If he had a clean history, he doesn't.
	He's a dirty cop.
	He's a dirty cop.
	And if he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency.
	But I'm going to let them make that decision.
	Now President Trump, when he says he's a dirty cop, what he means there is that James Comey was presiding over the FBI when the Hillary Clinton Fusion GPS scam document that initiated the entire Russiagate investigation was basically laundered.
	By the Hillary Clinton campaign via the intelligence apparatus to the FBI.
	That's what he means.
	He means all of Russiagate can basically be laid at the feet of James Comey.
	Comey put out an apology message saying, I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message.
	I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.
	It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind.
	So I took the post down.
	We get some more on this in a moment.
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	Okay, so he's claiming ignorance on all this.
	Now, there are a few things right off the bat.
	First of all, President...
	Trump was nearly assassinated twice last year, like two times.
	So we should take very seriously threats of violence against the president of the United States.
	I mean, he nearly had his head blown off on national TV.
	And then he was nearly assassinated again by a person who was sitting outside of his golf course in Florida and was waiting for him to get to a particular hole so he could kill him.
	And then, of course, we know that the Iranians were also attempting to assassinate President Trump.
	So it's not as though there is a shortage of threats.
	On the president's life.
	We also know that members of the radical left despise President Trump.
	And there would be few tears shed by many of those people if, God forbid, something were to happen to President Trump.
	So in that sort of climate, what Comey says there is indeed pretty bad.
	Is it prosecutable?
	Did Comey actually mean it?
	So this takes you to the edge of the stupidity versus malice conversation.
	As I've said very frequently on this show.
	I generally like to attribute people's motivations when they do something wrong to stupidity rather than malice, unless I have like very solid counter evidence.
	This is like right at the edge.
	At the very least, this is incredibly stupid.
	However, James Comey isn't incredibly, that guy's a stupid guy.
	He is a stupid man.
	I mean, I showed you his tweets standing on a road in the middle of Iowa and standing in a forest.
	Like this is a weird, stupid man.
	And so it isn't all that hard for me to get to the conclusion.
	That he took a picture.
	He thought that 86-47 meant something like, ah, get rid of Trump, as opposed to kill President Trump.
	On the other hand, could he be malicious?
	Could he hate President Trump enough that he would openly call for that?
	Now, if it were really malicious and not stupidity, you have to assume at least a stupid malice, okay?
	You have to assume at least a level of stupidity where the former FBI director does not know enough about the law to understand that if you openly threaten the President of the United States on social media, Secret Service is going to come knocking at your door.
	So, I mean, That would be like the truest level of stupidity and malice would be that he wants to kill Trump, but he's stupid enough to post it online knowing that he's probably going to go to jail for it.
	That's like the top level of both stupidity and malice.
	If you're at the top level of malice, then presumably he wouldn't just post something about it.
	If you're at the top level of stupidity, then he would post something about it and then walk it back, which may be what this is.
	The bottom line is this, with regard to James Comey.
	Is the Justice Department going to take this very far?
	No, we'll have to see how far they take it.
	It is certainly true that many of the people who are currently going after James Comey are people who also feel specifically targeted by folks like James Comey.
	That includes the current FBI Director, Kash Patel.
	So it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out.
	Joining us on the line to discuss is Executive Editor of The Daily Wire and host of The Morning Wire, now available on video everywhere that you can get Morning Wire.
	John Bickley, so let's talk about this bizarre story.
	So, you know, is there anything that I'm missing here?
	What is the current status?
	Do you believe, do your sources tell you, that a prosecution is forthcoming for James Comey along these lines?
	You know, I like your analysis there about stupidity versus malice.
	I kind of look at it like ego versus malice.
	We have egomaniacs in the government a lot, and this guy is top, top of the rung here.
	He's...
	He's been the savior of the Justice Department, the savior of the FBI.
	It's part of the reason he got fired back in 2017 by Trump.
	And I think he loves, he probably feels like this is a big win for him.
	He loves getting media attention.
	I don't think he probably thinks there's much of a threat that something's going to be actually taken to the next level for him.
	I don't see that.
	I do see this as a check on the...
	The feeling by a lot of people on the left, particularly these people that have been in major public offices, that they feel like they can say anything.
	I think the Trump administration is checking him here.
	Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, really playing the left's game against them about heightened rhetoric.
	8647, is it a direct threat?
	It could be interpreted as a direct threat.
	It's not the kind of direct threat I think that is ultimately actionable.
	It is extremely stupid, like you said.
	I think it's very egotistical in the sense that Comey is trying to create some waves, get himself back in the headlines.
	He's done it.
	Congratulations.
	I think he will get some more scrutiny than he's going to be comfortable with.
	Will we go to the next level?
	I have a hard time seeing that to the next stage.
	So meanwhile, over at Morning Wire, obviously you guys have been covering extensively President Trip to the Middle East.
	A lot got done on that trip.
	A lot of big deals getting done in Saudi, in UAE, in Qatar.
	A lot of ramifications for the future of the Middle East more broadly.
	He's made comments about relieving sanctions on Syria, for example.
	He seems like he is open to a deal with Iran, although it is unclear what exactly that deal would look like.
	What are your big takeaways at Morning Wire from his trip to the Middle East?
	Yeah, you know, we've been looking at this from a few levels.
	One of them is the economic level.
	I think there's been a need for stability economically here.
	And the announcement of a lot of these deals, particularly the almost $2 trillion in deals from his Middle East tour, is huge news for the U.S. These are real deals.
	This really matters.
	It impacts every American's wallet in the end.
	It impacts the stock market.
	We've seen the stock market.
	Really rebound.
	I mean, part of that's the truce between the U.S. and China that was announced this week, the total walkback of all these tariffs.
	30% now is the tariff rate for the U.S. against China, dramatically down.
	All of this is good news.
	It's very complicated.
	When you're talking about Syria and you're talking about Iran, of course, extremely complicated in terms of the ramifications of these kinds of deals.
	Trump does a lot of stuff in public.
	He makes his deals in public.
	He's saying a lot of things.
	He's very optimistic about an Iran deal.
	It's hard to know what's really happening behind the scenes, how close they really are.
	Iran cannot be trusted.
	And I think it is right to be extremely skeptical of any deal we work out with them.
	That said, this consistent message of Trump trying to broker peace throughout the globe.
	And I think that people are happy to hear that.
	Syria, it's complicated.
	I was actually very interested in your perspective on that.
	I do think, again, this idea of de-escalation in general, sort of writ large, is his goal.
	He's accomplishing that, at least in terms of bringing the temperature down for now, where these details end up.
	We'll see if the deal actually is hammered out and how good it looks in the final stages.
	Well, that is John Bickley.
	He is the executive editor of The Daily Wire and host of The Morning Wire, now, again, available on video anywhere.
	John, great to talk to you.
	Thanks, Ben.
	Great to talk to you.
	The Trump big birthright citizenship case is now before the Supreme Court.
	There was a hearing yesterday.
	This case is interesting for a couple of reasons.
	One is President Trump issued an executive order saying that birthright citizenship no longer applies in the United States.
	And this raises a couple of questions for the Supreme Court because district courts put an injunction on the EO, nationwide injunctions.
	There are two separate issues in this case.
	One issue is what is the authority of local courts to provide nationwide injunctions?
	And this has become an incredibly hot issue because Every time President Trump does anything, ranging from using the Alien Enemies Act to this sort of EO, some local court will then issue a nationwide injunction.
	As I've discussed before on the program, there's not a lot of precedent historically for the idea that a local district court can simply enjoin an entire national policy.
	Typically, what you would do is have an injunction in the area over which the judge presides, not over the policy nationwide.
	Otherwise, you could just forum shop, find some district court judge somewhere who doesn't like the president, and nationwide enjoin any.
	This is a point that was made by Clarence Thomas back in 2018 in a concurrence in a case called Trump vs.
	Hawaii.
	And Clarence Thomas wrote, at that time, As he points out, the basic idea of injunction is supposed to be for the case in front of you, not for all similar cases all the way across the nation.
	He says the judiciary's limited role was reflected in the court's decisions about who could sue to vindicate certain rights.
	So this would go to standing.
	Typically, in order to bring a lawsuit, you have to have standing.
	You have to have been damaged by a particular law.
	By you being damaged by a particular law doesn't mean that everyone across the country was quote-unquote damaged by the same law.
	He says, That would have been in like 1963.
	And then they still remain pretty rare.
	But recently, again, this is 2018, Clarence Thomas writes, they've exploded in popularity.
	Some scholars have criticized the trend.
	No persuasive defense has yet been offered for the practice.
	And of course, Clarence Thomas is correct about this.
	He says, universal injunctions are legally and historically dubious.
	If federal courts continue to issue them, this court is duty-bound to adjudicate their authority to do so.
	So that's going to be one of the big issues that comes up in this particular case.
	And it looks very much like the Supreme Court is going to limit.
	This form of judicial overreach.
	Now, Amy Coney Barrett came under some fire yesterday.
	She, of course, a Trump appointee.
	Justice Barrett, she asked the Solicitor General for the United States about this yesterday, whether or not the administration will actually obey court decisions.
	Did I understand you correctly to tell Justice Kagan that the government wanted to reserve its right to maybe not follow a Second Circuit precedent, say, in New York, because you might disagree with the opinion?
	Our general practice is to respect those precedents, but there are circumstances when it is not a categorical practice.
	This administration's practice or the longstanding practice of the federal government?
	And I'm not talking about in the Fourth Circuit, are you going to respect a Second Circuit?
	I'm talking about within the Second Circuit.
	And can you say, is that this administration's practice or a longstanding one?
	As I understand it, longstanding policy of the Department of Justice.
	It'll be interesting to see how the Supreme Court comes down on this.
	I would imagine that they are going to limit the power of nationwide injunction for district courts, which in and of itself would be a win for the Trump administration.
	Because otherwise, you're just going to, as I say, have forum shopping for some district judge somewhere to knock down entire national policy, and that is not why the court system was built this way.
	Now, onto the broader underlying issue here of birthright citizenship.
	So, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says, with regard to citizenship, All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
	That is the text at issue here.
	And this has been subject to some pretty wide-ranging controversy over the course of American judicial history.
	What does that mean?
	So originally, this was obviously meant to be directed at the children of freed slaves.
	Because the idea was that while slaves were not, in fact, They were considered legally, they should have been obviously, but they were not considered legally citizens of the United States.
	They couldn't vote.
	They didn't have constitutional rights.
	What about their kids?
	Are their kids citizens or not?
	So the 14th Amendment says, yes, they are.
	They were born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
	The phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof is the key phrase.
	Because if you just wanted a birthright citizenship clause, like plain and simple, why do you need that phrase?
	Why not just say, All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States.
	That would be a pure birthright citizenship clause.
	Why add the phrase subject to this jurisdiction thereof?
	What exactly does that mean?
	Are there people who are born in the United States but not subject to the jurisdiction thereof?
	And the Supreme Court has ruled on this in a variety of ways, many times, mostly indirectly.
	That is why this case has now reached the Supreme Court.
	The court, first in 1873, in a case called the Slaughterhouse Cases, said the phrase subject to this jurisdiction was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign states born within the United States.
	Okay, so that seems pretty unequivocal.
	In 1873, which again, the 14th Amendment was ratified in the year 1868.
	Okay, so five years later.
	Five years after ratification, the Supreme Court said in the slaughterhouse cases that subject to the jurisdiction was meant to exclude, let's say that you're an ambassador.
	You're an ambassador from the UK.
	You're here.
	Your wife has a baby.
	Is the baby a citizen of the United States?
	Subject to the jurisdiction thereof says no, because your kid is actually a British citizen and subject to the jurisdiction of British law.
	Okay, so now apply that to our modern context.
	Let's say that you're a Mexican national.
	You're a Mexican citizen.
	You come across the border with your wife.
	You drop a baby.
	Is that baby subject to this jurisdiction of the United States, or is that baby subject to the jurisdiction of Mexican law?
	And it seems, according to the slaughterhouse cases, that that kid should actually not be an American citizen.
	That kid should actually just be a Mexican citizen.
	But then, in a case called U.S. v.
	Wong Kim Ark in 1898, the Supreme Court held that a child born in the United States of parents of Chinese descent, who at the time of his birth were subject to the Emperor of China, But had a permanent domicile in residence in the United States and are there carrying on business and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the emperor of China.
	That kid was, in fact, a citizen.
	So that seems to contradict what was being said in the slaughterhouse cases.
	So in Wong Kim Ark, the court said, well, that's just dicta.
	Okay, so when you read a Supreme Court decision, there is sort of the precedent and then there's dicta.
	The actual governing law is the ruling.
	And then courts can sometimes distinguish between that and stuff that the court kind of says on the way to get to the decision, which they will call dicta, sort of side points that are not binding in law.
	There's also a case in 1884 called Elk v.
	Wilkins, in which the Supreme Court ruled that children of Native Americans who were born in the United States were not citizens by birthright unless they were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
	Again, same kind of thing.
	Native Americans who were living on reservations or were subject to the jurisdiction of their tribe were not automatically citizens of the United States if born within the boundaries of the United States.
	Get some more on this in a moment.
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	So, that brings us to a case called Plylar v.
	Doe in 1982.
	There, the court found that illegal immigrant kids were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and therefore could be given free education.
	In other words, this actually is kind of an open constitutional question.
	Now, the practice in the United States has been birthright citizenship for well over a century at this point.
	Not only that, in 1940, there was a piece of legislation from Congress that basically enshrined the idea of birthright citizenship.
	However, it is a fascinating legal argument and would obviously make a very big difference in terms of how migration is done to the United States.
	Because one of the ways that illegal immigration has become so prevalent In the United States, if somebody comes, they overstay their visa, for example, they drop a baby.
	Now the baby is an American citizen.
	And so because the baby is an American citizen, the idea would be that the parents should be given preference in terms of becoming American citizens.
	They can easily see there's a world where the Supreme Court would rule that, for example, Wong Kim Ark, which is the governing precedent here, which was holding, again, that a child born in the United States to Chinese parents Who are subject to the emperor of China, but had permanent domicile and residence, that those babies are birthright citizens.
	So you could say, if you have a permanent green card, for example, not a temporary visa, not you're here illegally, if you have a green card and you drop a baby, the baby's a citizen.
	You can see the court saying that, based on Wong Kim Ark, that would not be in conflict with Wong Kim Ark.
	However, is that the way that the court is likely to go?
	Probably not.
	Probably not.
	The Solicitor General of the United States, Made the claim on behalf of the Trump administration that I've made here, which is that the citizenship clause was originally designed for the children of former slaves, which of course it was.
	Your Honor, I'd say three things in response to that.
	First of all, our primary contention is that the citizenship clause related to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens who weren't even present as a discrete class at that time.
	Okay, so I think that just on a legal basis, that seems correct to me.
	As far as the birthright citizenship clause and how it'll be interpreted by the Supreme Court, again, I think the Supreme Court is going to be reluctant to step into this fight, so probably they will rule against the EO on that basis.
	Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked, okay, let's say that you actually were able to get rid of birthright citizenship.
	How exactly would you even effectuate that at a hospital, for example, to determine whether a kid is a citizen or not?
	What do hospitals do with a newborn?
	What do states do with a newborn?
	I don't think they do anything different.
	What the executive order says in section two is that federal officials do not accept documents How are they going to know that?
	How?
	So you can imagine a number of ways that the federal officials could...
	Such as?
	Such as they could require a showing of, you know, documentation, showing legal presence in the country.
	For a temporary visitor, for example, they could see whether they're on a B-1 visa, which would exclude kind of the birthright citizenship in that country.
	For all the newborns?
	Is that how that's going to work?
	Again, we don't know because the agencies were never given the opportunity to formulate the guidance.
	They're only going to have 30 days to do this.
	You think they can get it together in time?
	That's what the executive order instructs them to do, and hopefully they will do so.
	Okay, so it'll be interesting to see which way the court goes.
	My guess is that the court will limit nationwide injunctions as well they should.
	My guess is that they will not go along with the argument that the court Supreme Court is going to invalidate birthright citizenship.
	I think that's going to be a stretch.
	It'll be hard for them to do it.
	Justice Alito, by the way, had the best line with regard to the nationwide injunctions.
	He said, the practical problem is there are 680 district court judges and all Article 3 judges are vulnerable to an occupational disease, which is the disease of thinking I am right and I can do whatever I want.
	That is exactly right.
	Justice Alito, of course, a tremendous justice.
	All righty.
	Meanwhile, the tax bill that is percolating through the Republican system.
	Unclear at this point whether it's actually going to materialize in time or whether it is not.
	A lot of issues have to be hashed out here.
	As I said yesterday, there's going to have to be some political magic here done by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson as well as the Senate Majority Leader John Thune to get this thing together.
	It is a giant unwieldy bill.
	You have several different wings of the party who are arguing for different things.
	You have the so-called moderates in the party who are arguing for higher caps on SALT deductions as well as arguing for zero cuts effectively to Medicaid.
	Zero restructuring, zero work requirements on Medicaid, and all of the rest.
	That'd be like Josh Howley in the Senate, as well as people like Mike Lawler in the House.
	Again, these are people from purple states or purple district.
	Then you have people who are very strong on the idea that we need to make cuts, because the reality is that we are facing a fiscal disaster in the United States over the course of coming years.
	That if we continue to blow out our deficit to the tune of $2 trillion a year, eventually, it's all fun and games.
	And if you jump from the sixth story, the first five stories are fine.
	It's the sixth one that really hurts.
	And that's sort of the idea with the American economy, that at a certain point here, you can see, for example, right now, the 30-year bond yields in the United States are disastrously high.
	Why is that?
	Because people are scared that they are not going to be able to get their money paid back to them outside of inflated currency by the United States government over time.
	There will come a point here where the United States is paying trillions of dollars a year just in interest on our national debt.
	Like trillions of dollars, like a significant percentage.
	Of our GDP will go to paying for the interest on our national debt if we don't get our spending under control.
	So you have Republicans who are pointing this out and saying we at the very least need to be bending the cost curve.
	This is the case that Senator Ron Johnson is making.
	He's saying, you know, what we really should be doing in this bill is just going back to 2019 spending levels.
	Why exactly are we doing wildly inflated spending from after the COVID period?
	That's silly.
	Here is Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to get a fiscal hawk.
	I ran in 2010 because we were morging our children's future.
	We were $14 trillion in debt.
	Now we're $37 trillion in debt.
	And Republicans aren't fixing the problem.
	We're exacerbating it.
	That's unacceptable.
	It's not beautiful.
	I'm sorry.
	It's not a big, beautiful bill.
	That's called rhetoric.
	It's mislabeling.
	It's false advertising.
	Okay, so, meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul, again, another fiscal hawk, he says the same thing.
	He says, we're raising the debt ceiling by $4.5 trillion.
	What are you talking about now?
	I think the deficit will still exceed two trillion.
	One of the reasons I believe that is a third component of the bill is raising the debt ceiling $5 trillion.
	This has never been done before.
	It's an historic amount.
	It's an obscene amount.
	It's something that is not conservative.
	And no conservative should support raising the debt ceiling $5 trillion.
	So that alone is enough for me not to support the bill.
	Even though I support large segments of the bill, my fear is that really true cutting is not going to happen.
	Now, again, squaring this circle is going to be very difficult because you do have representatives like Mike Lalo who are in trouble in some of these purple districts.
	And remember, the House Republican majority is razor thin right now.
	As Politico reports, the boiling internal GOP debate that's holding up President Trump's self-declared big, beautiful bill isn't over the deductibility of state and local taxes.
	It's about the class and geographic divide splintering today's Republican Party, and it's really about two midterm elections.
	Trump's first in 2018, when a series of Republicans from affluent districts retire or lost.
	And his second, next year's election, when many of the lawmakers elected from upscale suburbia ever since are facing difficult re-elections.
	And that's why SALT deductions have become such a big issue.
	So most Trump-era congressional Republicans are fine with lower caps on SALT deductions because they're from red states or red areas within blue states, but there are some who are not.
	And so Mike Lawler has said they have a very myopic view of New York and California.
	He says, you know, you're going to lose our seats and then you're not going to have a majority anymore.
	And that's not totally wrong.
	Meanwhile, the hardliners are saying, listen, this doesn't cut spending in any material way.
	And what you're doing here is basically leading us a little bit slower toward the cliff.
	All of this led to a bit of a breakdown yesterday when a planned Friday vote in the House Budget Committee to advance that GOP megabill was placed in peril with three hardliners pledging to oppose the party line legislation.
	This is yesterday afternoon.
	Representative Ralph Norman, who sits on the Budget Committee, told reporters he would vote against the package of tax cuts and extensions, border security investments, energy policy, and more.
	He was joined by Chip Roy of Texas and Josh Pasheen of Oklahoma.
	And Jody Arrington, the House Budget Chair, he said, we'll see as far as when the vote would actually be moved forward.
	So again, this is very fraught, at the very least.
	According to Politico, House Republican leaders are having to salvage their party-line megabill a lot sooner.
	Then they thought.
	A surprise holdout by those conservative members of the House Budget Committee is forcing Speaker Johnson to entertain significant changes to the GOP sweeping domestic policy bill, endangering his ambitious Memorial Day timeline for a House package.
	The hard right objections surrounding missing fiscal scores for the legislation and ongoing concerns about the depth of Medicaid cuts Republicans are prepared to make.
	One option under serious discussion as a concession to those fiscal conservatives is moving up the onset of work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries.
	By two years, from 2029 to 2027.
	Now, again, that makes a lot of sense.
	I mean, those things should be moved up.
	I'm not sure why work requirements should only be put in place, you know, four years from now.
	That is a bizarre thing.
	Of course, that should be moved up.
	But again, you have several wings of the Republican Party that are all clashing with one another at this point.
	If it does not move forward with alacrity, however, you will see an economic downturn, a serious economic downturn, because the markets have already priced in.
	A big, beautiful bill passing.
	Beyond that, many of the most controversial provisions of the so-called big, beautiful bill push a bunch of the sort of pain off into the future.
	So, for example, according to Politico, for all four years of President Trump's presidency and only those years, Americans would enjoy benefits like no taxes on tips or overtime.
	Then, it won't be until 2029, when congressional GOP incumbents have already run for re-election and Trump is gone, that voters feel the sting.
	From the pay-fors, that includes much of the Medicaid cuts estimated to strip healthcare coverage from more than 10 million people.
	Now, again, it's not stripping healthcare coverage from 10 million people.
	That is a wild overstatement.
	The idea that people should not have to work in order to receive Medicaid if they are otherwise healthy and young is silly.
	That's not stripping coverage.
	That is saying you need to do the bare minimum.
	You're talking about 80 hours a month, by the way.
	I want to see Democrats make the argument you don't need to work 80 hours a month if you are otherwise fit and healthy in order to receive Medicaid benefits.
	And why?
	You just get to be as lazy as a bum and sit around doing nothing and still receive Medicaid?
	Why?
	Why would that be?
	But that, of course, is what the media are pitching.
	Get to more on this in a moment.
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	There are some perks that are being added to the bill, including a so-called MAGA deposit for babies.
	We've talked about this before, the so-called MAGA account, Invest America.
	This is basically every baby born in the United States.
	It's a $1,000 trust fund, essentially.
	It is placed in an untouchable fund until they are 18 years old.
	That is linked.
	Or invested in the S&P 500, which means it grows over time.
	Which, by the way, I think should be used as an alternative to other forms of special benefit.
	How about we get rid of some of the other subsidies and we use that instead?
	That makes more sense.
	There's a $4,000 tax break for seniors.
	Medicaid work requirements, however, wouldn't kick in until 2029.
	Medicaid address checks, which is the states would have to verify the addresses of people enrolled in Medicaid.
	That wouldn't kick in until 2029.
	The GOP bill would force states to cover 5% to 25% of food aid costs under SNAP.
	That would kick in October 2027.
	Now again, states should be paying for this stuff generally.
	I'm not sure why the federal government should be paying for that as opposed to the state government.
	With that said, again, dragging this thing over the finish line is going to be difficult.
	There is danger here if the Republicans do not drag it over the finish line.
	Jamie Dimon.
	He says that recession is still very much on the table and pretending otherwise is quite silly.
	He's the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, of course.
	Look, I'm going to defer to economists who give it about a 50% chance.
	I think all these things are probably inflationary a little bit more and slowing down the economy.
	If there's a recession, I don't know how big it'll be or how long it'll last.
	Hopefully we'll avoid it, but I wouldn't take it off the table at this point.
	So, meanwhile, President Trump came home today.
	From the Middle East after a very successful round of negotiations and business dealings with Saudi, UAE, and Qatar.
	So first he went to Saudi Arabia where he cleared some $600 billion in deals.
	Then he went to Qatar where he cleared some $1.2 trillion in deals.
	Then he went to UAE where he cleared like $1.4 trillion in deals.
	So a lot of money supposed to come into the United States thanks to all of this.
	There's still some sort of open questions here as to what happens on the big outstanding issues in the Middle East that are not financial and commerce related.
	The biggest one, of course, is Iran.
	So, Saudi has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.
	Israel, of course, has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.
	UAE has an interest in the Iranian nuclear program not being there.
	Qatar, they're basically a cutout for Iran, so they're perfectly fine with an Iranian nuclear program, actually, which is one of the reasons that it's a little disquieting when President Trump praises Qatar for trying to broker an Iran deal.
	I mean, yes, because Qatar plays both sides.
	Again, treating all of these countries as though they are identical is very silly.
	UAE, Qatar, and Saudi, not the same.
	UAE and Saudi are completely aligned.
	Qatar is so unaligned with UAE and Saudi that they nearly went to war in 2017.
	Really?
	Here's President Trump paying homage to Qatar trying to broker the Iran deal.
	Iran is very lucky to have the Emir because he's actually fighting for them.
	He doesn't want us to do a vicious blow to Iran.
	He says, you can make a deal, you can make a deal.
	He's really fighting, and I really mean this.
	I think that Iran should say a big thank you to the Emir, because the Emir is fighting very much that we don't.
	I mean, at this point, you might want to ask yourself, if the Emir is fighting very hard for Iran, why are we taking a $400 million jet from him?
	There are always strings attached.
	Qatar is a country.
	With 2.6 million people living in it.
	By the way, not 2.6 million citizens.
	2.6 million people.
	Qatar's actual citizenry is somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000.
	The rest are foreign migrant workers and or slaves.
	Because modern slavery is a real thing in Qatar.
	Again, this kind of warm relationship we have with Qatar boggles the imagination.
	It really does.
	That's not saying that we shouldn't do business deals with them.
	It's not saying we shouldn't try to foster better relations with them.
	It is saying we should hold them accountable.
	Which is something that I hope President Trump...
	We'll certainly do.
	Meanwhile, President Trump yesterday made some more comments with regard to Iran, in which, again, it's unclear which way the administration is going to go.
	He issues warnings with regard to Iran, but the devil is in the detail with Iran always.
	There was a rumor yesterday that the Trump administration was proposing basically a three-year moratorium on all nuclear development with Iran, and then after that, the JCPOA.
	The answer to that is no, because if you leave it to the next person in office, who could theoretically be a Democrat, that just means Iran goes nuclear.
	That is basically just JCPOA, the Obama deal that Donald Trump called the worst deal in history, part two.
	And by the way, it is worth noting right now that Republicans have already united to fight a JCPOA, part two.
	There's a letter that was put out Wednesday, signed by every single GOP senator except for Rand Paul, naturally, and 177 House Republicans.
	The GOP members asked President Trump to explicitly reinforce the warnings that he and his officials in his administration have issued.
	That the regime must permanently give up any capacity for enrichment.
	That, of course, is the right perspective.
	Now, the thing that's being pitched to the Iranians or from the Iranians is something short of that.
	Iran has already said it won't do that.
	Here's President Trump talking about this yesterday.
	Iran wants to trade with us, okay, if you can believe that.
	And I'm okay with it.
	I'm using trade to settle scores and to make peace.
	But I've told Iran, we make a deal.
	You're going to be really, you're going to be very happy.
	But more than anything, I've told Iran very simply, because I heard somebody making my case last night on television.
	I didn't like it.
	Because they were saying, there's plenty of time.
	There's not plenty of time.
	There's not plenty of time.
	You feel urgency?
	Well, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon.
	And eventually they'll have a nuclear weapon.
	And then the discussion becomes a much different one.
	Okay, so again, I think President Trump does live in the world of reality.
	And so I do not think that he is going to make those sorts of concessions to the Iranians.
	I don't think he's going to be taken in by them.
	Now, again, the Iranians are very good at this game, like extremely good at this game.
	The phrase in the Middle East that's constantly used about Iran is that they never win a war or lose a peace, which seems to be about right.
	And the manipulations that Qatar is trying on behalf of Iran are quite dangerous, but I think President Trump understands that.
	And meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky, Heating President Trump's desire for him to go to Turkey to negotiate with Vladimir Putin without any sort of preliminary ceasefire.
	Zelensky was basically abandoned in Turkey then by Vladimir Putin.
	So Vladimir Putin did not, in fact, show up.
	Zelensky yesterday did show up in Ankara.
	Again, he was there to talk.
	And Putin didn't show because Putin has no desire for this war to end.
	He believes he can simply outlast the United States.
	The United States will get bored and withdraw support.
	And then he'll be able to do whatever he wants in Ukraine.
	Here was Zelensky talking about it yesterday.
	Do you have a message for Vladimir Putin?
	I'm here.
	I think this is a very clear message.
	Okay, so he said he was here.
	It was a message to Putin.
	President Trump, for his part, says nothing will happen until Putin and Trump get together.
	I'm not disappointed.
	What would I be disappointed?
	We just took in...
	Four trillion dollars, and he says, "Are you disappointed about a delegation?" I know nothing about a delegation.
	I haven't even checked.
	Look, nothing's gonna happen until Putin and I get together, okay?
	And obviously, he wasn't gonna go.
	He was gonna go, but he thought I was gonna go.
	He wasn't going if I wasn't there.
	And I don't believe anything's gonna happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together.
	But we're gonna have to get it solved, because too many people are dying.
	Okay, well, I hope that President Trump continues to put the pressure on Putin because Zelensky is doing what he wants.
	He brought Zelensky to the table.
	Zelensky's at the table.
	In fact, he's the only one at the table.
	Putin is not at the table as of yet.
	More pressure is going to obviously have to be applied.
	And Trump wasn't going to go to Turkey if Putin wasn't going.
	So he had a bit of a bizarre catch-22 where Putin, according to Trump, wasn't going to show up if Trump wasn't going to show up.
	Trump wasn't going to show up if Putin wasn't going to show up.
	So neither of them show up and Zelensky shows up.
	Again.
	The desire by Putin to get to the end of this is significantly lower than the desire by Zelensky and Ukraine to get to the end of this.
	And I think Putin knows that at this point.
	And meanwhile, speaking of problems in Eastern Europe and situations in Eastern Europe.
	So the country of Romania has an election coming up.
	Romania, you'll recall, did actually have an election.
	That election was invalidated last year, supposedly because of Russian interference in the election.
	So there is a Romanian government investigation alleging that the election in December of 2024 had been tilted toward a candidate named Kalin Georgescu, who is not particularly well known, but then he ended up winning.
	And the Romanian government decided to simply invalidate the election based on allegations of Russian interference.
	There's a problem, however, for that particular argument, which is that the current frontrunner, a man named George Simeon, He is probably going to win in the first round of the vote in Romania.
	So Georgescu was basically ruled out of order that they said he can't run.
	So he's been replaced by George Simeon.
	Simeon then won 40% of the vote.
	He is very, again, likely to win the presidency.
	We're joined on the line by George Nicolai Simeon.
	He, of course, is the frontrunner in the current Romanian election.
	He is the founder and current president of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians.
	Obviously, Romanian elections have been a point of significant political controversy over the course of the last few months.
	Mr. Simeon, thanks so much for joining the program.
	Really appreciate it.
	Thank you, Ben, for inviting me.
	I'm quite a fan.
	I've been following your podcasts, your shows, for 10 years, I think.
	And I can't believe I'm now the star of it.
	Well, thank you so much for joining us.
	So why don't we start with this?
	people who don't follow Romanian politics closely, they're not even sure what happened.
	There was an election, the election was kind of thrown out, and now you're the Basically, our establishment, our deep state, didn't like the guy who won the elections.
	They couldn't control him.
	So they had to make a decision and the decision was to annul the elections and to say there was some foreign interference with the electoral process.
	They didn't present any proof, no shred of evidence that this actually happened, because it didn't.
	It was just the will of the people.
	He took 22% of the votes in the first round and he was ready to win.
	To have a landslide victory in the second round.
	And when they saw that the smearing campaign against him, the mainstream media attacks are not working, that the people are not afraid, they said, okay, through the Constitutional Court in Romania, which is like a political instrument, it's made of politicians, not of real judges.
	They decided to annul the elections on the 6th of December.
	So we are facing an ongoing coup d 'etat.
	They said that we will have repeated elections.
	Mr. Georgescu had his dossier ready for the new elections.
	And at the end of March, they said, Mr. Georgescu cannot run.
	Why?
	Because he had some alleged pro-Russian opinions.
	So we say that he cannot run, just like the Ayatollahs in Iran, for example.
	So I'm running instead of him, I'm his substitute, so to say.
	And we have the popular support.
	We won big time in the first round on the 4th of May.
	And this Sunday we'll have the second round.
	And I should be elected if nothing happens.
	Nobody meddles with the elections.
	If we have fair and free elections, I should be the next Romanian president.
	So, obviously, because of all the accusations of Russian interference and all the rest, that's sort of top of the heap in terms of questions people are asking about Romania and your candidacy.
	What do you think the relationship between Romania, the EU, the United States, Russia, Ukraine.
	What should the position of Romania be in the ongoing war in Ukraine, especially considering the fact that obviously Romania borders Ukraine?
	Well, we have three strategic pillars at the basis of our security strategy.
	One is the membership of NATO, second membership of the European Union, and third, the strategic partnership with the US.
	You cannot have one without the other.
	We struggled a lot to exit the communist zone and to be part of the free world.
	We made lots of sacrifices.
	We actually supported quite a lot.
	We invested a lot in the war effort in Ukraine.
	It's clearly that the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
	It is something unimaginable for some in the Western world, for some who do not know how the Russians react, how they behave.
	But for us, it is very, very clear.
	As it is clear that this war must stop, we must have a ceasefire, a truce, and the peace negotiations that already started, like you saw in Istanbul earlier, must conclude.
	To a long-lasting peace.
	The only thing we can hope and pray is that President Trump will make new security guarantees from the Russians because they are a danger and not only for us, for all the region, for Romania, for Poland, for the Baltic states.
	So, aside from national security issues, there's been enormous amounts of pressure put on you and your party with regard to, say, traditional Judeo-Christian values, traditional biblical values.
	A lot of the same insults have been hurled that say Viktor Orban in Hungary have been hurled at you, hurled at your party.
	What's your perspective on the sorts of values that should be promulgated in Romania and why do you think there's been so much resistance to that?
	Well, if you are a Christian Orthodox, you are pro-Russian.
	If you love your country, you are a fascist.
	If you say even that Putin is a criminal and you respect Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, for example, they say, yeah, but Donald Trump is pro-Russian and he's a Russian spy.
	They would say anything in order to fight who we are, to fight our values.
	I formed five years ago.
	I was never involved in politics and I started from zero, a political party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, who stand on four pillars: Christian faith, love for our nation, natural family and freedom.
	So we are smeared, we are attacked by the mainstream media.
	They don't like really that we say that only a relationship between a man and a woman can give birth to a child.
	That we say it's not normal to mutilate small children and to have gender operation on small children.
	We say the Green Deal causes a lot of poverty in Europe and in the free world, while India, China and other countries are polluting and we are not having the result and we are not saving the planet, etc.
	You already know all the narrative.
	The only change is that this time we are winning.
	They were trying to isolate me.
	They were trying to say nobody is talking to me.
	But with the victory of Donald Trump with his second mandate, things are changing also in Europe.
	I formed the Make Europe Great Again movement in order to win more and more national governments on our side.
	And it's happening.
	This Sunday we'll have elections in Romania and Poland.
	I was two days ago in Poland to support the conservative candidate there, Karol Nawrotzki, who is the successor of Andrei Duda.
	And we will be in power in a short period in the EU institutions, in the European Council.
	This is our aim.
	And this is exactly why they are trying to meddle with elections.
	They are trying to annul elections.
	They are trying to ban candidates like Marine Le Pen in France and to consider ISD in Germany like an extremist organization.
	They only like the rule of law.
	And democracy only when it's suitable for them.
	When the tides are changing and people are voting conservative, they become what they are really about.
	Authoritarian dictators, totalitarian regimes.
	So obviously you have seen this massive populist upsurge in Europe.
	An enormous amount of that has been driven by the immigration issue.
	What is the immigration issue like in Romania?
	How much of that has mattered in this election cycle?
	It didn't matter because we are a poor country.
	We are a rich country from the point of view of resources because it's a popular subject now in Washington.
	I can tell you we have lots of rare earth.
	We have oil, we have natural gas both onshore and offshore in the Black Sea.
	We have basically all the elements in the Mendeleev table.
	But we are not benefiting from these minerals, so half of our active population is working abroad.
	But it is a subject in Western Europe where our Romanians live.
	So this is why we had about 65% of the votes in the Romanians living in Western Europe.
	I'm currently in Paris.
	I was earlier in Brussels and yesterday in Rome meeting with the Romanians that are working there.
	So it's like a phenomenon all over the 27 states of the European Union.
	Of course, we are against illegal migration.
	Of course, we are for respecting the law.
	Of course, we are for common sense.
	And our enemies are beginning to be...
	Disrespected and ignored by the population who is not manipulated anymore by the mainstream media and have X accounts, Facebook accounts, YouTube or TikTok accounts.
	The social media really helped to transform our society into a real democracy.
	Now, I don't even need to campaign anymore because the Romanians are doing their videos, are campaigning for us.
	So, Mr. Simeon, let's say that you become the elected leader of Romania.
	What do your first few actions look like?
	What do your first few months look like?
	What are your top priorities?
	Well, I'm running under a limited...
	Project to bring back democracy into Romania.
	I never believed this.
	I'm 38 years old.
	The Romanian revolution happened 35 years ago against the communists.
	Over 1,000 people died then for freedom and for democracy.
	And now it seems to be our duty to fight for democracy and freedom for the return to the constitutional order.
	Hoping that we will this time have validated elections.
	I will, of course, concentrate also on the economy, on reducing red tape, bureaucracy, and getting the private sector in power, because they are the people who generate prosperity.
	And this is my main focus, to work with foreign investors, to help our local businesses to manage to make Romania.
	Which is a great, great country to generate prosperity for its citizens.
	Well, that is George Nicolai Simeon.
	He, of course, is running for president of Romania.
	He's the current frontrunner, likely to be the future president of Romania.
	Sir, thanks so much for taking the time.
	Good luck in the elections.
	Thank you, Ben.
	Alrighty, folks, it's time to get into a segment.
	We are now calling The Takedown.
	Here's the deal.
	The left loves to put out monologue speeches, diatribes completely unchallenged, but not anymore.
	In Takedown, we're going head-to-head, breaking apart arguments piece-by-piece, exposing the contradictions, the logical fallacies, the outright nonsense.
	They've had their say.
	Now, it's my turn.
	Let's get to it.
	This is The Takedown.
	Alrighty, so, Ruben Gallego.
	He's the senator from Arizona who shouldn't be a senator from Arizona.
	Again, Republicans need to stop running bad candidates.
	You can't run Kerry Lake for every single seat ever, guys.
	Just stop it.
	Anyway.
	Ruben Gallego is now not just a senator from Arizona.
	He has presidential aspirations.
	He wants to run for president.
	He pretty openly is saying he wants to run for president.
	And so now he has presented a five-pillar plan on the border and immigration.
	And let's just say that this plan that he is presenting is at odds with some of the things that he has said in the past, and some of it's just bad.
	So here is Ruben Gallego explaining that our border and immigration systems are broken.
	Our border and immigration systems are broken.
	For decades, Congress has tried to take action, but at the end of the day, politics got in the way.
	We've seen the same chaos over and over.
	It's time to push forward and enact a plan that works.
	So where were you for several years there, man, dude?
	Like, really, where were you?
	I would like to know.
	You are a senator from Arizona.
	Arizona is one of the state's hardest hit by the border crisis.
	Went down to the border in Arizona and watched as...
	The entire border was unoccupied by anything remotely like Border Patrol, as Mexican drug cartel drones were flying above the American side of the border.
	We were there.
	We saw it.
	That was your statement, dude.
	And you were nowhere to be seen.
	Not only was he nowhere to be seen, by the way, if you go all the way back to 2017, Ruben Gallego was getting very angry when he was a representative at that point for Phoenix.
	He was getting very angry at the Trump administration for enforcing the law.
	So go back to 2017.
	And the DHS was ordering more aggressive enforcement of detainment and deportation laws for undocumented immigrants, according to azpbs.org.
	So what exactly did he say?
	He said, the new guidelines tell us one thing.
	The Trump administration is willing to go after just about any member of the immigrant community.
	Last week, ICE arrested a DACA recipient and continues to hold them in custody without showing sufficient cause for his detention.
	Now the administration releases guidelines that lay the groundwork for mass deportation and tries to sell it to the American people as business as usual.
	This is far from the truth.
	And he continued to complain.
	He suggested, quote, these are not the values our country was founded on.
	So he says that the border isn't a political talking point to him.
	I think that it is.
	I really, really think that it is.
	Our border isn't a political talking point to me.
	In cities like Yuma, Nogales and Douglas, Americans and Mexicans raise their kids, start businesses, and cross-border trade fuels our economy.
	But for these communities to thrive, we must have a secure border.
	As a Marine combat veteran, I'm serious about keeping this country safe and doing it without sacrificing our values.
	He is so serious about keeping our country safe.
	He's so serious that back in July of 2018, House Republicans passed a resolution in support of officers and staffers with ICE.
	The Senate did too.
	And you know who abstained from that vote, who decided not to actually vote for A resolution supporting ICE.
	That one.
	Ruben Gallego, who is then a representative, voted present on that particular resolution.
	So, yeah.
	Then he got to the actual point.
	He says he wants more Border Patrol agents.
	Okay, fine.
	I mean, sure.
	Then he says that he wants to reform the asylum system.
	Now, when he says he wants to reform the asylum system, what he means is he wants to make it much easier than it currently is under the Trump administration to grant asylum.
	He also...
	Wants to grant a broader pathway to citizenship for people.
	So what he really wants is a more open border, more regularized.
	And so there are sort of two issues when it comes to the southern border.
	One is people who are crossing the border between ports of entry illegally.
	The other is people who are showing up at ports of entry and wanting to enter the country, being given a sort of preliminary asylum ruling, being let into the interior and never showing up again.
	There is very little in what Ruben Gallego is saying that stops number two.
	In fact, it actually accelerates number two by basically saying we should have quick, fast asylum hearings and basically let people into the country.
	Also, pathway to citizenship for pretty much everybody who's here already.
	So amnesty.
	That's his argument.
	So yeah, solidify those borders, but amnesty everybody who's here.
	That does not sound like a moderate plan to me.
	Here's Ruben Gallego.
	We need to secure the southern border, reform our asylum system, expand legal pathways to citizenship, protect DREAMers, and tackle the reasons why people leave their homes in the first place.
	Anyone who tells you that we can't do it all is selling America short.
	We can't secure a border.
	We can't fix our immigration system.
	And we can do it in a way that is tough, fair, orderly, and humane.
	So what exactly is that way?
	So if you actually look at his 21-page plan for his new immigration system, remember this is important because he wants to run for president as a Democrat.
	And Democrats are going to pretend to be quasi-border hawks before opening the border wide again.
	So he says we need to make it easier for people to come to the United States legally, according to azluminaria.org.
	The plan calls for increasing the annual allotment of some visas and green cards and of removing or significantly increasing arbitrary per-country caps.
	He calls for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants brought to the United States as children.
	That's like at least three and a half million people.
	He also wants a pathway to citizenship for spouses of U.S. citizens who are in the country illegally.
	Joe Biden tried that last year.
	That would have covered like 600,000 more people.
	She's talking about 4 million people immediately given amnesty under Gallego's plan.
	Also, he wants to hire more asylum officers and give them the power to decide those cases.
	So he wants to cut back on asylum access during border surges, but by adding more asylum judges, do you really believe that he's not going to loosen the standards on asylum from what Trump is doing right now?
	Diego argues the United States needs to figure out why migrants are leaving their home countries in the first place and then address those problems.
	Okay, that may very well be true, but that is actually the responsibility of their home countries, not the responsibility of the United States, per se.
	Again, the game that Democrats are going to play now is they're going to pretend to be border hawks because they recognize that across the globe, open borders is not a popular position.
	They understand that.
	And so now they're going to try to cosplay as tough on immigration.
	Border hawks.
	Ruben Gallego is not that.
	He has never been that.
	Pretending otherwise is simply silly.
	Okay, meanwhile, the Democrat resistance is not going particularly well.
	They have yet to find sort of the talking point that they wish to hit upon.
	Bruce Springsteen tried his best.
	They wheeled him out.
	He's like Joe Biden, except he quasi sings.
	Bruce Springsteen is currently 75 years old.
	And, you know, I gotta say, I was never a Springsteen fan.
	I understand.
	I understand that a lot of people love him.
	All right, whatever.
	But he is now going around talking about how Trump is treasonous.
	In my home, the America I love, the America I've written about.
	That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.
	Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.
	Okay, where's Robert De Niro?
	We're just going to bring out the octogenarian Democrats to try and lead the resistance.
	Good luck on that one.
	Speaking of old Democrats, Chuck Schumer says that Trump is a dictator as well.
	Why?
	Because he does not like offshore wind farms.
	These people are beyond parody.
	They're beyond parody.
	Trump gave them an absolute political gift with this whole Qatar jet thing.
	They're off it within like three days.
	It's unbelievable.
	Instead, they're like, ah, he's probably a dictator because, you know, offshore wind.
	Yes, this is what the blue-collar man and woman in America cares about, is that Trump doesn't like wind farms.
	Donald Trump hates offshore wind.
	He hates offshore wind because supposedly years ago they built a wind farm off the coast of his Scotland golf course.
	He fought to kill it.
	He lost.
	So now he's taking it out on all offshore wind to the detriment of the American energy.
	In a way, it's like a dictatorship.
	In a way, it is like a dictatorship.
	Yeah, because the wind farms, oh my God, they are so incompetent.
	Maybe Trump will be president forever.
	Maybe Trump 2028 isn't.
	I don't know.
	I mean, you guys are so bad at this.
	Truthfully, awful at this.
	Already, it's a Friday.
	That means it's time for some culture talk.
	So, I have some culture updates.
	First of all, There is a person named Lord.
	I say person because this person who is a woman wishes to suggest that she is not, in fact, a woman.
	When asked by Chapel Roan, another woman who pretends that she's not a woman.
	I don't know what's so bad about being a woman that women don't want to just be it.
	And why is Chapel Roan trying to run away from being a woman?
	And apparently so is Lord.
	Not like L-O-R-D-E.
	I don't know what the E does.
	It's silent.
	And apparently Chapel Roan asked Lord if she was non-binary.
	Which is not a thing.
	There's no such thing as a non-binary person.
	There are intersex people, but there's no such thing as a person who is non-binary.
	It's a made-up nonsense term for trash, for stupid, for people who have some sort of deep desire for attention that they cannot earn any other way, apparently.
	Lorde said, quote, I'm a woman except for the days when I'm a man.
	Well, that's interesting.
	Does she randomly grow up?
	How does that work, precisely?
	Apparently, Lorde said her idea of gender began to change in 2023.
	So, I'm just going to point out at this point that Lorde is 28 years old.
	Her idea of her gender began to change when she was, according to her, 26. Uh, that, what?
	Hmm.
	I feel like that's not a biological imperative then.
	If I'm going to be given this line that all of this is just part of, it's all baked into the cake.
	Born this way, baby, in the words of Lady Gaga.
	If that's the take, then you don't get to claim that you randomly changed your mind about your gender when you were trying on a pair of men's jeans in 2023.
	That's what she says.
	She says she tried on a pair of men's jeans and sent the photo to her collaborator, Jim E. Stack.
	I say Jim E because the name is spelled Jim hyphen capital E, not Jimmy.
	Jim E, like wall E. Apparently, he's some sort of Disney robot.
	He responded, I want to see the U that's in this picture represented in the music.
	Then, while writing one of the songs that appeared on an album called Man of the Year, she said she tried to visualize how her gender felt in that moment, dressed in men's jeans with duct tape on her chest, similar to her Met Gala look this year.
	These people are very well.
	Very, very well.
	Probably we should let them.
	Promulgate culture and decency to your children.
	Now, that seems to be the thing that matters the most.
	That's just, that's great.
	Okay, so what did we learn?
	We learned there are a lot of mentally ill people in the performing arts is one of the things that we learned.
	Now, speaking of people in the performing arts, we have some updates on Halle Berry.
	I know you haven't heard that name for a while, but apparently, Cannes Film Festival Has now issued a new dress code forbidding voluminous outfits and nudity from the red carpet and theaters.
	By the way, I have the same exact rules at our dinner table.
	No voluminous outfits and also no nudity at the dinner table.
	And mostly it works except for the two-year-old.
	The fact that you have to make these rules for, you know, grown-ass adults is pretty impressive.
	Apparently, according to an article that is available at MSNBC, Given the cultural reorientation toward conservatism across the Western world, especially in America, this new dress code reeks of control.
	That reeks of control.
	Okay.
	Apparently, it was at least in part a reaction to Bianca Sensori's viral moment on the Grammys red carpet in February where she and her Nazi husband showed up and then she just took off all her clothes.
	So that's great.
	And apparently, this had something to do with Halle Berry because Halle Berry has worn stuff, I guess, that is either voluminous or contains nudity.
	Before I even get to this, do you remember what Halle Berry was in last?
	I remember I saw her, I feel like, in one of the John Wick movies.
	So, you know what, I'm going to ask our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity.
	Yes, I am correct about that.
	So, John Wick chapter 3, she was in it.
	It was kind of weird.
	But she hasn't been in a lot recently.
	She was in the X-Men series.
	You'll recall where she played Tulsi Gabbard.
	Sorry, Storm.
	And then she was in Monsters Ball, where she won Academy Award for Best Actress.
	That's when Billy Bob Thornton was, that was kind of his first round being a thing.
	She was in Die Another Day playing Jinx Johnson.
	That's why they, as we'll see, they asked her about James Bond, which is kind of interesting.
	And yeah, that was kind of it.
	You know, it's been a checkered career, shall we say.
	Some hits, a lot of misses.
	But that wasn't the only Halle Berry story.
	Apparently.
	Halle Berry did something.
	We have a good Halle, bad Halle.
	We need the Trump music here.
	We have good Halle, bad Halle and Con.
	So she said something that is true, which is that James Bond should never be a woman.
	Again, I love the fact that we have to say the perfectly obvious now because apparently it's very controversial to say the perfectly obvious.
	I don't know if 007 really should be a woman.
	I mean, you know, in 2025, it's nice to say, oh, she should be a woman, but...
	I don't really know if I think that's the right thing to do.
	And no, I doubt there'll be a jinx spinoff.
	There was a time that that could have happened, probably should have happened.
	I would have loved for that to happen.
	But I think that time has passed.
	That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard, that there was a time when it should have happened.
	Of course it shouldn't have happened that way because men and women are different.
	Again, I provide you with the perfect example of why this is the case.
	The reason that James Bond...
	is an interesting and cool character.
	One of the reasons is because since the inception of the James Bond character, he can talk any woman he meets into bed, right?
	This is just a reality of the character.
	It's not me saying it.
	This is what the character is.
	So there is a widespread perception that that is like a difficult thing to do.
	And what makes James Bond uniquely charming, suave, and persuasive is that he can do that.
	He can get beautiful women into bed with him.
	You know what we call a woman who can get any man into bed with her?
	A woman.
	That's what we call a woman who can get any man into bed with her, basically.
	Because it turns out the male sex drive and the female sex drive are not the same.
	And there is science to prove this.
	This is not me just speaking anecdotally.
	This is scientific.
	Scientifically speaking, they have done studies.
	This is actually my favorite social science study.
	There is a couple of professors and what they did is they had a beautiful woman walk through a bar and proposition a bunch of men.
	I said to them, listen, I don't want to have a relationship with you.
	I'm not interested in the quick jibber jabber.
	Let's just go back to my place.
	And nearly 100% of the men in the bar said yes.
	Nearly 100%.
	The only ones who said no, it was because they had an other appointment or because they were married and they had to get home.
	And those were the only reasons.
	Everyone else in the bar said yes.
	Then they repeated the experiment, except they had a man go into a bar and do the same thing.
	The man would go up to him and say, listen, I don't want to mess around here.
	Let's just go back to my place.
	His hit rate was zero.
	Zero.
	Because it turns out that men and women do not approach sex the same way.
	So if James Bond, one of his major appeals, is that, well, then it doesn't work the same way if he's a chick.
	The same thing, by the way, also happens to be true in, I know that it's a now famous Hollywood idiocy, that women can beat up very large men.
	And it's in the Bond movies, right?
	You'll see Anna De Armas beating up guys who are like four times her size.
	And it's ridiculous.
	And actually, when you watch these sort of stunt scenes, the preparation for the scenes where Ana de Armas is beating up these giant men, you can tell how ridiculous it is.
	They add all sorts of sound effects and they move the camera in different ways.
	They add velocity to her movements in order to make it look as though she can really beat the hell out of it.
	Ana de Armas is a tiny person.
	Ana de Armas is her height.
	She is 5 '6".
	She might weigh.
	Like, I don't know what Ana de Armas' weight is.
	It cannot be particularly high.
	I would bet that Ana de Armas weighs no more than 125 pounds soaking wet.
	I don't care who you are.
	If you are a 125 pound woman and you are going up against a 220 pound man, you're done.
	You're finished.
	It's why there are weight classes among men.
	It's why you don't have a lightweight fighting Mike Tyson.
	Because that would be idiotic.
	So, can you make James Bond a 125-pound beautiful woman and it be the same character?
	Of course not.
	Okay, so Halle Berry is right about that.
	But then we got to Halle Berry being a weirdo because we have to.
	So, it was Mother's Day, which means it was time for Halle Berry to pose nude with her paramour talking about lubrication.
	Oh, goody gumdrops.
	Jojo, how my day started.
	How my Mother's Day started.
	And now, I'm going to tell you about, I'm not going to show you, I'm going to tell you about how my mother's day is going to end.
	Isn't that right, man?
	Yes.
	I wish you'd hurry up, too.
	First of all, we got our Let's Spin, because Let's Spin just came out in this cute little travel size.
	And so since we're in Cannes, France, I travel with it for the first time.
	And we're about to give it a spin.
	You about to can revamp.
	Happy Mother's Day once again, everybody.
	I hope all of you are somewhere spinning.
	Oh my god, I ain't never been so happy to have Mother's Day come to an end.
	Well, as it is Mother's Day, I hope that her two children really revel in that Mother's Day video and really enjoy it.
	Because there's nothing children love better on Mother's Day than to hear their parents talk about lubrication publicly in bed.
	With her new boyfriend.
	Pretty solid stuff there.
	That's great.
	That's just great.
	All right.
	Well, that's the thing that's happening in all of our lives, apparently.
	Already, coming up, we'll get to the latest on Scandal Biden.
	Yes, it turns out that everybody knew, but everybody pretended they didn't know.
	Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
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