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DOJ Targets Fed Chair?
00:06:48
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| The Trump DOJ seems to be targeting Fed chair Jerome Powell. | ||
| What's going on with that? | ||
| Plus, we're joined by a vice admiral to talk about the latest in Iran and a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security to explain what ICE is doing in Minnesota. | ||
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| Well, everyone in the world of economics and in the markets is talking about President Trump's DOJ going after Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman. | ||
| Now, again, Jerome Powell is leaving the Fed chairmanship next year anyway. | ||
| And not only that, he is leaving the Federal Reserve entirely in January of 2028. | ||
| So it's somewhat confusing as to why the DOJ is going after Jerome Powell if all they have on him is that there are cost overruns in the rebuilding and reconstruction of the Federal Reserve building. | ||
| Nonetheless, the controversy is hot and heavy today. | ||
| According to the Wall Street Journal, for years, a Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell responded to President Trump's broad size in ways that generally avoided escalation. | ||
| That changed on Sunday night. | ||
| In an extraordinary two-minute video message, Powell accused the administration of using the threat of criminal prosecution to pressure the Fed into lowering rates. | ||
| He framed the Justice Department investigation as nothing less than a head-on challenge to the Fed's ability to operate free of political control. | ||
| And of course, he is not the first Federal Reserve Board member to be targeted by the DOJ. | ||
| Lisa Cook has also been targeted by the DOJ over supposedly misfiling her mortgage forms, falsifying that it was a second mortgage when it was actually a first mortgage or whatever the case is. | ||
| The point that Powell is making is that it's kind of weird that the only people who seem to be cropping up in the DOJ list of people to investigate are people who are opposed to President Trump's agenda, which is lowering those interest rates. | ||
| Now, as I've said before, artificially low interest rates are not a good thing. | ||
| I understand that we've lived with those for a very long time in the United States. | ||
| It's why everybody has a 3.5% mortgage. | ||
| But the reality is that the interest rate, if it were allowed to free flow, if it were allowed to float where it should be, would actually ensure less uncredit worthiness in the market. | ||
| It would prevent speculation. | ||
| It would allow the market to naturally follow its ebbs and flows rather than creating these gigantic bubbles, which then pop. | ||
| And a lower interest rate said by the Federal Reserve right now, which effectively injects money into the supply, creates more speculative bubbles. | ||
| Right now, we may already be in a speculative bubble with regard to AI, which we'll get to in a little while. | ||
| And so lowering those interest rates as a matter of policy, I'm not sure it's so wise. | ||
| But even if you were to think that the interest rates should be lowered, the reality is that political pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower the interest rates is going to create enormous schisms in the economy. | ||
| It's going to make people feel as though the central bank of the United States is operating with political motives in mind, purely political motives in mind, and that the interest rates actually are artificially low, not because the Federal Reserve is getting it wrong, but because of political pressure. | ||
| And once that happens, once monetary policy becomes a pure tool of whichever party is in power, you start to have a real problem because you can deflate your way out of problems, inflate your way into problems. | ||
| And there are downstream effects to all of this for the American people. | ||
| This, by the way, is why I am a devotee of the Austrian School of Economics, which suggests a modified gold standard, not the Federal Reserve sitting there and either printing dollars or buying bonds off the market or injecting liquidity into the system by offering lower interest rates in the overnight markets. | ||
| Apparently, subpoenas arrived late on Friday. | ||
| Powell, a lawyer by training, spent the weekend huddling with his advisors, weighing how to respond. | ||
| A criminal investigation of a sitting chair is without precedent. | ||
| Powell's message was, too, according to the Wall Street Journal, by going public, Powell was making sure that pressure applied in private couldn't stay private. | ||
| The decision to disclose the investigation appeared to reflect a belief that the public should know what was unfolding. | ||
| The threat of prosecution of a sitting Fed chair would be material information for investors or anyone else trying to understand the forces shaping interest rate deliberations. | ||
| Now, President Trump is claiming he didn't know about the DOJ subpoenas and that any criminal investigation would not be related to disagreements that the White House actually had with Powell over the interest rates. | ||
| And a lot of allies of the president are not particularly happy about all of this. | ||
| They see this as needlessly chaotic. | ||
| According to Politico, a growing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill are expressing unease with the DOJ's move to investigate Jerome Powell. | ||
| According to House Financial Services Chair French Hill of Arkansas, he said that this creates an unnecessary distraction that could undermine this and future administration's ability to make sound monetary policy decisions. | ||
| Quote, I've known Chairman Powell since we worked together at Treasury during the George H.W. Bush administration. | ||
| Then as now, I know Mr. Powell to be a man of integrity with a strong commitment to public service. | ||
| While over the years we've had our policy disagreements, I found him to be forthright, candid, and a person of the highest integrity. | ||
| Senator Kevin Kramer, Republican of North Dakota, called Powell a bad Fed chair who has been elusive with Congress, especially regarding the overruns of the elaborate renovations of the building. | ||
| I do not believe, however, he is a criminal. | ||
| Again, Kramer is a strong ally of President Trump. | ||
| He said, I hope this criminal investigation can be put to rest quickly along with the remainder of Jerome Powell's term. | ||
| We need to restore confidence in the Fed. | ||
| Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who, again, is a sort of purple-y senator. | ||
| She tends to vote more often with the Democrats. | ||
| She wrote that the administration's investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion and added: if the DOJ believes an investigation into Chair Powell is warranted based on project cost overruns, which aren't unusual, then Congress needs to investigate the DOJ. | ||
| The stakes are too high to look the other way. | ||
| If the Federal Reserve loses its independence, the stability of our markets and the broader economy will suffer. | ||
| And again, this sort of stuff is not salutary for Republican chances in the midterms. | ||
| It isn't. | ||
| What Americans are looking for right now is a feeling of solidity. | ||
| They want to feel as though things are moving in the right direction, that they are not standing on shifting sands all the time. | ||
| And what the polling shows right now is that people are increasingly not just moving away from Republicans, they're moving away from both parties, actually. | ||
| Brand new Gallup polling shows 45% of Americans, the highest in recorded history, now identify as political independents. | ||
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Millennials Identify as Independent
00:02:22
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| Now, that doesn't mean they're not voting Republican or Democrat. | ||
| It means they do not identify with either party as sort of a point of pride. | ||
| In most years since Gallup began recording these statistics since 1988, independents have been the largest political group, but that percentage has been skyrocketing since about 2005. | ||
| In 2005, the American public was split 33, 33, 33, essentially. | ||
| Today, almost half say they are political independents at this point. | ||
| And again, if you look at how people are identifying by cohort, what you see is that Gen Zers are identifying as independent overwhelmingly at 56%, Democrat 27, Republican, 17. | ||
| Millennials are identifying as independent 54%, 24% Democrat, 21% Republican. | ||
| Gen X identifies 31% Republican, 42% Independent, 25% Democrat. | ||
| And it's really only as people get older that they stop identifying nearly as much as independent. | ||
| When it comes to how they are leaning, Republican independent leaners about 15% of the population, but Democrat-leaning independents represent 20%. | ||
| So again, if you add up the Democratic identifiers with the Democratic-leaning independents, they're currently at 47% of the electorate. | ||
| For Republicans, that statistic is 42%. | ||
| So again, the numbers are not looking amazing for Republicans here. | ||
| With that said, When it comes to identifying ideologically, a plurality of Americans say they identify as conservative, followed by 33% of moderate. | ||
| There is a rising percentage. | ||
| 28% identify as liberal or very liberal. | ||
| So if there is movement, that movement is actually in the direction of liberal to very liberal at this point. | ||
| More on this in a moment. | ||
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| So Republicans are running in choppy waters for sure. | ||
| And the president injecting, I would say, needless chaos into the economic system is not a great idea, particularly because, again, there are a lot of indicators that things are going pretty well. | ||
| CNN reported, for example, that the mortgage rates have now dropped below 6%. | ||
| Again, that's not 3.5%, but it's certainly well below the 8% or 9% that seemed to be the rule of the day during the Biden administration. | ||
| Mortgage rates on Friday fell below 6% for the first time in years. | ||
| And this comes after the president ordered his quote-unquote representatives to begin buying $200 billion worth of mortgage bonds. | ||
|
unidentified
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What are you hearing about this move? | |
| So at first, we actually did see yields coming down. | ||
|
Rental Supply Shifts
00:07:09
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unidentified
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And that's exactly what the administration wanted. | |
| And it was interesting because the bond markets sort of waited a bit to fuss out how they felt about this. | ||
| And then you had investors coming in and saying, okay, let's move REIPS down. | ||
| But then after this Powell investigation dropped over the weekend, we have the exact opposite effect happening. | ||
| The market has already undone all of the good of lower rates that happened off the back of that $200 billion mortgage bond purchase announcement. | ||
| Now, with that said, again, mortgage rates being lower is a good thing. | ||
| It means that people can get a mortgage more easily. | ||
| Meanwhile, it turns out that as we've been noting, there's been a lot of talk about affordability. | ||
| And one of the things that I have been pushing for a while, and that, of course, has now been taken out of context repeatedly, is the idea that rents are not the same everywhere. | ||
| Rents are not the same in Manhattan as they are in Austin, Texas. | ||
| And it seems that actually a bunch of the Sunbelt cities, the rents have not only been coming down, even with regards to, say, luxury apartments, rents have been coming down and concessions have been going up. | ||
| According to the Wall Street Journal, about 54% of rentals in the Phoenix metro area are giving tenants at least one month off their rent. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Well, because builders saw that there was a movement in population into Phoenix and those evil, terrible corporations then built a bunch of luxury apartments. | ||
| And then fewer people than expected showed up and then the rents went down. | ||
| See how that works? | ||
| When you increase the supply and the demand stabilizes, then the price goes down. | ||
| I know, shocking. | ||
| The renter-friendly environment in Phoenix is a symptom of the city's enormous glut of high-end apartments. | ||
| Developers flooded the Sunbelt with new luxury buildings and flashy amenities during the pandemic years when droves of remote workers were moving in. | ||
| That led to a record surge of new apartments hitting the market. | ||
| Now there aren't enough renters to fill them. | ||
| Places like Denver and Charlotte, North Carolina are similarly oversupplied. | ||
| By the way, you will notice that some of those places, like Charlotte, particularly, are actually heavily corporate owned. | ||
| We were told that those corporations owning apartment buildings was bad, but the rents are going down. | ||
| There's not a correlation between corporate ownership and rents going up. | ||
| It all depends on the amount of supply injected into the system, particularly if people in corporations, for example, are buying up houses that were owned by others and then renting them out. | ||
| That now is a piece of rental supply. | ||
| Landlords struggling to fill their empty apartments use concessions as a way to draw more tenants without having to cut their baseline prices. | ||
| The renters effectively end up paying a lower rent. | ||
| Landlords prefer that upfront discount because it's a more temporary hit and allows them to maintain the advertised value of the property for lenders and investors. | ||
| But Phoenix rents have been falling steadily. | ||
| And again, it is not just Phoenix. | ||
| The other cities that are offering major concessions, exactly where you would think. | ||
| Phoenix, Denver, Charlotte, Austin, San Antonio, Raleigh, North Carolina, Jacksonville, Florida, Tampa, Florida, Nashville, and Las Vegas. | ||
| You notice where you're not seeing a lot of that stuff? | ||
| LA, New York, precisely the places where we are told that nobody should ever move. | ||
| You should stay there. | ||
| And rent control will fix the problem for you. | ||
| So again, there are good indicators here that people are going to be able to achieve more affordable lifestyles, particularly if they are living in red areas in red states. | ||
| Meanwhile, Kevin Hassett, chairman of the National Council of Economic Advisors, he says that we are looking at possibly 5% GDP growth in Q4, which is astonishing. | ||
| Bottom line, right now, I'm looking at the output numbers, and we got GDP now north of 5% in the fourth quarter after 2-4% the previous quarter. | ||
| So I think you got to say that Trump policies are really working. | ||
|
unidentified
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They're really working. | |
| And they're working because they're onshoring production. | ||
|
unidentified
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They're causing factories to build. | |
| And in the fullness of time, I expect that to cause a job blowout in the second half of next year, especially. | ||
| Now, again, I do not think that the reason that the Trump economy is working is because of, say, the tariffs. | ||
| I think the Trump economy is working because we maintain the same tax rates. | ||
| We did not upset the apple cart. | ||
| We've cut regulations in a pretty marked way. | ||
| And again, populations are moving from non-business-friendly areas like California to significantly more business-friendly areas like, say, Texas and Florida. | ||
| Meanwhile, the home building costs are going to come down. | ||
|
unidentified
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They will. | |
| This is a point being made by former Senator Kristen Sinema. | ||
| She was a Democrat who turned independent. | ||
| She points out that as AI kicks in, as robotics kicks in, the cost on building a home is going to drop pretty markedly, which of course is true. | ||
| So there are about eight or so companies in the country that are using AI robots to build homes. | ||
| You're going to see those start deploying out this year. | ||
| We're reducing the cost of homebuilding by up to 40%. | ||
| That's going to make a huge difference for middle-class Americans. | ||
| Part of this is part of a bigger story, which is that the middle class has been moving into the upper middle class for years on end. | ||
| This, of course, is a point being made by the Wall Street Journal editorial board. | ||
| And this has been true for a long time. | ||
| According to Stephen Rose and Scott Winchip, most studies purporting to find a shrinking middle class in America are prone to a variety of measurement and analytical problems. | ||
| The biggest is the difficulty of defining a middle class. | ||
| Instead, Rose and Winchip said an absolute marker for different income groups based on multiples of the federal poverty level in 2024. | ||
| So, for example, for families of three, poor is a household income below 40 grand. | ||
| The core middle class would be incomes from 67 grand to 133 grand. | ||
| Upper middle class would be incomes up to 400 grand. | ||
| Then they use that inflation data to calibrate those thresholds for previous years going back to 1979. | ||
| Measured in that way, the story of the past 50 years is steady progress out of the core middle class and into the upper middle class. | ||
| The share of families in that core middle class has declined to 30.8% in 2024 from 35.5% in 1979. | ||
| But so have the proportions in the poor and lower middle class cohorts. | ||
| The upper middle class has exploded. | ||
| Only 10.4% of people in 1979 were in the upper middle class. | ||
| Now, that is nearly one-third of families. | ||
| For the first time in American history, according to Rose and Winchip, more families in 2024 were above the core middle class threshold, 35%, than below it. | ||
| Now, again, doesn't mean we don't have cost overruns and cost problems, particularly in heavily regulated blue areas. | ||
| But the notion that the American economy has been failing everybody is clearly untrue on a fundamental level. | ||
| Meanwhile, we are seeing some consolidation in the AI industry. | ||
| This is kind of interesting because you could see a world where this does lead to the bubble bursting, as we were discussing a little bit earlier. | ||
| Well, we are also seeing a consolidation inside the AI industry. | ||
| So a fascinating story out today. | ||
| Apparently, Apple has now chosen Google's Gemini to power Siri. | ||
| So that'll make Siri a hell of a lot better. | ||
| It also means that Gemini now has a leg up. | ||
| Gemini is incredible. | ||
| It's in heavy competition with ChatGPT right now as the best AI chatbot that is available today, the best LLM available today. | ||
| Gemini seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. | ||
| Well, if, let's say, Gemini were to out-compete OpenAI so thoroughly that OpenAI were to start to fall apart, that could have some knock-on effects to the broader economy. | ||
|
Chaos Surrounding ICE
00:14:10
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| Doesn't mean that AI is a bubble. | ||
| Does mean that there are certain competitors who could theoretically lose. | ||
| When competitors lose and there's a consolidation in the market, depends if there's bleedover to other companies as well. | ||
| So we'll definitely be keeping an eye on that. | ||
| Meanwhile, the other big story of the day, of course, is the continuation of chaos surrounding what's going on with ICE. | ||
| Obviously, the anger is palpable in places like Minneapolis. | ||
| People don't believe they're breaking the law, even when they're breaking the law. | ||
| If you get in the way of ICE officials who are attempting to pursue a federal operation, you are, in fact, violating federal law and you will get yourself into hot water. | ||
| According to the Washington Post, they say they're monitoring ICE arrests. | ||
| Feds say they are breaking the law. | ||
| They're talking here about a lot of these sort of ICE watch groups. | ||
| The fatal shooting of Renee Goode last week, says the Washington Post, as ICE officers and residents faced off on a residential street here has brought new attention to these sorts of activities. | ||
| Federal court rulings say citizens can observe and record police activity in public areas as part of their First Amendment rights. | ||
| Many of the observers are doing nothing more than that. | ||
| But as officers and agents employ aggressive tactics, some activists have blown whistles to warn community members of approaching law enforcement, tried to follow immigration enforcement vehicles or use their own cars to block the roadways that enters murkier legal territory. | ||
| Some legal experts said such behavior could, in theory, justify obstruction of justice charges. | ||
| Well, that's particularly true if you're taking your car and literally blocking ICE agents from getting to the place they need to be. | ||
| Officials throughout the Department of Homeland Security are vowing to prosecute anybody who interferes with an operation or endangers an officer. | ||
| Joining us on the line to discuss is Tricia McLaughlin. | ||
| She's assistant secretary for public affairs for Homeland Security. | ||
| Thanks so much for taking the time. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
| Ben, thank you for having me. | ||
| So first of all, why don't you explain, for people who've only been watching the legacy media coverage, why don't you explain exactly what the Department of Homeland Security is doing with these sort of large-scale ICE deportation operations? | ||
| Who are they targeting? | ||
| Which are the people that they're going after? | ||
| We are targeting the worst, the worst criminal legal aliens. | ||
| Ben, we know at least 20 million criminal legal aliens came into this country over the last four years alone. | ||
| So really our top priority are these gang members, our murderers, our child. | ||
| You know, I just see the reports every single day. | ||
| They come into a piece of paper on my office. | ||
| And what we've seen is just flabbergasting as far as the number of criminals who have been allowed to walk around with impunity in this country. | ||
| There's been over a thousand known or suspected terrorists that we've arrested in the last year, 3,500 members of Trende Aragua that we've arrested. | ||
| And there's plenty more who are out there. | ||
| And that's why we have been flooding the zone to get these individuals out of our country. | ||
| So how necessary is it to quote unquote flood the zone? | ||
| So obviously the ICE operation has been incredibly visible. | ||
| That means that you have groups that are well-funded like ICE Watch, for example, who are showing up to obstruct ICE operations. | ||
| You know, I think that formerly the ineffective operations pursued by non-Trump administrations during my lifetime have been kind of low visibility operations by ICE. | ||
| Certainly what we're watching now is significantly more visible. | ||
| Is it necessary for ICE to be as visible as they're being in pursuing these operations? | ||
| Well, I think we should take a step back and talk about what a sanctuary city means. | ||
| So when we're talking about Minneapolis, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and we call them sanctuary cities. | ||
| What exactly does that mean? | ||
| A, it means that these sanctuary city politicians are harboring these criminal legal aliens, but B, it also means that our law enforcement is not permitted to work with them. | ||
| And C, and this is the most important part, I think, for your audience, is that that means ICE law enforcement is not allowed into the jails. | ||
| So if Chicago picks up a criminal legal alien, maybe they picked up somebody who was convicted of and that person is in their jail. | ||
| They're not allowed to release them to ICE or coordinate their eventual release to ICE for eventual deportation. | ||
| What happens is that person will serve a certain amount of time, then they'll be released back onto the streets. | ||
| So the reason that we have such a large law enforcement presence is because we can't go into those jails to target those criminals. | ||
| And so we have to really sweep the city and target them in place using intelligence, using our case analysis, and make sure that we're going after these individuals. | ||
| So when we look at the sort of thing that's been happening in Minnesota, where you have people suggesting that ICE is engaged in state-sponsored terrorism or that ICE is the Gestapo, what was the exact operation that was happening in Minnesota for people unfamiliar? | ||
| So we've arrested in just the last five weeks alone 2,000 illegal aliens. | ||
| That includes multiple, I would say scores. | ||
| In fact, multiple murders, a known and suspected terrorists, multiple gang members. | ||
| But we also, in Minneapolis itself, of course, we've seen a scourge of fraud, $9 billion, but we think that that's just the tip of the iceberg. | ||
| So, our Homeland Security investigators are on the ground there. | ||
| We've had about 300. | ||
| They're not doing immigration enforcement. | ||
| They're really looking at this fraud and white-collar crime. | ||
| In addition, we have about 1,000-plus ERO, which is ICE enforcement, those members on the ground who are really sweeping the city there. | ||
| And as well, we are also doing immigration fraud, high-level investigations with USCIS, which is the arm of DHS that gives out visas, gives out green cards, but also does audits for fraud, like we're seeing in Minneapolis. | ||
| So, obviously, enormous eyeballs on this Renee Good situation, which I think everyone can agree, regardless of your interpretation of the situation, is tragic, but that has nothing to do with whether the officer who was involved did anything wrong. | ||
| The only question from a legal perspective with regard to the officer is whether he had the objectively reasonable view that he was about to be hit by a car. | ||
| And since he, in fact, was hit by a car in the process of shooting the defendant, the person who was killed, that seems to be dispositive from a purely legal level. | ||
| Why do you think this is blown up this way? | ||
| Well, I think that everyone's going into their different camps and instead of waiting and looking at the true facts on the ground, of course, immigration enforcement is polarizing, particularly to those on the left. | ||
| But the truth of the matter is, this was the mandate that President Trump was given when he was elected into office. | ||
| The American people saw that crime was surging. | ||
| If you look at Minneapolis alone, since Governor Walls became governor, homicides in Minneapolis have increased 50%. | ||
| But I think when you look at this particular incident, of course, any loss of life is tragic. | ||
| And we pray for the deceased and her family. | ||
| But what happened leading up to this, those facts are incredibly important. | ||
| At 10.25 a.m. Central Time on Wednesday, January 7th, what happened was this individual, she had been impeding and blocking in our ICE law enforcement officers. | ||
| She had been doing that throughout the day, obstructing lawful operations, which Ben, as you know, that is a felony. | ||
| At one point, our ICE law enforcement officers then approached her vehicle and said to get out of the car. | ||
| She was going to be under arrest. | ||
| And they commanded her to stop obstructing operations. | ||
| That's when she would not obey those lawful commands. | ||
| That's when we see in the video, the law enforcement officer is in front of her. | ||
| She hits the gas, and he was in fear of his own life. | ||
| And he was in fear of the law enforcement who are around him. | ||
| She used, she weaponized her vehicle. | ||
| She used it as a deadly weapon. | ||
| And our officer, he responded as his training instructs him to do. | ||
| And unfortunately, there was a loss of life here, but our officer, he conducted himself in the way he should have, and he did save his own life. | ||
| So what do you make of, you know, again, major Democrats who are coming out and comparing ICE to the Gestapo, suggesting that we are living now under the predations of police state and vowing that they're going to try to impede ICE operations themselves? | ||
| You've seen those sorts of claims being made by top-level Democratic politicians. | ||
| Well, they're clearly legally illiterate because ICE, CBP, and other DHS law enforcement, they are conducting these operations with the law behind them. | ||
| If people don't like ICE enforcing the rule of law, which is what our men and women are doing every single day, these politicians should change the law or they can lobby Congress to change the law, but continuing to demonize and vilify our law enforcement. | ||
| You're going to see more incidents like this because people who are either brainwashed or lunatics are going to take matters into their own hands. | ||
| We've already seen these vehicles be routinely and perpetually weaponized against our law enforcement. | ||
| We have a 1,000% increase in assaults against law enforcement. | ||
| I mean, Ben, just last week alone, we had 10 of these vehicle rammings. | ||
| These vehicles are deadly weapons. | ||
| And one of our law enforcement officers could easily end up killed if we don't see a stop to this. | ||
| But I think as far as the political nature of this for the Democrats as well, obviously Minneapolis has been a flashpoint because of the massive amount of fraud that we've seen and that Homeland Security investigations are investigating. | ||
| And so I think that there is a part of this where they're trying to circle the wagons and really use this as a smokescreen so people stop talking about the fraud. | ||
| Now, Tricia, one of the things that really is sort of unnoted in all of this is the fact that the number of deportations from red states actually, in many cases, outnumbers the number of deportations from blue states. | ||
| The difference is that the blue state governors are trying to obstruct and sanctuary city mayors are trying to obstruct in these blue areas. | ||
| In red states, if they cooperate with ICE, then these operations tend to go off pretty easily without a hitch. | ||
| And then the deportations are actually pretty sizable. | ||
| So it is not as though the Trump administration is only targeting blue areas of blue states. | ||
| A huge number of deportations are happening in red states and red areas. | ||
| No, completely. | ||
| I mean, you look at Louisiana. | ||
| We have a large-scale operation in New Orleans where we have a governor who's cooperating with us. | ||
| We have law enforcement who's cooperating with us. | ||
| That makes it a lot safer, not just for our law enforcement, but for the public on the ground as well. | ||
| Because when things, when we start to have agitators, we start to have riders, people who are impeding operations or assaulting law enforcement, our law enforcement are able to call local and state officials for backup. | ||
| And that really makes sure that there aren't these dangerous situations that spin out of control. | ||
| But you also, a lot of your viewers will have seen in the news that we have surged CBP law enforcement on the ground there to Minneapolis. | ||
| A lot of that is so that we can make sure that we are quelling any violence that we see from these violent agitators. | ||
| We're seeing things get more and more coordinated. | ||
| More and more people coming on the ground and using tactics like vehicle rammings and assault against law enforcement. | ||
| So we still need to conduct operations in Minneapolis and other blue states around the country. | ||
| And so what we're going to do, we have to bring more men and women on the ground to ensure they can still conduct these operations, but do so in a safe and orderly fashion. | ||
| Well, that's Tricia McLaughlin. | ||
| She's Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. | ||
| Tricia, thanks so much for your time. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you, Ben. | ||
| Meanwhile, blue state governance in other places, not going well either. | ||
| According to an editorial at the New York Post, Kathy Hochul has signed off on a bill that they say will all but guarantee more child abuse in the state of New York in the name of fixing racial disparities in the child welfare system. | ||
| The new law bars callers to the city administration for child services from leaving tips anonymously, which sounds insane to me. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because it turns out that they say that these tips, quote, drive inexcusable racial disparities that disproportionately impact black and brown families by leading to unnecessary interactions with child welfare services. | ||
| So they apparently are supposing that a bunch of KKK members are calling up the Administration for Children's Services and saying that the black guy down the hall is beating his kid and it's not true. | ||
| So now they don't want you to leave an anonymous tip. | ||
| You have to actually leave your name. | ||
| Advocates say that anonymity lets abusive exes and vindictive or racist landlords, neighbors, and so on use ACS to harass innocent parents with disruptive probes. | ||
| But the actual reality is that if you hand over your name and your phone number, even if there's a promise that your identity won't be revealed publicly, will not just discourage bogus tips. | ||
| It will discourage all tips. | ||
| Because even though they say they're not releasing it publicly, I mean, are you sure? | ||
| If there's a guy who you think is homicidal down the hall and you call in a tip and they make you give your name, are you sure he's never going to get that it was you who turned him in? | ||
| As Naomi Shafe Riley has pointed out in the New York Post, black children are more than three times as likely to die by abuse and neglect than their white peers. | ||
| Whatever the reasons for this, it means preventing abuse, of course, is going to disproportionately impact black families. | ||
| But again, this is when DEI is taken to its fullest extent, it can absolutely turn deadly. | ||
| Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of the United States took up yesterday a case from Idaho and West Virginia called Little versus Heacock. | ||
| It involves an adult biological male named Lindsey Heacocks who sought to compete against the women at Boise State University. | ||
| And another case in which a teenager, who is a boy who says he's a girl, wanted to compete against the girls. | ||
| The athletes' briefs to the justices dispute that trans players have an unqualified advantage over female competitors. | ||
| This is silly, of course. | ||
| It'll be interesting to see how the Supreme Court of the United States rules on this. | ||
| Ruling in favor of the states would make it so legislatures can make common sense rules on transgenderism in athletics. | ||
| More than half of states have already decided that they want to protect girls' sports. | ||
| The Supreme Court, I would think, almost guaranteed to rule in favor of these states and localities attempting to protect girls from boys playing against them on their sports teams. | ||
|
Iran's Protests and Regime Threats
00:15:01
|
||
| And meanwhile, the situation in Iran continues to percolate. | ||
| A lot of rumors that the Iranian government is going to move over the course of the next couple of days in particular to completely shut down the protests, by which we mean mass murder everybody. | ||
| According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House is weighing Iran's nuclear talks offer. | ||
| This seems foolish to me. | ||
| What exactly is it that Tehran would offer that would be in any way credible? | ||
| What is the thing that would be in any way credible? | ||
| They have lied every step of the way. | ||
| They are quickly seeking to rebuild their missile and nuclear facilities. | ||
| What could they do at this point that would convince the United States and its allies that they don't have nuclear ambitions, that they aren't rebuilding their ballistic missile programs? | ||
| All Iran is attempting to do right now is delay for a couple of days while they kill everybody. | ||
| That is pretty obvious. | ||
| Unsurprisingly, there is some conflict inside, according to the Wall Street Journal, the top echelons of the administration. | ||
| President Trump is leaning toward authorizing fresh military strikes because his instincts are excellent when it comes to the Middle East, as he has proved over and over again. | ||
| The Abraham Accords and the 12-day war and the end of the Gaza War being excellent examples. | ||
| However, some senior administration aides, led by the vice president, are urging President Trump to try diplomacy before retaliating against Iran for killing protesters. | ||
| For how long? | ||
| For how long? | ||
| I mean, Iran could have called at any time. | ||
| Why precisely should you wait while they mow down the protesters by the hundreds or thousands instead of supporting the protesters? | ||
| What is the goal you seek? | ||
| And why does the timeline not? | ||
| What is the timeline here? | ||
| Speaking on Sunday to reporters on Air Force One, President Trump said that Tehran messaged Washington a day earlier that it was willing to enter negotiations over its years-long nuclear program. | ||
| President Trump said a meeting is being set up, but that the United States was still looking at very strong options he could authorize before discussions. | ||
| Well, if they wanted to negotiate, maybe a precondition for the negotiation would be don't murder your protesters and turn the internet back on. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| How about you want to negotiate? | ||
| You don't want the United States to, say, ship guns to the dissidents or to take your oil tankers or to perform any sort of military strike on IRGC facilities? | ||
| How about you open up the internet and stop killing people? | ||
| How about set that as a precondition to talks? | ||
| Not unconditional talks while you murder all of the people who are putting pressure on the regime. | ||
| President Trump supposedly will meet with senior aides to determine his approach. | ||
| The options could include ordering military strikes on regime sites or launching cyber attacks, approving new sanctions, boosting anti-regime accounts online. | ||
| Vice President Vance, according to the Wall Street Journal, while generally resistant to engaging in conflicts as opposed to whom, I think most people are not generally in favor of engaging in conflicts for their own sake, remains open to striking Iran, according to a person familiar with his thinking, believing the country is a threat to the United States. | ||
| I'm glad that he has changed his mind about that because obviously he took the opposite position originally with regard to striking Ford. | ||
| The United States does not currently have an aircraft carrier in the Middle East. | ||
| The United States could still use bombers, Air Force jet fighters, or naval assets to strike Iran. | ||
| Iranian officials are saying they might attack the Americans. | ||
| If they did that, that would be the end of the regime. | ||
| Bar none, end of story. | ||
| So they're not going to do that in any serious way. | ||
| Well, joining us on the line to discuss all of this is retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, senior national security expert with first-hand experience inside Iran. | ||
| He actually grew up in Iran and was asked by President Trump to serve as national security advisor. | ||
| Vice Admiral, thanks so much for the time. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
| Good to be with you, Ben. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So let's talk about what's going on in Iran. | ||
| Obviously, these are groundshaking moments that we're witnessing in Iran. | ||
| What's the serious possibility that the Iranian regime topples? | ||
| What would it take for that to happen? | ||
| Support of the Iranian people. | ||
| It's got to happen from within. | ||
| And they have, I think what's different now, we've seen snippets of this with the Green movement in 2009, the terrible protests after Amin, what she experienced. | ||
| But now you have the bazaars, the guys who run the markets, the guys who run the business, you have politicians, you have the everyday folks. | ||
| Everyone's behind it now. | ||
| So you have a mass you've not been before. | ||
| So the numbers are much different now. | ||
| Number two is, but we got to help enable them. | ||
| I think President Trump, in his statement that we stand behind and support the people of Iran, yet hold the regime accountable, is a big change as well. | ||
| So I think there are numerous steps and entities, not only the U.S., but other allies in the region, such as Israel and others, there are steps we can take to support the people of Iran and really bring this long overdue change to fruition. | ||
| So in my mind, it's not a if. | ||
| This is more when. | ||
| So I want to get to how a change would actually occur. | ||
| What would be necessary to push it in a second? | ||
| First, I want to point out that something really different is going on this time because the circumstances have changed. | ||
| Not only have the sanctions placed on the Iranian government by the Trump administration in term one and then reimposed in term two absolutely destroyed the Iranian economy. | ||
| I mean, the real is basically worthless. | ||
| I mean, it is a fraction, a fraction, a fraction of a cent of an American dollar at this point. | ||
| The economy there is so bad that they were actively talking about shifting the entire population of Tehran out of Tehran and not making it their capital anymore, thanks to water and power shortages. | ||
| But also the guarantee, the sort of quiet guarantee that the Mullahs made was that Iran would at least be a military powerhouse capable of spreading its tentacles all over the region. | ||
| Since October 7th, obviously, Iran's tentacles have been chopped off one by one by the IDF, culminating in that 12-day war, which itself culminated in President Trump ordering that incredible sortie against the Fordo nuclear facility with the B-2. | ||
| And so that means that just on a military level, it seems as though the population knows that the IRGC, when they're not shooting Iranian citizens, are a paper tiger abroad. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| All the lies have been illustrated to be lies. | ||
| Not only are they failed militarily, they've failed governance. | ||
| They're not taking care of the Iranian people, and they've had to suffer under this regime for decades. | ||
| It's reached a real boiling point now where there is an opportunity for them to drive that change. | ||
| I couldn't agree with you more. | ||
| And I think as we came out of the war in Iraq, many administrations who were afraid to be engaged, did not want to use force. | ||
| They didn't want to be embroiled in the Middle East and saw this as a potential conflict. | ||
| So they used a policy of accommodation and appeasement. | ||
| You're back to an administration that understands realpolitik, you know, national security that's not driven by ideology, but by common sense. | ||
| And they're willing to use force to reinforce those national security interests. | ||
| And if you find an Iran government in Iran that provides for their people, wants to grow and prosper, as they did under the Shah in the 60s and 70s, it's saying not only the geopolitical contact of the region, but broader because our adversaries rely on them to be a part of their access of evil that has now been deteriorated and eradicated. | ||
| So, yeah, it changes everything, Ben. | ||
| So, when we look at the actual mechanics of how a change would be effectuated, obviously, if the Iranian people are able to gain control, for example, of military bases, take over the weaponry, then everything changes. | ||
| But one of the big questions, and this has happened multiple times, it's why I think a lot of people are still extremely worried as they should be, is that the IRGC just comes out of the shadows, turns off the internet, and shoots everybody. | ||
| And it seems as though that is what the IRGC is in the middle of engaging in right now. | ||
| The internet has been down for days on end at this point. | ||
| They're trying to turn Iran into a black box where nobody can find out what's happening. | ||
| President Trump has said that if there's evidence that there are mass shootings being carried out by the IRGC, he will act. | ||
| The question becomes: what sort of action would be sufficient to sort of allow for the final cracks to emerge in this edifice? | ||
| There's been some talk, for example, about going after the Iranian tankers that are in the Gulf of Aden, taking their oil ships, preventing them from being able to export. | ||
| The Iranian economy is already trashed. | ||
| And so, whether or not that makes a big difference is a question up for debate, I suppose. | ||
| If you were advising the president, what sort of action would you be looking at in order to help the protesters effectuate their goals here? | ||
| I think that's you've hit one of those real stats. | ||
| You know, not only have we sanctioned the oil, but if we embargo it, we stop it. | ||
| That's additional pressure on the regime. | ||
| I got to remember, I was in Frankfurt airport a few months ago, and I'm listening to an Iranian on his phone talking to his boss. | ||
| Hey, so I can't sell stuff because we're sanctioned and all. | ||
| And so when I got off the phone, I talked to him, I said, How bad is it? | ||
| Iranians said, Look, they're murdering any dissidents. | ||
| It's horrible. | ||
| But he said to me, and you'll like this one, Ben, this would never happen in the United States. | ||
| I go, why? | ||
| Because you guys have guns. | ||
| Your government can't. | ||
| So this Iranian knew our Second Amendment and knew why we have guns more than this. | ||
| So if I could get a million guns and 10 million rounds of ammo into the dissidents so that they're armed to fight the and it's not just the IRGC. | ||
| Don't forget that I think one of the most important components of this is the bashij. | ||
| The volunteer militia has been that kind of intel apparatus at the very tactical of pointing out and identifying. | ||
| So if we can get the bashij to flip and be part of the solution, not the problem, that presents a big threat to the IRGC and the military, a professional military, which is sometimes at odds with the IRGC. | ||
| How do we get them to flip? | ||
| So I think armed force going after these different entities of power that the regime has. | ||
| And so similar to where we disbanded the military in Iraq, we may here be able to use a professional military to go after the IRGC. | ||
| So, I think all those elements of power we can go after directly and indirectly. | ||
| I would do indirectly first, as opposed to any strikes. | ||
| And those strikes would be focused on those elements of power that have the least chance of flipping, being the IRGC, so to speak. | ||
| So, I think this administration has shown they're willing to do that. | ||
| The president does what he says he's going to do, and he's done that in Venezuela. | ||
| So, the people in Iran are hearing that. | ||
| And I think for the regime, it's a do or die. | ||
| So, how they leverage and build those building blocks and enhance that RIOS stat to crank up the heat is the solution here. | ||
| As you say, the president has said over and over and over this is a red line. | ||
| The red line clearly has been violated at this point and continues to be violated. | ||
| And so, the question again becomes what the president is willing and able to do. | ||
| Obviously, no one here, and I've said this a thousand times: no one is talking about an Iraq-style invasion of Iran. | ||
| There are a bunch of people out there who are lying and saying that, so that the United States does nothing because they present a false choice between an Iraq-style full-scale occupation of Iran, which is totally unnecessary since the population does not want the current regime. | ||
| And as you mentioned, there are people inside the military apparatus, not the IRGC, but the actual Iranian military, who are not in favor of the IRGC or the Malocracy. | ||
| So, these are apples and oranges comparisons. | ||
| One of the concerns that's been put forward has been the possibility of Iranian counter-strikes. | ||
| Iran, of course, has been threatening to fire a missile barrage at Israel. | ||
| They, of course, did that during the 12-day war to some minor effect, did some property damage, killed a few people, but not overwhelming for us by any stretch. | ||
| They're suggesting, of course, that they will fire directly at American bases in places presumably like Kuwait, possibly like Qatar or on the Iraqi border in Erebil. | ||
| You know, how much should we take those threats seriously? | ||
| And how significant would those threats be? | ||
| Look, we've seen them do those strikes in Israel, Qatar, and other places, and it's been very ineffective. | ||
| And so, to me, if they go to that step, that would justify our ability to strike and take out not only their military, the IRGC, if anything, we want to. | ||
| But so, that to me would represent their last straw, understanding that it's do or die for them. | ||
| And we've been very effective in countering those. | ||
| So, I think our capabilities far exceed them. | ||
| And the fact that they have no air defenses, so anyone can fly over the country. | ||
| We could strike at anything just illustrates, again, how vulnerable that is. | ||
| So, I think you always got to take credibility in this statement by understanding there's really not the bang they had before under those threats. | ||
| And again, I think that would really be the final straw that would end all this. | ||
| But again, if you want long-lasting security and stability in Iran, it has to come from within. | ||
| So, just like our adversaries for decades have been coming out at us asymmetrically because they know they did and would lose in direct military confrontation, I still think that's the situation here. | ||
| And we're best supported by helping the Iranian people bring this to closure. | ||
| So, Vice Admiral, you know, here's the $100,000 question. | ||
| What is the chance that this actually succeeds? | ||
| Obviously, this is not our first round here with major Iranian protests you saw them in 2009. | ||
| This current round actually really started in about 2022 and has kind of increased over the course of the last three years or so. | ||
| What are the real chances that the Iranian regime falls and how quickly would that happen? | ||
| I won't want a timeline, but yes, it's going to happen. | ||
| If we and our allies, Israel, support it, it will happen. | ||
| And in my opinion, we should not squander this opportunity. | ||
| We need to bring this to fruition. | ||
| It's long overdue, and it just changes everything. | ||
| So, we need to support the Iranian people and bring this to closure. | ||
| Well, it's Vice Admiral Robert Harward, national security expert with first-hand experience inside Iran. | ||
| Vice Admiral, thank you so much for your time and your insight. | ||
|
Yezu's Promise
00:02:06
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||
| Thanks, Ben. | ||
| Good to be with you. | ||
| Alrighty, folks, coming up, the show continues for our members. | ||
| Democrats seem to be changing their tune about Iran and Hamas. | ||
| Weird, weird. | ||
| Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. | ||
| If you're not a member, become member. | ||
| Use code Shapiro. | ||
| Check out for two months free on all annual plans. | ||
| Click that link in the description and join us. | ||
| What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God? | ||
| Is that who you think I was alone with? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maradin, I knew your father. | |
| I am yet convinced that he was not of this world. | ||
| All men know of the great Talies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my father, the gods should war for my soul. | |
| Princess Garris, savior of our people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know what the Bull God offered you. | |
| I was offered the same. | ||
| And there is a new pirate work in the world. | ||
| I've seen it. | ||
| A god who sacrifices what he loves for us. | ||
| We are each given only one life, Singer. | ||
| No, we're given another. | ||
| I learned of Yezu the Christ, and I have become his follower. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one. | |
| Trust in Yezu. | ||
| He is the only hope for men like us. | ||
| Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Life. | ||
| Great light, great darkness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Such things mattered to me then. | |
| What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies? | ||
| You, nephew, the sword of the High King. | ||
| How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you. | |
| I cannot take up that sword again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what you must do. | |
| Great life, forgive me. | ||