Joe Kent's resignation over the Iran war highlights deep fractures within MAGA, yet polls show 87% base approval for Trump's strategy. Senator John Thune defends the SAVE Act and legislative filibuster against Democrat attempts to expand statehood or pass radical agendas like wealth taxes. Meanwhile, U.S. pressure on Cuba via oil subsidy removal may accelerate regime collapse, though reforms could reverse if Democrats regain power before 2029. Ultimately, these segments underscore a GOP focused on preserving institutional guardrails while executing aggressive foreign policy shifts. [Automatically generated summary]
Joe Kent, who honestly you probably hadn't heard of, but now you have, he is exiting MAGA, resigning from a counterterrorism post that you certainly have never heard of.
And of course, our craven mainstream media are frothing at the mouth at the notion that MAGA could be fracturing all their juiciest, most lurid fantasies are coming true.
But as it turns out, MAGA is doing just fine.
We're just shedding some excess baggage here.
Meanwhile, the end of the story in Iran is still in the making.
I will lay out three paths to how the regime can fall once and for all.
And in Cuba, decades of chaos, poverty, and corruption are finally coming to a head.
How does it all end?
We're exploring all the options today here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
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So let's start with some facts.
According to a brand new economist YouGov poll, March 13th through 16th, how's President Trump's approval rating going on, Iran?
Well, apparently, approval of Trump's handling of the situation in Iran for MAGA.
87% support, 6% disapprove.
How about on even sending ground troops to Iran if necessary?
35% of MAGA say sure.
36% say no.
So dead even split on if Trump decides to do that, only 36% of MAGA will openly oppose that.
How about on whether to end the war quickly or stay until the objectives are achieved in Iran?
Only 30% of MAGA supporters say that we should end the war as quickly as possible.
58% say that we should keep fighting until all U.S. objectives have been achieved.
So no, President Trump is not losing MAGA.
And yet, according to those who have had their brains rotted out by X, and of course, our usual duds in the mainstream media, the base is totally fractured.
And they know this because they have found some new heroes, heretic MAGA, who are targeting the administration for destruction.
And this brings us to Joe Kent.
So yesterday, this lit up the interwebs and also cable news.
Joe Kent is a former failed congressional candidate from Washington State.
He was elevated to the position of director of the National Center for Counterterrorism, which you really had never heard of, by President Trump.
And he served under Tulsi Gabbard.
Kent is a former Green Beret and served in the CIA as well.
Now, Kent has a long political history.
In 2020, he voted for Bernie Sanders, but back in 2022, Kent ran for Congress and he ran into a bit of trouble because of his AIDS associations with white supremacists.
According to Nick Fuentes, Kent sought his support, but then was forced to disavail him when that support became public.
Kent has been for a very long time conspiratorially minded in the extreme.
He suggested that the Secret Service might have been in on the assassination attempt on President Trump in July 2024, among other bizarre theories.
He's also been strangely supportive of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's aggression against Ukraine.
Before that, though, Kent had some bizarrely heterodox views.
In 2020, after President Trump knocked off Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani, Kent explained, quote, we remain in striking distance by choice for no clear benefit.
We should crush their ballistic and nuke capes and get out of Iraq with sanctions to follow.
Interesting, because that's kind of what President Trump has been doing.
Well, way back when Kent was actually nominated to serve in the federal government, MSNBC was highly critical.
That man you heard speaking is a Trump-endorsed Republican who believes the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and he hired a member of the Proud Boys as a campaign consultant.
He once told a white nationalist youth group, quote, I don't think there's anything wrong with there being a white people's special interest group.
Then, yesterday, Kent released a bizarre and paranoid letter announcing his resignation from that National Center for Counterterrorism.
In the letter, Kent announced that, quote, Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
You know, you know who he's talking about, don't you?
You know, Nudge Nudge.
He then stated that Trump had been duped by, quote, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media who deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America-first platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.
And then, just in case he wasn't done blaming the Israelis and, you know, all of the terrible people in America, he blamed the Iraq war on the Israelis too.
And then he wasn't done even then, actually.
He declared that his wife, who was killed by ISIS in Syria in 2019, was murdered, quote, in a war manufactured by Israel.
So to get this straight, according to Joe Kent, who again was a Trump appointee in charge of the National Center for Counterterrorism, President Trump is a dupe of the Israelis and unspecified media members, who knows.
The Iraq war was the fault of the Israelis, even though it was opposed at the time by the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
And also, the Israelis are at fault for his wife being murdered by ISIS in Syria somehow.
This is, to put it kind of mildly, nutty.
President Trump himself dismissed the notion he's been manipulated by the nefarious Yudin yesterday.
Now, Kent's take is kind of unsurprising, to be honest.
His wife works for far-left propagandist Max Blumenthal, who has worked for a wide variety of foreign propaganda outlets.
And all of this calls into question why Kent was selected for his job in the first place.
Obviously, Kent and his Ron Paul-esque foreign policy preferences have some allies in the administration.
According to Fox, Kent was, quote, a known leaker, and he was cut out of the president's intelligence briefings months ago.
The White House told DNI Tulsi Gabbard he should be fired for suspected leagues, but she never did.
He has not been part of any Iran planning discussions or briefings at all.
Now, our own Mary Margaret Olihan reports that it's true that Kent was kept out of all briefings on the war, but an intelligence official tells her that Gabbard would have fired Kent if she had been asked to do so.
The White House did confirm this morning that Kent had literally nothing to do with any Iran war considerations before the war or during the war.
It's been a while since the president has seen him here at the White House.
It's been a while since he's been involved in the process of the presidential daily briefs, and he's been actually present for the president's intelligence briefings.
This was an individual who was not involved in any of the discussions pre-operation and throughout this operation.
I think the president views it as deeply unfortunate that this individual who the president gave the privilege of working for the administration put out this resignation on government letterhead with many falsehoods throughout, essentially accusing the president of being manipulated by foreign governments.
Again, she's under some fire today for having appointed people like Joe Kent, quote, Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our president and commander-in-chief.
As our commander-in-chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people, and our country.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the president and commander-in-chief with the best information available to inform his decisions.
After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat, and he took action based on that conclusion.
Now, that is a pretty weak T statement there from Tulsi Gabbard.
She's not backing the president's play.
She's just saying that he has the authority to do what he's doing, which we already knew.
In any case, according to John Hudson of the Washington Post, quote, Kent and Tulsi Gabbard met with Vice President JD Vance at the White House on Monday per sources, which, again, is kind of weird.
If you're going to resign, typically you don't meet with the vice president first to discuss such matters.
During the meeting, Kent presented his resignation letter to the vice president.
A White House official said the VP encouraged him to speak to the White House chief of staff and president before making any final decisions, and the VP encouraged him to be respectful to the president.
But again, there are some natural lines of demarcation in this administration, and it appears that the vice president, Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Kent might be on one side of that divide.
Well, it turns out this was not particularly respectful to the president, this letter, since it basically calls him a dullard working at the behest of the Zionists.
But it was enough to earn him the royal treatment from our usual friends.
He is slated to appear on all the leaders of the anti-Trump Grievance Party podcast, Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, all the rest.
And Emma's now has now discovered newfound love for Joe Kent in some strange new respect time over at MSNBC.
Tom Nichols, Mr. Kent writing this sort of sentence that'll live on forever when the history of this chapter is written and the chapter on the war in Iran is written.
I believe the sentence will be there.
Quote, I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.
Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
And then for good measure, the president decided to dunk on Kent, showing his rather inconsistent feelings about the Middle East.
This is a tweet that he reposted from 2020, quote, we should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran's ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq.
They're only targets now.
No, USWIA KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and intel professionals, not Iranian restraints.
So back in 2020, he, of course, was being hawkish on Iran.
The White House's Caroline Lovitt released a statement detailing all the false allegations in Kent's resignation letter, and there are many.
Quote, there are many false claims in this letter.
Let me address one specifically: that Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.
This is the same false claim Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over.
As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first.
This evidence was compiled from many sources and factors.
President Trump would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum.
Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, says Caroline Lovitt.
The Iranian regime is evil.
It proudly killed Americans, waged war against our country, and openly threatened us all the way up until the launch of Operation Epic Fury.
And then it goes on to explain why Joe Kent was wrong.
The best comment actually came from Senator John Fetterman, who remains just hilariously awesome, who told Huffington Post, quote, I know your readership loves that, and the New York Times loves it.
And he's going to be the national hero, you know, just like you made MTG.
But now her crazy ass is now all about Tucker Carlson.
So I really don't care what he chose to do.
I wish the best for him in his next life.
A perfectly fair statement from the Pennsylvania senator.
Now, he's right.
The legacy media are busy shrieking with pleasure at the supposed breakup of MAGA.
Remember, Marjorie Hayler Greene, that former congresswoman who cannot tell the difference between the Gestapo and Gaspacho, like between the secret Nazi police and cold tomato soup.
It feels like there's this war machine, and then our soldiers are put into these spaces, and they're just there to serve an America that they believe in.
And it's no knock against them or anything like that.
It's just, I just don't, I just, it just feels like it's causing a lot of pain and fear.
And yeah, I don't understand our political, like, why we are so beholden to these, to this government, this Israeli government that just seems to be obsessed with control.
If business and front party and back hosts aren't with you, who is?
I mean, aside from 90% of actual MAGA, the myth-making about the war in Iran is indeed a motivated op.
It is designed to undermine support for the war.
It is also meant to damage President Trump.
Let's be real about this.
All these people who are avoiding saying Trump's name because they're cowards, this entire op is designed to damage President Trump.
And it's not going to work because Trump has the loyalty of his followers and his voters, and they trust him to do the right thing here by a margin of nine to one.
But this whole thing does demonstrate the deep and abiding desire by some, both in the legacy media and in the grievance party right, to use this moment to supplant Trump.
Some aren't being particularly shy about it.
Candace Owens, for example, points for honesty.
Quote, Joe Kent is an American patriot, hero, and veteran.
Trump is a shameful president.
May American troops take his lead and look into conscientious objection to Bibi's red heifer war, Goyam Stand Down.
Points to the crazy lady who talks to ghosts, at least for honesty.
Tucker Carlson only hints at this.
He's still too chicken to say Trump's name.
Marjorie Taylor is actually doing even more.
She's busily calling Trump a traitor to MAGA, which is kind of like calling Thomas Edison a traitor to the light bulb.
But make no mistake, Trump is still very much in control of MAGA.
And when he wins the war, that control will solidify even further as it should.
Speaking of which, we seem to be nearing something big in Iran.
We'll get to that in one second.
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All right, folks, if you're watching on YouTube, again, we're going to take questions during the show, like live.
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Say, Abby, what have we?
unidentified
Let's do this.
So, J-Bud F, question for Ben.
Was a split with people like Joe Kent something you saw possibly happening in the past?
Because I had a strong feeling he was pretty crazy when running for my district.
But in the end, President Trump has instincts and then he acts upon those instincts.
One of the things that I always find really strange is people trying to quote unquote grab MAGA away from Trump.
So I voted for President Trump in 2020.
I campaigned for him in 2024.
I gave money to his campaign in 2024 and all the rest.
I did a fundraiser for him.
Okay, here is the thing.
There are lots of areas where I disagree with President Trump.
I make them clear on the show when I do, whether we're talking about things like tariffs or whether we are talking about his perspective on the war in Ukraine.
When I disagree with the president, I disagree with the president.
But also, I don't try to claim that MAGA is mine.
He's a traitor to me.
The president is the president.
I am a citizen with a perspective on what he is doing.
The bizarre notion, what you're seeing here is not just people who are quote unquote disagreeing with President Trump.
What they're trying to do is claim that he is a traitor to the program that he created, the movement that he created.
That is a revolutionary attempt.
And so was this going to happen?
Yeah, I mean, there are always gaps in the Trump coalition.
There always are in any coalition.
The question is why there are some who now feel motivated to go directly after the president and try to tear him down and supplant him with their own leadership class.
Well, back to the war in Iran.
Democrats are claiming, as per their usual arrangement, that the president doesn't have a plan.
Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who is running for the presidency as a Democrat, but has no shot because his last name is the same as my last name, which is to say he's a Jew.
He complains that Trump has no clarity about his endgame.
The reality is that if Donald Trump did set a bunch of goals at the beginning, repeatedly, but Democrats don't care.
And are we under the impression that if President Trump had spoken about what he was going to do in Iran for say a year or two or say 47, Democrats would have any other different thoughts?
President Trump, for his part, does not seem particularly worried right now.
unidentified
The Iranian regime is built on ease.
If you put boots on the ground in Iran, it will be another Vietnam.
Well, the reason the president is not particularly worried is because the United States and Israel have basically knocked out the entire upper echelon of the Iranian regime, among their other accomplishments.
Israel continues to kill off all the top members of the Iranian regime.
Last night, Israel took out the Iranian intelligence minister, a man named Esmail Khatib.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Khatib had previously held several key roles within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, primarily holding intelligence positions according to the Israeli military.
Well, you know, now he will be holding a new kind of meeting underground with the rest of the Iranian leadership, like six feet underground.
How thorough is the Israeli penetration of Iran's governmental networks?
There's an incredible story from the Wall Street Journal today.
Apparently, Israel is now calling IRGC leadership directly, like on their cell phones, and telling them to give up the fight if they would like to live.
According to the Wall Street Journal, quote, the journal reviewed the contents of one call between a senior Iranian police commander and an agent of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service.
Can you hear me?
A Mossad agent can be heard speaking Farsi.
We know everything about you.
You are on a blacklist, and we have all the information about you.
Okay, said the commander in the recording.
I called to warn you in advance that you should stand with your people's side, said the Mossad agent.
And if you do not do that, your destiny will be as your leader.
Do you hear me?
And the commander said, brother, I swear on the Quran, I'm not your enemy.
I'm a dead man already.
Just please come help us.
The Israelis have apparently dropped 10,000 munitions on Iranian targets.
That includes thousands on the heads of IRGC, Assyjis, and other internal tools of the regime.
Many of the tips on targets, by the way, are coming directly from Iranian citizens.
So, the big outstanding issue right now remains the Strait of Hormuz.
We discussed this at length yesterday.
We've been discussing it for the last several weeks.
President Trump had asked our allies to contribute to reopening the strait.
Those allies have demonstrated all the courage of brave Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
They would prefer to talk a big game and then let us, as usual, do all the work.
In fact, here is a British man who seems like a character directly from Monty Python, Kier Starmer, the Prime Minister.
At the beginning of this conflict, I made it really clear that we wouldn't join the offensive strikes that the U.S. and Israel were carrying out on Iran.
We've got about 300,000 British nationals in the Gulf region, and it's important that we protect them and our Gulf allies.
So we have got the IRF in particular flying airplanes across the region.
They're actually intercepting strikes to stop them hitting people and buildings.
So that's defensive action.
But we're not joining the war.
We are allowing the U.S. to use our basis, but again, for defensive, collective self-defense, to take out basically the ability of Iran to put missiles into the air that are going or may go to attack our Gulf allies and our people in the Gulf.
So that's a no from this thumb with glasses on really, really helping.
Well, yesterday, President Trump issued a statement basically saying to our allies, listen, you don't want to help in the Strait of Harmony's fine.
Quote, the United States has been informed by most of our NATO allies they don't want to get involved with our military operation against the terrorist regime of Iran in the Middle East.
This, despite the fact that almost every country strongly agreed with what we're doing and that Iran cannot in any way, shape, or form, be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
I'm not surprised by their action.
However, because I always consider NATO, where we spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year protecting these same countries, to be a one-way street.
We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us in particular in a time of need.
Fortunately, we have decimated Iran's military.
Their navy is gone.
Their air force is gone.
Their anti-aircraft and radar is gone.
And perhaps most importantly, their leaders, at virtually every leader at every level, are gone, never to threaten us, our Middle Eastern allies, or the world again.
Because of the fact we've never had such military success, we no longer need or desire the NATO country's assistance.
We never did.
Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea.
In fact, says the president, speaking as the president, by far the most powerful country anywhere in the world, we do not need the help of anyone.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
President Trump talked pretty openly about NATO's failure to step up yesterday.
We're watching from above is a hell of a statement.
For the record, Nowruz is Friday.
So it's quite possible that the Iranians rise up in the near future.
The question, of course, is coordination and weapons.
Presumably, there would be some close air support from the United States and Israel.
A successful uprising in Tehran would, of course, change the world forever.
This would be the best possible outcome.
Then there is the second possibility, sectarian uprisings in the remote areas of Iran.
We've talked about this possibility before with regard to outlying areas.
Here is this map of ethnicity in Iran again.
And as you see, up in the northwest portion of Iran, the portion that borders Turkey and Iraq, you have a very large Kurdish population.
And then if you move just slightly east of that, bordering Azerbaijan, you have a huge Azeri population.
If you look down at sort of the southeast of the country, you have the Baluch who border Pakistan.
Now, it is far easier to smuggle weapons into the border areas of Iran than it is into places like Tehran because there's significantly more interior.
It's also easier to penetrate with information, which means easier coordination.
The IRGC also happens to be less centralized in these areas.
And with the cracking of that hierarchy of control, they may be operating on their own, the IRGC.
So if large-scale ethnic insurgencies were to strain the IRGC to the breaking point in these border regions, the IRGC might actually have to mobilize away from Tehran, leaving the censor strained to prevent a full-scale uprising in the capital.
Now, the downside to such a solution is pretty obvious.
Sectarian violence is easier to start than to stop.
And it's possible that Persians, who represent 65% of the country or so, might be so concerned about the possibility of a civil war that lasts a long time that they actually acquiesce to the IRGC's centralization efforts.
That's a real concern.
But suffice it to say that from America's perspective, in Iran, even in Iran, rife with internal divisions, is in Iran incapable of projecting outside force, which is our main concern.
This is far from the best available outcome.
But for the United States, it is Still far better than a united Iran with the mullahs in iron control.
Then finally, there is the longer-term option and probably the most realistic option, the possibility that the United States achieves freedom in the Strait of Hormuz and calls it a day.
Let's be clear, the Iranian government has been absolutely hammered.
Their ballistic missile capacity has been essentially destroyed, as has their production capacity.
The same is true of their drones.
Their nuclear facilities have been degraded beyond recognition.
Their air force no longer exists.
Their navy has been sunk.
Their terror arms are weaker than they have literally ever been.
The vaunted Houthis, by the way, have been totally silent for the last several weeks.
They have no functional economy, none.
If the United States were able to open the strait, which is the only leverage that Iran has right now, there's a high likelihood that over the course of the next two years, the regime will fall into a state of complete collapse, unable to even pay its hoodlums to murder people in the streets.
Now, right now, again, Iran is attempting to stave off that third possibility of eventual collapse by trying to exert control in the Strait of Hormuz and then claim some sort of victory to the people back home.
But they're in a bit of a catch-22.
If they allow the United States to reestablish freedom of transit, or even if there were to be something like a Chinese broker deal that allows freedom of transit, or if anyone reestablishes freedom of transit without Iranian overwatch, then Iran remains isolated and broken.
If they continue to pry, if they continue to continue to try to pry concessions out of the United States, President Trump is significantly more likely to bear down than to back down.
He's likely to go even harder, perhaps using, say, Harg Island or even unleashing special operators in Tehran directly.
In fact, today, the Israelis began striking Iranian regime at gas fields.
This is a big story.
According to the Jerusalem Post, facilities linked to Iran's gas industry in South Pars and Asaluya were targeted in an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday.
This is an enormous development because Iran's electrical grid is really, really reliant on these gas facilities.
Some 75% of Iran's gas comes from specifically those areas.
80% of all electricity in Iran is generated by gas.
So this could take down the entire electrical grid across Iran.
Now, Iran is threatening retaliation, that they're going to go after oil fields, but here's the thing: Iran has already been doing that.
They've already been firing at energy infrastructure in Saudi and UAE and Iraq, including gas fields and pipelines and ports and all the rest.
The United States is moving quickly to finish off the remaining pillars of support for the Iranian regime.
President Trump is even musing about the possibility of freeing up the Strait of Hormuz and then basically saying, you know what?
Finish up the war fairly quickly and then eventually collapse occurs.
The biggest downside to this option is basically time.
The only serious danger to this strategy is the danger of delay.
As President Trump has noted, let's say that the Iranians are able to stick it out just three more years and now you have a Democrat, God forbid, in the White House.
And at that point, the Iranians make a last-ditch attempt to cut another deal like the Obama deal or the Biden deal that preserves their regime and rebuilds their arsenal.
Again, they did this with Democrats, with Obama and with Biden.
So, how much should Americans worry about the long-term endgame?
It's a concern, but we shouldn't be nearly as worried as the critics would have us believe.
President Trump knows the stakes of America going wobbly, and President Trump does not look as though he is interested in going wobbly.
Get to more in a moment.
First, this episode is sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
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All right, Savvy, have we a member question?
unidentified
We do.
Okay, Captain Rex, if Iran is lacking all of the capability to sustain a war, why is this still going on?
Can't we just end this in like three days using full force?
Well, I mean, I think that President Trump is already effectuating it.
So I think that the next move in Iran is to shut down the natural gas distribution in the country, shut down the electrical grid.
I think that you will see the United States possibly seize Kharg Island, which is that source for 90% of all Iranian oil, basically cut off the last lifelines to the regime and then foster some sort of uprising inside the country.
I think that is the next thing that is going to happen.
I think it's already underway.
All those actions that I just described, the preliminaries have already been done.
The Israelis, the United States, they've been taking out police stations in Tehran.
The United States took out the military facilities on Kharg Island that protect against some sort of ground-landing amphibious move against Kharg Island.
All those things I would imagine are on the table.
unidentified
Which brings us to Atarki Park.
Do we lose the Iranian people if the Karg Island infrastructure is damaged?
No, we do not lose the Iranian people if the Harg Island infrastructure is damaged because there's not going to be a rally around the regime effect.
There's going to be a let's end this war as soon as possible effect.
If you have no money and no oil and no power and nothing, at a certain point, you might look at the regime and say, guys, I think you might need to go, especially when everybody's dead.
The United States and Israel have absolutely wrecked these hop levels of the IRGC.
If you look at a chart of the Iranian government before this, they've killed pretty much everybody at the top levels.
Basically, it's like the Speaker of Parliament and the President who are left alive.
Everybody else has been killed.
The foreign minister, Abbas Iraqi, he's still around to mouth off on NBC.
But that's about it.
Not much left over there.
unidentified
Tiberius 202.
I've heard Iran has a largely educated population compared to Iraq and its neighbors.
So I believe 80% of Iranian adults are university educated.
A huge percentage of Iranians are secular by preference.
So all the talk about the IRGC having widespread support, the truth is maybe one-third of the population somewhere in that neighborhood is actually religiously Shia.
A huge percentage of Persians who are not openly Shia are actually secularists.
They're identified as Shia in a lot of polling, but they're not necessarily particularly religious.
Well, meanwhile, back on the home front, Democrats continue to maintain their shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, and they also continue to hold up the SAVE Act.
That's the bill that would nationalize voter ID requirements, among other things.
Joining us on the line to discuss is Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
Senator Thune, thanks so much for taking the time.
Well, so what we did is the House, I think, as you know, sent the Senate a bill that does two things, basically.
It requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, and then it requires a voter ID to actually vote on election day or at the ballot box.
And so that's what we got on.
And that came over from the House in the form of what we call a message, which is a unique way of transmitting legislation from House to Senate that skips a step for us.
And the step that we got to skip was closure on the motion to proceed, which is a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
So we were able to get on it yesterday.
We got 51 votes to get on the bill.
We will stay on it now and have the debate and the fight that I think people want to have with the Democrats over whether or not they want to defend the position of citizens or non-citizens being able to vote in American elections.
So the issue, I think, is very straightforward and simple.
And that's what we want to argue, the substance of that, and force the Democrats to defend that position.
So we'll continue that.
I did what we call in Senate language, filled the amendment tree.
So we have a couple of votes that we have set up at some point.
But at least for now, we're going to allow the debate to go and let both sides get in and mix it up.
But frankly, at the end of the day, this is a very difficult, I think, position for the Democrats to have to defend.
And if you honestly are defending a position that non-citizens ought to be able to vote in American elections, I think that's hard to sell the American people, which is why American people are overwhelmingly in favor of our position.
Well, the Democrats continue to use the power of the filibuster to hold up the SAVE Act in the final vote, Senator.
And obviously that's created a lot of pressures inside the Republican chamber.
I think that folks do need a reminder as to why the filibuster is important, because every so often, this has been happening for as long as I've been following politics, there's a push on the Republican side of the aisle when they have a majority to kill the filibuster.
This seems to me radically short-sighted, given the fact that there are plenty of times in living memory, not all that long ago, when Democrats were running Congress and the presidency.
And it seems to me the last thing you want to do is give up the power of the filibuster and the Democrats can then turn around and use against you the minute that they're in power.
And historically, as you know, Ben, the filibuster has protected conservative principles and priorities way more than it has Democrats.
And Democrats typically, if you look throughout history, have had majorities in the House and the Senate more frequently than Republicans.
And so, you know, the idea of enabling all the things that they would do if they were able to nuke the legislative filibuster and pass their agenda with 51 votes.
You'd start with, you know, adding Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. estates.
You'd go to expanding the Supreme Court.
You'd federalize our elections.
You'd have a wealth tax.
You'd have no, you'd have abortion on demand.
I mean, there's so many things that the Democrats would do if that happened.
And so it's important.
I mean, people, and the other thing is, and this is probably the more practical consideration that we're dealing with right now, right here, is that the Republicans in the Senate, by big majority, support the legislative filibuster for that reason.
And they understand how it's protected us in the past.
It's a feature of the Senate that goes back to the country's founding.
The Senate was designed to be a place to give the minority a voice in our lawmaking process.
It's a way that the founders divided power in the Article I branch of the government between the House and the Senate.
So there's a lot of support for the legislative filibuster.
And frankly, the only way you would get the SAVE Act passed absent Democrat support would be to nuke the legislative filibuster.
And the votes aren't there to do that.
It's just a function of math.
And, you know, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's the reality that we have to deal with.
And Senator Thun, what do you make of the argument that some people have put forward that as soon as Democrats are in control, they're going to nuke the legislative filibuster.
So you may as well preemptively nuke the legislative filibuster.
Does that just sort of ignore how the Senate in actuality works?
I understand that everybody thinks that partisan polarization means Democrats will automatically go to the extreme.
Well, first off, they have to have the House, the Senate, and the White House in order to make that actually a workable proposition.
And if we do our jobs right, we ought to be able to keep control of the House, Senate, and the White House.
But notwithstanding that, that is the argument that probably, that's the argument, frankly, that President Trump makes on a regular basis.
And it's perhaps the hardest one to defend.
But I would also say, and this is the view that I think most Senate Republicans share, and somebody has described it this way, at some point the Democrats may try to steal the car, but we're not going to hand them the keys.
And I think, you know, if the Republicans were to go down that path and enable all the bad stuff the Democrats are going to do when they get the chance to do it, that's not something that we want to have our fingerprints on.
Now, it's possible that the Democrats will do this when they have the majorities, and they may not.
I mean, they tried to do it a couple of years ago, and they had a couple of them that blocked it.
And I think there are Democrats that I've talked to at least who share the view that the filibuster serves an important purpose in the Senate.
And now, whether or not they continue to hold that view, if they ever have the majorities in the White House, I don't put a lot of stock in that, but I do think that that's a hypothetical.
And what we're dealing with right now is reality.
And the reality is there aren't the votes in the Senate among Senate Republicans to nuke the filibuster and to move everything to a 51-vote threshold.
So an issue like the SAVE Act, which is very popular with the American people, and I'm not, I wouldn't say unanimously supported by Republicans and Senate, but near unanimously supported, you know, when we get a vote on it, it's going to take some Democrats to vote with us.
And who knows?
Maybe there'll be one over in the course of the debate, but this is an issue on which they feel very strongly too.
And they've made it abundantly clear that they're not going to cooperate or help in any way Republicans pass it.
But I think it's an important debate to have.
I think it puts everybody on the record.
And this is an issue of free and safe and secure elections in this country.
And we ought to do everything we can to ensure that that's the case.
Well, Senator Thun, speaking of safety and security, obviously Democrats continue their partial government shutdown with regard to the Department of Homeland Security.
This seems absolutely insane to me.
We have TSA delays all over the country.
And beyond that, we also have Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism on planet Earth, that the president and the military are thoroughly lacking right now that seem to be interested in activating lone wolf terrorists or assassination groups or terrorist attacks on American soil.
And the DHS is partially unfunded because of the Democrats.
They are, I think, defending the indefensible, and that is trying to defund law enforcement, the law enforcement, the very law enforcement that protects the homeland, customs and border patrol and immigration and customs enforcement to agencies.
And that's what this is all about.
I mean, they just want to defund those agencies.
And I think that becomes a very dangerous position for all the reasons that you've mentioned.
You know, we live in a dangerous world.
We've got, you know, we're involved now in Iran.
There are, we're already seeing evidence and activity in this country spurred by Iran and jihadist groups and terrorist groups that are funded by Iran.
And I think, you know, in order to avoid more of that kind of thing, we've got to make sure that we have these agencies that protect us from those types of attacks and incidents in this country funded.
The Democrats, at least right now, are blocking that.
And so they're, I just think this, in the end, Ben, this is a very hard position if you're a Democrat to defend.
They've kind of gone down that defund the police, defund law enforcement track, and it didn't work so well for them.
And that's essentially what this is.
Now, you know, we've got other agencies in that Department of Homeland Security, like TSA, like Coast Guard, like FEMA, that are really important as well.
But the Democrats, as long as they hold this bill hostage, are holding all of those functions of our government hostage and seeing that a lot of those employees aren't getting paid.
It's an unsustainable position.
And it all comes back to the Trump derangement syndrome.
They hate the president.
They're blinded by their hatred of him.
And, you know, and they don't want to do anything to fund ICE or customs and border patrol.
And I think that's a losing hand for them in the end.
But they seem to think they're winning politically right now, which is why I think they've adopted that position.
You remember that third Iran strategy, you know, the one where we remove all the support pillars for the regime and then we sort of let it collapse?
Well, that appears to be our strategy in Cuba, where the removal of Venezuela oil supply looks like the end of the Cuban communist regime that has basically held the island hostage for more than 60 years.
President Trump announced on Monday he thinks the Cuban regime is in its final throes.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who needs to add the title of El Presidente de Cuba to his ever-growing list of honoraria, joined the chorus yesterday.
Well, aside from not having a hellhole communist nation 90 miles off our coast, it turns out that Cuba has utilized its assets to gather intelligence on us.
Here's Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Americas, Joseph Humeier, yesterday explaining.
Cuba historically has been one of the strongest intelligence adversaries that we've had in the United States.
They not just have penetrated our government, they penetrated other governments, partner governments throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
And I think that's a tested to the fact that when Operation Absolute Resolve was carried out, it was mainly Cuban military officials that were defending Nicolas Maduro and Saifu Te Tuna and Caracas in the compound.
Well, the Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canal says he is already in discussions with the United States.
According to the New York Times, President Miguel Diaz-Canal announced in a state media broadcast that both he and Raul Castro, his 94-year-old predecessor, and that would be Castro's grandson as well, have also been in discussions with the United States.
Quote: The discussions were based on respect for the political systems of both countries, sovereignty, and our government's self-determination.
By the Calci odds right now on Miguel Diaz-Canal leaving office before May are now upwards of 50%, 50%.
Before September, 71%.
So, yeah, Cuba's regime looks like it is about to fall.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that protests of all types have increased from 31 in January to 60 in February to 130 in the first half of March.
That's according to Cubalex, a U.S.-based human rights organization that monitors conditions on the ground.
Well, Diaz is pretending not to go quietly now.
He's very, very angry at the United States for cutting his line to his Venezuelan sugar daddy.
So he put out a tweet yesterday: quote: The U.S. publicly threatens Cuba almost daily with overthrowing the constitutional order by force, and it uses an outrageous pretext.
The harsh limitations of the weakened economy that they have attacked and sought to isolate for more than six decades.
They intend and announce plans to seize the country, its resources, its properties, and even the very economy they seek to strangle to make us surrender.
Only in this way can the fierce economic war be explained, which is applied as collective punishment against the entire people.
In the face of the worst scenario, Cuba is accompanied by a certainty.
Any external aggressor will clash with an impregnable resistance.
I assume that President Trump will presumably reply with just laughter, I assume.
Naturally, leave it to the Democratic Socialists of America to now try to save the Cuban regime.
How are these people not being arrested already, given their treasonous support for a communist regime abroad?
City Journal, a project of the fantastic Manhattan Institute, is now reporting: quote: The DSA has been sending delegations to Cuba for years to, quote unquote, educate people about the impact of the blockade and the 2021 designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Coacher Claire Bleckman said, quote, it is not very legal to send money directly to Cuba.
So this is what we have to do.
We have to send money to DSA, and then we have to buy stuff and then send stuff to Cuba.
I feel like that's kind of an admission that you are breaking the law a little.
Well, the DSA is going to head to Cuba for its own Gaza flotilla.
We can only hope to see Greta Thunberg and her Lord Farquad haircut aboard.
This is an image of their.
We are going to Cuba.
Wow.
Wow.
You're going to do it, guys.
You're going to save it.
And apparently, they will be joined by limousine socialist Hassan Piker, yet another millionaire streamer who zaps his dog and cosplays as a Maoist.
So he is joining.
He's going to Cuba.
He's also looking strangely bored by the whole endeavor.
Well, we hope he has a great time because this may be his last chance to see Cuba before capitalism, you know, the thing he hates so much, rescues Cuba from its horrific poverty and suffering.
Joining us on the line to discuss all this is Daniel DiMartino, born and raised in Venezuela.
DiMartino has lived through the consequences of socialism at firsthand.
Well, I think that the main time constraint happening now is the war in Iran, right?
Even President Trump said it a few days ago that after we finish in Iran, he said we're going for Cuba.
And the truth is, the U.S. used to have the USS GL4, the aircraft carrier in the Caribbean for the Venezuela operation.
And then they had to move it to the Mediterranean Sea because of the operation in Iran.
So I believe that as soon as the aircraft carrier comes back to the Caribbean, the Cuban regime is going to say, look, we don't want to end up like Maduro.
We don't definitely don't want to end up like the Ayatollah.
So we're just going to unilaterally surrender and do economic reforms.
They just attempted that, right?
I mean, the Castros announced that they are allowing Cubans abroad to invest.
That's obviously not enough.
And which Cuban abroad is going to invest while the regime is still in power?
Yeah, Cuba is much more complicated than Venezuela, I would say, because Cuba, unlike Venezuela, doesn't have an active organized opposition movement inside.
Like there's nobody who is a clear leader against the Castro regime inside Cuba, only people outside.
They have been very effective at pushing them out.
And so I think that this is going to remain a dictatorship.
They're just going to open up economically, which is going to be good for the Cuban people.
But the question is: can the Trump administration even force the Cubans to create an infrastructure to even hold elections?
They don't even hold elections.
Like their elections are not even like the Venezuelan RIP ones.
So when you look at the future of Cuba, it looks like, again, the regime is going to surrender in some form or fashion to the dictates of the United States.
Are you afraid, though, that as we move forward in time, President Trump is president for another couple of years here, but are you concerned that as we move forward in time, if the Democrat were to be elected, that those reforms might be reversed?
And how much of a concern should that be for people who, for example, would invest in Cuba in an attempt to not only rebuild the economy, but transition the government itself away from dictatorship?
Yes, that is literally the only thing that is the hope of the Cuban regime and of the Venezuelan regime, just like of the Iranians and all these other foreign dictatorships, is when Trump leaves office.
Because if we don't complete in Venezuela, for example, a transition to democracy before January 20th, 2029, because the truth is, even if a Republican wins the White House, do we really think that they have the guts to do what Trump did on January 3rd?
Do we really think they have the guts to do what he did on Iran?
Trump has really been a unique president, both in unpredictability and deterrence effect because of the things he's proven.
And I think that he needs to take advantage of the two and a half years he has left and he needs to finish this in his term.
That's what's going to make Trump one of the best presidents in American history.
He's going to be the president who's going to be able to say, not only did I liberate Venezuela, you know, Iran, Cuba, but I created all this space of national security for us, reduced drug trafficking, increased oil production.
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