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Feb. 20, 2025 15:26-19:28 - CSPAN
04:01:58
VP Vance & Republicans Deliver Remarks at CPAC
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo Source
Participants
Main
ben shapiro
dailywire 25:15
elon musk
18:25
eric schmitt
sen/r 08:15
j
jeremy boring
13:24
matt walsh
dailywire 07:54
michael j knowles
dailywire 11:01
mike davis
06:15
mike johnson
rep/r 12:24
nigel farage
gbr 09:09
pam bondi
admin 16:30
rick scott
sen/r 09:09
steve bannon
r 16:37
ted cruz
sen/r 12:43
Appearances
andrew klavan
dailywire 04:35
b
ben ferguson
02:41
donald j trump
admin 02:03
m
matt schlapp
01:22
r
rob finnerty
newsmax 04:08
r
rob schmitt
newsmax 00:49
Clips
charlie kirk
tpusa 00:12
e
elaine beck
00:29
j
john mcardle
cspan 00:17
j
justus smith
00:09
tucker carlson
dailycaller 00:07

Speaker Time Text
Bring an End to Conflict 00:15:07
unidentified
These were to suggest that Ukraine caused it is like the old male adage that a woman caused herself to be raped.
Ukraine was a and is a sovereign nation that has a right to join NATO.
Since when does Vladimir Putin get to dictate who does and who doesn't enter NATO with sovereign nations?
That's not a vassal of Putin.
Ukraine is a sovereign nation.
john mcardle
JC, you bring up 1938, you bring up the Nobel Peace Prize.
Cal Thomas in his column today in the Washington Times bringing up both those things as well.
He writes that Wall Street Journal columnist Will McGurn was right when he asked the question, will Ukraine be Trump's VP?
unidentified
And you can continue watching this on our website.
C-SPAN.org.
Now we take you to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference near the nation's capital, where House Speaker Mike Johnson is participating in a fireside chat.
This is live coverage on C-SPAN.
rob finnerty
Thank you so much for being here.
Look at all the patriots gathered.
This is great.
mike johnson
Fantastic.
rob finnerty
About to make America great again for the next four years.
We want to thank Matt and Mercedes-Schlap for putting this together.
On behalf of Newsmax, Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for being with us.
Yeah.
unidentified
As everyone just heard, Kash Patel, it's official.
rob finnerty
Murkowski and Collins voted against him.
Mitch McConnell voted for him and announced that he's not going to run again in two years.
I guess my question is, which one surprised you more today?
mike johnson
Well, I'm glad he did it, and I want to tip my hat to Leader Thune and the Senate Republicans.
They're getting the job done.
The Trump cabinet is being confirmed.
We need that.
President Trump needs his team in place, and I'm really grateful that they're moving as quickly as they are, and they're setting a good pace.
And so far, so far, so good.
rob finnerty
So, Mr. Speaker, only twice in, I believe, 85 years has the president's party picked up seats in the midterm elections.
But you are going to change that in two years.
mike johnson
We are.
We are.
There's a lot of reasons for that.
We're going to defy history, and we're going to grow the House majority in two years and not lose the majority.
I think everybody recognizes President Trump needs four years and not two.
And if they took the majority back, they would try to impeach him.
They would open the border wide.
They would create all sorts of chaos.
So we have to win, and we will.
And let me tell you why.
Because we have a very favorable landscape.
Right now, as we're sitting here today, 13 House Democrats are sitting in districts that President Trump won pretty handily.
That's right.
There's more than 20 districts that President Trump came within five points of winning.
So we've got a great landscape to go out and play offense, not defense, but offense, to flip those seats into our column.
And on top of that, we had an historic demographic shift in the election cycle.
We all saw it happening.
We had a record number of Hispanic and Latino voters, black and African-American voters, Jewish voters, union workers, all these groups that had not traditionally been in the Republican Party, but on the sheer force of Donald Trump's persona, they came into the party and they're going to be with us for quite some time because now we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity, Rob, to demonstrate for these people that it truly is our conservative policies that are better for them, that leads to human flourishing.
It's better for individuals, families, communities, states, and the nation as a whole.
We do that.
We'll hold this majority for quite some time.
rob finnerty
Question I've wanted to ask you for a while.
So before the election, Trump Force won Donald Trump's personal plane.
There was a photograph.
I'm going to name you four people that were in this photograph.
Kid Rock, RFK Jr., Elon Musk, Donald Trump, the fifth person, House Speaker Mike Johnson.
mike johnson
That's my current.
rob finnerty
I never think that group would be together at 30,000 feet.
mike johnson
You left out Jelly Roll.
I mean, it's a great group.
unidentified
Yeah.
mike johnson
We went to the UFC fight, was in Madison Square Garden, and we did a round trip to Palm Beach, to South Florida, in the same night.
So we arrived back at Palm Beach about 4.25 in the morning, and everybody you just named was up like it was the middle of the afternoon, man.
It was a great, great event.
But look, that's the power of President Trump.
He brings together all sorts of people who would not otherwise be unified like that.
And it's a great thing for the country.
It's unifying for the country.
There's talent, and it's a motley crew sometimes, but in a beautiful way.
And that's been one of the highlights of being speakers, hanging out with that class.
unidentified
Absolutely.
rob finnerty
And you fit right in.
mike johnson
Yeah, yeah.
rob finnerty
You fit right in.
Can you explain why the left and why so many Democrats are enraged at Donald Trump right now for trying to end two wars that he did not start?
mike johnson
I wish I could explain the Democrats.
They're just enraged about everything.
Think about it.
Their policies and their parties are in totally disarray.
They don't have a leader.
They don't have a real vision forward.
They don't know where they're going to head.
The entire platform has been repudiated by the American people.
The woke progressive nonsense has been stamped out.
And so all they know to do is to lash out.
I mean, think of it.
They're opposing the ending of wars.
They're opposing the ending, or they're opposing the Doge effort, right?
What Elon and the team are doing is what Congress has not had the ability to do.
They have cracked the code.
They're inside the belly of the beast of the bureaucracy.
And the algorithms are crawling through.
unidentified
That's right.
mike johnson
They're exposing this massive fraud, waste, and abuse that we have not been able to uncover because the deep state has hidden it from us.
This is a revolutionary kind of moment.
It really is.
And I told Elon in his office Monday before last, I said, you think of this like a scientist and a data analyst, and I think of it like a constitutional law attorney and a historian.
Elon, what we're going to do here is bring back the founders' original intent for the federal government, right?
I mean, Rob, you know, you're a student of history as well.
The founders wanted a lean, small federal government.
They wanted most of the power pushed down to the states, as you know, and they wanted the federal government to be closely monitored by the duly elected representatives of the people in Congress.
The problem is, Congress has not been able to do that job because they've been hiding the evidence, hiding the ball.
Elon's on the inside, and that's why the Democrats are so nervous.
He is right over the target right now.
rob finnerty
It's been remarkable to see the Department of Government Efficiency.
That's what Doge stands for.
Department of government efficiency.
And Democrats are almost in this un-American position right now of being against their primary mission, which is to save the American taxpayer money, which to me doesn't make any sense.
mike johnson
They like to spend the taxpayers' dollar.
I don't think that's ever been.
They sure do.
They're for big government.
That's what big government progressives do.
They want the government to control every aspect of our lives.
And the last four years, Biden-Harris administration, it was regulations on steroids.
And so now we have an opportunity to fix everything.
We have a very ambitious, very aggressive legislative agenda because we have been given this opportunity by the voters to fix it.
President Trump got 77 million popular votes, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
mike johnson
In the House, House Republicans got 74.8 million popular votes.
That's the highest total we've ever gotten.
unidentified
Wow.
mike johnson
Yeah, so we see it as a mandate to dial all that back and to fix it.
And you're seeing that happen very aggressively.
The president has over 300 executive actions already, and we're going to codify so much of what he's doing so that the next team can't unwind it.
That's right.
rob finnerty
In America, we hold presidential elections every four years.
We did so during COVID.
We did so during the Second World War.
We did so during the Civil War.
During the War of 1812, the White House was burned to the ground three months before James Madison was elected.
How important is it for Ukraine to hold presidential elections?
mike johnson
Well, it's very important, of course.
rob finnerty
Because they were canceled last spring.
mike johnson
That's right, that's right.
And the president has pointed that out.
rob finnerty
And they claim to be a democracy.
mike johnson
That's right.
We need an end to the conflict.
And what I've explained, I've done two panels at two different events this morning.
I started at the Republican Governors Association.
They asked me about this, and I went to the big business leaders, Fortune 500 executives there.
They all want to know the same thing.
What is President Trump doing there?
I said, you've got to give him room to operate and do what he does.
He's doing a level set, right?
You've got to get both parties to come and bring about an end to this conflict, which will serve America's interest and everybody's interest around the world.
But I think of it very much like a mediation or arbitration.
If you're a lawyer, you know, I'm a recovering lawyer.
Forgive me if I think of those terms.
But when you start a mediation, you start an arbitration between two parties, you don't bring them into the room for that first meeting.
You do it separately.
So I think Zelensky complaining that he wasn't invited to the first meeting with Saudi Arabia and Russia is misplaced.
I mean, what Trump's trying to do is do a level set, put the conditions in place for that real negotiation to happen, and we've got to allow him to do what he does.
Remember, he wrote the art of the deal.
He knows what he's doing.
unidentified
Absolutely.
rob finnerty
If that level set takes, let's say, three, six months, or it drags on, do you see another funding bill for the war in Ukraine?
mike johnson
Look, there's no appetite for that.
What do you think?
I know.
unidentified
Yeah.
mike johnson
Got our answer there?
We have to bring it to an end.
And I can tell you that our European allies understand the necessity of this as well.
It struggled on too long.
By some estimates, Russia's lost almost 700,000 troops, maybe more.
The Ukrainians have suffered great losses.
We have to bring an end to the conflict.
President Trump's exactly right.
It's time for it to end, and he is the brute force, I think, that can make that happen.
rob finnerty
The President said that a percentage of Doge savings could maybe go back to the American people in the form of what he called Doge stimulus checks.
Something like 20%.
How would that work?
mike johnson
Well, look, I mean, politically, that would be great for us, you know, send everybody a check.
But really, we have to think of it, I think, in a day.
rob finnerty
That just got everybody's attention, by the way, everybody look up all this.
mike johnson
I know.
But if you think about our core principles, right, fiscal responsibility is what we do as conservatives.
That's our brand.
And we have a $36 trillion federal debt.
We have a giant deficit that we're contending with.
I think we need to pay down the credit card, right?
That's what I think we need to do.
rob finnerty
Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing about this one big, beautiful bill.
Tell me how big, how beautiful.
mike johnson
Oh, it's going to be so big.
I shouldn't do it in that voice.
So the beauty of reconciliation, and I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on the procedure, but normally you need a 60-vote threshold in the Senate to do anything of substance, but budget reconciliation is the one exception in the process where you only need 51 votes in the Senate, a bare majority.
So we're going to use this reconciliation process to achieve most of the priorities that we ran on in the election cycle and that President Trump, that's right, committed to.
So I could be here a long time listing all those things, but clearly it's the most important interest of the country.
We're going to secure that border once and for all.
We're going to do that.
We're going to get the economy going again, American economy going, make sure that we don't have the largest tax increase in U.S. history, which is what would happen by default at the end of this year if we fail in this mission because the TCJA, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extensions expire, the cuts expire.
We're going to get the economy going.
We're going to get back to American energy dominance in this bill.
unidentified
Yep.
mike johnson
And we're going to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state, get the bureaucracy back into check.
Lots of details, lots of subcategories under all that, but it's going to be a big, beautiful bill.
And it has to be by necessity because that gives us the highest probability of success, remembering that I have a small margin in the House.
One.
I'm going to have one vote for much of this.
What could go wrong, Rob?
It's going to be fine.
But everybody, everybody is committed to delivering the America First Agenda, and that's why we're going to get it done.
rob finnerty
What is your working dynamic like with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who for the first time in a long time, the Senate's got a bigger majority than the House right now?
mike johnson
Yeah, they do.
The Republican majority in the Senate has a larger margin than we do in the House.
And so by necessity, the two chambers have to work very closely together.
And that's kind of an innovation.
It doesn't really happen in Washington.
It hasn't, so long as I've been there.
But as soon as I became Speaker of the House in October 23, the first instinct I had was, go meet with the Senate Republicans and let's align the two chambers.
It just makes sense.
It's common sense.
So we're doing that.
And you're going to see no daylight between the Republicans in the House and Senate.
rob finnerty
Mr. Speaker, there was some reporting this week that the Democrats are planning what they're calling a super ticket in 2028.
Kamala Harris and AOC.
Are you prepared for that?
mike johnson
Oh, let it be so.
Let it be so.
unidentified
Wow.
mike johnson
Is that real?
Is that real?
rob finnerty
Yes, that's an actual legitimate.
Well, I use that word legitimate very loosely nowadays with the media, but that report is out there.
jeremy boring
We'll say.
unidentified
Wow.
rob finnerty
I don't know who would run for president and who would be VP.
mike johnson
Oh, wow.
Yeah, I so hope that happens.
rob finnerty
Do the Democrats, do they have a leader right now?
mike johnson
No, they don't.
They don't have a leader.
rob finnerty
Any leader at any level, or is it still Joe Biden?
mike johnson
Well, he wasn't the leader for the last four years.
They really are in a real bind.
They don't have a leader.
They don't have a vision.
They don't have a platform they can run on.
They have to do a whole cloth reinvention of the party.
But they're very divided right now because they're in the blame game as they do the autopsy of what happened in the election cycle.
So it's an interesting time.
Look, our party's in great shape right now.
We are very unified.
We have a broadened coalition.
That's exactly right.
And we have the principles and the policies that truly are better for the American people.
I think they've recognized that.
You know what happened in the last four years, Rob, is that the woke progressive left tried so hard, they moved so aggressively, so quickly, to swing that pendulum to the left, and it went all the way to the left and it clicked.
And now it's coming back, right?
We are a center-right country.
Musk's Immigration Tweet 00:00:58
mike johnson
We always have been.
We always will be.
And I think President Trump is seen as a force helping us to push that pendulum back in place.
So we're going to seize that historic moment, and I believe we can bring about a much better outcome for the people and for the country.
rob finnerty
Two questions.
Elon Musk tweeted yesterday, quote, the real reason so many Democrats are upset about entitlements is that they're using taxpayer money to attract and retain illegal immigrants, their future voters.
Is that what you think the last four years at both our borders has been all about?
mike johnson
100%.
They opened the borders wide.
They did not care about the calamity and the heartache and the death, frankly, that it caused of American citizens because it was a power play.
American People Speak 00:07:14
mike johnson
They wanted to turn these people into voters.
And they want to change the outcome of the census in five years.
This is very serious.
And we're going to be dealing with the effects of this, the catastrophe, for years to come.
It's a terrible tragedy.
And don't ever forget that that was their motive.
It was for their own political gain that they put the American people in such jeopardy.
Fentanyl alone is the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, and that's float open the border.
Human trafficking, all of the atrocities.
They lost hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors in the system somewhere to traffickers.
All of it.
They allowed, they turned the other way.
They could have sealed that border any moment.
The president had the authority.
And I asked him personally on multiple occasions.
I pleaded with him.
I begged Joe Biden, use your authority.
And he'd look down at the floor and shuffle his shoes and say, I can't do that.
Well, the American people let him know how they felt about that.
rob finnerty
Can I ask you, now that the horse is out of the barn, Joe Biden is in Rehoboth Beach, retired, how did he seem during those moments where you were with him in person?
mike johnson
It was only a couple of occasions.
I talked to him on the phone a few more times than that.
They didn't allow me to meet with him one-on-one for probably most obvious reasons now.
But there's a now widely reported story of something that happened, I think it was in early February of last year, when I was in the Oval Office and I asked him why he paused LNG exports.
Like, Mr. President, why would you pause liquefied natural gas exports to our European allies?
Because they're going to have to go to Vladimir Putin to get their needs met.
And he tried to argue with me and tell me that he didn't do that.
And it occurred to me in this dialogue that he genuinely did not know what he had signed.
That they had put this executive order in front of him, and he didn't understand what it was.
And that was a very alarming moment of realization for me.
And I think the whole country knows now.
But it was a dangerous time, a very perilous time for us, particularly in that last year of his administration.
But thank God, thank God, that President Trump is back in the White House and we can restore that.
rob finnerty
I think, Mr. Speaker, this room knows you, but I think the American people are still getting to know you.
And I thought this was wonderful.
Your son is on the boxing team at the Naval Academy.
I didn't know that.
How is he doing?
mike johnson
Well, he's bigger than his father, if that's any kind of.
He's doing great.
He made it to the semifinals in the brigade championship last Friday and lost in a one-point split decision to a young man that was three years older than him and had been boxing about six years longer, I think.
So he held his own.
He's been boxing for about seven months.
rob finnerty
Seven months since he's on the team?
mike johnson
He did jiu-jitsu for a long time.
He's a tough kid, but this is a different kind of.
rob finnerty
Does he learn that from his father?
mike johnson
Oh, yes, of course.
unidentified
I mean, of course.
mike johnson
No, he's a tough kid.
He's a great kid.
He takes after his mother.
rob finnerty
Ladies and gentlemen, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
unidentified
Do solemnly swear.
President Trump is back in the White House.
Donald Trump won that president.
He's back in the White House.
Donald Trump has taken back America.
donald j trump
I actually started quite a while ago in CPAC, and I enjoyed it so much that I came back for a second one, then a third.
Then I said, what the hell?
Let's run for president.
unidentified
Matt said, it's like five years ago, six years ago.
donald j trump
He says, you should run for politics.
unidentified
He's the one who said you should run for the presidency of the United States.
It is my honor to introduce to CPAC 2017 our president, Donald Trump.
donald j trump
First of all, I want to thank Matt Schlapp and his very, very incredible wife and boss, Mercedes, who have been fantastic friends and supporters and so great when I watch them on television defending me, nobody has a chance.
unidentified
I love this place.
Love you people.
You never stop fighting for America and I will never ever stop fighting for you.
donald j trump
We know that there are still more records to be shattered, new summits to be scaled, more triumphs to be realized, and more amazing history just waiting to be written.
The American adventure has only just begun.
unidentified
God bless America and we will see you next year.
Thank you very much.
You never stop fighting for America and I will never ever stop fighting for you.
matt schlapp
Hey everyone, it's Matt Schlapp with CPAC.
You know, CPAC isn't just a conference.
We're fighting 365 days a year on all the issues you care about.
Please go to your badge.
There's a QR code.
Check it out and see the different centers we have at CPAC, whether it's fighting anti-Semitism or corporate responsibility or rating members of Congress or state legislators or criminal justice reform.
You name it.
We're into it and check it out right now.
unidentified
Everything they said about him has been wrong.
matt schlapp
I don't know how he does it.
unidentified
It has always been a battle against Donald Trump.
Puts a very bright light on the two-tiered system of justice that only seems to go after President Trump.
The reason why we want him as president is because he's not stuck in this kind of bureaucratic mechanism.
michael j knowles
He was very clear.
unidentified
If you hit your target, you are golden and you could work and work and work and do a great job.
He's a very inquisitive person who loves to talk about the economy.
pam bondi
Trump does the same thing in a different medium.
unidentified
He's talking directly to the American people.
That's why Trump is transformational because he kind of came outside the Republican Party.
He's a great closer.
He understands what the most important issues are to voters.
Not only is America a great country, but that we Americans are good people.
Donald Trump stands for everything that's good, everything that we need, what needs to be changed in our society today.
Think about that Trump supporter that was demonized, that was taken down, that was criticized, that was targeted.
Think about that person out there.
pam bondi
That is the one.
unidentified
They are winning tonight.
The American people, they've spoken up tonight.
matt schlapp
We've just lived through history.
We're never going to see anything like this ever again.
rob schmitt
Being woke is easy when it was just a call to defund the police or end capitalism, right?
It's a little different when your fellow audiologues start cheering for your beheading.
unidentified
And here's a question.
Fighting Back Washington 00:15:36
rob schmitt
This next video, does this look like London to you?
The pro-Hamas protests making for a very interesting political moment at Harvard, a university recently ranked the worst school for free speech in America.
What would Harvard do in a moment like this, we all wondered, a school that will expel you for using the wrong pronoun and making a pink-haired trans girl cry?
Well, in this moment, Harvard just miraculously transformed into free speech absolution.
Apparently at Harvard, there's nothing offensive at all, even though everything's offensive at Harvard.
There's nothing fenced at all about celebrating the murder of 1,000 people, including a whole bunch of kids.
unidentified
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome from Florida, Senator Rick Scott.
rick scott
So good afternoon.
Welcome to the Capitol.
What do you think about Kash Patel?
You know, I told CPAC leadership that next year's event should be down in my home state of Florida.
You know, we also have a great view of the Gulf of America.
By the way, the weather is a little bit better.
I think it's about 75 degrees.
So the first thing I want to do is I want to thank you.
I want to thank CPAC for all your friendship and support.
You know, last year I ran to be Senate Majority Leader.
And many of you very vocally supported me.
And I'll be eternally grateful.
Your vocal support changed the Senate.
You did it.
Now, for too long, Washington has been known for all the wrong things.
Big spending, no results.
Waste and inefficiency.
Washington is about enriching politicians like Nancy Pelosi.
unidentified
Yep.
rick scott
Bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci at the expense of the American people.
Washington was always about protecting the status quo because the politicians in Washington made money off of it.
Washington was about a radical social and environmental agenda.
About forever wars, open borders, lies and no accountability.
Washington was about Washington.
It wasn't about the American people who simply want to lead their lives without bureaucrats telling them what the hell to do.
All of that is changing.
It's changing fast because of one person, Donald J. Trump in the White House.
Now President Trump is bringing common sense back to Washington.
He's bringing transparency and accountability back to Washington.
He's working with great leaders like Elon Musk to bring efficiency back to Washington.
And the Democrats are complaining like crazy, but he's changing Washington in record time.
He's bringing the voice of the American people back to Washington.
President Trump is making America great again.
Now, what's he deserve?
He deserves our thanks and our respect.
But what's he get instead?
He gets lies and obstruction for the Democrats, the mainstream media, and even some establishment Washington Republicans desperately clinging to relevance.
Mitch McConnell supports Merrick Garland's nomination for Attorney General.
He's already voted against three of President Trump's cabinet nominees.
AOC, she's the only level of fascism.
CNN is blasting, blaring that the Trump administration is a threat to democracy and ushering a constitutional crisis.
Guess what?
Here's the good news.
They're the past.
Their voices no longer matter.
Their shadow can no longer hang over politics.
They lost.
The American people won.
What happened last fall?
President Trump and an army of supporters like you all across this great country started a movement.
One that changed the country and reset our future for a golden era.
The future is about you and your hopes and your dreams.
It's about us.
It's about amplifying the voices of the American people and finally, finally, finally giving the government they're paying for and that they deserve.
Now, a couple years ago, in the midst of Joe Biden's disastrous presidency, or whoever was in charge, I put out a plan with some ideas to rescue this country from the radical Democrats who were trying to destroy our values and bankrupt us in the process.
Now, the way the Democrats and establishment Republicans responded, you would have thought I broke the law.
And the craziest part of it, I couldn't tell who hated it more, Joe Biden or Mitch McConnell.
Now think about it.
I propose some really crazy ideas.
So just think about these.
Teach your students about the U.S. Constitution.
That's a hard one.
The Bill of Rights, our founding fathers.
Having our kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance and salute the flag.
eliminating the Department of Education, banning the federal government from asking American citizens to disclose their race or skin color on government forums.
Funding our police and enforcing all of our laws.
Securing the border.
michael j knowles
Build the wall.
rick scott
Name the wall after Donald Trump.
Start growing the American economy, not the Washington economy.
Enacting term limits for member Congress and federal bureaucrats.
Protecting the integrity of the American election.
Protecting, defending, promoting the American family at all cost.
Believing in science.
Guess what?
Men are men.
Women are women.
Unborn babies, they're babies.
Sorry, Democrats.
I was tarred and feathered for proposing such crazy ideas, but it was worth it because it was time for Republicans, at least the true, honest Conservative Republicans, to stand up and fight the hell back.
Now, here in Washington, we're seeing what truly fighting back gets us.
The bureaucrats are scared that their lives are being exposed.
The muddy spigot is being turned off.
NGOs across the world and liberal think tax around the world are scrambling because their golden goose has finally laid its last egg.
Corporate America is tripping over itself to reverse racist DEI programs that seek to divide us by race, gender, and creed.
Now, fighting back gets us a government that's listening.
An administration that's focused on a stronger future, a president that really cares, who truly fights for us, and will not accept the status quo any longer.
Now, let me say what I said a few years ago when I introduced my plan to rescue our country.
Failure is not an option.
The future of this country depends on each and every one of us and the actions we take today, tomorrow, and the months to come.
Now, I've got great kids.
Many of you in this room and watching on TV, you've got kids and grandkids as well.
In America, we used to believe we had a duty, a sacred duty, to leave things better for our children and our grandchildren than we found them.
$2 trillion deficits, $36 trillion in debt, Medicare and Social Security going bankrupt, failing schools, high crime rates means that hasn't happened.
Instead, our political and cultural rot has made things harder for our kids and our grandkids than they were for each of us.
It's harder to get a good education now than it was when I was growing up.
It's harder to buy a home.
It's harder to start a business.
It's harder to get a good, full-paying job.
It's harder to live the American dream.
That's wrong.
that cannot be our legacy those of us fighting side by side in the conservative movement have faced significant obstacles even unfortunately inside our own party But you and we have kept fighting.
We have to fight harder now.
We have the opportunity, but it takes our fight.
Now, we all watched what happened in Butler.
We all saw President Trump stand up and raise his fists.
What did he do?
Fight, fight, fight.
Even in the face of unimaginable obstacles, he kept fighting.
Now, we know he's going to keep fighting.
I know I'm going to keep fighting, and I know everybody in this room is going to keep fighting with us.
Thank you for what you're doing.
God bless every one of you.
God bless the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and God bless this great country.
Have a great day.
Bye-bye.
unidentified
They've made billions partnering with big health insurance corporations while opposing reforms seniors want, like applying big discounts to medicines directly at the pharmacy counter.
Instead, AARP supports liberal price-setting schemes, giving politicians, not seniors, control over any so-called Medicare savings with no guarantees.
Funds won't be spent on unrelated programs or pad big insurance profits.
If AARP and Congress believe America's seniors aren't watching, think again.
Pay for by American commitment.
Every institution today is under attack.
The home, the church, the government, and many people asking, what is the truth?
Jesus Christ claimed to be ultimate truth.
Are you willing to face the truth?
justus smith
Do you think that MK Ultra Project ever activated?
charlie kirk
The Central Intelligence Agency is actively involved in mind manipulation.
elaine beck
We all answer to one God and one Savior.
And he's there to change your life for the better.
unidentified
I'll be seeing you in Japanese.
Still under construction, but already the biggest news station in Poland.
The only international TV station that interviewed Donald J. Trump.
donald j trump
I'd like to say hello to the Polish people.
nigel farage
Poland's leftist government wants to destroy us, but we are not backing down.
unidentified
We're building conservative English-speaking European news space.
Join the movement.
Support the revolution.
Make Europe great again.
This is Republica, the home of free speech.
Hey there, scan your QR code on your badge so that you can view the agenda.
Check out our membership circles and learn more about our centers.
jeremy boring
As I think it was President Reagan said, we're from the government.
unidentified
We're here to help.
I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
We're from the government.
We're here to help.
Sources out there that are saying that Iran, their goal is to draw the U.S. into this broader conflict.
There's no question that not only did the Iranian parliament come out and start saying death to Israel, you know that they've chanted death to America, they hate us.
They hate our culture.
They hate what we stand for, which is that of freedom and religious freedom.
And for them, they want to take us down.
And the mere fact is you have a commander-in-chief right now who is hiding in the basement that needs to be out there every single day answering the tough questions.
Instead, they basically say that climate change remains the most important national security crisis that we're facing.
They have caved in time and time again to Iran while knowing that they are funding Hezbollah.
They sent over $100 million, that is, Iran, to Hamas and over $700 million to Hezbollah.
Clearly, it is about sponsoring terrorism.
Clearly, it is about destroying our strongest ally, Israel, and then America.
Ladies and gentlemen, up next, Nowhere to Hide.
The Tady Down of Left Tech.
Please welcome, from Missouri, Senator Eric Schmidt, and founder and president, Article III Project, Mike Davis.
Can you set up?
Big Tech Antitrust Fight 00:15:24
eric schmitt
Good news.
mike davis
Well, thank you for coming.
We're going to talk about big tech, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, and what we need to do to end their gatekeeping power over information and commerce.
And this started under the Trump 45 administration, where we saw our 100-year-old antitrust laws get dusted off, and we ended big tech's antitrust amnesty, where we want to use antitrust, which is law enforcement, to go after these trillion-dollar big tech monopolists who they have too much power and they use that power for bad things.
And they're anti-competitive.
And we saw that the Trump 45 Justice Department started this.
I always said that the only thing that the Biden administration did right was they continued President Trump's antitrust enforcement under the Biden antitrust division.
And we're seeing with President Trump that he is fully committed to finishing the job with antitrust.
You see this with his appointment of Andrew Ferguson to chair the Federal Trade Commission.
And we're seeing this with President Trump's pick of Gail Slater to lead the antitrust division.
And it's critically important because these trillion-dollar big tech monopolists, they crush competition, they shutter small businesses, and they cancel conservatives and others with whom they disagree.
And I'll tell you, the tip of the spear in this fight has been Senator Schmidt from Missouri.
He has been a warrior against big tech.
And so I'm very pleased to talk to him today about these issues.
And I just want to start this off, Senator, to just get your thoughts on antitrust and big tech generally and what you think needs to happen.
eric schmitt
Well, I think great to be with you and great to be back at CPAC.
What a great crowd.
And this feels a lot different now that we won in November than it did just a couple years ago, doesn't it?
There's a new sheriff in town.
So, yeah, I think that for most people, especially people in this room and conservatives, they have seen, like, over the last four years in particular, what happens when you have these massive concentrations of power.
And you see that sort of collide with this fundamental belief that we have as conservatives that when we're born, we're born with certain rights.
And those rights come from God.
And the first one that's mentioned in our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, is the right to speak your mind.
This idea of fundamental human expression, right?
And government's only role is to make sure it protects those rights.
That's like the foundation of the country.
And we believe that.
So when you have these massive companies then that infringe upon that right, and sometimes with the behest, at the behest of the federal government, it's a scary situation.
In my previous job, before this one, I was attorney general for the free state of Missouri.
It was a great gig.
I loved it.
And we launched the Missouri versus Biden lawsuit, which turned into Murphy versus Missouri.
But you've got to remember, so I think it's important to sort of go back in time.
In 2021, 2022, really before Elon Musk had bought Twitter, before Jim Jordan was holding hearings, we filed this lawsuit.
And it's interesting, Jen Saki, you got to go back.
This is COVID, forced masking, forced vaccinations.
The real raw power of the federal government was on display.
And Jen Saki was standing there up at the podium saying, yeah, we're flagging this for Facebook.
They need to take this down.
They wanted to start a disinformation governance board.
Remember Mary Poppins, who was singing, what was her name?
But she's singing about how great it is.
And this misinformation, disinformation must be taken down by the government.
So you saw this, when we filed the lawsuit, we got discovery before the temporary restraining order that ultimately went to the Supreme Court.
And what we found was shocking.
We had an idea what was happening, but could have never been prepared for what we found, which was high-level government officials working directly through a secret portal with the big tech companies at Facebook, at Twitter, saying, take this down.
This is misinformation.
You need to take this down.
And them saying, okay, what else can we do?
They were also threatening, threatening to take away Section 230 protections if they didn't do more censorship.
So as this unfolded, it really, I think, showed to the world and to this country the real risk of these concentrations of power with the federal government working directly with big tech giants to censor speech.
And I think this is the fight.
This is the fight long term for us.
The Democrats, the liberals even, have ceded this ground, the high ground of defending your right to speak your mind.
And so as conservatives, I think we should own this issue.
It's the right thing to do.
And clearly, American people, I think, watched all this the last four years, and they sent back President Trump to fix it.
mike davis
That's exactly right.
I think people need to understand the whole point of antitrust is to protect the free market, right?
When you have these trillion-dollar monopolists using their market power to crush competition, you no longer have a functioning market.
You no longer have a free market.
And that's why antitrust laws that have been on the books are so critically important to break up this power.
Because if you're a free market conservative like we both are, you should strongly support antitrust law enforcement.
You are targeting the anti-competitive tumors on the free market so you don't need industry-wide regulation.
Facebook is calling for regulation.
Of course they are because they're a big company and they can afford to pay for the lawyers and the lobbyists and the PR people to navigate those regulations.
Those are entry barriers to startup competitors.
And I would say this, remember this about Google and YouTube.
If Google competed against YouTube instead of acquired YouTube, there's no chance that Google would be censoring half of America based upon their political viewpoints.
They would try to be, they would be competing.
Google would be competing with YouTube for conservative users, not trying to censor them.
And I think that's really important to remember.
eric schmitt
I think in Google in particular, like there's been a lot of attention.
I mean, thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter and X, and it really is a platform.
It really is a platform.
But Google is really the ultimate black box.
That algorithm, like if you're a business or whatever, or you're a political candidate, there's a huge difference between you being on page one of the search and page 12 of the search, right?
And nobody gets to see the wizard right now.
Nobody gets to see it.
So I think some of these, the litigation as it relates to Google is really important to sort of bust that up so you have real competition.
mike davis
That's right.
There are two major antitrust lawsuits working their way through the courts right now.
And Google is the worst of the worst.
They're the worst actor.
And one is on Google's search monopoly.
When you go on Google and look for things online, that's their search monopoly.
The bigger problem is Google has an online advertising monopoly, right?
They use the money they make with their online advertising monopoly to fund their censorship, all their woke nonsense that they do is because they have this online advertising monopoly.
And you're seeing lawsuits right now, again, started under Trump, to Biden's credit, continued under Biden.
We need to finish the job with Trump's antitrust law enforcers like Gail Slater at the Antitrust Division.
Another problem you're seeing with these big tech platforms is something like NewsGuard, right, where they have, they rate news services in schools like libraries and classrooms.
And of course, they give conservative news organizations like Newsmax or Fox News or Breitbart, they give them lower grades, and so kids don't have access to conservative news sites.
They get the liberal news sites like CNN and MSNBC, and that needs to end as well, because again, they're trying to control information and commerce in this country, and we just cannot let this happen.
eric schmitt
Well, and I think the other thing that's happening too, and we saw it, which is why, you know, it's such a great opportunity for us now with having President Trump in the White House, having a Republican House, having a Republican Senate, because we can actually put some structural safeguards in place too.
For example, Section 230 protections, what is that?
Back in the 90s when the internet was sort of becoming a thing, what Congress said was, okay, you're going to be sort of immune from liability because you're a platform, right?
People can go on there.
As long as it's an open platform, you can't be sued for what somebody else says.
And the idea was to have this democratization of information, right?
What it didn't ever contemplate was that they would then be themselves sort of the censors, right?
And so I think, you know, by way of legislation, you got to pick.
You're either going to be an open platform or you're going to be a publisher who can get sued like 60 Minutes ought to get sued for the nonsense that they did of President Trump and the enemies.
So they've got to pick a team.
And also, if you're a bureaucrat and you work to censor Americans, you ought to be able to be sued individually by a citizen, so it doesn't take an attorney general to have to go do that.
You as an army of Americans can sue the censors.
That would change, I think that would really change the incentive structure, which would be really important.
And I can't miss the opportunity to point out just how exciting, as Mike and I and all of you believe, you know, the founders believed in this system of checks and balances where we have, you know, power is spread out among the branches, you have federalism.
The whole intent was so that no one branch or no one person could get so powerful to take your liberty away, right?
That's the whole idea.
The whole point is to protect individual liberty.
They could have never contemplated the administrative state as it currently is right now.
This army of bureaucrats in buildings, by the way, they don't even show up to work anymore.
About 6% of people are actually in the offices here in Washington, D.C. on any given day.
But they have immense power over your lives, right?
Over your lives.
They can take away your liberty in some cases.
They could take away your livelihood.
And so what President Trump is embarking on, and you see just the histrionics every day, the Democrats are losing their minds because of Doge and these efforts to strip away that power.
And they should.
They should, because the people of this country elected one person to run the executive branch.
And he gets to make decisions on personnel and on policy.
And you don't get to send millions of dollars to Guatemala for sex changes and think you're immune from having that money stripped away.
That's what this fight is all about right now.
So it's an exciting time.
mike davis
It is an exciting time.
And I will say this to the big tech platforms like Google and Facebook.
Thank you for paying for Trump's inauguration.
I think Marcus Zuckerberg donated a million dollars.
We appreciate that.
It was a fun party.
But Mark Zuckerberg spent, what, $400 million chasing President Trump out of office in 2020.
So $400 million versus a million dollars.
I think he has a lot of catching up to do.
And I don't think that he's going to buy antitrust amnesty from the Trump 47 Justice Department or the Trump 47 Federal Trade Commission.
We've had these antitrust laws on the books for 100 years.
And to these trillion-dollar big tech platforms, nobody's above the law.
And so justice is coming.
eric schmitt
Yeah, and I think one other, with the time we have left, I just mentioned one other thing to kind of look out for.
On the Judiciary Committee, I was telling Mike, I chair the Constitution Subcommittee.
So we have jurisdiction over the First Amendment, the Second Amendment.
So get ready.
We're going to have some fun hearings and bring people in and hold people to account for trying to take away your right to speak your mind.
So whoever's watching this to engage in activity, stay tuned.
But also, what's happening with Doge right now, and it was so smart to start with these, with USAID, right, where you had all of this money flowing to DEI programming in Burma and LGBTQIA plays in Europe and, you know, LGBTQ Sesame Street in Iraq.
I mean, this is like totally insane, but that's where this money was going.
But it was funneled effectively through these NGOs, right?
The Biden administration was also using these NGOs to bring mass migration into this country, to break up our sovereignty as a country, and they were also using it to help flag things for their vast censorship enterprise.
And so I think we're going to do some investigating on who these NGOs are.
And if you want to know why the Democrats to this, there is a lot of corruption that's going to be exposed.
unidentified
So let's go.
steve bannon
I want to end it.
mike davis
I want to end this on this point.
Senator Schmidt has been a warrior in the Senate for President Trump's cabinet, PICS, and others.
And Kash Patel was just confirmed today as our next FBI director.
I remember when Cash was nominated, a lot of very smart people in Washington said his nomination was dead on arrival.
Well, now it's Director Kash Patel.
And I want to thank Senator Schmidt for all he does for President Trump and his nominees.
This guy is a warrior.
unidentified
So thank you.
eric schmitt
Thanks for your work.
unidentified
Thank you.
eric schmitt
Thanks for your work, too.
unidentified
Thank you.
Yep.
All right.
God bless you guys.
You came to Washington for one of two reasons.
Why We Came Here 00:07:05
unidentified
Some of you came here for position, for power, and fame.
You came for you.
But a few came to change this town.
We came to be sandpaper to a culture that despises truth.
Are you one of the few willing to stand in the gap for our nation?
If so, come join us as we make America's national model, our personal declaration.
We hold these crews to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
He will become the founder of a mighty empire.
Founders talked about this providential experiment that God had ordained and intervened at this unique moment in American history.
steve bannon
Most of them believed there were no accidents in history.
unidentified
Americans today should regain our bearings.
That our nation is no accident.
Freedom, sovereignty, prosperity.
The Patriots for Europe Foundation is on a mission to make Europe great again.
Globalist elites have led Europe into a dead-end street.
Violent crime has surged because of mass immigration.
The Green Deal has put the future of the European economy at risk.
Fake NGOs and the massive bureaucracy in Brussels are interfering in our democracies.
Patriots must take action.
We bring analysis.
We organize debates.
We build the network of patriots to challenge the woke narrative head-on.
Patriots for Europe Foundation.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Nigel Farage.
nigel farage
What a reception.
It's great to be here and how amazing it is.
You know, 13 years ago, I was the only foreign speaker and now CPAC is a global brand.
Congratulations to Matt and Mercedes-Schlapp for making it happen.
And what a time it is to cross the pond.
My country.
You can't say anything or you might get put in prison.
We're getting poorer.
Everybody's miserable.
We're governed by a left-wing, awful government.
Suddenly, post-November the 5th, America is optimistic.
It's upbeat.
It's the beginning of the golden age in America.
And it is all because of one totally extraordinary individual.
You know, I can tell you that if you take on the establishment, they do not come out with a tray of drinks.
The whole of the British establishment wanted us to be members of the globalist European Union.
All the parties, all the big businesses, all the trade unions.
And it was almost me alone saying, this is a crazy idea.
We want control of our sovereignty, our borders and our identity back with the British people.
And for daring to say that, they made my life hell.
But the tough times I went through are as nothing compared to what they put Donald J. Trump through.
It went on for year after year after year.
Endless court cases, mainstream media abuse, harassment of his family, debanking from some of the worst financial institutions, assassination attempts.
And yet this man has come through it braver, stronger, wiser than at any point.
He is simply the bravest man that I know and we should all applaud him.
We really should.
We really should.
And what a pick.
What a pick for vice president.
You know, very often, around the world, very often vice presidents, American vice presidents, are not particularly noticed, not taken that seriously.
But after the speech at the Munich Security Conference, I think we can say with some confidence that the American VP is going to be a major part of global politics.
And I loved it.
I loved it.
Did you enjoy his speech?
Well, I tell you what, they didn't, did they?
They absolutely hated it.
It rather reminded me of my times in the European Parliament a decade ago, getting up saying the bloke had the charisma of a damp rag, and that rather upset them.
But JD was right to have allowed millions of undocumented young males to come into Europe, many from war zones in which they took an active part,
to allow those people who come in and in many cases come from cultures and countries where women are not even treated as second-class citizens, to have seen the massive increases in crime, gang crime, dramatic increases in sexual crime against women.
And yet nobody in the European establishment is prepared to put their hands up, to recognise the depth of the problem, and to say sorry to their people.
And JD called them out in this speech, and he was right.
He was right.
He also mentioned free speech.
And I think there's a third figure in American public life now that is, well, I think he's a hero.
Because if you remember 2020, in November, you couldn't say anything about the conduct of the election in this country.
You then couldn't say anything about vaccines or about lockdowns without social media closing you down.
Why We'll Win 00:05:00
nigel farage
And then along came the hero of free speech, E. Lon Musk.
Fantastic.
And he's fighting for free speech.
And boy, if we don't have free speech, we're not living in a free, open, democratic society.
It matters that much.
And I believe that the talents of the world's most successful businessmen going into this amazing Doge project, I wish him all the luck in the world and Godspeed.
I really, really do.
And we now we very often follow you.
American trends we tend to follow.
You occasionally follow some of our trends.
I mean, you gave us woke.
And we gave you Prince Harry.
No, you keep him.
You keep him.
But in 2016 we delivered a political thunderbolt across the whole world and it was called Brexit.
And I believe that a wave crossed the Atlantic and helped Donald Trump win the presidency in November 2016.
Well, this time the Trump win has the ability not just to save your country, not just to make you freer and more prosperous than America has ever been, because undoubtedly that is what is going to happen.
But it's also producing a wave that is now coming the other way across the Atlantic.
I had been retired from politics for nearly four years, but I decided last June I'd get back into politics because I couldn't bear what was happening in my country.
And I am now leading, And in historical terms, this is incredible.
I am now leading Reforming UK, and we are now topping every opinion poll in Britain.
And we are.
And we are going to win the next general election and save our country.
We're going to do it.
We're going to do it.
And what you guys have done.
What CPAC, what the activists have done in helping President Trump win 85% of the counties in this great country of yours to win the House, the Senate, the majority vote, all those things you've done.
The confidence of this man surrounded by a great, great team.
This is all going to blow back and help us in our endeavours and across the rest of Europe too.
And I really believe that like you, British taxpayers have had enough of sending £100,000 to Bangladesh to study shrimp behaviour.
But we've had enough of free speech being cracked down upon.
We've had enough of two-tier policing, two-tier justice, different groups of people being treated differently by the law.
We've had enough of being told you can't say that.
To hell with it.
Within the limits of what free speech gives us, we should be allowed to say whatever the hell we want.
And we will.
And we will.
We will deport those who come into Britain by dinghy illegally.
We will make sure that those to come to Britain legally subscribe to our shared values.
In fact, in many ways, what we're fighting for is a very similar agenda to the one that you've just fought for and the one that you have just succeeded with.
I want to finish by saying, as a regular at CPAC and as somebody who has publicly supported President Trump and been a friend of his for a decade, this is a remarkable CPAC coming together.
A Free Press Matters 00:15:19
nigel farage
This is something to celebrate in style, to be proud of.
You're going to make America great again and we in turn will make Britain great again.
Thank you.
unidentified
thank you very much it's our america We conquered it.
We built it.
Great values like honesty and fairness.
Great courage.
A great nation needs a free press.
Newsmax is it.
30 million Americans regularly go to Newsmax when they really need to know.
They watch Newsmax TV at home.
On the free Newsmax app.
They go to newsmax.com.
Start today.
Newsmax is real news for real people.
Welcome to CPAC.
At Great American Media, we celebrate what matters most.
Faith, family, and country.
Today, we invite you to experience storytelling that uplifts, inspires, and reflects the values we all cherish.
Pureflex is your home for entertainment without compromise.
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Join us and experience the best in faith and family entertainment.
The home, the church, the government.
And many people are asking, what is the truth?
Jesus Christ claimed to be ultimate truth.
Are you willing to face the truth?
justus smith
Do you think the MK Ultra Project ever actually ended?
charlie kirk
The Central Intelligence Agency is actively involved in mind manipulation.
elaine beck
We all answer to one God and one Savior.
And he's there to change your life for the better.
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Ladies and gentlemen, this is Verdict with Ted Cruz and co-host Ben Ferguson, featuring Attorney General Pam Bondi.
ben ferguson
What a good-looking crowd today.
unidentified
I love it.
ben ferguson
All right, so we are going to be doing our podcast live, so I'm going to give you guys a countdown.
You guys are going to be in the podcast with us.
I'm going to say we're from CPAC.
I want you guys to be as loud as you possibly can.
unidentified
Are you ready?
matt walsh
All right, here we go.
ben ferguson
Welcome, it is Verdict with Ted Cruz live from CPAC 2025.
unidentified
Senator and Son!
ben ferguson
I like this being our annual time to hang out with fun people.
ted cruz
Well, it is great to be back with CPAC.
And I gotta say, CPAC, this year, there is energy, there's excitement.
It turns out winning doesn't suck.
unidentified
It does not.
ted cruz
And we have a guest.
We have the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi.
pam bondi
They finally did, and I get to do it in front of all of you.
So this is awesome.
ted cruz
Well, Pam, I will tell you that there is some good karma to being on this podcast at CPAC because the last guest we had at CPAC was someone named JD Vance.
He's on our right for himself.
pam bondi
He's a great man.
ted cruz
So, welcome.
pam bondi
Thank you.
ted cruz
You have been Attorney General 15 days.
pam bondi
It feels like 15 years.
ted cruz
I believe you.
And by the way, you just got some help.
An hour ago, the Senate just finished confirming...
pam bondi
Been on the phone with him nonstop.
unidentified
I...
ted cruz
I talked to him on the ride over here.
He is going to do fantastic.
All right, let's start.
15 days.
You've come into what I think is the single most important cabinet position in this administration.
Because we went through four years of Biden weaponizing the Department of Justice, using it to attack his enemies and to support his friends.
So let me ask you, you come into DOJ, you've got a mission.
You've got a mission to restore integrity to the department, to end the weaponization and politicization.
How do you do that?
How do you get that done?
pam bondi
You know, the volume, Senator, what concerned me the most, it's the volume of how bad it was.
And it still is.
We're working on it.
It's day by day by day.
But we've got a team of great people.
And on day one, I issued 14 executive orders.
And number one is the weaponization ends, and it ends now.
And that's what we did.
ted cruz
Let me ask you something.
In the 15 days you've been there, how many DOJ employees have said something to the effect of, thank God?
unidentified
A lot of them.
ted cruz
I believe you.
Look, I spent four years hearing from AUSA's assistant U.S. attorneys, hearing from FBI agents, hearing from men and women who believe in the rule of law and were horrified at the politicization of the FBI and the DOJ.
And so I know for a lot of good, honorable men and women who've devoted their careers to defending the Constitution, there's a lot of gratitude that they can get back to doing their job.
pam bondi
Their core function.
And that's thanks to Donald J. Trump getting back in office.
And he gave us a clear directive, make America safe.
And that's what we're going to do.
You know, to start with the law enforcement agencies talking about cash, these men and women didn't go to Quantico.
They're not risking their lives to waste their time on all this politicization and raiding Mar-a-Lago, really.
Stopping.
All of that is stopping.
And we are returning them to their core function, fighting violent crime.
And that's what the great majority of men and women in law enforcement, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals, FBI, as well as the incredible legal team at the Justice Department, that's what they want to do.
ted cruz
So let's talk about one of the most lawless aspects of the last four years, which was the open borders that we saw and the 12 million illegal immigrants that have come into this country.
You've had just two weeks, but you've hit the ground running, going after the criminals, going after the murderers, going after the rapists, going after the child molesters, going after the Venezuelan gang members.
Tell us, number one, what you're doing as Attorney General that is making a real difference, that is already making America safer.
And number two, I understand you have some breaking news concerning my home state of Texas, which I'm particularly proud to hear.
pam bondi
I do.
I do.
And the press release isn't even out yet.
Joint Task Force Alpha that we elevated once we came in office.
It's with the Department of Justice and the FBI, and we work hand in hand with Homeland Security.
Christina is awesome.
We all work so well together.
Joint Task Force Alpha just made a huge arrest in Juarez, Mexico.
They were headed to Texas, to El Paso, human smuggling.
Yeah, huge.
That's why we do what we do every day.
That's why these agents risk their lives every single day.
It's human smuggling, and a lot of children, a lot of children, they're saying, are safer because of this.
ben ferguson
Let me ask you a question.
President Trump, and this has made headlines on what you're just talking about.
We've designated these cartels as terrorist organizations.
What does that allow you to do in your job?
And Kash Patel now is the head of the FBI.
What is that going to give you the ability to do and to go after them?
pam bondi
Well, Stephen Miller is doing a great job as Leon Ri leading this effort with all of us, Mike Waltz at DOD.
We all work so, Pete Hegseth, we all work so well together.
And it gives us the ability, it gives, they are a terrorist group, and it gives us the ability to go after them more ability anywhere in the world and treat them as terrorists.
They are terrorists.
If you're bringing fentanyl into this country and killing our kids, you're a terrorist, and we're coming after you.
ben ferguson
300 a day is the average that are dying in this country right now.
When you took this job and you hear that number and you saw the inaction from the last administration, how angry did that make you?
pam bondi
So angry.
You know, I was a state AG before I became United States Attorney General.
And fentanyl was really just coming on the market.
And now with this horrible open border policy just flowing, flowing across our borders and killing kids, killing adults every single day.
And it's criminal that no one was doing anything to stop it.
I can't comprehend how any administration, progressive nor conservative, how any administration could tolerate that and let that happen.
And it ended day one with Donald Trump when he shut that border.
I was at the border back in September.
I went with Laura Trump and Morgan Ortegas.
And we were in Yuma, Arizona.
And I saw firsthand there is nothing humanitarian that was happening at that border.
Nothing, nothing.
They have a rape tree where they're raping women as they're coming into this country.
I saw firsthand piles and piles of passports just thrown from every country you can imagine because the Biden administration was letting you walk right in the country.
If you didn't have a passport, they said they saw Asian Chinese individuals saying, oh, we're from Cuba.
So they wrote down there from Cuba and had to let them legally walk right in under that administration.
But the drugs, the trafficking, I learned a new term, disposable child.
The customs, the border, I mean, the border patrol agents told me that they saw a little boy and they kept recognizing the same little boy over and over and over coming in.
Because if you came into our country as a family unit, they just let you walk right in.
Well, this little child was being trafficked.
Now, how they were getting him back to Mexico is beyond me, but they were bringing him time and time again.
He wasn't their family, so who knows what happened to his parents?
ted cruz
Well, and I will say a number of people in the room gasp at a term you use, which unfortunately is a real term, rape tree.
And it's something that we're seeing.
We've been seeing for the last four years in Texas.
We've seen it in Arizona that the cartels will go and violently rape women.
They'll violently rape teenage girls, young girls, and then they will hang their underwear in the tree.
And you'll find a tree down on the southern border with 10, 20 pairs of underwear as they're mocking law enforcement, saying we can do whatever we want.
And for four years, the Biden Justice Department, they just turned a blind eye and they facilitated it.
You know, you talked about the kids, so they had a policy.
If you arrive with a kid, it's essentially a get-out-of-jail free card.
And so you started seeing a phenomenon that we've never seen in immigration before, which is single young men showing up with little kids.
Now, that's not a normal pattern of migration, but we started seeing military-age men showing up with little boys and little girls, many of whom are physically and sexually assaulted in transit.
And the same kid, the cartels would recycle over and over and over again to bring in gang members, to bring in criminals.
Now, let me ask this: what is most effective stopping the invasion at the southern border?
pam bondi
The border closing our borders, which is what we've done.
Donald Trump has closed our border.
But now, of course, we all know we have so many of these illegal aliens, fighting-age men, ages 18 to 35, in our country walking around our country.
And President Trump is a strong directive on that.
ted cruz
How concerned are you right now about the 12 million illegal aliens who came in under Joe Biden and about the risk of terrorism of Hamas, of Hezbollah, of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the risk of terrorism targeting Americans across this country?
Endangering Law Enforcement Lives 00:05:07
pam bondi
It's a huge risk, and we all know how bad it is now.
And that's what Donald Trump is committed to do: to take these people out of our country, to prosecute them, to deport them, to get them off our streets.
And that's what all of these law enforcement agencies are doing.
You know, Lake and Riley, of course, that beautiful young woman, University of Georgia, Lake and Riley, it's probably the most prominent name.
But look how many Lake and Rileys are out there.
One victim is too many.
ted cruz
Jocelyn Nunbury, Rachel Morin.
pam bondi
Right.
ted cruz
I mean, the numbers every day.
And I've got to say, so already in the first two weeks, you've sued New York, you've sued Chicago.
unidentified
You can clap for that.
ted cruz
These sanctuary cities that are fighting, and I've got to say, Massachusetts in particular, actually, in our last podcast, we talked about this.
How Massachusetts continues to this day to have violent child rapist illegal immigrants who they release on the streets and they refuse to notify ICE.
They refuse.
These are illegal immigrants who could be deported immediately.
And the Massachusetts officials take criminals who violently rape little kids.
Let me ask you, what is your message to a mayor, to a local official who wants to defy federal immigration law?
pam bondi
Well, our message is very clear.
I sued Illinois first, Chicago, first day, first day, and I gave a very strong warning.
If you don't comply with the law, you're next.
And guess who didn't listen?
New York.
Kathy Hochle got sued.
They all got sued in New York.
And if you don't follow the law, you're going to be next because we are going to get violent criminals off our streets.
And, you know, Senator, it's more than that.
They are endangering the lives of our great men and women in law enforcement.
That's what people don't understand.
When you're hiding illegal aliens from law enforcement, you're endangering their lives.
It's got to stop.
ted cruz
So let me ask you, two weeks into it, you've been at DOJ.
What's your assessment?
Is it as bad as you thought it would be?
Is it better?
Is it worse?
pam bondi
It's worse.
It's now worse.
ben ferguson
We're in here to chaos.
pam bondi
Worse, meaning, yeah, that that department had completely lost its mission of fighting violent crime.
Look what they did to President Trump.
Look at the weaponization.
And weaponization ended.
And the deep state is very real.
I think all of you in this room know that.
It's very real.
And people trying to undermine everything you're doing.
You know, three weeks into it, I went in one department and found huge 20 by 20 glosses of Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Kamala Harris still hanging up in my office.
They're gone.
And guess what's replacing it?
A very handsome photo of a man named Donald Trump.
ben ferguson
Not the one in the hallway, right?
That picture?
pam bondi
That one.
unidentified
That one.
ben ferguson
Okay, I like that one.
pam bondi
That one's right and replacing it.
But I make light of that, but that's what's happening.
You know, he had been in office three weeks, and the deep state still had those pictures hanging.
And to me, that's defiant.
It's insubordination.
Not going to happen.
But what we said, most people, the majority of the people are great people who went to law school, became prosecutors, became law enforcement agents to fight crime.
ted cruz
You've spent your professional life as a prosecutor.
pam bondi
Career.
ted cruz
How important is it to you to go after bad guys and to get bad guys off the street and keep people safe?
pam bondi
It means everything.
And that the drug epidemic, you know, the fentanyl just flowing into our country now, the terrorists, the gangs, TDA, TransdAgua, MS-13, all of the gangs who are now terrorist organizations, we've got to stop them.
And that's why we do what we do.
And we all have to work together.
And working with Homeland Security has been great, too.
ted cruz
So one of the most shocking statistics from the prior administration is the number 300,000.
300,000 children that the prior administration had in custody and that they lost.
That they do not know where they are.
We know that many of those children are being abused right now.
Why One Life Matters 00:06:04
ted cruz
Tell me about the efforts you and Homeland Security and the Trump administration, the efforts you are doing to find those children and to get them out of harm's way.
pam bondi
That's top priority, and that's Donald Trump's top priority, to find these victims and to save them.
And that's what I don't, I truly can't comprehend how any administration would let that happen and not care.
And that's what we're all fighting for.
And, you know, you say, when you take a job with this incredible volume, you think, how do you do it?
How do you focus every day?
And you do it by saying, if I can save one life, it's worth it.
ted cruz
Well, it's a lot more than one.
pam bondi
But it is compounds.
That's how you start out one life.
ted cruz
And it is thousands and ultimately more.
So I want to say something to the folks here at CPAC, which is, as many of y'all know, Ben and I do this podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
We do it three days a week.
We do it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
We've got roughly a million unique listeners all over the country.
And we do this to go around the corporate media, to go directly to the American people, and to bring the truth and bring the facts.
So I want to ask everyone here.
Many of y'all already subscribe to the pod, but I want to ask everyone here to pull out your cell phone right now.
Pull out your cell phone and text the word verdict.
V-E-R-D-I-C-T.
Text the word verdict to 24005.
Again, 24005.
When you text verdict to 24005, what you'll get back is a link.
A link to subscribe to the podcast.
Now, if you're under 40, you know what I'm talking about.
And if you're not, ask your kids or ask your grandkids.
Although I'll say, if you're at CPAC, you're pretty hipping connected.
So you may know as well if you're here at CPAC.
But every Monday, Wednesday...
ben ferguson
And subscribe doesn't mean it costs you money to quote your dad.
ted cruz
Oh, my father points out that my dad is 85 and he said when he hears subscribe, he thinks it's a magazine subscription.
There's no charge.
It just magically appears in your phone early in the morning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
And we bring in guests like the Attorney General of the United States, and we focus on what is happening, the victories that President Trump is winning, and the news that the corporate media won't cover.
ben ferguson
I want to ask you.
ted cruz
24005.
ben ferguson
I want to ask you a question.
It's one that I've been dying to ask you, and it deals with all of the pardons that were given out from Joe Biden at the end.
There were a lot that went to his family.
It is what it is.
There's one person he did not pardon.
That would be himself.
There are a lot of people that think there should be accountability.
Should this be something that is looked at to see what he did while he was president?
pam bondi
Don't you find it very interesting that they attempted to prosecute the president for having documents in the most secure place in the world other than the White House, Mar-a-Laga, and he had the security clearance to take them.
Yet Joe Biden, who had no security clearance to take them at the time, had them in his garage with his drug addict son going in and out of his garage.
Yet what did they say about him?
ben ferguson
Too old to prosecute.
pam bondi
Frail.
mike johnson
Frail.
pam bondi
Old man.
But listen, Donald Trump and I have not talked about that at all.
This is not about targeting.
This is what they do to us.
This is not about targeting.
This is not about weaponization.
This is about keeping America safe and going forward and prosecuting violent criminals.
If you committed a crime in this country, no one is above the law.
I will say that.
No one is above the law.
ted cruz
So, Pam, the media are going crazy about New York Mayor Eric Adams and the charges that were dismissed against him.
So glad you brought that up.
Tell us what the story is, what happened there, and why were the charges dismissed?
pam bondi
Sure.
And Amel, who has done an incredible job, he worked on this case.
He looked at this case.
It was an incredibly weak case filed to make deportation harder.
That's why they did it.
They took one of the biggest mayors in the country off the playing field in order to protect their sanctuary city.
This case, it was so incredibly weak.
It was about increases in airline tickets, upgrades, and airline tickets in his official capacity without getting into all the details of the fact.
I don't even think it could survive a verdict.
Excuse me.
Incredibly weak case.
That is the weaponization of government.
unidentified
That's lawfully.
pam bondi
Filing, that's lawfare.
When you're filing cases like that to keep someone who criticized Joe Biden, who said they took away a security clearance so he could not get the details, so he could not help enforce the deportation efforts in New York.
And, you know, these people are going after him ride a subway in New York.
It's not safe.
Violent crime is at an all-time high, and that's what they're doing.
So it's not about weaponization.
It's about ending their weaponization of the government and fighting violent crime and enabling cities like New York and mayors like Eric Adams to enforce Donald Trump's immigration policies.
ben ferguson
I want to ask you and go back to something you said a moment ago, we were talking about cartels and they have been able to set up networks and we see this coming up now more often, where they're controlling states and cities and states and the entire flow.
Campus Watchdogs 00:10:00
ben ferguson
And they've been able to do this and set it up without having to worry that anyone's going to stop them.
We're seeing this not on border states, but all over the country, this network.
At what point do we get to start dismantling that?
How long does that take?
How much time is that going to take?
Because they've been here for quite some time with the last administration.
pam bondi
There's a lot I can't talk about now.
But very publicly, I think you've seen a lot happen.
A lot is happening every day.
Our great men and women in law enforcement are out there.
It's a joint effort with our office and with Christy Noam.
And again, we all work so well together, whether it's Mike Waltz, Peter.
ben ferguson
Y'all are friends.
I think people don't understand this.
Like, this is a group in this administration, and you and I have talked about this on the show.
You guys are friends.
Like, y'all know each other before you got here.
How important are those relationships that you say, hey, I trust you.
I trust you.
I trust you.
I got your back.
Let's go to work.
unidentified
Vital.
pam bondi
And crucial.
And Mike Waltz and Christy, we're on the phone with each other all the time.
And to change topic just a little bit, just to give you an example, Lee Zeldon, a dear friend of mine.
unidentified
Great guy.
ben shapiro
On President's Day, I'm running the EPA now.
pam bondi
EPA Lee Zeldon, great administrator of EPA.
I'm on the phone hours with Scott Besson, our Secretary of Treasury, and Lee Zeldon.
And, you know, we've seen, thanks to Elon Musk, my buddies, great work.
unidentified
Yep.
pam bondi
And it's been reported, look what they're doing at EPA.
Yeah, I'm changing the subject a little bit, but they're giving out billions of dollars after Joe Biden lost the election, trying to push this money out the door.
ted cruz
Actually shoveling cash out the windows.
pam bondi
As they said, gold bars.
Let's throw all the gold bars off the ship.
jeremy boring
Yep.
pam bondi
And we're stopping them.
We're stopping them in real time.
We're going after them.
But it's because we all pick up the phone and we talk directly to each other.
So we're able to work together.
Talk to Marco Rubio and look at the men like Steve Witcoff out there, Rick Grinnell, what they're doing working with Marco and Mike Waltz and all the great people that they're saving around the world.
And that's thanks to one man, Donald Trump.
He put all of us in these positions.
ted cruz
The consistent thread of the cabinet nominees is that you're all change agents.
You all came in with a mission.
And it is, listen, there has never been a first month of any presidency in the history of the United States of America like the last 30 days.
unidentified
That's right.
Amen.
ted cruz
And I'll tell you, I have had great joy turning to my Democrat colleagues in the Senate and just deadpanning.
Well, three years and 11 months to go.
And they literally start twitching.
They have facial tics that they cannot suppress.
But Pam, one of the things that people like about this podcast that we try to do is we try to bring people behind the scenes to actually understand what's going on behind closed doors.
So tell us about your first day as Attorney General.
You're confirmed.
And like day one, when you get sworn in, just walk everyone through what day one of being Attorney General of the United States is like.
pam bondi
You go nonstop.
And I jokingly said it felt like 15 years because you're working seven days a week nonstop.
And we're all working with each other and everything we do.
It overlaps.
And especially with the Department of Justice, especially too with all this money going out, the USAID, all of these agencies, and we're going to be helping all these agencies.
But you just hit the ground running literally.
And don't look back.
I don't look at what time of day it is.
I don't think I've slept in 15 days, but you don't want to.
And then when you find out about this human trafficking ring that was just broken up, it's just, that's why we're all doing what we're doing.
And you just keep going forward.
And our directive, our directive from our boss is so easy, especially on my end, make America safe.
And so you just don't, Senator, you don't even, my hardest thing now is I forget to eat.
You forget what time it is.
And it's 6 o'clock at night.
Why do I have a headache?
Because I haven't eaten today.
But you're going nonstop.
And it's not me.
It's an entire team.
I've got Chad Meisel, I've got Amel, I've got Todd Blanche, thank goodness, coming in, and we've got Kash Patel now.
So they better look out.
unidentified
How nice is it to have a boss guy by the name of Donald J. Trump who just lets you do your job?
pam bondi
Exactly.
ben ferguson
I mean, there's a lot of presidents in the past that have really tried to keep their thumb on people.
It seems like he's saying, go and go get it done and call me when you need me.
pam bondi
He has trusted all of us in all of our various capacities and all the different roles we have, whether it's education or agriculture, all the cabinet labor, all of the different cabinet secretaries, just to go out and do the best we can.
And, you know, we want to make all of you proud.
And we want to fulfill his directive to make our country great.
That man sure didn't need that job.
He's a good friend of mine.
And I love during my confirmation hearing when they get on me because they say I'm friends with Donald Trump.
Yes, I'm very proud.
No, I'm not friends with him.
I'm good friends with him and I'm very proud to work for him.
ted cruz
You know, when you look at weaponization and politicization, part of it is using it to attack your political opponents.
And we've seen four years of that under Joe Biden.
Another part of it is turning the other way at your political allies and refusing to enforce the law against them.
And I think one of the most egregious examples we've seen over the last two years is the rising anti-Semitism on college campus.
ben ferguson
Amen.
ted cruz
The violent protesters and rioters, many of whom are not students or not affiliated with the universities, and they are threatening students.
You look at Columbia University, the Orthodox rabbi there sent out an email to the Jewish students on campus and said, do not come to campus because the university cannot and will not keep you safe.
And the Biden Justice Department did nothing.
They investigated nobody.
They didn't follow the money.
They didn't indict anyone.
They didn't prosecute anyone.
And they did not enforce Title VI of the civil rights laws, which say that if you are tolerating harassment on the basis of ethnicity or religion, that you will have your federal funds cut off.
How is the Department of Justice different today?
And what will your approach be to anti-Semitism and threats of violence directed against Jewish students on campus or any other students on campus?
pam bondi
We have an October 7th task force that we started, and we will protect you.
When I was just a citizen before I had this job, what you said, I'm watching these, these aren't peaceful protests.
We all believe in peaceful protest.
Oh, I'm sorry, unless you're a liberal and you don't want a parent to quietly pray outside an abortion clinic or you're a Catholic or a parent at a school board, they're going to call you a domestic terrorist.
But I'm screaming at my TV watching these violent protests.
You know, the last, since October 7th, you're watching this happen, and all of our students deserve to be saved.
And first of all, these students who are here on visas, who are threatening our American students, need to be kicked out of this country.
ted cruz
It is refreshingly simple to have an attorney general who has the approach that you're going to follow the law and enforce the law.
And that sadly has been missing for the last four years.
pam bondi
It's pretty basic, isn't it?
ted cruz
It should not be complicated.
Let me ask you: what keeps you up at night?
What scares you in the first two weeks of this job?
pam bondi
Pretty much everything.
I don't sleep at night anymore.
Of course, everything we talked about-the drugs, the cartels, the great, maybe I'll get a little sleep tonight based on the arrests that were just made, the children that are being trafficked, things that have been so personal to me since I was a state prosecutor and then since I was state attorney general.
Now you just get to help people on a bigger level, which is pretty cool to get to do that.
But most recently, it's really been what Elon has been uncovering.
And the USAID, the waste at EPA, this money, trillions of dollars, they believe, just being handed out, which is most likely making a round trip and going to terrorist organizations.
ted cruz
And you are on the front line of defending the president and Elon Musk and Doge and all the effort they're doing.
Kids Safe 00:15:45
ted cruz
And every day, we are seeing Democrat attorneys general and Democrat interest groups suing the president, suing Elon Musk, suing the federal government, and the Department of Justice is on the front lines.
And sadly, we're seeing left-wing activist judges, individual district court judges, issuing nationwide injunctions.
Tell us about what it's like defending against those lawsuits and give us your thoughts on the authority of one radical district judge to try to run the executive branch and issue a nationwide injunction.
pam bondi
Two words: we're winning.
But, yeah, so you've got one unelected district judge trying to tell President Trump, who was elected overwhelmingly by the American people, where federal funds can go.
We're winning.
Even in liberal courts, by the way, Senator, we're winning.
And if not, we're going to go all the way to the Supreme Court and keep winning.
ted cruz
Well, Pam, let me say you and I have been friends a long time.
I am thrilled with the job you're doing.
I'm thrilled.
I was thrilled when the president announced your nomination.
And let me say, on behalf of 31 million Texans and Americans across this country, thank you.
Thank you for stepping forward and answering the call.
Thank you for pouring your heart into defending this nation, into keeping my kids safe, keeping Ben's kids safe, keeping all of our kids safe.
And thank you for remaining faithful to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and restoring integrity to the Department of Justice.
It is desperately needed, and you're doing a hell of a job.
pam bondi
Thank you, my friend, and thank you for fighting for us.
ben ferguson
Thank you guys here for being here as well.
Don't forget we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
So make sure that subscribe or hot or download button.
God bless America.
pam bondi
Thank you, my friend.
unidentified
coming up.
Yes!
Tension is look escalate from my purple.
The White House is behind me.
I'm a faithful watcher of Male America's voice.
rick scott
That's where the news is.
unidentified
Freedom, sovereignty, prosperity.
The Patriots for Europe Foundation is on a mission to make Europe great again.
Globalist elites have led Europe into a dead-end street.
Violent crime has surged because of mass immigration.
The Green Deal has put the future of the European economy at risk.
Fake NGOs and the massive bureaucracy in Brussels are interfering in our democracies.
Patriots must take action.
We bring analysis.
We organize debates.
We build the network of patriots to challenge the woke narrative head-on.
Patriots for Europe Foundation.
donald j trump
During my second term, we will fight for Alaska like never before.
unidentified
I'm excited about what we can do with President Trump in the office.
donald j trump
We're going to work together to provide affordable energy to Alaska and allies all over the world.
unidentified
More investment, more certainty, production, more exploration.
donald j trump
Thank you to everyone in Alaska and thank you to your great governor.
I look forward to a long and enduring future relationship.
unidentified
Drill, baby, drill.
matt schlapp
Hey, we have a great group of sponsors down at CPAC Central.
Make sure you go down there, get all the merchandise you need, see all the companies that are fighting the woke crap in the country.
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unidentified
Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the Doge update.
Please welcome Newback's host, Rob Schmidt.
Man, that is a big crowd.
And they are not here for me.
rick scott
How are you guys doing?
unidentified
Nice vibe this year, right?
After the best month we've ever had.
Nice to see you all.
Thanks for coming out.
Good to see you.
I'm not going to kill any more time.
Let's bring out Elon Musk.
We've got one more, we've got one more surprise in case this wasn't enough.
I'm going to let Elon do it.
Who else is here?
elon musk
Well, President Millay has a gift for me.
unidentified
Javier Millay from Argentina.
You guys know who that is, right?
Why don't we bring him out now?
elon musk
The chainsaw for bureaucracy.
unidentified
Good job!
elon musk
All right.
unidentified
I love it.
Mr. President, thank you so much.
elon musk
All right.
Thank you.
unidentified
Thank you, sir.
Nice to meet you.
I love it.
We love it.
We love it.
All right.
They told me to put this right.
elon musk
Where should we put it?
matt walsh
They want it right here.
elon musk
All right, great.
matt walsh
A little stage prop.
elon musk
All of you guys suit.
Thanks, guys.
unidentified
Have a seat.
So, uh.
That was something.
elon musk
I am become meme.
Yeah, pretty much.
I'm just, I'm living the meme.
It's like there's living the dream and there's living the meme.
And it's pretty much what's happening, you know.
unidentified
You're like, I think you're big.
elon musk
I mean, Doge started out as a meme.
Think about it.
And now it's real.
Isn't that crazy?
unidentified
It is.
It is crazy.
elon musk
But it's cool.
unidentified
Let me ask you this.
A year ago, if someone had told you you'd be at CPAC and working with the president to absolutely shred the government, the swamp, whatever you want to call it, would you have ever believed that?
elon musk
No.
unidentified
No.
Me neither.
elon musk
But it's cool.
This is awesome.
And I just want to say, you know, thanks for your support.
I mean, you guys are, you know.
So, I mean, you know, we're trying to get good things done, but also, like, you know, have a good time doing it.
And, you know, and have, like, a sense of humor, you know.
So, like, I mean, the left wanted to make comedy illegal, you know?
You can't make fun of anything.
So then it's like, comedy sucks.
It's like, nothing's funny.
You can't make fun of anything.
It's like, legalize comedy.
unidentified
Yeah.
Legalize comedy.
And we've shifted the entire culture in just the last few months.
rob schmitt
The whole culture of this country has shifted dramatically just because of that election.
elon musk
Yeah, exactly.
You know, freedom of speech, you know, having fun again.
It seems like we should have a good time, you know?
unidentified
I mean, it's a great time.
Everybody in this place is so excited.
And I haven't, I mean, when you talk to conservatives, everybody's happy.
Yeah.
And everybody feels this great sense of relief because we were going to hell for about four years.
It really felt bad, especially toward the end.
It felt really bad.
elon musk
Yeah, I mean, I thought we were sort of heading for a point of no return, really.
Until that's why it was so essential that President Trump win the election and that there be a Republican majority in the House and Senate, which thanks to you, that has been accomplished.
ben ferguson
Yeah.
unidentified
I want to ask you, one of the biggest questions I have for you is, and you've been, you know, politically, you weren't really on one side or the other for a long time.
You're a businessman.
A lot of people stay away from it.
Now you're on a side, and you've chosen to side.
You're sitting here in a MAGA hat.
How did that happen?
What was the moment?
It's like, you know.
elon musk
Dark gothic MAGA.
rick scott
That's a good one.
unidentified
Was there a specific moment?
Was there a moment that it all changed?
elon musk
Yeah, when I realized it was a fool.
But no, I was, I guess, yeah, I mean, I'd say like I was politically neutral for quite a while.
You know, leaning a little Democrat.
unidentified
How do you go from that to this?
elon musk
Yeah, no, no.
unidentified
Well, did they go crazy?
elon musk
Yeah, they did go crazy.
unidentified
Yeah, they went crazy.
elon musk
No, I mean, that whole cancel culture and, you know, it's trying to stuff freedom of speech and infringe upon, just in general, infringe upon people's personal freedoms.
You know, they just want state control, state control of what you say.
They want to, you know, take away your guns.
And the reason they want to take away your guns, so like there's nothing you can do to oppose them.
So it's sort of like, you know, I just like, we just need to restore the fundamental elements of what made America great, which is freedom and opportunity.
unidentified
We're seeing a lot of these freedoms disappearing in the West.
It's not just about America.
We're all watching Europe and knowing that they're about 50, 100 years ahead of us, right?
Because they got an early start.
And we're watching how they're devolving.
And you're trying to save it from happening here.
elon musk
I mean, in Europe, they put people in prison for memes.
unidentified
Yeah.
elon musk
You know, I'm like, that's insane.
unidentified
And they're collapsing.
I mean, this society is, it's a collapsing society.
It feels that way.
elon musk
It feels like...
unidentified
France was nicer 50 years ago than it is today.
Yeah.
I don't think you can question that.
elon musk
Yeah.
So, but yeah, I mean, really.
Thanks.
Well, me too.
I mean, I really just wanted to do useful things.
Like, you know, basically build products, you know, provide products and services that are good.
And I wasn't really that interested in being political.
It just, like, there was at a certain point no choice.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
unidentified
Can I ask you what, on the same side of that coin, what's it like from going neutral to being vilified, largely vilified by the media?
eric schmitt
Like you're.
unidentified
What?
No.
ben shapiro
Really?
unidentified
I mean.
You turn on some of these channels, brother.
I mean, they're angry.
Does it bother you at all, this little?
elon musk
I mean, when they're chanting for my death, I suppose that's a little bit like this song is not even that good.
And it's like, like, you call that a death chant?
That's nothing, please.
unidentified
They've been singing a lot lately.
There's a lot of music lately.
It's not good music either.
I would say that watching what you're doing with Doge is just people love it.
I mean, I've always looked at the government and I've always looked at the government.
I've seen this big machine that, and you just know that they waste because they don't care.
There's more money coming, they don't care.
You're cutting all this out.
Everybody in this country knows that the government is full of waste, fraud, and abuse.
And you're doing the work, and the Americans love it.
Watching their reaction politically to this, I can't believe how bad they are at responding to this.
I don't know how you're going to sit there and scream and complain because they're cutting waste out of the government and try to win another election.
How do you try to win on that?
elon musk
Well, at this point, I'm like, I'm not sure how much of the left is even real.
unidentified
How much was propped up by our money?
elon musk
Yeah, yeah, like literally, you see, like these sort of fake rallies where there's like hardly any people, and the media will frame it and get full six people in the frame, but there's like nobody else is there.
Like, just it's it doesn't have popular support.
But then you learn that like there's hundreds of billions of dollars going to these so-called NGOs and it's your tax dollars that are funding things that are fundamentally anti-American.
unidentified
And they're propping up their narrative.
Yeah, a lot of that government money has been propping up a left that I don't think is as strong as they made it seem.
elon musk
In fact, a massive amount of your tax dollars is going to legacy media companies directly from the government.
unidentified
The government wants to take over media.
elon musk
Yeah, it's terrible.
unidentified
That's why we have X.
elon musk
Yeah, and that's.
unidentified
That's why you spent $44 billion.
I mean, that's a lot of money.
elon musk
I mean.
unidentified
More than it was probably worth.
But there was a message.
elon musk
Freedom is priceless.
unidentified
Priceless.
Yeah.
Probably one of the most important investments this country's ever seen.
If you've got to protect the First Amendment, it's not much more important than that.
elon musk
Yeah, I got a lot of criticism, and people said, well, that proves he's a huge idiot from a, you know, like, look, you know, you voted for whatever, $44 billion, and now it's worth like $0.8.
unidentified
It's not worth $8.
Threat to Freedom of Expression 00:04:35
elon musk
But it was essentially to buy freedom of expression.
And once that's gone, it's all over.
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, all the sort of federal money going to media companies is what helps explain why the legacy media all says the same thing at the same time.
unidentified
Yeah.
elon musk
Like, isn't it like, it's like weird.
Like, you can put them up where it's like, you know, like when they're.
unidentified
They're mouthpieces for the state.
For the state.
Yes.
And that's what we've come to know.
Yeah.
elon musk
It's scary.
And I like that meme where they're, because they're always saying like, threat to our democracy, threat to.
But if you just replaced democracy with bureaucracy, it makes a lot of sense.
unidentified
It makes perfect sense.
elon musk
Big threat to the bureaucracy.
unidentified
That's exactly right.
Let's talk about these Doge dividend checks that everybody's talking about this week.
And I know you tweeted out that you're going to, has everybody want like a $5,000 check in the mail?
It sounds kind of good, right?
And the best part about it would be knowing where it came from, that that's five grand that you sent them last year.
elon musk
Totally.
It's money that's taken away from things that are destructive to the country and from organizations that hate you to you.
That's awesome.
unidentified
Does it seem like, I mean, have you talked about this?
elon musk
I mean, that's like glorious.
That's like the spoils of battle, you know?
unidentified
I like that.
Is there traction on that?
Yeah, yeah.
elon musk
I talked to the president, and he's supportive of that.
And so it sounds like that's something we're going to do.
So as we're finding savings, that's going to translate directly to reductions in tax.
unidentified
Yeah.
I mean, I think they fired 6,000 people at the IRS today.
And I think Lutnick said last night that they're talking about shutting down the IRS.
And I think it's fair.
I think people should realize this is, I mean, the amount of money that we send Washington like five or six trillion a year, that is such an ungodly amount of money.
I mean, what do they do?
They say like a trillion seconds is like 30 years or something like that.
I mean, that's how much we send them, and they seem to never have enough.
There must be a lot you can cut.
elon musk
No, no, absolutely.
People ask me, what's the most surprising thing that you've encountered when you go to D.C., you know, when you're in D.C.
And I said, well, the most surprising thing is the scale of the expenditures and actually how easy it is to, just when you add caring and competence where it was absent before, you can actually save billions of dollars, sometimes in an hour.
It's wild.
unidentified
And then they scoff at it and say, oh, a few billion here, there.
I mean, the way they're talking about it, you can see they don't care.
It's such little money compared to how much they're used to wasting.
That's what's really scary.
ted cruz
Yeah.
elon musk
No, I mean, exactly.
But obviously, it just shows that they really lack empathy for the average taxpayer who's working hard, paying taxes, and then they say, oh, a million dollars doesn't matter.
I'm like, I think it matters a lot for people, you know?
So what are you talking about?
unidentified
I'd like to have it.
Let me ask you a question.
I know the president fairly well, watched him survive two assassination attempts.
Had the first one not happened, the second one would have gotten him.
Because without those extra guys, they would have never seen that gun poking through the fence at the golf course.
elon musk
I saw the crew that you're kind of mind-blowing that this has happened?
I mean, I just, and what, by the way, why do we still know nothing about that guy in Butler?
What's going on?
But cash is going to get to the bottom of it.
unidentified
Yeah.
There you go.
nigel farage
By the way.
unidentified
Yeah.
steve bannon
Woo!
unidentified
Confirmed just a couple hours ago, but I saw that the security detail that you had come in is enormous.
elon musk
Well, it's not that enormous.
Maybe it should be Vega.
unidentified
I think you can probably afford it.
But I mean, how concerned are you about your safety, Dylan?
I mean, you are a wanted man.
Voter's Dilemma: Gold and Illegals 00:15:32
unidentified
Are you?
elon musk
So look, I'm open to ideas for improving security, I have to tell you.
Like, I don't actually have a death wish, I think.
But, you know, it's not that easy.
So, yeah.
I mean, but I have like even people like President Bukele from El Salvador who managed to put in prison like 100,000 murderous thugs.
And he was like, he called me, he's like, I'm worried about your security.
I'm like, oh, you're worried about my security?
unidentified
I'm like, what?
elon musk
Okay.
unidentified
I mean, yeah, talk about guts to do that down there.
I mean, and survive.
elon musk
I was like, how did you put all those thugs in prison without dying?
Because it seems like that would have been not easy.
unidentified
Well, the president has, one of his top attorneys is now investigating, I guess, Chuck Schumer for threats against SCOTUS, a congressman on the Democrat side, who's saying, you know, basically saying we're going to bring a war to you, like a fight to you.
I mean, the rhetoric, you guys are screwing with things that are not supposed to be messed with.
elon musk
We're fighting the Matrix.
unidentified
There's a lot of people that really don't want that to happen.
elon musk
Yeah, we're fighting Matrix big time here.
unidentified
Yeah.
elon musk
But it has got to be done.
unidentified
Yeah.
Are you wrong?
It certainly does.
What's going on with, tell us about Fort Knox.
Yeah.
Kentucky, it's a military base.
It's a ton of gold, tons and tons and tons of gold.
elon musk
5,000 tons of gold or something.
unidentified
5,000 gold are there in the ground in like this.
I mean, it's a very secure thing.
We all want to see it.
I'd love to see it.
elon musk
Like, this is your gold, by the way.
It's the public's gold.
unidentified
Do you think it's not there?
elon musk
I don't know.
matt walsh
We just want to see it.
elon musk
Yeah, we want to go see it and just make sure somebody did a spray paint some lead or something, you know?
unidentified
Yeah.
elon musk
Like, is this real gold?
Invite the bar, you know?
unidentified
Didn't they?
elon musk
But I think, honestly, you know, part of this also is just like, you know, let's have some fun.
And, you know, like I said, all this gold at Fort Knox, it's the public's gold.
It's your gold.
So like, I think you have a right to see it.
unidentified
You want to take a tour?
You know?
Yeah.
elon musk
I think we should have a tour.
And then the president last night was like, I think he's in favor of it.
That would be cool.
And then it should be like a live tour.
Like, you can see what's going on.
unidentified
Open the door.
Like, what's behind it?
elon musk
You know, I think I'd watch that.
unidentified
Oh, are you kidding?
Yeah.
I mean, what is 5,000 tons of gold?
How big is that?
Is it the size of this?
elon musk
It's got to be pretty big, you know?
unidentified
It's got to be a lot of gold.
elon musk
Maybe there's some other stuff in there.
Like, just walk around, like, I don't know, maybe they've got some other stuff in there.
unidentified
Are you thinking about auditing the Federal Reserve as well, which is obviously regulatory economy?
I imagine you think the waste has got to be everywhere.
elon musk
Yeah, no, waste is pretty much everywhere.
People ask, like, how can you find waste in DC?
I'm like, look, it's like being in a room and this target, the wall, the roofs, and the floor are all targets.
So it's like, you're going to close your eyes and go shoot in any direction.
You can't miss.
So it's pretty wild.
Like, you just push on things a little bit and you save billions of dollars.
Like, just a little bit, you know?
It's wild.
unidentified
It's scary, isn't it?
rob finnerty
It's really.
elon musk
That's why I say, like, it really is underrated.
If you add caring and competence, how much things improve.
Yeah.
And, you know, and we just find so many totally crazy things, which, you know, obviously we're sharing with the public.
We post everything we learn.
You know, just so you can see it.
What do you, I mean, it's like, isn't it like it's totally wild?
Like we did just, we just did like a check the database on Social Security.
Like says, how many Americans, alive Americans eligible for Social Security are there?
And according to the database, it's over 400 million.
And we're like, wait a second.
unidentified
And how many are you?
michael j knowles
How old are you again?
unidentified
Yeah.
elon musk
And then we found one person in there who's like 360 years old.
I'm like, what did they know?
unidentified
Ben.
elon musk
America didn't exist before that time.
unidentified
Yeah, we were colonies.
elon musk
Maybe it's just me, but I think it's a red flag.
I don't know.
unidentified
But are there indications that there were checks going to those people or any of those people?
Well, yes, I guess the question, right?
I mean, I get the Social Security Administration is dumb, but are they paying these people?
Are they that dumb?
I don't know.
elon musk
A bunch of money is going out from the Social Security Administration.
And in fact, from all entitlements programs.
unidentified
$70 billion in waste in like seven years.
steve bannon
It's $10 billion a year.
elon musk
Well, I think the rough estimate from Government Accountability Office is over $500 billion or 40 years.
$500 billion.
unidentified
And how long of the time?
elon musk
Per year.
unidentified
Per year?
On Social Security?
elon musk
No, no, on all entitlements.
unidentified
On all government.
elon musk
On all entitlements.
unidentified
All entitlements.
elon musk
All entitlements, yeah.
Yeah.
It sort of actually makes sense when you look at the thing from a top level and say, like, okay, the $7 trillion was spending by the government.
What percentage do you think is fraudulent?
Okay, exactly.
Like, a conservative estimate of the $7 trillion would be 10%.
Conservative.
unidentified
Probably a little higher than that, yeah.
Exactly.
It feels like a quarter out of every dollar, right?
elon musk
But if the fraud's only 10% of $7 trillion, you've got $700 billion of fraud.
unidentified
Yeah.
elon musk
And by the way, it's like really easy to take advantage of the federal government.
Very easy.
unidentified
Very easy.
Look at COVID.
elon musk
Yes.
unidentified
Everybody got rich during COVID.
I mean, look at all these stars.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
elon musk
It looks like in terms of the COVID payments, there was something like $200 billion of COVID payment fraud taken by fraudsters out of the country.
unidentified
Out of the country.
elon musk
That's like, I think, listen, if there's going to be fraud, it should at least be domestic.
So, you know.
But they managed to get $200 billion out of the country.
I'm like, what?
Didn't we notice that?
unidentified
Let me ask you, let's do immigration here for a second.
You know, there's this move now that Trump's latest thing is that he's going to cut funding any kind of money that ends up in the hands of illegal immigrants.
So if you're funding these sanctuary cities and states, that's how they thrive, right?
They're paying for these hotels.
That's all federal money.
If you've got a hotel in your city in New York, you've got all these hotels full of migrants.
That's not state money.
That's the feds are covering that.
He's going to cut all that.
It's really hard to deport 15 million people.
And it seems like the move now is, let's see if we, especially at the rate that we're going, it seems like the move now is let's make it so that they leave on their own.
If there's no longer a dole system for them, if they can't get their hands on hotel rooms and money, they're going to go back, especially if there's no work.
elon musk
Well, I think it's really important for people to understand that the Biden administration sent any possible money that they could, if there was money they could send to facilitate and amplify illegal immigration, they sent it.
They took money from FEMA, meant for helping Americans in distress, and sent that money to luxury hotels for illegal immigrants in New York.
That is an outrage.
They actually did that.
And not only that, even after the president signed an executive order saying it has to stop, the FEMA, the sort of whatever, deep state bureaucrats still pressed send on $80 million last week to go to the Roosevelt Hotel in New York and other places last week.
And now they're mad that it got stuffed.
And they're like trying to sue to have it be restored.
It's like the gumption is a little bit more.
unidentified
You think they're creating a new voter class?
Do you think that was the goal when they opened up the borders for four years?
Create a new voter class, get them citizenship, get them in, free cards.
jeremy boring
Vote.
elon musk
A lot of these things, like you don't actually have to assume some grand conspiracy.
You just need to look at basic incentives.
unidentified
Who benefits?
elon musk
So if the incentives, fundamentally, if the probability that an illegal is going to vote Democrat at some point, whether it's cheating, but eventually they can become citizens.
But if the probability is like 80, 90%, just look at California, which is a supermajority dem, then the incentive is to maximize the number of illegals in the country.
That is why the Biden administration was pushing to get in as many illegals as possible and spend every dollar possible to get as many, because every one of them is a customer.
Everyone is a voter.
So the whole thing was a giant voter importation scam.
unidentified
Pretty obvious.
elon musk
Very obvious.
And then, moreover, then they actually created the CVP1 border app thing where they were, which is like where they would literally fly people in.
It's not like at the point at which people are being flown in at your expense.
unidentified
Sending planes, building a wall up, doesn't fly them over the border.
michael j knowles
Yeah, they're literally flying them in.
unidentified
No other country in the world would do something like this.
Nobody is this stupid.
elon musk
Yeah, and then we found that it was like a $100 million contract given to some guy in London, actually, oddly enough, for the CVP1 app.
So they're flying illegals into the swing states.
And if you've got like a margin of victory of maybe 20,000 people and you fly 200,000 illegals into that state, it's not going to be a swing state for long.
unidentified
Change the numbers.
Eventually.
Yeah.
Maybe in four or eight years, you're exactly the same.
elon musk
It's just a matter of time.
unidentified
It's a long game.
elon musk
It's just a matter of time.
So it might take like a year for an asylum seeker or something to get a green card and then five years for the citizenship.
It's an investment that is guaranteed to pay off.
Just a question of when.
unidentified
They all remember who brought them in and who left them here.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I want to go back.
I want to talk about Biden's.
elon musk
It's a big deal.
I think a lot of people don't quite appreciate that this was an actual real scam at scale to tilt the scales of democracy in America.
unidentified
It's treasonous.
elon musk
Treason.
unidentified
One more Biden question.
I remember when they would do the electric car stuff, they would always try to box you out, even though you have the only electric car anybody wants.
Yeah.
You said, I think this week, that you think that Biden left these astronauts up in space because he didn't want to give you an opportunity to save them, make NASA look bad, make the private sector look better, make you look good.
Do you believe that?
elon musk
Yeah, no, absolutely.
So, of course.
unidentified
I kind of agree.
Why would he want to let you help them come down when you're supporting the president?
elon musk
The Biden administration was attacking the next level.
I mean, the Department of Justice or Injustice under the Biden administration was, I mean, they were suing SpaceX.
They were suing SpaceX for not hiring asylum seekers.
And we're like, but it's actually illegal for us to hire asylum seekers because we're rocket technology is covered under ITAR rules, which means it's an advanced weapons technology.
And so we can only hire permanent residents or orchestra citizens.
So we're damned if we do, damned if we don't.
So how can they sue us for not hiring asylum seekers when it's actually illegal for us to do so?
But nonetheless, there was a big Department of Justice or Injustice case about this against SpaceX.
So obviously it was an antagonistic situation.
And those astronauts were supposed to be up there for eight days and now they're up there for eight months.
Does that make any sense?
And we obviously could have brought them back sooner, but they didn't want anyone who supported President Trump to look good, basically.
That's the issue.
unidentified
A lot of them are saying right now that the reason that you want to get into Social Security, that you want to get into all of these different, into Treasury and things like that, is that you're looking for personal information and you're trying to make more money.
I've never met anybody as rich as you that cared less about money in my life.
Every time I hear a story about you, you're sleeping on a couch of some other guy in a city that you could buy the entire thing.
Yeah, I don't think you care about money, do you?
elon musk
No, actually, I mean, listen, like, if I steal some Social Security, I can finally buy nice things.
unidentified
And on that same question, they're also talking about you guys are going to end Social Security, you're going to end Medicare, you're going to end these things.
I don't imagine that conversation has been had with the President, and that's the plan.
elon musk
No, in fact, the actions that we're taking with the support of the president and the support of the agencies is what will save Medicare, what will save Social Security.
unidentified
Yeah.
elon musk
And it, because if the country goes insolvent, if all the money is just spent on paying interest on debt, there's no money left for anything.
unidentified
Yeah.
So.
elon musk
So that's the reason I'm doing this is because I was looking at the big picture here, and it's like, man, our debt's getting out of control.
The interest payments, interest on the national debt now exceeds the entire Defense Department budget.
unidentified
A trillion a year.
In interest, just to carry the money that we owe is a trillion a year.
That is unbelievable.
elon musk
And rising rapidly.
A country is no different from a person.
Country overspends, country goes bankrupt, same as a person who overspends goes bankrupt.
So it's not like optional to solve these things.
It's essential.
rick scott
We're going to go bankrupt.
unidentified
Yes, we are.
Couple minutes left here.
Russia.
There's a huge push from the US.
elon musk
Oh, yeah, yeah.
People like to end this.
They say like, you know, I'm a bought asset of Putin.
I'm like, he can't afford me.
unidentified
Yeah.
I think you're worth more than Russia.
Think about it.
So you're trying to end a war.
Ending a war always means you have to compromise, you have to negotiate with an enemy or an adversary.
That's just what it is.
And right now, they are lambasting the president for trying a different method to a war that they haven't been able to end for three and a half years or three years.
They're saying Trump's blaming Zelensky for the invasion.
How do you process all of the negativity toward him for trying to end this war?
elon musk
Well, first of all, I think we should have empathy for the people dying at the front lines.
People Dying In Trenches 00:02:17
elon musk
That's the most important thing.
And people have been dying, you know, it's like, how many more years is this supposed to go on?
And imagine if that was your son, your father.
What are they dying for?
What exactly are they dying for?
The line of engagement has barely moved for two years.
This is a whole bunch of people dead in trenches for what?
And I'll tell you what, for what?
It's like for the biggest graft machine that I've ever seen in my life, that's for what?
It's unreal.
Like the amount of money that is being taken in graft and bribery is disgusting.
And so what's actually happening is that those poor guys are getting sent into a meat grinder for money.
That's what's actually going on.
And it needs to stop.
unidentified
And that's, I mean, that's, it seems, I mean, Trump is so pragmatic on this.
He's just looking at it and he's saying it's Ukraine, it's not our country, it's not a NATO ally.
I just want to see people not dying.
I want to see on both sides, I mean, think about how many young, so many young men have died in Ukraine that the army is starting to age out.
The military is aging out.
You've got 40 and 50-year-old guys fighting in a war because there's nobody left that's not killed or maimed in their 20s.
That's the reality of it.
Think about how many people that is.
If you're a humanitarian at all, you just got to end the war.
Like, no matter what.
Just get it over with.
elon musk
Yes, they need to stop dying.
And the growth machine's got to stop.
And I think people, a lot of people out there don't realize, like, the president has a lot of empathy.
Really cares.
He's a good man.
unidentified
I got one more for you.
I've been fascinated by you for a very long time.
elon musk
Thanks.
unidentified
I've never seen anybody that can do so many things at the same time.
What's Inside Your Mind? 00:03:21
unidentified
I mean, you've got the rockets, you've got the cars.
I've always wanted to ask you: what is it like inside your mind?
Is it just a thousand miles an hour?
I mean, are you?
Is it just not, I mean, does it ever stop?
Do you sleep?
How much do you sleep?
Paint us a picture of inside of the mind of a genius.
Like, how do you see the walls?
Can you answer that question?
It's not an easy question.
elon musk
I mean, my mind is a storm.
So.
It's a storm.
But, I mean, let me maybe tell you something.
Like, you didn't ask the question, but I think it's worth nonetheless, maybe just elaborating on something, which is, you know, I grew up in South Africa, but my morality was informed by America.
I read comic books, you know, played Dungeons and Dragons.
And I watched American TV shows.
And it seemed like America cared about being the good guys, you know?
About doing the right thing.
And that's actually pretty unusual, by the way.
unidentified
It's like in the world, it's very unusual.
ted cruz
Yeah.
elon musk
It's not like actually.
unidentified
Most countries don't do that.
No, they don't.
elon musk
No.
And so I was like, yeah, you know, you want to be the good, you want to be on the side of good.
You want to care about what's right.
unidentified
And yeah, so that's what I believe in.
I gave you a tough one at the end.
Yeah.
elon musk
So, yeah.
unidentified
That's great.
That's great.
Elon Musk.
All right, thank you.
Thank you so much.
jeremy boring
I appreciate it.
unidentified
All right.
The Switch 00:04:05
unidentified
Hello, CPAC.
Don't forget to vote in the CPAC Straw Poll.
Your ID is on your badge.
Scan the QR code and get your vote in.
rick scott
I switched. I switched. I switched.
unidentified
I need to switch to Newsmax.
rob finnerty
Start this morning in Washington where all eyes are on the White House.
unidentified
I switched to Newsmax.
Newsmax.
Newsmax.
rick scott
Have you made the switch?
unidentified
You bet I did.
My whole family switched.
Everyone is making the switch.
I did.
I did.
pam bondi
I switched, and it made all the difference.
unidentified
It made all the difference.
Have you made a switch?
You should.
Millions are switching to Newsmax.
You should too.
Every institution today is under attack.
The home, the church, the government.
And many people are asking what is the truth.
Jesus Christ claimed the ultimate truth.
Are you willing to face the truth?
justus smith
Do you think the MK Ultra project ever actually ended?
charlie kirk
The Central Intelligence Agency is actively involved in mind manipulation.
elaine beck
We all answer to one God and one Savior.
And he's there to change your life for the better.
unidentified
America is under attack.
Our families are being crushed under the politics of a radical agenda.
But moms have had enough.
We are standing up and we are fighting back.
This is our battle.
This battle is everything that is important as a revolutionary war because we fight for the same thing.
Moms for America is a national movement of moms reclaiming our culture for truth, family, freedom, and the Constitution.
I think Moms for America is exactly on track and is doing the right thing for the future of our country and our children.
Like Moms for America is going at the heart of the issue.
tucker carlson
I want to go on the record and say I'm for moms, I'm for America, and I'm especially for Moms for America.
unidentified
But I am honored to join Moms for America today as we speak out against the horrific mandates.
With a national network of over a half a million mothers, Moms for America is one of the fastest growing movements of women in the country.
The most dangerous place in all of nature is between a mama bear and her baby cup.
We are the change.
No matter what, no matter where, and no matter how difficult the obstacles are that are facing us and our families, we will not give up and we will not give in.
So if not now, then win.
If not you, then who?
Welcome to the Moonlight Volution.
There, scan your QR code on your badge so that you can view the agenda.
A Glorious Day 00:15:51
unidentified
Check out our membership circles and learn more about our centers.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome host of War Room, Steve Bannon.
steve bannon
What a glorious day.
Hold it.
How did I draw the card to follow Elon Musk?
Come on, man.
You bring out the world's wealthiest guest, Superman.
I'm supposed to follow it?
I'm just a crazy Irishman.
This is a glorious day.
You know why it's glorious?
Cash Batel's director of the FBI.
Confirmed by the United States Senate.
As was Bobby Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth.
Didn't they tell you it couldn't be done?
Didn't they?
All right there.
Didn't the mainstream media say it couldn't be done?
None of them, right?
It's a glorious day.
Mitch McConnell.
Mitch McConnell's gone.
He retired.
Right?
You did that.
Remember on the Ukraine vote, remember that?
You broke, he broke his pick on that.
You delivered that.
Just like you delivered Tulsi and Bobby and Pete and cash.
They said Trump wouldn't get any of his cabinet members key.
eric schmitt
He got them all.
unidentified
Why?
steve bannon
Because of you.
Scott Besson today said Elon's group in the first 30 days found $55 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse, right?
$55 billion.
That's going to add up to $600,070, $800 billion.
In one month, they've done that.
And President Trump comes that day.
He's so excited, he says, hey, I think we can balance the budget.
Right?
President Trump, hang on for a second.
Let's just get it down to under a trillion.
We'll start there.
Zelensky's been put in his place, right?
Right?
And the J6ers are here at CPAC.
unidentified
All of them.
steve bannon
From the medium-high security prisons to the U.S. penitentiary to the men that got diesel therapy.
All of them are here.
unidentified
Right?
steve bannon
They don't like that up there.
You don't like the J-6s being here.
The J-6s are here.
Hey, and let me tell you something else.
I talked to Ambassador Rick Rinnell last night, and the J6ers, I think, the J6 choir is going to play the Kennedy Center for a night in honor of their families.
In fact, I got an idea.
The night that they play, the J6 choir plays and opens the new, you know, the new, the new, with Rick Rinnell and President Trump as chairman.
We have the J6 choir, right?
And we invite all the families they try to destroy, the J6ers, and they get to sit in the boxes where the elite's sick, right?
And we take the elite for just one night, and we take them down to the DC Gulag, right?
unidentified
for one night think they can handle think they can handle that I don't think so either.
steve bannon
Game likes game, right?
Game knows game, right?
I'll tell you his game.
The gentleman sitting in the White House, Donald J. Trump, it's a glorious day.
Days of thunder.
Days of thunder and years of lightning.
Every day is Christmas Day.
Every day you get more executive orders, more executive actions.
It's not going to stop.
But you know what's the most important thing of all that?
It's you.
You're here today at CPAC.
You represent the tip of the tip of the spear of the populist nationalist movement.
All of that, from Kash Patel to McConnell leaving to the J6 being free, right?
To Zielinski being put in his place.
And Elon just said it right there.
It's been nothing but griff.
The parents and the kids in Ukraine didn't want him to die.
Who wanted him to die?
The globalists want him to die.
Who said stop it?
You said stop it.
You gave voice to President Trump.
Now, why is it so important that all the media's here and the world's here and the Financial Times of London and the New York Times and all these?
mike johnson
Why are they all here?
steve bannon
They're not here to see me.
They can see me every day on Real America's Voice screaming like a madman at the microphone.
They can see Rob Schmidt and Elon.
Elon's everywhere, right?
It's great he did this.
He's everywhere.
ted cruz
Right?
steve bannon
JD Vance, great, gave a great speech.
You can see J.D. all the time.
President Trump's going to give a magnificent speech on Saturday, is he not?
But they get enough of President Trump every day, don't they?
Hell yeah.
He calls them into the Oval Office, he signed executive officers' office, executive orders, and they're sitting there throwing these questions.
unidentified
Baboom, baboom.
steve bannon
He's like a Howardson.
Oh, they got enough of President Trump.
You know what they're really here for?
They're here because of you.
They can't defeat what they don't understand.
They can't destroy what they don't understand.
Right?
They can't contain what they don't understand.
From Riyadh to Beijing to Berlin to the city of London to Buenos Aires, you name it, every world capital.
Every hedge fund, every political consultant, all the money, all the power, all the legislation.
You know what they want?
They want to understand MAGA.
You know why?
You represent the best of the American people.
In your righteous indignation, you rose up.
unidentified
Right?
steve bannon
You rose up.
How many times have I been doing this last two or three years?
What did I tell you last year on this very stage?
We're going to win.
We're going to win the primary.
We're going to win the general election.
And Donald Trump's going to return to the White House.
And all these guys, all the mainstream media, the fake news, mocked and ridiculed.
Trump's not going to win the primary.
unidentified
You were right.
steve bannon
Right?
unidentified
You were right.
steve bannon
They had, who was it?
Nikki?
Nikki Hale?
Had Governor, and I like Governor Santis life.
Governor Santos dropped out by then?
I don't remember.
Well, it was soon thereafter.
You had Trump's back.
You had Trump's back in those dark days of 2021, did you not?
Remember, he went to Mar-a-Lago, and it was like a lion in winter, and they all abandoned him except for you.
And the schlaps had enough guts and courage to taking the seat back in Orlando and march 47 days after he had gone into exile because guess what?
They stole the 2020 election.
Is there any doubt in your mind that they stole the 2020 election?
They stole it.
And they know they stole it.
They thought you were finished.
They were going to de-bank you.
They were going to de-platform you.
You are nothing but trash.
You're nothing but garbage.
You're nothing but deplorables.
Right?
You surprised them with Hillary Clinton in 2016.
And guess what?
11 more, 74 million, 11 more than we had in 2016 voted when you won the 2020 election.
And the reason the J6ers are here and they're patriots is because that was a Fed surrection totally set up by the FBI, by the Justice Department, by D.A., all of them.
And we're going to show the receipts.
We're going to show the receipts.
And they thought Trump's finished and you're finished.
unidentified
No.
steve bannon
I want you to look within yourself right now of that journey.
Go back to 2021.
Go back to your life.
Go back to the anxiety.
Man, Trump won, but they stole it.
The system's so big, so corrupt, so powerful.
Remember that?
Back on our heels, right?
You didn't quit, just like in any military contest.
We got a rally point.
We dug the guide on in and say, you know what?
Regroup.
Dust ourselves off.
Fix bayonets.
We're charging again.
That is why Kash Patel is the director of the FBI.
That is why Bobby Kennedy is the head of HHS.
That is why Tulsi Gavin is a DNI.
That is why Pete Hedzeth is across the river in the Pentagon.
Fix baynets.
Fix bayonets.
You're not going to stop.
You know why they fear you in Riyadh.
You know why they fear you in Beijing.
You know why they fear you in Berlin and the city of London?
Because they know you're not stoppable.
Right?
This time won almost 80 million votes.
40% of black men in this country came and voted with you and supported you.
Majority of Hispanics, Hispanic families voted with you.
Every Asian, every Asian American in this country, come.
This is your home is MAGA, right?
Every member, everybody from India that's here in the United States as a citizen, come, this is your home, MAGA, right?
Make America healthy again.
Do it like that.
We're going to hard weld Maha to MAGA.
You're unstoppable.
You're unstoppable.
And they know that.
You don't think in Riyadh they know that.
You don't think in Rome they know that.
You don't think in Berlin they know that?
The righteous indignation of the American people, just like every patriot grave, just like the revolution, the Civil War, and World War II, they understand when the American people, with its common sense, isn't what President Trump says a revolution of common sense?
unidentified
Right?
steve bannon
It's also a revolution of common decency.
The decency, the grit, the determination, the courage of the American people is unparalleled in world history.
This is why we have our best and brightest on every battlefield all throughout the world, from the South Pacific to Europe to North Africa.
What other nation on earth has ever done that?
What other people have ever done that?
None.
Only you.
And you rose up.
And you rose up and you said, you know what?
Trump is our guy.
Is President Trump perfect?
No, he's far from perfect.
He's an imperfect instrument.
But I will tell you, George General Washington was an imperfect instrument.
Abraham Lincoln was an imperfect instrument.
And he's the third.
These come along about every hundred years.
Leaders that take us in a new direction.
And that's what Trump has done.
It was divine providence that won 16, and it was divine providence hand that let them steal 2020.
Because we had to see how depraved they were.
We had to see how demonic they were.
We had to see what they were prepared to do to this country.
And what did you do?
Did you ever falter?
No, you did not.
Did you ever doubt?
No, you did not.
Did you ever question?
No, you did not.
And you know what it brought us?
glorious glorious glorious victory the reason these phonies in the mainstream media for nothing but the propaganda department for the ruling class in this world right They fear you.
They fear you because they understand you're not beatable.
You're not beatable.
They've had every shot and right now, and I want people to celebrate and to come together.
We're going to do it the next couple of days.
But understand the toughest part of this war is ahead of us.
I've never promised you anything.
I've never promised you sunlit uplands.
I said it's ahead of us, maybe decades.
But at times in American history that people have to lay it all down.
You're expendable to get to bridge to the other side.
You know that.
You're not asking for a handout.
You're not asking for a pat on the head.
You're not asking for a thank you.
All you're asking for is where is my musket?
Where's my bayonet?
And where do I go over the top?
The other question, they're all running around.
They're all running around.
unidentified
What's the future of MAGA?
steve bannon
What's the future in 2028?
We ain't worried about 2028.
We're worried about today and tomorrow and the next day.
That's how we won.
We didn't go back in 2021.
Well, what's going to happen in 2024?
No, it's every single day.
You report for duty and we get it done.
Action, action, action.
So media, you don't have to come up and answer me.
I'm going to tell you right now.
The future of America is MAGA.
In the future of MAGA is Donald J. Trump.
We want Trump in 28.
That's where they can't stand.
A man like Trump comes along only once or twice in a country's history, right?
unidentified
We want Trump! We want Trump! We want Trump! We want Trump!
steve bannon
God I love you.
Nothing's got enough.
Nothing's going to work them up like that.
No, no, no, no.
They want to say, oh, Trump's a lame dog.
Trump's this.
Trump's that.
Trump Knows Agency Matters 00:15:40
steve bannon
Trump's not around 28.
Trump is here.
He's the leader of this movement.
When they record the history of this age, Ain't going to remember me or Elon Musk or Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity.
They're going to remember two things.
Donald Trump and MAGA, okay?
And you know why?
You know why they know they can't beat you and why they're so upset?
Your agency, your human agency, you did this yourselves.
You came, you worked through it.
You said, I'm going to put aside fear.
I'm going to put aside questions and concern.
I'm going to put aside my anxiety of the 2020 election being stolen.
I'm going to get together.
We're going to fight.
We're not going to back off any day.
Your agency, your human agency, right?
They can come up with all the algorithms in Silicon Valley they want.
They can take away half of the economy as far as labor goes.
Human agency is what drives this world forward, right?
This is the Holy Spirit working through us.
Your agency.
That's why Trump, General Washington, and Lincoln and Trump, they come along every hundred years.
Most nations never have them.
We've had three.
He is an instrument of divine providence, right?
Of course he is.
Look what he's rented.
Look at what this capital has become.
The revolutionary generation never anticipated this imperial capital, right?
If they came back today, they would spit on the floor to see what we've allowed to do, what we've allowed to happen, right?
With the lords of easy money and the oligarchs.
And they would say, hey, what we need is a populist nationalist revolution.
And guess what?
Donald Trump gave him one, right?
It's going to get so tough.
It's going to get so hard.
Are you going to quit?
Are you going to back Trump?
Are you prepared to fight?
When he made the moral decision to come back from Mar-a-Lago, understand they were going to put him in prison for 700 years, right?
They were going to bankrupt him.
They're going to destroy his family.
What did he do?
He came back in 47 days and said, I'm in.
Are you in?
unidentified
Right?
steve bannon
When they tried to shoot him, they tried to assassinate him.
And he was on the ground right there.
They could have crawled off like any other politician in the world.
unidentified
What did he do?
steve bannon
He got up.
And what did he say?
What did he say?
I can't hear you.
Are you prepared to fight for Trump?
Are you prepared to fight for this republic?
Are you prepared to fight for this country?
The hardest, toughest days are ahead, folks, but you know what?
Riyadh, Berlin, Beijing, Moscow, the city of London, right here, this is not beatable.
You can't, the only way we lose is if we quit.
The only way we don't have victory, if we surrender.
The only way that they win is if we retreat.
And we're not going to retreat.
We're not going to surrender.
We're not going to quit.
Fight, fight, fight.
Amen.
God bless you.
You are amazing.
You've honored every patriot in this country, every patriot grave.
You've honored them through your agency.
unidentified
All you standing up
for America's families with the stroke of a pen.
President Trump is shutting down radical gender ideology and racist indoctrination in our schools, protecting children from dangerous, irreversible transgender surgeries, defending the truth that there are only two genders and saving women's sports.
They'll do anything to stop President Trump, but he's not backing down, and neither are we.
Who's AARP really watching out for these days?
They've made billions partnering with big health insurance corporations while opposing reforms seniors want, like applying big discounts to medicines directly at the pharmacy counter.
Instead, AARP supports liberal price-setting schemes, giving politicians, not seniors, control over any so-called Medicare savings with no guarantees.
Funds won't be spent on unrelated programs or pad big insurance profits.
If AARP and Congress believe America's seniors aren't watching, think again.
Paid for by American Commitment.
donald j trump
During my second term, we will fight for Alaska like never before.
unidentified
I'm excited about what we can do with President Trump in the office.
donald j trump
We can work together to provide affordable energy to Alaska and allies all over the world.
unidentified
More investment, more certainty in production, more exploration.
donald j trump
Thank you to everyone in Alaska, and thank you to your great governor.
I look forward to a long and enduring future relationship.
unidentified
Drill, baby, drill.
matt schlapp
Hey, it's Matt Schlapp with CPAC.
You know, we've had a huge problem in this country with election fraud.
But at CPAC, that's not a problem.
Our only problem is getting each and every one of you to vote.
So look at your badge.
You have a number on that badge and get your phone out and vote on all the issues that matter.
And my guess is you probably like what Trump's doing as well.
And we'll have the results for you very, very soon.
donald j trump
I actually started quite a while ago in CPAC, and I enjoyed it so much that I came back for a second one, then a third, then I said, what the hell?
Let's run for president.
unidentified
Matt said, it's like five years ago, six years ago, he says you should run for politics.
He's the one who said you should run for the presidency of the United States.
It is my honor to introduce to CPAC 2017 our president, Donald Trump.
donald j trump
First of all, I want to thank Matt Schlapp and his very, very incredible wife and boss, Mercedes, who have been fantastic friends and supporters and so great when I watch them on television defending me.
Nobody has a chance.
unidentified
I love this place.
Love you people.
You never stop fighting for America and I will never ever stop fighting for you.
donald j trump
We know that there are still more records to be shattered, new summits to be scaled, more triumphs to be realized, and more amazing history just waiting to be written.
The American adventure has only just begun.
unidentified
God bless America and we will see you next year.
Thank you, Burke.
You never stop fighting for America, and I will never, ever stop fighting for you.
Everything they said about him has been wrong.
matt schlapp
I don't know how he does it.
unidentified
It has always been a battle against Donald Trump.
Puts a very bright light on the two-tiered system of justice that only seems to go after President Trump.
The reason why we want him as president is because he's not stuck in this kind of bureaucratic mechanism.
michael j knowles
He was very clear.
unidentified
If you hit your target, you are golden and you could work and work and work and do a great job.
He's a very inquisitive person who loves to talk about the economy.
pam bondi
Trump does the same thing in a different medium.
He's talking directly to the American people.
unidentified
That's why Trump is transformational because he kind of came outside the Republican Party.
He's a great closer.
He understands what the most important issues are to voters.
Not only is America a great country, but that we Americans are good people.
Donald Trump stands for everything that's good, everything that we need, what needs to be changed in our society today.
Think about that Trump supporter that was demonized, that was taken down, that was criticized, that was targeted.
Think about that person out there.
pam bondi
That is the one.
They are winning tonight.
unidentified
The American people, they've spoken up tonight.
matt schlapp
We've just lived through history.
unidentified
We're never going to see anything like this ever again.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome host of the Ben Shapiro Show.
Ben Shapiro.
Hey, how are you?
How's it going, guys?
michael j knowles
How are y'all?
ben shapiro
Well, folks, you know, I'm not famous for being a particularly optimistic sort.
If you've ever listened to my show, let's say morosity, depression, that may be a feeling that's come over you once in a while listening to my show where I describe what's going on in the country.
But I can safely say I have never felt more optimistic about the United States than I do right now.
And that is thanks to President Donald J. Trump.
And one of the things that's sort of mysterious about President Trump is the fact that he isn't really an ideological conservative.
Now, people like me, I grew up in the movement.
I grew up reading Thomas Sowell and Frederick Hayek and reading Russell Kirk.
I don't think President Trump has ever sat around reading those people.
I don't think he sits around at night and browses Edmund Burke or anything.
And so the question is, why is it that this man who's not truly an ideological conservative is the most successful conservative president of my lifetime, Barnan?
It's a real question.
And I think to understand that, the thing that we need to understand about President Trump is that more than anything else, more than anything else, and in this era, needed more than anything else, President Trump lives in the world of reality.
President Trump has been slandered by the media as somebody who creates fictions of his own and sort of lives within those fictions and says a lot of words that don't always match up with the truth and all that kind of stuff.
The reality is that President Trump, in his gut, lives in the real world, which is why President Trump wins so often, because if you are going to win, you have to acknowledge reality because reality always wins.
And this is what makes President Trump conservative.
Conservatism lines up really, really well with reality.
The reason that President Trump won the last election cycle is because the Democratic Party, the left, completely disconnected themselves from reality, completely disconnected themselves from reality in every possible way.
They ran screaming with their hair on fire, their blue hair on fire, away from reality.
President Trump embraces reality with both arms.
When it comes to the world of economics, for example, President Trump only cares about success.
He cares about economic dynamism.
He cares about American businesses being able to build and succeed.
And he understands that in order for all those things to happen, you have to free American business from the shackle of regulation and government.
You have to allow businesses to innovate.
That you have to allow people to rise and fall on their own merit.
Meritocracy has to be valued more than, say, identity politics and DEI.
President Trump knows that in his guts because he's a business person.
President Trump has had to make payroll.
Unlike literally every leader of the Democratic Party over the course of my lifetime, he is not a career politician, which means he's always been answerable to reality.
And that means that when he unleashes another businessman, Elon Musk, inside the government, and says, go in there with a meat axe and start taking out programs, that is what a businessman would do.
If you came into a business as a business person and it was rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, you wouldn't sit around and run a commission on it.
You would start firing people.
You would go in and you start making changes.
You start breaking things and moving quickly.
And President Trump is doing precisely that.
You can see business optimism in the country is skyrocketing specifically because of that.
Meanwhile, the Democrats don't know what to do because their cherished blue pipeline, which is what the federal government is.
It is a permanent payment program for the left, the federal government.
They have permanent institutions that exist outside the government.
They take literally trillions of your taxpayer dollars and then they funnel all that money out to their political allies inside and outside the government.
And Donald Trump came in and he broke the pipeline.
ted cruz
Why?
ben shapiro
Because he lives in the world of reality.
When we're talking about foreign policy, President Trump lives in the world of reality.
When President Trump looks at the situation in Ukraine, he doesn't say, well, you know what, we're not going to set an endpoint.
We're not really going to set a goal.
We're just going to wing it.
We're just going to go along with this for years.
He says, listen, here's the reality.
The reality is that there is a grinding trench warfare situation in Ukraine.
There is very little shot that Ukraine is going to be able to win back Donbass and Crimea.
And we don't want Ukraine to actually fall to the Russians.
And so we know what an off-ramp looks like.
Now it's just a question of how do we get to that off-ramp.
That is what a practical person does.
That is a person who lives in reality.
That's not a person who wants to speak airy fairy nonsense and nostrums about democracy and tyranny.
All that stuff sounds nice, but does it get the job done is the question that President Trump is always asking.
Does it get the job done?
When it comes to the Middle East, President Trump has completely broken the mold.
The sort of ancient wisdom of the State Department, which has been wrong for 80 years in the Middle East, is that the only way that you actually achieve peace in the Middle East is to make the Palestinian issue front and center.
President Trump in his first term totally turned that on his head.
He ignored it, and peace broke out in the Middle East.
President Trump has now thrown onto the table a solution with regard to the Gaza Strip that is breaking people's brains and also happens to be the only plausible solution anyone has proposed in about a century in this particular area.
Because it turns out that when you have a population group that literally held today a celebration of dead babies in the Gaza Strip, babies they had murdered in the Gaza Strip, it turns out that a two-state solution in which one of those states is actually run by those people is a really bad idea.
And President Trump knows that, and he says it, because he lives in the world of reality.
And this is how you chalk up victories.
When it comes to China, President Trump is a realist.
He understands that China is globally an opponent of the United States and that we need to stand up to Chinese predations, stealing our IP, buying American land, funneling fentanyl precursors through Mexico.
He understands on immigration that a realistic nation cannot have an open border.
Commonsense Ignored 00:03:46
ben shapiro
You cannot have a welfare state and an open border and pretend that that's workable.
President Trump understands that.
Now, all of this sounds commonsensical to all of us, right?
Because it is commonsensical.
But in Washington, D.C., commonsensical is not the way things have been run.
Instead, people have been so wedded not to victory, not to winning, not to achieving things, but to saying things properly in just the right way to get the right coverage in the New York Times or in the Wall Street Journal or in whatever media outlet they're pandering to, that they never actually think about what wins and what loses.
And then there's the matter of the reality of our daily lives.
President Trump understands that what most Americans want is not identity politics.
What most Americans want is not some bizarre notion about androgyny where men can be women and women can be men.
And that we are sort of free-floating sets of feelings existing within the meat suits that we wear around.
President Trump understands basic things that the left has completely abandoned and that he was willing to say.
Stuff that was uncontroversial, you know, five minutes ago.
Like boys are not girls.
These are controversial statements to make, but President Trump understands that that actually has some pretty deep ramifications when you say things like boys are not girls, such as perhaps men have a role to play that is different from women's role.
That does not mean that women shouldn't be in the workplace, obviously, and it doesn't mean that men shouldn't help take care of the kids, but it does mean that men being masculine is a good thing, and it means that women being wives and mothers is a good thing too.
And that no country that ignores these basic truths can survive and grow and thrive.
President Trump acknowledges and knows that the things that most Americans want, whether they are Hispanics living down on the border of Texas or whether they're white Americans living up on the border of Canada, those things are basically the same.
They want to be able to live in safety, free of crime, with prosperity, being able to hold down a job in a growing, innovative, dynamic economy.
They want to be able to go to their church and worship God and share that with their community without the government getting in their way.
These are all things that, again, sound so easy.
They sound so easy.
But the way that President Trump measures whether a thing is true or not is whether it works.
And that is why he has been so unbelievably successful.
Now, when it comes to us, what can we do?
This does say something to the rest of us.
I think that I talk for a living, which is a really fun way to make a living.
But the reality is that people come to me all the time and say, how do I make a difference in politics?
And obviously there are things that we all can do.
I spent the last election cycle campaigning with a variety of Senate candidates and with President Trump.
I went out and I did things.
But the things that most of us can do, aside from all the normal political fighting that Steve was talking about earlier, which is really important, the thing that is most important is to live a reality-based life, to be a model to our children, to be a model to our community, to build the social fabric that actually makes this country work, to create the businesses that make the country function, to engage in everyday common virtue.
Because the truth is the country is not just built by President Trump.
We love President Trump.
He's doing an amazing job.
He should continue to be healthy and well and continue to succeed day in and day out.
We're all praying for him.
But the country also runs because of the people who are doing the everyday things, whose names we don't know.
You, people I know, all the people out there who are just living with their families and bringing up their kids in the correct fashion in a country that is growing and thriving, building those building blocks, taking those building blocks and actually making the country work on a day-to-day level, President Trump is clearing the field for you.
Continuing To Build 00:03:04
ben shapiro
He's clearing the field for me.
The Republicans, I hope, are going to do that.
But then it's our job to actually build.
And that's what we should be focused on, not just on politics over the next four years or eight years or 20 years.
We should be focused on the building because that project, that's the project that never ends.
The political fight will always be there.
There's no such thing as permanent victory.
There will be losses in the future.
But the one thing that we can do every single day is continue to build.
And thank God, President Trump, the reason I'm optimistic, President Trump has brought us back to a world of reality where that building is possible and we should all build together.
Thank you so much.
And now.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
And now, I want to take the opportunity to welcome out my buddies from The Daily Wire for an episode of Backstage Live.
unidentified
No, I shouldn't.
jeremy boring
No one should clap for Michael.
unidentified
No.
matt walsh
Well, you're amazing.
michael j knowles
I know we can drink this delicious 45-47 whiskey.
Can we smoke the Mayflower cigars, too, or is that, are we?
Washington, D.C. is a little.
jeremy boring
What's the worst thing that could happen?
Welcome to CPAC and Backstage Live.