The Danielle Gill Show Episode 2 - State of the Union
Danielle Gill launches The Danielle Gill Show, diving into Trump’s first year—tariffs, border closures, and USAID shutdowns—while Oron McIntyre of The Blaze slams GOP resistance to his agenda, like blocked appointments and judicial pushback. McIntyre ties voter concerns to immigration and economic affordability, mocking the left’s "wokeness" pivot as a failed distraction amid Olympic wins like Jack Hughes. He argues deportations are orderly, not authoritarian, and mass immigration’s demographic gambit is backfiring, exposing the left’s power-coalition tactics over shared ideology. Gill contrasts conservative meritocracy with progressive undermining of excellence, closing by celebrating athletes’ patriotism. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm Danielle Gill, and I am so excited about this new podcast I just started, where we are going to dive into all kinds of political, cultural, religious topics.
We're going to talk about news of the day, trends, different things that are happening in our culture.
And today, we have a really interesting guest.
We're going to be talking to Oron McIntyre from The Blaze.
We're going to be talking about Trump's first year in office.
We just had the State of the Union, such an incredible evening.
We got to hear from President Trump.
We got to focus on some of the amazing wins from the last year.
Can't believe it's only been one year of Trump in office because it honestly feels like longer because of the light speed, because of how much he's gotten done, how incredible it's been.
And really just getting started.
We still have three more years of Trump who is going to just continue to remake the country in such a positive way.
So, amazing state of the union.
And then we are also going to talk to Oron about the next year, things that we should focus on as Republicans coming up, as well as the Olympics.
We saw some incredible wins.
We're going to talk about the hockey player Jack Hughes and just the pure beauty of patriotism.
This is the Danielle Gill Show.
I am delighted to welcome our guest today, Oron McIntyre.
He is a columnist, a lecturer, and author focusing on the application of political theory.
He's the host of the Aron McIntyre Show on the Blaze, and he lives with his wife and son in Florida.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, of course.
Well, I thought we could start off by talking a little bit about Trump's first year in office.
It's kind of hard to believe it's only really been one year, and we still have three more years because I feel like we're kind of already gearing up for the next, you know, the next election, the next midterm, the next 2028.
But what is your kind of read on the first year?
And what do you think we need to focus on in this next coming year?
What would be your kind of assessment?
Well, I think, like a lot of people, I was very excited to see Donald Trump and the energy that he brought to his administration when the year began.
Critical Issues for Republicans00:08:19
Obviously, this was a man who had many of his efforts rebuffed by the deep state and the collusion between the media, the Democrats, the unelected bureaucracy inside the U.S. government.
He recognized the problems that he had faced and he was ready to come in with a new team, a different approach.
When he hit the ground running, it was a lot of executive orders, making things happen, closing departments down, trying to overturn different rulings.
He really hit the whole spectrum simultaneously, which had a nice effect of blowing the Democrats and the media back on their heels.
They didn't know how to handle it.
Too much was happening.
Every time they tried to chase down one story, Trump was already on to the next.
He's doing tariffs.
He's closing the border.
He's over here shutting down USAID.
He's addressing affirmative action.
He's addressing birthright citizenship.
They just didn't know where to focus.
The only problem that Trump faced is one that was similar in his last term.
The Republican Party still kind of hates Donald Trump and hates MAGA.
And so they were unwilling to take significant actions that were necessary.
Trump can do a lot.
He can be very energetic inside the executive branch, but ultimately he does need the legislative branch to do his job.
He's not just a dictator.
And so he could make these things happen through executive order, but they had to be solidified.
through legislation.
He also needed his full staff available.
And the Republicans have totally failed him in this.
They haven't been willing to confirm many key appointments.
And so he has moved into this phase where he's still trying to do a lot.
And we're still seeing impressive gains on things like border security.
But he's also missing that piece, that legislative backstop that will allow him to continue to move forward.
And that means that he starts racking up losses with the judiciary, act as judges, start pushing back against him.
And I think that's where we are in the battle right now.
Donald Trump is still a man with a vision.
I think MAGA is still energized on many of the things that he has been aiming for.
But the fact that we've seen the slowdown in some of the momentum, because we haven't seen those wins converted in Congress, and because of some of the things like possible war, possible issues with the Epstein files, those have slowed down some of his momentum.
I think he's picked some of it back up in the last few weeks, but he really does need to find that groove and a way to get back and get to the Republicans to work with him rather than constantly pushing back against it.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
And one of the issues, I think, too, is that we, you know, we have this very slim majority in the House.
And then obviously we have people like Massey who vote with the Democrats.
And then in the Senate, we don't, you know, I guess we didn't want to do anything about the filibuster situation.
So then we have to deal with getting a 60-vote threshold.
Still hopeful that the Save America Act will pass.
But obviously, you know, after the one big beautiful bill, all these things they wanted to focus on, there's still more that they want to do.
But then we have issues like, you know, the Supreme Court, they're kind of, they put a little bit of a hindrance on him with the tariffs, which is something he was kind of doing from that executive position.
So even from the executive, sometimes he's facing some roadblocks.
And then now in the midterms, we could potentially have an even more difficult situation for Trump if we don't retain the Senate and the House.
What do you kind of see in this coming year that should be like a big focus in order to prevent that?
Well, yeah, that's a huge concern, obviously, is once the Democrats get a hold of really any part of the government again, they're going to be doing investigations.
They're going to be throwing up roadblocks.
It'll just be a constant grind to get anything done.
That's why you want to see that momentum really consolidate.
You don't want to lose it in the middle of that stride.
Now, things like the SAVE Act are critical.
Things like deportations are critical because these are things that make the next win easier.
There are so many times with Republicans where we're fighting for this issue or that issue.
And don't get me wrong, these things matter, gun rights, abortion.
These are critical issues for the right.
And I still fully support us achieving those goals.
But ultimately, the things that really help you down the road are those that make the next election more winnable.
So by shutting down the Democrats' constant attempt to import foreigners, shift the voting demographics, shift the loyalty and the situation inside the United States, and ultimately, it would seem to try to get illegals to be able to vote in these different areas, shutting down voter fraud, shutting down mass immigration.
These are critical things that don't just deliver for the voters, but they also do a great job of ensuring that guys like Trump, other Republican allies can stay in power.
So I think those are critical moves to be sure.
I think the Trump administration needs to find ways to address the affordability crisis.
I think this is going to be a critical aspect of elections going forward.
I think if you look at the issues that people care about right now, they really tend to be either immigration or affordability.
I can't buy a home.
I can't get a job.
My kids aren't safe in school.
Our hospitals are full of people who shouldn't be here.
Our roads are full of people who shouldn't be here and are killing people as they're driving 18-wheeler trucks while being here illegally.
These are things that people care about.
These are the bread and butter issues that matter.
Are my kids safe?
Can I bring food to this table?
That's what matters.
Donald Trump is doing a great job on the immigration side, but there has to be movement on the affordability side.
Now, I know he's been hampered in many of these issues.
Yet again, as you point out, his attempts to control trade relationships with tariffs, he's had to work around those.
He's had to work with people who are not very interested in his model of economic growth.
But ultimately, he has to find a way to deliver those things, I think, to young people, or at least find a plan, a roadmap that allows them to see that future for themselves.
I think that will take a lot of wind out of the sales.
The left is trying to pivot from wokeness to more Bernie Sanders economic issues.
They're not doing a great job with that, but that is their goal because they see that ultimately the wokeness is unpopular and the economic issues are the things that perhaps they could win on.
If Trump can take the wind out of their sales on the economic side, then they're only left with the wokeness.
And that's a losing strategy for the left.
Yeah, definitely.
But it's interesting because it seems like the left, even if they know woke is losing, they can't give it up because too much of their base loves it.
Too much of the left is obsessed with woke.
It's like the Tallerico Crockett battled.
You know, they can't really criticize Crockett too much as she's a black woman.
And then, you know, even though they kind of want Tallarico, for example, in like the Senate primary in Texas.
But I think that the Democrats, they want to latch on to that affordability issue.
You're right, because they think, okay, this is our one little window.
I don't know what other possible window that they could have with people.
It's because on pretty much every other issue, their views on it are so losing.
I don't know if they have anything else that they can stick to because I think people kind of move past a lot of the woke stuff.
I just don't know if it's going to go anywhere for them.
But they do have this like far left contingency that's just obsessed with woke.
So that's kind of like a, I don't know, like a trapeze that they have to deal with.
What do you think?
I think you're right.
I think ultimately the wokeness is the leftism.
Wokeness is part of the left's eternal revolution.
If we look at the French Revolution or, you know, Spain or the Russian Revolution, it's almost always about like killing the church, you know, kill the priests, get rid of the church, you know, overturn the population, over, you know, bring in debauchery.
These things are always and they've always been part of leftism.
They're not new.
We treat woke as if it's some kind of weird development, but that's not the case.
This is the core of wokeness, the Marxism and on the redistribution.
That's just how they get to this end point.
However, I think the smart actors, as you say, in the left are recognizing that this is a problem and that while it may be the purpose of the revolution, it's a hard sell.
So they're in a bad place because their core base wants this.
This is what the left is.
This is what the revolution is.
But the wiser hands know that if they play too much of that out, then people will see it too quickly.
You want to boil the frog slowly.
You want to introduce the wokeness over time.
Keeping the Pressure Off00:03:03
You don't just want to spill it all in the boat at the same time.
And that's what is confusing to many of the leftists who are just saying, no, we already won these battles and we should just keep going no matter what.
Like I said, I don't think they're ultimately going to be able to keep this under control.
And that's fantastic.
So really outside of the economic issues, which you could take away from them, I think relatively easy, the only other thing that they really have going for them is attempting to paint Donald Trump as somehow overzealous or some form of brutal authoritarian during the deportations.
Most people want deportations.
If you poll, they like the idea of deportations, but seeing the physical deportation process can make some people squeamish.
They don't realize moving millions and millions of people out of the country is always going to involve physically removing people who don't want to go.
And that's going to create some level of conflict.
Now, the good news is that if the Trump administration could get Congress behind them, there are many non-direct ways they could get people to self-deport, right?
We can look at things like taxing remittances, making sure to enforce E-Verify, making sure that employers are paying penalties for employing illegal immigrants, cutting off illegal immigrant services for things like healthcare or education.
These would all be soft power ways where you don't have to physically move a single human body.
But if you're an immigrant who came over here for the free health care and the education and the handouts and all of those things are suddenly gone and you don't know the language and you don't know anything else and you're probably going to get deported if you get caught, you're probably just going to go home.
Like you can't even make money here and send it home anymore.
Like none of that works if you have those different soft power things in place.
So I think a focus on that from the Trump administration paired with the physical deportations.
Don't get me wrong, we need ICE deportations.
But I think bringing alongside those other options will really help and it'll release some of the pressure the left is trying to put on the physical deportation side because there'll be far more people leaving through that method.
And then you have fewer and fewer of these physical conflicts that the left can use that they can put into their propaganda.
Right.
Yeah.
Because if they weren't able to get free stuff, if they're not able to get jobs, if they're not able to get the health care or any of these things, then what are they going to do here?
So they would have to just go.
But I think it's interesting because I actually thought before this year started that there was going to be more contention with the deportations.
Like, okay, we just got to accept it.
Like some people are just going to get dragged out.
That's just the way it's got to go.
But I feel like it's actually been pretty peaceful almost the entire year.
And then only kind of a little bit later was there some, you know, media attention on some of the ICE stuff.
But if you think about it, it was actually a lot of like peaceful deportations happening for a long time.
And if we look ahead to, I guess, the next couple years, do you think that at a certain point the left is just going to have to, I don't know, I mean, move on to the next thing because they can keep talking about it.
It's kind of like January 6th.
They keep talking about it, keep talking about it, they keep talking about it.
Left's Narrative Struggles00:15:10
But eventually, like the voters didn't really care about that.
They weren't really voting on, oh, let's like save our democracy.
That was like one of their big slogans when Kamala was running or Biden.
So if immigration is popular, most people don't want open borders, then the Democrats, they're going to have to just shift away from that narrative.
Or do you think kind of the play on the emotions too much?
I think it's impossible for them to shift away from that narrative because mass importation of foreign demographics is the basis of the Democratic Party.
It is their entire electoral plan.
They've said this out loud many times.
You know, we can't wait for America to be less white.
We can't bring in all these other people from outside the country because they'll all vote for us.
Now, I don't think that's always been the case.
I think we've even seen Hispanic men move towards Trump over the last few years in the last election.
But ultimately, they were banking on this idea that bringing in these foreign demographics would just make sure that they're going to be in power in just perpetuity.
And what they've discovered is that if they don't have that constant inflow of people, if they have something like the SAVE Act that's going to crack down on foreign voting, then their plan is going to fail.
They need something else because they can't sell their current plan to the American people.
The American people are just uninterested.
Donald Trump has seen a hit in some of his popularity ratings.
But the one thing that's consistent is no matter how many points Donald Trump loses in his popularity ratings, the Democrats lose more.
They're even less popular.
That's how unpopular.
their message is to the American people.
I think they have a very hard time selling the future that they're looking at right now to the American people.
And so ultimately, what are you going to say?
Well, I think we should have more immigrants.
I think you should make less in your job.
I think that we should allow foreign countries to take advantage of you monetarily.
What are you going to sell to the American people?
We have no solution for education or any of these other issues as Democrats, but Donald Trump sure is mean.
That's kind of what they've got at the moment.
And so I think that they were very reliant on the immigration piece.
And even if it's deeply unpopular, they have to stay with it.
Remember, both the Republicans and the Democrats supported mass immigration for decades, despite it being one of the least popular policies in the United States.
In our theoretical republic, representative republic, both parties were working heavily against the public's preference when it came to immigration.
I think the Democrats are going to continue to do that, even if the Republicans have found momentum in that issue.
What do you think about the inverse?
Because sometimes you'll see those clips on social media circulating where it's Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi or even Obama deported people, where it's kind of the opposite, where they're like, we have to secure elections or we have to deport people.
Because you're right, it's like Republicans were so weak on this.
And then for so long, Republicans and Democrats were letting it happen.
But then also Democrats were saying the opposite thing.
Well, and of course, that rhetoric is elastic, right?
You use it when you need to.
So for certain, there have been moments, and you're seeing this now.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have come back and said, well, perhaps things have gone too far and we need to, you know, we need to go ahead and clamp down on this.
And those are obviously corrections that I think they're going to make rhetorically.
I don't think they're going to continue to say, yeah, sure, Joe Biden can let 8 million people over the border.
But I think functionally, what the policies will look like over and over again will be that acceptance.
Most of the deportations that happened under people like Obama were turnaways.
They're counting turnaways as deportations, not actually removing people from the heartland of the country.
Trump is doing real deportations.
He's going into a place like Minnesota and physically removing people.
He's not just turning them away at the border and counting that as a deportation.
If he did, his deportation numbers would be astronomical.
So I think that we have to remember that there's a lot of bean counting and rhetorical gameplay being done.
I do think the Democrats recognize that at some level, just maximum open border rhetoric is not in their favor.
But I think privately, they're never going to ultimately curb their understanding of how many foreigners they want to come into the country.
I think, again, they are very reliant on that.
Perhaps there are certain issues they can win on with the American people separate from immigration.
But I do think that there's less and less people in the United States who are looking at the Democrat vision and ultimately saying that that's something that's good for America.
They might see themselves benefiting it once they move to America and support the Democratic Party.
But I think very few current Americans are looking at the left and saying, these guys know how to steer the economy.
They know how to secure a better future for my kids.
I just don't see that being talked about.
When the left has any winning issues, it's usually just things are expensive or Donald Trump is mean.
Yeah.
And it does make you wonder, how are these people so liberal, like the Clintons and just all these people?
I'm like, how can you even think any of this?
It's so insane.
And then, when you look at these outsiders, it makes sense why they would want to vote for the Democrats because they're like, oh, you're going to give me free stuff.
You know, you're saying all this multicultural stuff, whatever.
It kind of, you know, so that makes sense because they shouldn't be here.
But if you're someone who's these, you know, people who've been here for years, I guess the Clintons, for example, why are you going to be so liberal?
Now, I know people say they're corrupt.
They want power because it's just all about corruption.
It's all about money.
But I think there's more than just the corruption because there are actual people who vote for Democrats, who are, I guess, what is it, like the white liberal women or something who just vote for Democrats.
I mean, so it does make you think: do you just want to harm yourself?
You just want to harm your own family, your own kids, your own country, I guess.
And it's very hard to get through to them because they only respond to emotion, which I guess the Democrats like to play on with, like, oh, you know, we feel so bad for these people.
But then I'm thinking about it, I'm like, Democrats, they don't actually care about people.
They don't actually feel bad for people.
They're not the good people.
They're not the loving people.
Actually, conservatives are.
We're the ones who actually love people.
We're the side that stands for Christianity and family and safety and all these things that actually are loving to people.
So how do we make any dent in that group?
Well, one way I try to help people understand this, because I think your question is one that many people ask.
It's very common.
And I think the way to think about this is that the Democratic Party is an alliance on getting to rule middle America, right?
So it's not just people who are coming from outside the country, immigrants, that kind of thing.
It's also coastal liberals, people in elite circles, people who tend to look down on Mississippi or Alabama or Iowa, these people who believe that they have the right to ultimately rule what we would call red state Americans, right?
Like I think that really is the coalition of what the left is.
How else do you get radical Muslims in the same coalition with people who like trans kids, right?
The only thing that these people have in common is they think that they should be in charge of what Americans believe and what Americans can do.
And so even though the Clintons or someone who's been part of the country for decades or even centuries, their family land goes back, they might still see themselves as like properly the people who should be able to enforce their way of life on the average American.
And therefore, they're going to join this coalition that might in some ways damage what America was, but gives them the power to ultimately do that.
And so I think when you understand it through a lens of kind of this, the Democrat Party is not this ideological structure that makes sense and the logic flows through it.
It's a power structure.
And it's people who want to have that power, wield that power over different parts of the country.
And when you do that, all of a sudden, all the ideological clashes inside the Democratic Party, they make more sense because otherwise these people would never ever work together.
Again, what does a black Christian in the South have to do with a radical Islamist or any of these?
They don't make sense together.
They don't make sense together.
So the only way you can fuse this coalition together is to understand it, I think, through power and the distribution of benefits, not through some ideological convergence.
Yeah.
And then just shifting a little bit to the Olympics, do you think we're seeing a little bit of a surge in patriotism?
Do you think that the left sees the wins like Jack Hughes, hockey, as, wow, this is so beautiful.
You know, this like maybe is a moment that is national pride.
Or do you think they see things like that and think, you know, this is just repulsive to me?
Because part of me feels like us as conservatives, we love it.
We love seeing it, seeing America dominate on the world stage.
We love seeing this, this like beautiful, beautiful wins like this.
But then I think the liberals, I mean, I don't know if they even care.
It's been funny to watch because the conservatives are just universally excited about the wins, right?
Like the right is just like, we won these, it's amazing, we're America, you know, love these athletes, whatever.
The left has been trying to spin these narratives.
Uh, there's the one skater who's uh you know originally from China, but she peed for America, and you know, people say, Oh, well, she has this belief or that's belief, and she's an immigrant.
And the right's like, We don't care, we're just excited that she won.
And America is a place that's dominating things.
But the left wants every part of the win to be political, they want to use it as you know, deploy it against the Republicans in some way.
I think that most of America is still excited about these wins.
I think this is still a moment that largely unifies the country.
I think it really is only some of the most bitter leftists.
I mean, I've seen, I think it was the Huffington Post that just ran a headline: it's okay if you feel bad when people are waving the flag and celebrating America.
Like that plays in New York and California and a few other, you know, coastal regions of the United States, urban regions of the United States.
But for the vast majority of people, I think even Republican and Democrat, they're glad to see these wins.
Yeah.
And it is kind of heartwarming to think, okay, you know what?
There is some youth, there are some people who are still like focusing on, I mean, even just focusing on like, I don't want to say like raw masculinity, but just excellence and just like focusing on like sports, you know, not everything has to be about DEI.
And that's, I think, something that's so sad about the left is they've tried to insert DEI into so many things that so many young people aren't really used to seeing things like this, which is also, I think, just pure fun.
Like that picture of him is so big.
It's like he's like smiling and he's so happy.
One of the beautiful things about being on the right is that there is a certain level of our worldview that just comes straight out of God's natural hierarchy.
When we observe the world around us, we can't help but see things in more of a conservative way.
And that's not even trying to politicize them.
It's just that's the natural tendency we have when we observe something like sports.
It's so, it's so meritocratic.
It's so built on excellence.
And it just dissolves away everything else.
What is the DEI?
Who has the most oppression points?
You know, how hard was there?
None of that matters.
Maybe you have those stories before and after, but in the moment of the competition, the only thing that matters is who is the best, who has the most heart, who is trained the hardest, who is working together as a team.
These are things that are just universal to the human experience and speak to kind of the beautiful things that God has just created in this world.
And so I think when we observe that, it's hard not to, you know, just to feel that, you know, you can't destroy that with any leftist narrative, any wokeness, and any of those things.
It just shines through time and time again.
And no matter how much you try to coat it over, I mean, we've all seen the NFL, we saw the Super Bowl, we've seen what all of the woke culture war stuff has done to our sports.
But even with all of that, still, at the end of the day, those victories, especially those heartfelt victories like we saw in USA hockey, those really just break through all of the narratives.
Yeah, they definitely do.
Well, Oran, thanks so much for joining us today.
I appreciate it and hope to talk to you again soon.
Thanks for having me.
As we wrap up today's show, I wanted to talk a little bit more about this kind of amazing inspiration that Jack Hughes brings to so many young people.
He is this amazing hockey player, this person who just went out there and decided he was going to fight for America, go out on the world stage, play this sport, play with excellence.
I think that it's something that people see the end result of a lot of the time, especially when people win a game in sports or something great happens.
People think, oh, you know, wouldn't that be awesome if that were me?
Or isn't that great?
They see the end result.
But there's so much hard work that went into that.
There's so much that was behind that and him getting there.
I'm sure years and years of training, years and years of suffering, you could say, where you're just kind of breaking yourself down.
You're pushing yourself even when you want to stop, even when something's a setback.
But he just keeps going.
And that's so true of so many of our athletes, especially all of our Olympians on the world stage.
But really, just anyone who wants to have some kind of inspiration, look at an end goal.
I think you have to look back at what they put in to get to that point.
And sometimes the left doesn't want to focus on this.
They don't like to talk about this kind of stuff because it makes it out like, oh, hard work can get you somewhere.
And the left hates that concept.
They want to look at it as, you know, you're black, you're a woman, you're trans, you're this, you're that.
Therefore, you can never do this.
You can never be that.
Or, you know, they just hate the idea that there's any kind of human agency in this world.
But I think the beauty of something like the Olympics is it's pure human agency.
It's pure excellence.
It's pure sport.
And there's something just so beautiful in seeing kind of the fruits of someone's labor, seeing the end results, seeing the amazing gold medals that were won, and just seeing the happiness on the face of the hockey players who won.
I don't know if you all saw this video, wanted to play this for you, which shows how they actually brought the children of one of their teammates who was killed by a drunk driver onto the stage.
Heartwarming Moments in Hockey00:00:48
It's so incredibly beautiful.
And we also saw just so many heartwarming moments.
I think hockey is now a sport I need to start watching because I can see that it's just, it's just like such a great thing to view.
I don't know.
We all have to become hockey fans now.
And as we continue to watch the Olympics, I think it's a great time for us to kind of be reminded of just the greatness of America and the beauty of so many Americans putting in the hard work to be at the Olympics.
Well, that wraps up today's show.
If you enjoyed the show, make sure to find me on social media.
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