Donald Trump's plan to federalize D.C. with 800 National Guard troops frames a constitutional restoration against the city's high homicide rates, contrasting its decay with Moscow's infrastructure while hinting at future interventions in Detroit and Los Angeles. The hosts critique the administration's performance, assigning an F for foreign policy and Epstein file handling but an A for immigration stops, sparking debate on whether the U.S. faces balkanization or requires a Cromwellian strongman to unify a fracturing nation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Militarizing the District of Columbia00:15:19
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Donald Trump is federalizing DC.
I can think of a few more cities in the Union that might need a little bit of this extra care as well.
Detroit comes to mind.
Atlanta comes to mind.
Los Angeles certainly comes to mind.
I wouldn't mind even, you know, with San Francisco.
I think there's a few mainline Protestant churches that need to have their property seized.
You know, there's a few different things.
You know, law and order.
It needs, let's make law and order great again.
That's what we're going to be talking about on this episode.
D.C. has long been an absolute poop hole.
I will say that.
It is a terrible place.
Everybody knows that.
Absolutely terrible place.
And not just because of the politicians.
I mean, that already makes it terrible.
But beyond that, just the degree of crime, and not just the crimes being committed by congressmen, but crimes on the streets.
There's the high level treasonous crimes, of course.
Got to figure those out.
But there's also the petty crimes on the street, like stealing people's car or pushing someone into a subway and killing them, those kinds of things, stealing people's kids.
It's out of control.
And Donald Trump is right to do something to take the city back.
And hopefully, this can become a kind of the guinea pig in a larger national equation where the federal government goes to certain states and cities that ultimately are refusing to instill law and order and say, all right, well, if you won't do it, then we will.
That's what we're going to be talking about in this episode.
Tune in now.
All right.
So I think this is a pretty interesting one.
I think for the left, certainly the Democrats, this story has really alarmed them.
I think more, we'll talk about why it's alarming them probably more than it ought to.
But in the sense that they've always accused Trump of being an authoritarian.
And here we see the militarization of, you know, the District of Columbia.
And they're like, okay, this is it.
This is him planning to really.
It's happening, guys.
It's happening, finally.
But in reality, and I think it would be a little fun exercise to talk a little bit about why this is really a no brainer.
I think specifically with.
With DC.
This is straight out of the Constitution.
This is totally within the remit of the executive branch to do.
And Trump knows that.
And so I think this is a really powerful move to get some political capital.
This was actually included in the 2024 campaign or party platform for the Republican Party to retake, I think it was language akin to retaking the federal district or retaking DC.
And so obviously it's, I think, particular for politicians who have to live in this place and all of the Uh, you know, bureaucrats who have to deal with these things are getting mugged as they're going to their cars, they're getting things stolen out of their vehicles, so on and so forth.
There are total, you know, complete wards of DC that are just you can't even, I mean, just wouldn't be wise to visit.
Um, you know, we'll talk about homicide, the homicide rate, and so on and so forth, which are true.
It's truly third world stuff.
Um, and so all of this is going on, and Trump, uh, Trump is staying true to the party platform and saying enough is enough.
We're going to deploy 800 National Guard troops.
We have plans to potentially deploy active duty troops as well.
And I think the last thing he said, which really freaked people out, was, and I'm also considering doing this in places like Baltimore.
And I think New York was another one, so on and so forth.
So, like you mentioned, Joel, this could really become the blueprint for what it looks like to retake some of our great American cities.
And so I think we should just open it up.
We have a couple clips we'll watch from the press conference that was given this morning.
One is from Trump, and then we'll watch another one from Hegseth.
It should be pretty short.
So let's.
Let's look at the one from Trump and see what he had to say.
We have other cities that are very bad.
New York has a problem.
And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland.
We don't even mention that anymore.
They're so far gone.
We're not going to let it happen.
We're not going to lose our cities over this.
And this will go further.
We're starting very strongly with D.C., and we're going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say.
The way he talks always makes me very quick.
Very quickly.
And then let's, before we really start to open it up, let's look at the Hegseth one, too, because I think one, Hegseth brings a little bit more energy to this thing.
Obviously, partly because it's sort of in his purview.
But let's look at this clip from Hegseth.
At your direction this morning, we've mobilized the D.C. National Guard.
It'll be operationalized by the Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, through the D.C. Guard.
You will see them flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week.
At your direction as well, sir, there are other units we are prepared to bring in.
Other National Guard units, other specialized units, they will be strong, they will be tough, and they will stand with their law enforcement partners.
This is nothing new for DOD.
As the President noted, at the border, we've got 10,000 troops down there who've been operating in defense cooperation areas, defense zones, where there's zero, zero illegal crossings because of troops on strikers scanning the border.
We've been protecting other people's borders for 20 years.
It's about time we protect our own.
And we're working with ICE and CBP.
In Los Angeles, we did the same thing, working with the California National Guard, working with ICE officers.
ICE officers deserve to do their job and not be attacked.
We will work alongside all D.C. police and federal law enforcement to ensure this city is safe, this city is beautiful.
And as I always say about President Trump to the troops, he has their back.
And my message to the National Guard and federal law enforcement in Washington is we have your back as well.
Be tough, be strong.
We're right behind you.
I like the comment just Christian imperialist left.
D.C. is a ghetto, it's a historical icon of the West.
I mean, we are.
The premier nation in the world.
We're the biggest, we're the best.
And it looks like garbage goes to the capital city of any other country and they protect the beauty of those places and we do not.
I think he's absolutely right.
It's a shame that our capital city of America is dangerous and a trash heap.
Yeah, I remember like the exact opposite rhetoric was used by many, you know, allegedly conservative individuals, even conservative pastors, even reform pastors in regards to Russia.
But it was the exact opposite.
You know, when Tucker, remember when Tucker went there and he filmed, you know, he visited Russia, interviewed Putin, and he filmed the subway.
And he's like, what in the world is going on?
This is like, this is pristine, right?
You could eat off the ground in the subway.
You know, it's beautiful, the architecture, the painting, all the beauty.
And then he showed, you know, the capital in Russia and showed capital buildings and this monument and this statue and all these different things.
And the retort from conservatives was, yeah, but look at the rest of Russia.
It's, you know, it's impoverished, it's, you know, it's terrible.
And there's a truth there.
I'm not saying that that's not true, right?
That was the whole thing with the Cold War.
It's like, okay, like we're neck and neck, you know, seemingly on the big stage, in the global stage.
America and Russia's neck and neck.
Who's going to make it to the moon?
Who's going to do this first?
Who's going to do that first?
But the difference was that America was accomplishing all these feats of art and philosophy and politics and discovery and innovation and all these things.
Meanwhile, also the people, Americans themselves, were prospering and getting ahead.
And, you know, and meanwhile, Russia, Is like, you know, seemingly on the global stage, neck and neck with us in terms of all these national feats, but their people are like trying to grow vegetables on their roofs, you know, and starving.
That said, so there's a truth there.
That said, it's not a boast, right?
So to say, okay, but the average American is doing well.
Meanwhile, Russia, all of its national monuments are beautiful, but then, you know, there's places in Russia in terms of the people.
Where it's absolutely terrible and the people are barely scraping by.
Meanwhile, in America, the average American is living at this level.
Yeah, that's great.
But the fact that you can say the reverse, that Russia actually cares about its capital, it actually cares about its national monuments, it actually cares about its history and its public places.
Meanwhile, all the public places in America, there's graffiti on our statues.
You can't take your kids to D.C. to go and see.
You know, some monument or go and see, you know, a museum because, or heaven forbid, New York City, the quintessential American city.
Right.
I would never take my kids there.
Right.
So that's a failure on the other side.
That's a ditch on the other side of the road, right?
To say, well, the average American, but here's the deal we can't even say that.
The average American is financing burritos.
And if they're under the age of 40, can't own a home, you know?
And so now it's like we're rivaling Russia.
You know, it's like a race to the bottom in terms of the actual citizens.
In what they can't afford, and the fact, well, we can't afford to get married.
We can't afford to own a home.
We can't afford to do this.
And at least Russia has a nice subway.
So now it's like, okay, well, you know, at the American citizen level, at the citizen level, it's, yeah, they can't afford homes and they're financing burritos.
And then at the national monuments, they're filled with graffiti.
And your subway is pristine and it's a work of art.
And our subway, we have to clean up, you know, the blood off of the rails after, you know, somebody gets pushed in front of a train.
Yeah.
Not great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it really is sad.
I think there's a lot to love about DC.
I think.
Particularly just it being the seat of our government for, you know, I would almost 200 years, I guess.
Over 200 years, actually.
Yeah, over 200 years is the seat of the government.
We've obviously poured millions and billions of dollars, frankly, into the architecture there, so on and so forth.
So it truly should be a city, to your point, Joel, that we should be able to enjoy.
That people coming from Texas, they could take their children there on a vacation and feel safe and sort of admire, I think, the founding of our government and what we stand for as a nation, or we at least stood for.
But it's just, yeah, it's just not the case.
There's been no will, I think, in D.C. from any of the residents, from the Metro Police, so on and so forth, to change any of that.
Of course, there have been times where the National Guard has been deployed in D.C. before, namely the George Floyd riots.
Obviously, during inaugurations and so forth, they've had efforts where the National Guard's deployed, but there's never really been a concerted and consistent effort to clean the city up.
Echo Pass 01.
Outposts said, Send the National Guard for the Epstein files.
I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I was just going to say, I think it's a little helpful to talk through the history a little bit of why DC is the way that it is.
And I think it is the way that it is in a unique way from cities like Baltimore and Oakland and New York City.
So you could start all the way back.
You could go to say, Why is there a District of Columbia?
Why is there a distinct state in which the national government sits?
And it really goes back to sort of pre Constitution days.
There was a Shortly after the Revolution, essentially, there was a mutiny.
It's called the Philadelphia Mutiny of 1783.
And essentially, a bunch of soldiers who fought in the Continental Army and hadn't been paid marched on Independence Hall.
At the time, the Confederate government was in Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
And the Continental Congress called on the state of Philadelphia to help, and they didn't help.
And so, from that moment on, they fled.
They went to Princeton, New Jersey, and they bounced around in temporary capitals for a long time.
So, at the time where they're ratifying the Constitution, a clause was included which basically established the state, now we call it the District of Columbia.
And in that clause, they give all of the power to govern that state to the legislature.
So, that is the national legislature, the federal Congress.
And the executing clause, or the take care clause, as it's known in the Constitution, is given to the chief executive.
In other words, it is truly the president who exercises all of the laws of the District of Columbia.
In 1973, something called the Home Rule, so the DC Home Rule, was passed in the US Congress, which gave DC its own governing powers.
So it's very recent.
Only in the past 50 years has DC ever had a mayor, has DC ever had a city council that could control their police department, for example, and refuse to crack down on crime, to institute laws like cashless bail, which allows murderers to walk around the streets shortly after having killed someone.
And all of these silly policies are very, very new.
And so, of course, Trump does have the right by the Constitution to federalize the military, sorry, the National Guard, to federalize the police department, the Metro City Police Department in D.C.
And so, all of these things are completely within his constitutional sort of rights.
And I will just pull up a quote quickly.
I like this.
This is from Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution.
It says, He, referring to the District of Columbia, the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
In other words, he is the chief legal officer, the chief law enforcement officer of the District of Columbia.
Again, totally within his right to crack down on crime.
And he should.
And it's good that he's doing it.
We should call spades spades.
Yeah.
The tough thing will be I think he can do it with DC.
I know he can do it legally, and I think he can pull it off.
The tough thing will be then, because I'd like to see a little franchising in this effort.
You know, like let's take this show on the road, you know, and go clean up some other cities as well.
And that's when there probably will be a showdown, you know, like if he goes into New York and tries to pull it off there and is having to fight against the mayor and the governor and these kinds of things.
But that will be, I don't know if we'll get there.
I'd like if we get there because I think it could be huge.
You know, I'd like to see what happens.
Yeah.
Cleaning Up Other Cities Too00:02:50
Yeah.
Well, speaking of DC, It depends on the source you pull, whether you're pulling murders, whether you're pulling felonies.
You guys have to remember that in the 90s, our major cities were like this as well.
New York City, you did not take your family to Times Square in New York City in the 90s.
And it was Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani, that came in as mayor and was tough on crime, hard on crime, cracked down.
And we actually enjoyed through the 2000s and the 2010s a decent amount of reprieve.
The cities were pretty safe.
I remember visiting New York City as a kid.
I remember visiting D.C., Philadelphia, been there a decent bit.
But I think what people have to realize is that some of this crime is coming back.
If you look at this graph right here, this is from 2024.
New York City's crime rates have grown on the second from the right, the column.
That's the percent increase in crime as far as violent crime, murder, shootings, felony assault, and property crime.
They're all on the rise in 2023 compared to 2019.
In the same way, major felonies have not been this high in New York City since 2007.
And again, some metrics, crime is maybe even, it's going down a little bit.
But we could certainly say that post COVID and as well immigration being another big factor in violent crime.
That there is an increase in crime.
People feel less safe.
They feel less social cohesion.
They feel less trust.
And it very quickly, I mean, the crime that was big, the late 80s, the 90s, it wasn't overnight that all of a sudden you realize, I can't walk down my street and be safe.
But little by little, it crept up, it crept up, it crept up.
Nobody did anything about it.
And then you get to the point where you're like, holy cow, crime is fostering more crime and it's spawning off, be it gangs, it's incentivizing this, it's financing more of this violence.
And so I think Trump's right to get ahead of it.
And to your point, I think there's going to have to come just a point where you say, look, the federal government, we're going to have to help with DC.
Like, as Christians, Romans 13, that is the job of the state.
Like, one job he's given explicitly.
There's many things he can permissibly do.
But I mean, my goodness, there's one thing is to make a nation safe for the people that live in that nation.
So, if it's not safe to walk down the street, I mean, in DC, the big story that kind of blew this up, there's a girl getting assaulted by, I think, four or five black teens, and a Doge staffer rushed in.
He saved her, got beat to a pulp in the process.
And this is just like a Friday night.
That's a Friday night.
The young girl's getting robbed.
He did.
Honestly, what a Chad.
Praise him for his courage.
But when that becomes the ordinary thing, this is absolutely the response to the government to come in and say, I'm sorry.
You don't just get to have people robbed, crime, theft.
We're shutting it down.
And we've been given the right by God to do this.
Yeah.
Amen.
All right.
Let's go to our first commercial break, and then we will be right back.
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All right, we're back.
This is going to be our final segment.
We're going to go ahead and be a little shorter on today's episode because this is actually our second live stream of the day.
So go back and check out.
We decided to split it up instead of just doing one big show because they're two very different stories.
So we hit the story of the breaking news in regards to the Supreme Court.
Potentially taking up a Burgerfell and considering overturning it because of what is her name?
What's the chick's name?
Kim Davis.
Kim Davis.
Because of Kim Davis from basically a decade ago, who was thrown in jail for six days because she would not issue, she was a county clerk, wouldn't issue a marriage license to a same sex couple on the basis of religious grounds and her conscience.
And so she actually has, she's one of the only people in America who does have the legal standing.
And all the lower courts have rejected this case and went all the way up to the Supreme Court.
And we're going to find out if they take it up.
And at least three of the Supreme Court justices have already been public.
And saying that they do want to take up this case and reevaluate Burgerfell.
So, we did a stream on that.
Go ahead and check it out if you haven't seen it already.
And the stream that we're in right now is all things regarding Trump federalizing DC.
And so, we're going to go ahead and keep this short because it's our second stream of the day.
And we thought it would be fun to go ahead and just go through maybe an overall, but also some specific categories in regards to Trump's presidency thus far.
It's been about seven or eight months now.
And just give him a letter grade.
We'll give an overall letter grade at the end.
But first, let's go through some individual categories, giving him A letter grade in regards to how we think the presidency is going thus far.
And if you would like, we're happy to take a couple questions at the very end.
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All right, so letter grades for Trump.
First category, I think let's go economics first.
Right.
Let's start with you, Antonio.
What do you think economically, his policy?
How is he executing?
What do you think?
Yeah.
Well, I would just, I'll start and say it's still a little hard to tell in terms of what the tariffs specifically, which have been his sort of prompting.
Just got extended on China today for 90 days.
Yep.
So he's, I think they're playing their cards a little bit close in terms of what their end goal is with some of these different tariff or trade negotiations.
But I would say the economies where Trump probably is the strongest.
I think culture, we'll talk about another category, but I think culture and economy are where he's.
I would say on the economy specifically, I'll probably give him, as it stands now, probably a B, a B to B plus, simply because I think there's still a lot to show in terms of the tariffs and their effects.
And obviously, a lot of that is long term.
Obviously, you look at the one big beautiful bill, which was passed, which includes a lot of investment, the federal government dumping money into infrastructure, so on and so forth.
So, those things could help sort of spurn the economy a little bit.
But, yeah, overall, I think his rhetoric on the economy, his focus, obviously, we've talked in prior episodes about egg prices and gas prices, all of these things being down from peaks, you know, inflation peaks in February and March.
So we're only a few months into the administration.
We're already seeing the real world impact of some of the policies.
Yep.
So, yeah, I think B, B plus is fair.
Yep.
Yeah, I think the same.
I would say B plus, maybe even an A minus.
I think that is probably his best area is economics.
You're right.
In terms of the verdict, it's still out.
It hasn't come back in in regards to what the results will be in terms of tariffs.
And then in terms of racking up more national debt with the big, beautiful bill, that has obviously an economic issue, taking on more debt.
But before I penalize him for that, it's tough because it's like on one hand, I really appreciate Thomas Massey.
I appreciate that he's not as Zionist as Schill, and he's one of the only guys in D.C. who's not.
And so I very much appreciate him in that regard.
And I think he's doing right by his constituents.
I mean, he went in with a lot of what he ran on was to keep us out of debt, to make the debt go down.
And so, of course, he was going against the big, beautiful bill, which I understand.
And then he's also really trying to hold DC's feet to the fire in regards to the Epstein files.
And I very much appreciate that.
So I think Thomas Massey is great on the Epstein files and accountability and not selling out to Israel and being America first in those regards.
That said, Thomas Massey is.
He is a libertarian, right?
So he is retarded at the end of the day.
And, you know, we do our best to be gracious and to forgive him for that.
A libertarian, it's like, you know, Thomas Massey, he's the best of the libertarians.
But at the end of the day, it's like being the world's tallest midget.
You know, it's like you're still kind of short.
So a libertarian can only do so much.
And so on the big, beautiful bill, my point is, as it pertains to Trump, I would say that even there, it is not an economic blunder if.
He passes this bill, racks up our debt, but uses it to deport 20 to 50 million people.
Right?
So, you know, if he can do that over the next three and a half years, then it was worth it.
If we get, you know, two, three, four million deportations over the course of his entire presidency, and all we ultimately, it's like, look, I'll give you two million deportations and four trillion added to the debt.
Well, then economically, I'm going to say Trump was terrible.
And then I will.
What is we doing here?
I will have.
To give a new grade and it will be an F.
So, as of now, I would say B, A, but with some pretty weighty constituencies, conditions in terms of let's see if we get, you know, if this big beautiful bill actually gets us law and order and actually gets us mass deportations, the things that we need.
And let's also find out, you know, what the consequences are of these tariffs.
Right.
Yeah.
I'll be the most bearish one here.
I'm going to give it a B. There's been a couple of trade bills at one point, OpenAI.
They're looking at putting $500 billion investing into the economy.
Stargate.
Stargate.
They realized it actually would be a lot more challenging.
They're only opening a couple of sites.
This is outside of his control, but the Fed has continued to not cut rates, which I think is also the economy is suffering.
Tariff policy, the messaging on it has been a little bit confusing.
We mentioned Trump sending it for 90 days.
I'll be honest, past the first week, I had no idea what the tariffs were, what was still in place, what wasn't, what deals we made.
So practically, a lot of prices are down.
So inflation, I think, has been tamed and under control, doing good there.
But I don't know that I've seen huge wins necessarily yet.
That we've seen now Apple manufacturing Kentucky, I think that's good.
I think he's definitely doing his best to bring business here.
But if we're talking practically, I mean, like home sales, like prices are down, but they're also down because people can't afford them with the interest rates.
So it's not like home prices are down and rates are low and people are scooping up houses and families are finally getting into affordable housing.
And I know that Trump does not have a button on his desk to make them lower.
But practically, I'm not looking out at the economy and seeing tons of different metrics by which, man, we're excelling here and we're doing great here and there's all this money coming in here.
One bright spot, which is why he deserves to be native born workers adding more jobs while foreign born workers are decreasing.
That's definitely been a metric that's trending up, which is a good thing.
Native born workers to the United States, they're adding jobs as foreign born workers are decreasing, whether they're self deporting, whether they're exiting the workforce, whatever it would be.
So, B minus on my end.
Yeah.
All right.
What's the next category?
Let's talk foreign policy.
All right.
A plus for Israel.
I mean, my goodness, I got to hand it to him.
His.
We wrote that check and you did what we needed you to do.
He ran on a MAGA platform.
He is governing on Amiga platform and he is nailing it.
I think A plus Netanyahu has got to be so proud.
A plus on bombing Iran.
A plus on a lot of that.
No, all right, to be more serious.
Yeah, I think I would give him a D or an F, honestly.
Not just with Israel.
It's not just that he bombed Iran.
And then he literally posted, all right, so I'm going to use his own words.
I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not putting on the tinfoil hat and speculating on Truth Social.
He went from, well, it's just a teensy little bunker buster to no regime change.
We actually have to change the regime.
It's like, are you kidding me?
You ran on no more forever wars.
You ran on that we've done enough regime change.
Every time we do a regime change, it's always worse.
And so that I think was absolutely atrocious.
He just agreed to funding Ukraine more so that they can continue the war in Russia.
That was supposed to stop, right?
The Middle East stuff was supposed to stop.
Russia and Ukraine was supposed to stop.
So, on both those fronts, not good at all.
I don't feel like he's fixing relations with Russia.
He's still funding Zelensky.
He's still getting our money to fund this endless war where a ton of people are dying.
And then what happened with Israel and Iran is terrible.
You can tell Trump is frustrated, even with Israel.
He's like, I don't know that clip that surfaced where he's like, I don't know what they're effing doing.
And he was talking about both sides.
Or he said they don't know what they're effing doing, Israel and Iran.
And so it's like, yeah, I see that you're frustrated.
And I guess I can take a little heart in the fact that, I mean, if he felt great about it, that'd be even more concerning.
So the fact that he's frustrated is somewhat reassuring, but we should have stayed out of it.
We had no business getting involved.
And then with China, China might be between Russia, Ukraine, Iran, and Israel, and then China.
China probably is his best at this point, trying to.
Trying to play tough guy a little bit, which I think that's the best of Trump.
I think that's like one of the best cards he has in his hand being a bully on the global stage and putting different superpowers in check.
And the fact that he's doing some of that with China, I think, you know, there are some guys who think that he's just going to provoke them unnecessarily.
I don't think so.
I actually think that that's going to settle down.
I think China is a threat long term, but I actually think that in the near term, I'm not really concerned about China.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My biggest disappointment is that the Ukraine Russian war is still going on.
Practically, Israel and Iran, the death count was pretty low.
I think it was probably in total about a couple thousand people.
Definitely some damage as far as to the cities and everything.
But we're not talking at this point.
I mean, I think the death toll is in the hundreds of thousands.
Ukraine and Russia, it's brutal drone warfare over there.
Drones just chopping people's limbs off, suicide bombs.
And one of his big promises was, I want to come in and end this war.
This senseless war has to end.
He said quickly, too.
I think he said he would do it.
And very early on, it was a strong show.
They said, Hey, Zelensky, you are here acting like you own the place.
Who do you think we are?
We've given you a ton of stuff, we haven't seen a return on it.
But practically, at the end of the day, this is what goes into being a leader.
The war is still going on.
Now, someone else brought it up, and I think it's a good point.
The South African, the Afrikaners, the settlement program, I think we could categorize that under foreign policy.
I think that's strong.
And practically, I mean, as far as Iran goes, we're about two months from it, and I don't think it's going to escalate.
Even though it was bad, it could have, it definitely risked escalation on Iran's part.
We, at the end of the day, we didn't get it unless there's something I'm not aware of.
And so I'll give them a C. Wish the war in Russia would end, Russia and Ukraine, one way or another.
Don't like the Iran stuff, but some good stuff as far as the South African farmers.
And yeah, just a little bit.
Yeah, I'm right there with you, Wes.
I'd say a C.
I think you don't get us in any new wars, and I don't think you fail.
So you can at least say that about Trump.
I think he's been strong on rhetoric more than he has on action.
You think about continuation from his first term with respect to NATO, and in Europe, it's not, you know, Europe has all of these discriminatory policies versus US companies, so on and so forth.
And he's done things behind the scenes to sort of change the tune a little bit for American companies operating in Europe.
And so, and Europe has acquiesced in a lot of those sort of policies.
I think I saw something the other day that said much of the major Western nations are now spending a greater percentage of their GDP on defense.
And so, that is, of course, something that Trump said from day one, really back in 2015, 2016, when he was running, saying things like America can't subsidize the defense of Europe.
And so, A lot of that stuff has really come to fruition here a decade later.
And so he obviously continues to still push on those things.
Blending Culture War and Policy00:14:56
I think I'll just, you know, I'll repeat what you said, Wes, with respect to Iran.
I thought it was going to, I thought it was a bad call.
Didn't get us in a war.
I was chimping, I'll be honest.
But so he didn't get us in a war.
And so I have to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
Obviously, he made a call, had information that we weren't privy to.
There's nothing he can do to make Putin stop.
Well, there's nothing that he should do, right?
He does not need to provoke Putin.
He doesn't need to start a war with Russia or anything like that.
So, I actually appreciate that he's not like trying to put Russia in its place or make, you know, make Russia stop in terms of, you know, by force.
But what he could do is, and I understand, easier said than done, but he could stop funding Ukraine, you know.
And I think that to me, that's the big thing is like, let it end.
And I understand that for the Ukrainian people, I can't imagine.
It's devastating.
But I'm sorry, you're not, you are not in a place.
To play hardball.
You don't get what you want.
Russia is bigger and stronger.
And yeah, you're going to have to make concessions and get peace any way you can.
And getting peace for Ukraine means losing, losing, you know, giving up more than they wanted to give up.
But it's time for the end.
What's the alternative?
The whole West goes back to war again?
Right, exactly.
We're not doing this, we're not doing another civil war.
We had an American Civil War.
That was a mistake.
We had a European Civil War in the West.
I think that that, in many regards, was a mistake.
And to do World War III, another civil war over Russia and Ukraine, no.
Putin is invading Ukraine.
He believes there are historic lands that rightly belong to the Russian people.
And I just feel like we've seen this story before.
A guy says, I think that these are historic lands and they belong to us.
And the entire West gets involved in that war.
And Britain gets uppity.
Yeah.
And it doesn't go well.
So, no, I don't, I think stay out of it, leave it alone.
It's Ukraine.
It's their problem.
It's not our problem.
They're going to have to make some steep concessions.
And I, you know, it's like playing poker.
You know, it's like once you, you know, half of your chips are in.
And then a guy, you know, he goes all in and you're already, you know, it's like, man, I'm pot committed, I think is the term.
Like, I'm already pot committed and, um, And that's where most people make some fatal mistakes they feel like they've already committed so much, and so they feel like they can't fold.
When the reality is, you're thinking, well, I'd lose half my chips.
But the better way to think is, I can protect half of the chips that I still have.
And so I understand that for Zelensky, he's thinking, but we've already paid such a tremendous cost.
And for it to be, in the final analysis, for nothing, or less than nothing, to lose these lands.
Just is more than we can bear.
But the reality is, that's actually not the worst scenario.
The worst scenario is that you keep going to war, more people die, and you still lose those lands.
Yep.
All right.
Domestically?
Yeah.
Let's do domestic and culture.
I think those kind of, so think about some of the culture war issues and blend those together and then some of the domestic policies.
Obviously, the big ones that fall in this is obviously the border.
I think the biggest one that he ran on.
I see, I think we're net failing there.
I think, I mean, we've seen.
Early signs of some real will to do something.
I don't think it's come to fruition yet, but in terms of investment, in terms of deploying ICE, obviously we've seen ICE now has a massive budget.
And so they're going to be hiring, so on and so forth, and they're going to get some of the resourcement that I think really will get us to where we need to go.
But certainly the rhetoric, obviously, has always been strong on the border.
Probably the reason he won, frankly.
But all that to say, for the border alone, I just have to, I can't give him anything higher than a B.
So I'll probably say like a C, frankly, just because we, again, we haven't seen that stuff come to fruition.
I think on the culture war issues, so you think about where the momentum has gone culturally with respect to, you know, draining the swamp, so on and so forth.
I think that, I think a lot of what Trump's about has lost momentum from his first term and just sort of being seen as this sort of explorer or maverick on the front, on the front, End of fighting the culture.
I don't see him that way anymore.
I think a lot of his just age, you can just sense that he's just less, he just has less vitality, frankly.
And so he's less willing to step out there.
I think he's got other things that he wants to accomplish as it relates to legacies, economy, so on and so forth.
And so he's not really focused on calling out that which is gay and that which is stupid in culture anymore.
But every now and then he does dip into those issues and we appreciate it.
But yeah, so I'll just say domestically, Border, he's really suffered.
Obviously, consumer sentiment is another big one with respect to domestic policy.
So, how do people feel?
Do people feel like they're in a better state than they were under Biden?
I think that, without a doubt, is true.
Although it wasn't a swing, it wasn't the swing that I expected.
So, if you look at like the stock market, for example, which is a good, I would say, actually a pretty good measure of consumer sentiment, stock markets at record highs, where obviously people are feeling better overall about the trajectory, whether, you know, our ability to combat inflation, so on and so forth.
And so that can be palpable, I think, when you're coming from such a bad presidency like Biden Harris.
And so there's a little bit of credit that's due there.
But overall, could do a lot better domestically.
Yeah.
It has, I mean, We have, for the first time in 50 years, we have net negative immigration.
Yeah.
So, first time in 50 years.
So, in terms of closing the border, you know, I've got to give him credit.
He's done an incredible job.
In terms of mass deportations, no.
I can't give him an F because of net immigration, that is zero.
There's been three major failings here domestically.
Epstein has been a big one, and it was the first occasion where he has actually attacked his base.
It's not great.
That was one of the promises on the campaign trail.
We're going to release these files.
He reneged on that.
He threw his attorney general on the bus.
That has been terrible, and it's garnered a lot of backlash for him.
On deportations, unfortunately, he's flip flopped a ton.
We're going to deport farm workers.
We're not going to deport them.
He's floated the idea of amnesty.
Now, who knows what we actually get, but practically speaking, what we're looking at now is most workers are kind of free from it.
So, sure, you pick up these people along the fringes, but you're not looking at getting out millions and millions of people, even if you have that funding, which leads to the third failure, which has been Doge.
I mean, initially, and some of that's Elon Musk, but I mean, practically, he brought him in.
He was promising $2 trillion worth of cuts to.
The deficit to the budget.
We ended up maybe around 30 billion.
Now, what we did get in there, thankfully, is Palantir software within all of the major information structures within the government, which is also not great.
So, you've had some pretty big failures that are public, like Doge was a failure, and then he had a falling out with Elon Musk.
Yep.
You've had failure on the Epstein side of things and deportation, the signaling, same thing back to the tariffs.
It just hasn't been concise, clear, and consistent.
And so, for those reasons, again, there's some help for immigration for sure.
Early on with some of the culture stuff, did a good job.
It's going to have to be like a D to a D minus.
One of his biggest problems right now, I think, keeping the base happy.
And I'm not the only one saying this.
Like young men, by and large, it's like about a 40 point change in approval.
I'm one of millions of people that said, hold on, I signed up for X, but I do not seem to be getting it.
And that shift in approval is not that they've shifted, like that Trump is too far to the right.
It's all these young men are.
They're not going left.
No, they are going past Trump, further to the right.
So, yeah, there's been a massive shift in his approval, even just in the last couple months.
Especially for everyone, but especially young men.
And it's young men who are going further right.
Yep.
Yep.
Okay.
Any other categories?
We did economics, we did foreign affairs.
I think we did them all.
We did domestic.
What's an overall?
All right.
So overall.
Overall is probably a B. B minus.
Okay.
C plus.
For me, I think I said B minus or A plus on economics.
I said F. What did I say?
F on foreign policy.
Yeah.
And then I said, did I ever give one for culture?
I don't think so.
I don't think I did.
Because of.
Because of net negative for the first time in 50 years on the border in terms of new people coming in, I appreciate that.
The mass deportations are not happening.
Jeffrey Epstein files, that's a huge, huge L that I feel like he's just having to wear across his neck.
And that is tanking his approval.
So for Jeffrey Epstein, give him an F there for sure.
Mass deportations, I mean, he had to get the funding, those kinds of things.
And so we'll give him some time.
We'll give him a C there and then stopping immigration altogether.
In terms of more people coming in with the border, he's doing really good there.
We'll give him an A.
So, I'd say C all the way around for me on the domestic, cultural, immigration type issues.
And then I said F when it came to foreign affairs.
And I said B minus or A, A minus or B plus.
We'll give it an A minus when it comes to economy.
So, I'm going to say C overall.
Yep.
What about you?
You said B overall?
Probably a C plus.
All right.
Cool.
So, he's got three and a half more years.
You know, he could turn it around.
Trump has surprised people.
You got to give him credit.
There's a lot of people who counted him out.
They're like, this is it.
His business is done.
Oh, yeah.
His presidency is done.
Trump is done.
Trump excels at proving people wrong.
And that's awesome when you trust in him sometimes.
And of course, there's obviously a lot they're trying to get done, I think, in this term.
And so we're six months in, and you just have starting pains.
It's going to be tough to get these big initiatives off the ground.
And so you've got to give a little bit of credit there as well.
We've still got three years for some of this stuff to start playing out.
And as a leader, things literally happen that are not in your purview.
But the buck stops here.
Like I was arguing with a friend yesterday about Jimmy Carter, and Carter inherited a number of problems with going off the gold standard, the oil shock in the early 70s.
So you can make all these excuses for him.
It doesn't matter.
Like he was president, the president sets policy.
And so if you feel we're being a little bit unfair, like this is kind of what you take on when you be a leader.
I own it, whether it was my fault, whether I inherited it or not.
Right.
Do we have any questions, Nathan?
We have at least one.
Okay, here we go.
One question.
This is from History Admiral 9461.
He wrote in and said, How will power be centralized?
In the US?
Will we see something like a monarchy?
Will we see Weimar solutions, et cetera?
We were just talking about this over lunch.
Any thoughts?
I think the US is too big to centralize.
Yeah, I think actually what we'll see is actually decentralization.
I think the government's actually pretty centralized as it stands now.
As it relates to most of the power, most of the policies that are affecting day to day life here in Texas, for example, or anywhere else around the country are actually federal policies.
And a lot of people look to, You know, the federal judiciaries or the federal Congress to sort of lay down the law.
So I actually think the force will be predominantly federalization and decentralization in the future.
I could see balkanizing.
Yeah, it's just too big, too big of a country.
And it's not even so much that it's too many people, although it is too many people if it's multiculturalism, so many different kinds of people.
But just the landmass itself.
I mean, you think of the EU, you know, it's just, I mean, we are a massive country, just geographically.
We are a massive country.
That was always going to be a challenge.
It was not as challenging when there were substantially less people.
And although, yes, there were challenges when the Italians came and the Irish came, and, you know, with each wave of immigration, there were growing pains.
But we were still in this basic stage of the development of our country where we had a massive landmass that needed to be settled.
We actually needed hands, we needed guys to come and put them to work.
There's all this.
Rugged terrain, you know, the wild, wild west, and, you know, all these things where it's like, hey, come and you're coming for not a handout, but you're coming for a job.
You're coming to be put to work.
And it's like, hey, you can have this land if you can tame it, right?
There was no job board in early New England.
Nobody came there and, like, all right, I'm going to go to the unemployment office.
Yeah.
So early on, when you're looking at settlers, not immigrants, but settlers, and yes, there are, you know, the Irish are very different than the Italians, and, you know, and then both of them are very different.
From the English.
So there are differences, but the differences between the Italians and the English were not as pronounced as the differences between English and Haitians, right?
That's just a whole other ballgame.
And so I would say that you still had at least some commonality in terms of the stock of the people.
Italians were Catholic, but Catholic is a lot closer to Protestant.
There are serious distinctions, but it's a lot closer to Protestant than voodoo or Hinduism or.
All the Muslims who are now coming into the country, right?
So I think religiously, racially, in many different ways, you just had more solidarity and you had a massive country where we needed people.
We don't need people now.
And so now it's like we have more people, we have more diversity of people, and diversity is not a strength.
And yeah, the idea that it could all be held together at the federal level seems.
Seems impossible.
It seems like we're just continuing to LARP this failed experiment.
Like we're not admitting to ourselves, you know, like Benjamin Franklin, like, what did you give us, Mr. Franklin?
A republic if you can keep it.
And I think at some point we've got to just admit we did not keep it.
We didn't keep it.
So I think balkanization, there are challenges and problems and potential pitfalls with that.
Admitting We Failed to Keep It00:06:43
But that seems the most likely.
It's either going to be that we balkanize.
Or it's going to have to be some kind of strong man, like Cromwellian type figure.
America is, just because of our tradition and our heritage, we're never going to call him king.
But it would have to be someone who functionally functions as a king, even though we will refuse to use the term and we'll continue to say no king but Christ and those kinds of things.
But it would have to be like a Bukele type figure, Cromwellian figure who comes in and unites the nation, but does it.
Painfully, it will not be peaceful.
So it's either that or it's we break off and some places will thrive and other places will be terrible.
Yep.
I think there's one, I'll just quickly say, I think there's one scenario where the federal government is centralized and it's peaceful.
And I think that is packing the courts.
I think it's just a leader comes along and says, My initiative is to expand the Supreme Court, put a bunch of people who love me on the Supreme Court.
To remove impeach judges around the country and reinstate judges who are friendly to me, so on and so forth.
Because at this point, you even see this with Trump, like the only thing standing in the way of his political will is a corrupt judiciary.
So, yep.
Okay.
Last minute, we had one more question.
This is from Stryker5573.
He says, For a small based church, what tools do you think are most impactful for attracting other based people?
Facebook ads, podcast ads, grassroots only.
I don't know, man.
It's tough.
Like for us, the podcast has been a blessing.
It's difficult because it has attracted an immense amount of opposition.
And so that poses its own challenges.
But one thing that helps tremendously is there are very few people who arrive at our church who don't know what they're in for.
Most people know preemptively, they've seen the podcast, those kinds of things.
So they're not showing up and saying, what?
You don't believe that women can be pastors, you know, or something like that.
They, you know, they're coming forward.
We did have two women that I think just straight up walked out this Sunday.
We did.
I noticed.
They were like, eh, not what I signed up for.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Very early, though, you got to hand it to them.
They made a snap judgment.
Did you explain the liturgy?
Yeah, we didn't even start the liturgy.
I think I was explaining family integrated worship.
Oh, okay.
And I was saying, you know, it can be difficult, it is a challenge.
This is how we're training our children.
We don't want to just drop them off in Christian childcare, but we actually want our children to be in church with us, families worshiping together.
And then I may, right, I can neither confirm nor deny, but I may have made a comment.
About if you can train your dog, then I don't want to hear that it's impossible to train a child.
We are a church that views children higher than animals.
We actually believe that a three year old can be trained to be obedient and honor their mother and father and to sit quietly and to worship the Lord alongside their parents.
And I think that might have been what did it.
I can't believe you said that.
I was so real for that.
Okay.
Well, I don't know.
What do you do?
I like the Foxhound said word of mouth, like practical.
Word of mouth, yeah.
I think so.
With ads, you're paying money for it.
You're just hitting a lot of people that just have no interest in it.
Right.
But by being 60, 80 people strong, those are 60, 80 people that when people ask them, what do you do?
Who do you know?
Oh, are you religious?
They're saying, yeah, I go to this church and this is what we're about.
And I'm a conservative.
I think word of mouth, just being in the community and attracting people who are also there.
And you got to narrow it down.
Like you need an elevator pitch, right?
It can't just be like, well, our church, you know, and then like SpongeBob, you know, three hours later, you know.
So, like, it has to be narrow so that you can just elevator pitch, tell somebody, you know, in 30 to 45 seconds, hey, I'm a part of this church, and our church is like X, Y, and Z.
And, you know, I think it kind of like the Four Pillars episode that we did last week.
A lot of people were blessed by that.
I think, you know, telling people, like, all right, we're unapologetically Christian, and what kind of, like, we're reformed, whatever, you know, whatever you are.
So, like, we are reformed Protestant.
Christian.
And then, you know, beyond that, we're patriarchal, male led.
We believe that men should be masculine and that they should be leaders.
We are, you know, conservative, you know, culturally, you know, in explaining what you, in a conservative politically.
We're America first.
You could say that.
We're America first.
We are not Zionist.
You know, we're not dispensational.
Say, you know, just a few little things like that that you can just, you could be at the park.
Kids are playing, there's another family there, and the conversation comes up.
You know, what church do you go to?
Well, we go to a church.
What's it like?
It's like this.
You know, so if you have an elevator pitch, word of mouth could be really good.
Any thoughts?
Yeah, no, I think it's word of mouth.
I think, particularly as it relates to the elevator pitch, like finding specific topics that you feel like your church is attractive on, right?
So, you know, it could have been your stance on COVID or something like that.
Like, you know, finding those fault lines and saying, hey, this is what, you know, our church feels about this particular issue.
Can I think be a little bit more galvanizing for people when you're giving pitches?
So just keep that in mind.
But I think word of mouth will definitely, particularly in the early stages, be the most impactful.
Yeah, you can say our church was stood the test of COVID 19, BLM, and George Floyd, and the Antioch Declaration.
What's the Antioch Declaration?
It's like, listen, for about 17 people, it was a really big deal, and we stood the test.
All right, well, thanks for tuning in.
We hope this episode has been helpful for you.
And what day is it?
It's Monday.
All right, so we will see you, Lord willing, on Wednesday, and it'll be all three of us Antonio, Wesley, myself in the studio.
And then I think Friday, we're going to try to get a guest, and that one will be just me and Wesley.
So, Antonio, you guys have probably seen.
So, Michael has transitioned out, and we did a whole episode explaining why he's transitioned and what he's working on, some of his private projects, how you guys can support him.
He preached yesterday at church.
Standing the Test of Crisis00:01:05
And so, we're still good friends.
He's still a part of the church.
You can check out the sermon online.
He did a great job.
It was Matthew 11, verse 16 through 24, where Jesus is pronouncing woes on all these.
Jewish cities in Israel and saying it'll be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for you because of the miracles that he had done there.
So he did a really good job with the sermon.
So if you want to hear from Michael, he preached just yesterday.
You can check out that sermon online, it should be up.
But Michael is transitioning and working on other things, other projects, and Antonio is transitioning in.
And basically, what we're doing is you're here about half the time.
Yep.
As you still have some other obligations.
But just so that people know, the plan is that.
Wes and I are going to hold down the fort.
Antonio is hopping on once or twice a week and working towards the end of this year, where Antonio would come on with us full time and be the three of us.
So we will see you with all three of us on Wednesday, and then Wes and I may be a guest on Friday.