Dave Rubin, Will Chamberlain, and Ben Ferguson dissect Zohran Mamdani's opposition to the Iran war, arguing it prioritizes regime change over domestic needs like student debt relief. They contend the conflict exposes China's weak air defenses, reducing threats to Taiwan while strengthening U.S. geopolitical leverage against NATO allies who shirk defense contributions. The hosts also flag birthright citizenship as a national security risk exploited by spies, citing Eric Swalwell's alleged affair with Fang Fang as a Democratic liability compared to Ilhan Omar's immigration fraud. Ultimately, they frame NASA's Artemis II mission as a vital step for American innovation, contrasting it with leftist critiques of space spending. [Automatically generated summary]
It is Friday, April 3rd, which means it's time for another roundtable extravaganza.
And we are doing the rare two first time guests on one panel.
That's right.
Two guests, one panel.
What does that make you think of?
Uh, joining me today are the senior counselor at the Article Three Project, Will Chamberlain, as well as the host of the Ben Ferguson Show, Ben Ferguson.
In the face of Americans facing a historic affordability crisis, that we have the pursuit of something that has already cost $23 billion thus far, the kind of money that could transform.
Working class Americans live, whether through investments in Medicare or teachers or even elimination of student debt for tens of thousands of Americans, and all of that being thrown aside for the pursuit of yet another regime change war.
And it's a war that should be opposed on every single ground, not just procedural, but also moral, but also political.
And also a war that should be opposed on the grounds of the fact that it is being financed by the very money that could make it easier to keep calling this city, this country home.
And yet, there is a blindness to that fact, all while we're being told that this is not what we're seeing with our own eyes.
No, not just handing it out in fraud to various members.
Constituency.
I mean, you know, what the entire cost of the war would be, what, one seventh of the proposed budget he put forward.
And he can't find, I mean, New York is running on what, $140 billion a year?
That's more than the entire state of Florida, which has three times as many people as the city of New York.
And yet he's talking about like refunding student debt and stuff like that.
Like, no, actually, I don't really feel like that's a great expenditure of money.
Moreover, honestly, the long term cost savings here are actually going to be real because so much of our money that we spend in the Middle East is because we have to deal with the the threat of Iran.
We have to constantly be in a defensive posture against them.
They're the primary antagonist of the one major country that, you know, has been outside of our alliance.
So a world in which the regional order in the Middle East has a peaceful and pacified Iran is a world where we're going to have to spend a lot less money over there.
Ben, it seems to me that if, regardless of any of our feelings about the war in Iran or anything else, if someone doesn't like America, he's pretty much going to be on their side.
Ask Google how much money New York City or chat GBT or Gronk or whatever was spent in New York City On illegal immigrants.
And, and so if this dude's like obsessed with like, we could have paid off student debt, he actually could have done that if he would have stopped giving five star hotel rooms and four star hotel rooms to illegal immigrants, not for days, not for weeks, but for months on end.
Look at all the healthcare costs that they have in New York City.
You want to send kids to school for free?
Great.
Stop having millions and millions of dollars go to give a treatment to illegal immigrants that you've allowed to come into your city.
This is the same guy, by the way, that said that all transportation should be free.
Just checking.
Did the price go up January 1st or did it not go up for you to get on a bus or a subway in New York City?
I'm pretty sure it went up.
So this is another example of a liberal that actually gets elected.
It's crazy.
And they have all these crazy ideas.
They don't actually get to implement many of them the way they claim they're going to.
And somehow they're still yelling saying, people are disenfranchised.
We need to give reparations for X, Y, and Z. You're in charge, dude.
Did Mandani's wife celebrate the October 7th attack and the killing and the raping and the taking of Jewish people that were at a concert and killed inside of their own country?
The answer is yes.
If you don't believe me, go look it up because that's who's actually running this city.
And I also think this comes down to the bigger issue here.
And it's happening in this country.
And you look at Europe and I worry about this.
I actually think the number one threat to this country now is, is the issue of does America have the right to protect and defend itself?
And that can include citizens that hate the United States of America.
We're seeing this in Minnesota.
We've had four terrorist attacks in this country in the last 30 days.
People don't want to talk about that.
And at some point you have to look at what's happening in, in Europe and the attacks there and you say, What is our obligation?
What is the mayor of New York's obligation to protect and defend its citizens?
I don't think this guy looks at it that way at all, and that's scary.
It's a great point because, you know, everyone's focused on illegal immigration and deportations, but we have a homegrown thing that they have now, they now know all too well in Europe, and I don't think we're even close to ready to have that conversation on a national level.
But let me, let me throw into this video because Jamie Dimon, uh, CEO of JP Morgan, of course, he's come out rather strongly in defense of Trump and what we're doing in Iran, not necessarily from a security point, But from an economic point, I think it's kind of interesting.
There's this weird faux sophistication you get from these economist types where that's like, you know, I mean, again, I posted something on X about this, you know, like if you read these foreign policy types, if they were around in World War II and something similar had happened, they'd be like, yeah, okay, it's January 1942 and magically Hitler, Goering, Bormann, they're all dead.
The entire German Navy's at the bottom of the North Sea.
The Luftwaffe is blown up.
There's total air supremacy over Germany, but the Third Reich is winning because they've closed the Danish Straits.
What's wrong with you people?
Actually, no.
It's not good to have your entire military industrial base destroyed.
And from China's perspective, they're the ones who were helping arm Iran with all these ballistic missiles.
Those ballistic missiles are gone.
All that productive capacity is gone.
They wanted to pin down the United States and sort of help entangle them.
But if we win, that's good for us.
Moreover, Chinese air defenses don't work.
Turns out that's a big problem for them.
Also, everybody knows that Chinese air defenses don't work.
Everybody knows that China's alliance isn't worth anything if you're under attack from the United States.
So their oil supplies are threatened.
Their air defenses don't work, which means that they're very unlikely to make a move on Taiwan now, even if we're running low on interceptors.
Nobody's going to start a war when they can't defend their own capital from American F 35s.
And other countries know that the Chinese alliance isn't really worth very much, that it's not very protective.
So our geopolitical position is stronger.
I fail to see the basic problem here that all these sophisticates think, oh, that got the Straits of Hormuz, which means that got America.
No, we're the biggest oil producing nation in the world, actually.
This isn't an us problem, it's a you problem.
You know, we'll just make more oil and sell more oil.
Ben, Ben, the reason I wanted to show that clip, and I've played a couple clips of Jamie Dimon this week, is that if you go back, you know, eight, nine years ago, the entire financial world was freaking out about Donald Trump.
But first, this is when CEOs have to deal with reality at some point.
And all of these CEOs that were giving money to Barack Obama and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and helped.
Orchestrate this massive communist, socialist, Marxist takeover of the Democratic Party.
They're now in the places that they helped turn into that.
And so what you're seeing is a lot of these CEOs, look at California.
Look at how many liberal CEOs are leaving California.
We're not talking about just generic people.
We're talking about like liberal activist CEOs and companies who are like, we can't afford to be here anymore.
The same thing is now happening in New York City, right?
Jamie's talked about that.
You probably played one of those clips, but he's like, there's a lot of people leaving.
Where are they going?
They're going to Florida.
Look at Citadel, for example, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.
Where do they leave?
They left New York City and they went to Florida.
And why are they doing it?
Because these individuals and, and, and Jamie's one of them who propped all this up because they just hated Donald Trump and hated conservatives and traditional values.
They're now realizing you can't make money.
Like you cannot make money in a market where you have insanity of the left and the rules and the regulations are constantly changing and the Green New Deal and all of this stuff.
And then by the way, on top of that, they tax the hell out of you afterwards.
So I think that's the reason why you're seeing him come back a little bit to sanity because it's impossible for him to operate a company.
Let me, let me, uh, Will, before you jump in, let me throw in this clip of Scott Jennings talking about the NATO alliance because the other part of all of this Is that we are seeing a complete redrawing of the figurative map when it comes to alliances.
It was just a couple of weeks ago that we learned that Iran has ballistic missile capabilities that can reach most of Europe.
On top of that, does no one else here find it agitating that we spend billions and trillions of dollars over decades?
We have U.S. troops stationed in all these bases with all these allies.
And then when we decide that we need to do something that is in our national security interest, you have supposed friends of the United States saying, You can't use these bases.
I mean, do we need to go back to the tariff negotiating table and, you know, renegotiate the EU tariffs up to 100%?
Do we need to, you know, make clear that there won't be any more F 35 cooperation, for example?
Like, we're taking the F 35 back, all new military technology, we're giving it to, you know, our actual friends, Israel, Japan, like countries that'll fight with us, and Ukraine.
Maybe we'll turn Ukraine around on them, suddenly say, like, oh, you know, the drone technology Ukraine has, you don't get that either.
They're our allies because we spend more money, so we're taking them.
You name it.
I mean, the way we could be hostile to the Europeans in terms of saying to them on trade, on military technology, intelligence cooperation, we're not doing that, you guys, anymore.
And really, in the future, it's just going to get worse because these countries can't get their own immigration policies under control.
We really do have to worry about them as future adversaries, given the way that their domestic politics is trending.
There, there's two really fun things about Donald Trump and his second administration.
The first one is, uh, FAFO.
That's his foreign policy with adversaries, right?
Like, and, and, and he keeps backing it up.
Venezuela, you don't believe me.
Iran, you don't believe me.
Like, keep going.
And then there's this second new foreign policy, which I actually love even more than that.
It's the Donald Trump.
And we've noticed over the last several days, like, good luck.
Like, we're not doing this anymore.
The UN's worthless.
NATO's worthless.
We pay for everything.
And then when we need, like, your airspace, like the airspace for people that don't understand foreign policy, It's like the lowest level of, of non-involvement that an ally of you can give you.
If there's anything we've proven over the last week, like America is good on her own.
Like I'm not really sure we need any help with anybody else.
It's nice to have alliances and allegiances.
It's nice to have, you know, multiple countries behind you and do things in a unified manner.
But right now the world's so splintered and I'm talking about like Europe and what you were describing and Muslims taking it over and extremists and what we're witnessing.
I don't need them anymore.
Like the way we fight wars has changed.
Technology has changed it.
Everything has changed with drones.
It's not about like how many million soldiers do you have?
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So the other thing that he's fighting domestically right now is birthright citizenship.
And surprise, surprise, the Democrats want as many people born here for whatever reason to become citizens.
Birthright citizenship is not about rich people from China and the rest of the world who want their children and hundreds of thousands more for pay to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America.
It's about the babies of slaves.
We are the only country in the world that dignifies this subject with even discussion.
Look at the dates of this long ago legislation, the exact end of the Civil War.
The world is getting rich selling citizenship to our country while at the same time laughing at how stupid our U.S. court system has become, tariffs.
Dumb judges and justices will not a great country make.
Uh, Will, you're a constitutional guy.
I'm following you on X. You like the laws.
You like the Constitution.
We've got the 14th Amendment.
I don't think they intended for people that were seven months pregnant to get on a plane from China and come here and have a baby and then be able to become, have that baby become president one day, but I'm a simple man.
Yeah, I think intent is even beside the point here.
It's the question of what does the constitutional provision mean?
And, you know, there's this phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
And the question is, is that like an actual general rule that has categories and you can come up with new categories that apply to it?
Or is it what the ACLU lawyers described as a closed set of exceptions, meaning people like children of ambassadors, children of foreign invaders, and the children of then existent Indian tribes or then sovereign Indian tribes?
And the Indian tribes example, I think, is actually really devastating to the way that Democrats look at this because the children of Indians didn't get birthright citizenship in 1860, despite the fact that they were, if they were in U.S. territory, they were obligated to follow American law.
And they were then subject to this jurisdiction in the sense that they think.
But I've actually had the opportunity to talk with a number of the law professors and legal scholars who've looked deeply at this.
And it's really clear that what was meant by subject to the jurisdiction was people who are domiciled in the United States legally, who are lawfully present, who have an obligation of allegiance to the United States.
And so that, you know, that original meaning holds.
They, they, they are not, they, they talked about temporary sojourners, which were obviously much rarer in the 1860s because travel was so much more difficult.
But they talked about temporary sojourners and the children of temporary sojourners as obviously the kind of people who wouldn't be entitled to citizenship.
And similarly, I mean, our, our statutes look at illegal aliens as people who are here temporarily, who are, or applicants for admission who don't have a domicile in the United States.
It's not hard to understand how you can get to a world where these people shouldn't be able to game our system and get citizenship from their children.
And I also think this is gonna have to be an argument that has to be fought differently from a public PR perspective.
If I am wanting to roll out why there needs to be a change, I believe this is a national security issue.
And if there are people that are using a loophole to gain the system to then become a part of America when they have no desire to actually be Americans or put this country first, and then you can see this happening, I think this is a national security issue.
The number of Chinese spies that we have in this country, it would shock many people watching right now if you knew the numbers.
We had a number that came out during the last administration and it was even worse under the numbers we got from the Obama administration.
I use their numbers because Those are the numbers that should terrify people.
But we know that there are people in our adversaries that are exploiting this.
And so then what do you get when you're an American citizen?
You can run for office.
You can run this country.
You can destroy this country from within.
We know for a fact the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, has openly talked about trying to take over our educational system.
Why?
To destroy this country from within.
Who is the number one donor to our private universities?
The best and the brightest that are being trained in this country.
The money is a fact.
It's undisputable.
It comes from China.
We know that the money, the most money that's coming, for example, from the No Kings rally.
Where was that money coming from?
From billionaires living in China who are trying to destroy America from within.
So I believe this is a national security issue and we have to do something here to stop this from being abused because flying in to then have a baby, to have an anchor here, and it's not just for a better life.
Many of them are wanting to get into this country to destroy this nation and their, their, their governments have said that they're not fleeing.
They're a part of it.
They're not running away from a country.
And that used to be the other argument you hear all the time from the left.
Well, they're seeking asylum.
They're just trying to get to America.
They're trying to get away from dictators and communists and whatever.
No, Many of these people are still pledging allegiance to that country, to those values, and they're coming here to destroy America and make it weak.
Let me show you this clip because this thing has been known and many of us have been talking about it for years and years online.
And as you guys know, there's just like an airlock with mainstream media where they let us all talk about stuff for years, then one day it gets in the New York Times and they pretend they discovered it.
This is video of 2021 at my house when then majority leader Kevin McCarthy came in and told me that Eric Swalwell banged a Chinese spy.
Didn't Swalwell sleep with a Chinese spy or something?
What we know publicly, a Chinese spy, and also remember, Senator Feinstein, we found out later, the driver of more than 10 years was a Chinese spy in Silicon Valley.
They've been in pictures together.
This woman, a Chinese spy, creates relationships with Swalwell when he's in the city council.
He runs for Congress.
She helps.
She puts interns in his office.
Do you know how difficult it is to get on the Intel Committee?
When Swabo was put on the Intel Committee, they were in the minority, so they had fewer seats.
He was a sophomore getting put on the Intel Committee.
Hey, he got his tingle up his leg from a foreign spy.
So, you know, there's that there.
Look, I go back to, is there any state in America where you could run? for office and legitimately still have a chance to win after banging a Chinese spy.
It's California.
So he's got a little political prowess.
I'll give him that.
I, I do think though, the media, the fact that he's still a legitimate candidate, that they have put this much cover to protect and defend him and that the Democratic party didn't do more to get rid of him and say, Hey, this is probably a bad candidate.
Let's start leaking some stuff out.
Cause look, Democrats, they take care of their own boat.
If they want to get rid of you, they know how to get rid of you.
And clearly they think that he is so important or What he did with her is so damning that they have to protect him no matter what.
The American people get to decide on that one.
But the fact he's still a legitimate Democratic Party leader and player and is running in California, God help us, because if this is the dude that's, that, that, that, this is his biggest accomplishment, sleeping with a spy, can you imagine what other Democrats have that they're trying to protect?
I mean, yeah, that's, I mean, many politicians are stupid, narcissistic idiots, let's be clear.
So it's not like he's unique in that class, especially Democrat politicians.
But yeah, I mean, you have to, you're a politician and this, you know, like cute Chinese girl comes up to you and talks to you, and all of a sudden you're getting jobs on the House Intel Committee, as he pointed out, like that that's not an easy thing to do.
But do you guys think, do you guys think we're going to get a win here?
Like, do you, like, to me, the fact that this thing has now broke the airlock and it's only, what, five days or so since JD in an interview with Benny Johnson said that Ilhan Omar broke federal immigration law.
So now that's broke the airlock.
You think we're going to get a couple wins where they actually take some people down or is it just that the story never stops?
I mean, I think that the Ilhan Omar thing actually has real legs because you really can go ahead and go for denaturalization for her, right?
Charge reintegration fraud.
Swole, well, it's not.
You have to find an actual crime that he committed as a result, like merely having a spy try and solicit you.
And, like, unless it's, you know, there actually are restrictions in terms of you have to really do something intentionally that is like betraying your country.
And it's not obvious that he did that.
But that's really more of a case of it's just embarrassing.
And I think Fang Fang was already criminally charged or expelled from the country, I think a while ago.
Like, if you defraud and then you become a member of Congress, And you're working against the country that you're representing and, and, and you did all these things.
Like that's the example that needs to be made.
And if you're trying to crack down illegal immigration and immigration fraud, what better headline for the president of the United States of America to say America first and watch what we're about to do here.
Hold my diet coke, right?
Like I, I also think that swallow, I don't know if you get to go to jail for just being an idiot or incompetent.
Cause if you did, most of the Democratic party would be in prison right now.
That she was a spy, and I don't think he's actually smart enough.
Like, I actually think him being this dumb actually is his greatest defense.
Like, I just thought there was a naked woman in front of me.
I didn't know that she was a spy.
Like, that's the best defense a guy's gonna have here.
And he can literally say, I'm just a meathead.
I was just getting some.
Like, unless he knew that he was giving her secrets, that she was recording his conversations, that she was sending intel to the Chinese Communist Party.
And honestly, I kind of like Boxer, right?
Like, how do you let a guy drive you for 10 years and not ask any questions?
And just record everything or take notes on everything you're saying in that car.
Because look, if you've ever been in a, in a car with a senator or a congressman, there's a lot of intel you can get on just half that conversation.
You know what's happening.
You know what votes are going to happen.
You can figure out and connect dots.
And nothing happened to her, by the way, either.
So I, I, I worry about how many other Chinese spies there are in this country that are working in our political offices.
My guess is, Dave, there's probably a hell of a lot more than we realize.
I think we're all in agreement that if we're only going to get one out of two here, Ilhan, going would be, uh, would be much, much better for the country.
You know, to your point about the drivers and all that, every time I'm in DC, I'm always thinking, man, these Uber drivers must all be spies because the amount of just politicians and influencers and whatever that just, and diplomats that hop into these cars and just start talking like you, you'd have to be stupid if you were a foreign country not to be sending Uber drivers.
Yeah, you'd have to be stupid.
Let's, let's, people know I like ending.
I don't like ending with politics.
I like trying to end with something positive and sometimes otherworldly if possible.
So as everyone knows, the Artemis II, is en route to the moon.
It will not land on the moon.
We have not landed on the moon since 1963, which is completely insane, but at least we're heading back.
So let's throw into some video here.
There's no, uh, there's no audio on this, but this is incredible.
So this video that you're seeing here, someone just caught this on a, I guess that's a spirit airline, just caught the law.
But Will, the point, the point of this is it would be pretty cool if we could start doing some things again.
You know, Elon's always talking about interplanetary travel and we're on the AI and robot horizon and 3D printing.
We're gonna start setting up bases and then on those bases, the robots will be able to build space stations and that will get us to other planets like, Within our lifetime, these things can happen if we're just willing to dream again and not just get bogged down in all of the mire and muck of the usual mountains.
Yeah, no, I think it's a really good thing for our country to do.
It inspires people.
It creates big, hairy goals that lead people to do really hard things and work really hard to try and be part of them.
I'm almost reminded of the very beginning of this thing.
You had Amandani talking about, God, we could have used this money to pay off student debt.
And I'm just reminded that's what leftists also used to do with the Apollo program, right?
They were always like, Why aren't we sending people to the moon when we could like spend a little bit more on, you know, home care or something?
Because, like, actually, our country should be great and do great things.
And, you know, the be all end all of the world is not to collect welfare payments, but to actually like do things that nobody else can do.
And so I'm glad to see it.
I think it's a good thing.
You know, I want, I want, you know, it shouldn't be just NASA or whatever.
Obviously, we want like SpaceX and all these other private companies to be doing, you know, Jeff Bezos.
Like everybody should be trying and adding to the project, but I want, you know, it's good for Americans to be dreaming big again, including in the government.
I also want some accountability because I don't know if you guys talk politics at family gatherings, but the most lively debate of the last two years has been the argument that was brought to me did we or did we not land on the moon back in the day?
So I want us to land the moon and I want, I want live video of finding the damn rover and I want to see that American flag and I want to see pictures of the boots if they're still there from the last time in the, in the, in the sand-esque stuff on the moon dust.
And then everybody can just shut the hell up and we can say, see, there it is.