Dave Rubin critiques CNN's Scott Jennings for debating unqualified guests regarding the ongoing Iran war, detailing President Trump's "Operation Economic Fury" that blockaded the Strait of Hormuz to cut $13 billion monthly in oil revenue. He contrasts this with domestic successes like Working Families Tax Cuts and criticizes NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's luxury property tax as class warfare driving billionaires to Miami. The episode concludes by highlighting Justice Clarence Thomas's call for civic ownership, a planned 250-foot Triumphal Arc for America's bicentennial, and fears that Democratic efforts to eliminate the Electoral College signal a shift toward socialism ahead of the midterms. [Automatically generated summary]
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I would say this program today is, is a standard old fashioned Ruben Report.
It's a little bit of everything.
We're doing a little foreign policy, little economic stuff.
Yes, a little bit of crazy Democrat run cities.
And then I think we have some nice messaging at the end to tie it together.
So let's dive right in.
We will start with Scott Jennings over on CNN because obviously the main thing right now is, you know, we're about day 40 into the war, which is on temporary hiatus as we had a ceasefire agreement.
Well, we didn't have an agreement.
We had a ceasefire.
We had a meeting about a ceasefire.
We had a couple pieces of paper and a meeting about a ceasefire in Pakistan.
Did not go that well.
And then subsequently, We clearly, I mean, it's just obvious to me, although the panicans seem unable to see it, that Trump had a plan if the ceasefire didn't go well, and the plan was, okay, we're just gonna blockade the Strait of Hormuz, and if Iran can't export oil, they will lose literally billions and billions of dollars every month, and eventually they won't be able to pay whoever's left in their military or anything else, and they'll come crawling back to us, and if they can't get any of that oil out, it's gonna hurt China, and China might start crawling back to us,
and we're starting to see the fruits of some of that.
However, Over on CNN, you know Scott Jennings, he sits down with this clown car collection of leftist losers.
That's what the show is a clown car collection of leftist losers and Scott Jennings.
And they had David Hogg on.
Now, David Hogg, he's like this 20, 22 year old kid who became famous.
He was one of the kids at Parkland High School in Orlando a couple years ago that got shot up, and he became a major anti gun advocate.
I'm very proud to say that my friend Kyle Kashuv, who was a student there, eventually became one of our interns, and he worked for us for a while.
He became a pro Second Amendment.
Advocate.
The media largely tried to destroy Kyle while they propped up Hogg.
Hogg, then with worse grades, got into Harvard.
Kyle did not, even though he aced his SAT.
Like the whole, it's all the stuff about the system that you all hate, right?
Anyway, Hogg and Jennings got into it about Iran.
Now, remember, this is a 21, 22 year old kid who has no expertise in foreign policy or anything, but they feel that they just need another leftist because there's six of them already.
We need another one at the table to debate with Scott.
And in light of his lack of qualifications, His unprofessional manner, and just generally, I don't like this kid.
We are going back with the old school intro for the Scott clip.
Anybody with an elementary school understanding of foreign policy could have told you the Strait of Hormuz was going to get shut down, and that is exactly what happened.
First off, again, the fact that they have to literally, it's the bottom of the barrel stuff.
To get on people that can make an argument around the left, which is why Scott's job has become so easy in a way, right?
So, anyone with an elementary school education would have known they were going to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Well, there was a chance they were going to, there was a chance they wouldn't.
We get virtually, America gets virtually no oil that goes through the Strait of Hormuz.
China gets a tremendous amount of it.
Other countries get a lot of it, and we now control the Strait of Hormuz.
So, the question is is a temporary, again, this is It was a 35 ish day war.
We're in about day 40, but we've had a ceasefire for, let's say, five days.
Is some level of temporary pain in that gas peaked at $5 per gallon?
That's about two weeks ago.
It's now down to $4.12 per gallon.
That's still a little bit high, right?
So that is.
But the true question around oil and gas is are we willing to pay a little bit more?
Is there some degree of pain that the average American will take in order to stop a radical Islamist apocalyptic regime from having nuclear weapons and threatening not only the region there, but quite literally all over the world?
Just for a little context, gas prices surged by over 30% to over $4 a gallon, which did rise a dollar, and then now they are down, right?
Yes, the strait is, well, it's not even temporarily closed anymore.
We now have a blockade over it.
That's a different situation than them controlling it and closing it.
They used what little leverage they have left for the time that they closed it.
We now completely control it.
And she, oh, the negotiations failed.
Again, that's the first salvo.
And, lady, do you not?
And it's like they can't even, that's the problem.
The left has been so hollowed out that they have nobody left to put on these shows that can make a cogent argument.
That's why Scott looks like such an all star all the time.
So you put up this kid.
He's an expert in absolutely nothing.
They have a 21 year old kid who's accomplished literally nothing in his life.
The only other thing that he did post Parkland and becoming an anti gun advocate was he opened a pillow company in.
He literally opened a pillow company in opposition to MyPillow because he didn't like the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell.
And of course, his pillow company, he was going to source it properly and pay everyone a lot more than minimum wage and everything else.
And the company failed overnight.
So that's the only thing he's done.
And they have him up there discussing Iran policy.
Then you have a former congresswoman from Florida who's accomplished nothing.
No one knows anything about Val Demings trying to tell us that negotiations, that this isn't going well and that we never laid out a strategy.
How many times has Rubio and Trump and Heg said, And down the line, and now JD said, This is why we're doing it.
Why are we doing it?
They were going to get a nuke, and you don't wait to the day before.
You didn't want them to have that umbrella of ballistic missiles and drones and everything else.
We wanted to stop them from exporting terrorism all over the world.
We wanted to expand the Abraham Accords so that you'd have more peace in the Middle East and that would calm markets over time.
And I would also add that Trump, for 40 years, has been talking about this, and ironically, he's the only politician that I can think of in my lifetime who actually does what he says he's going to do.
There is one sane Democrat on the Senate side.
You know who he is.
He's Mr. Hoodie himself, John Fetterman.
And here he is giving credit to Trump for doing what he says he's going to do and saying that his team sucks.
What President Trump decided to do was deal with the Iranian regime.
Every single president since 1979 wanted to deal with it.
That's the right side of history for me.
And I'll be the only Democrat that supported it publicly, but I guarantee I'm not the only Democrat, at least privately.
You know, refuse to acknowledge that because politically it's very toxic as a Democrat.
Like the New York Times and other, some of the media effectively are, are, have turned Iran into the underdog that we could maybe.
It's like if, if you, if your hate of, of Trump is, is more than, you know, holding Iran accountable, forget Iran executed tens of thousands of its young people just, you know, a month last year.
So no matter how many times Trump has laid out why he's doing this over the course of his life, they pretend that doesn't exist.
They pretend that he never laid out a plan.
right now.
They're always, always, I mean the entire left at this point is always on the side of our enemies and he is the odd man out in his party and my suspicion is he will be a Republican soon enough.
I actually think he'll make the full conversion.
You know, Tulsi and Bobby Kennedy who are obviously in the Trump administration, they both publicly left the Democrat party.
I don't think either one of them have said I'm officially a Republican in By action, of course, they are.
I have a feeling when he leaves, he is going to say, I am a Republican as of today.
Some of that will have to do with just like internal Pennsylvania politics.
Does he think he can win as a Republican and everything else?
So we'll leave that there for now.
So let's move to the economic side of all of this because, okay, the war, again, despite what the panic ends are telling you, the war militarily has gone extremely well and we have all the leverage in the world right now and we completely control Iran.
Fact.
Now let's talk about the economic side of it because there is a whole bunch of good things happening.
And Scott Besant yesterday announced Operation Economic Fury, that there is a secondary, it's almost as if they had a plan with this, that there was going to be a military part and then an economic part.
Yesterday, we announced Operation Economic Fury, and we, for over a year, we have had maximum pressure on the Iranians, both on blocking payments into the Iranian state and going after the accounts of the IRGC.
One of the what may prove to be fatal mistakes that the Iranians made was bombing their GCC neighbors and who are now willing to be much more transparent in terms of the funds or do a deeper dive in investigating the funds that are held within their banking systems.
So we have pushed out to them the request that we want to freeze more funds of the leadership of the IRGC and any members of Iranian leadership.
The other thing that we have done.
Is we have told companies, we have told countries that if you are buying Iranian oil, that if Iranian money is sitting in your banks, we are now willing to apply secondary sanctions.
So, again, for all of the people, if Trump doesn't know what he's doing and there is no plan and every day they wake up and he tweets out something stupid, it's like, you guys are ridiculous.
The plan to go ahead and do this military operation was so intricate.
And so successful that you damn well better believe there was a plan.
And again, years from now, there'll be a book about it, there'll be a movie about it, hopefully not on Netflix, but you get the point.
And they will lay out how absolutely masterful all of that was.
But then there was going to be a secondary piece that my guess is this, this would be my guess, that if the military part in and of itself wasn't going to be enough to topple the regime altogether, which probably was the hope, but if that wasn't going to be enough, then you have.
Contingency plans, and I think at the top of that level would be now the economic layer.
So if you are in the IRGC, we are now sanctioning your bank accounts.
And then he pointed out, Iran foolishly decided to bomb all of these other countries.
So suddenly you've got Oman and the UAE.
UAE has really come far closer to the West over the years.
But Bahrain and Qatar and Kuwait, these are all countries that, you know, they play at some level, play nice with the West, but then do all sorts of awful things.
Well, now they're all kind of on our side of this.
I would argue way more in many cases than the UK and France, which have just largely become utterly irrelevant and everything else.
So we are now applying economic pressure.
And the key part of all of this is that the economic pressure is also going to hit China.
So I mentioned before, China, which is getting 13 to 14 percent of all of their oil, comes from Iran.
And 80 percent of what Iran exports goes to China.
Now there's going to be a secondary layer of economic assault on China.
We are reaching out to banks, including Chinese banks, to remind them that any Iranian goods and the purchases thereof are forbidden and that the dollars would be sanctioned and that we will press for secondary sanctions if there's a problem.
Trump says the Chinese are actually happy that we're opening up the strait, saying this, Qi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks.
Beijing can't buy any more cheap sanctioned Iranian oil, and now every Chinese trade route to the west is controlled by the U.S. Navy.
But the Chi Coms are welcome to buy American, and they already are.
The U.S. oil market is open for business, and it is booming.
Big oil just had its biggest payday in history.
The United States just hit an all time high all week, exporting 5 million barrels a day.
Over 100 tankers are lining up off the Gulf of America to get their frantic little hands on our sweet, sweet crude.
And it's not just crude, we're shipping everything from gas, jet fuel, diesel at record levels.
We are now exporting oil at record levels amidst all of this.
We also have access to all that Venezuelan oil.
And there are tankers waiting to get our oil, and China's going, well, we're in a little bit of trouble here because we need that Iranian oil, which they were getting cheaper than market share before all of this.
Here's the great Victor Davis Hansen on whether Trump should meet with China right now.
Look, if Trump goes, I think Trump is going to walk in at peak Trump level.
The hair will be particularly golden.
The tie will be particularly red.
And he'll walk in and say, Well, here we are, guys.
We're controlling the oil now.
We do some crazy things with our military.
How are you feeling about that Taiwan operation?
You better not do that because, you know, we're getting a lot of microchips from there and we're not going to let you have that.
We now have leverage.
There has been a much bigger game being played here than.
I would say the low level analysts have been offering up to people to keep everybody in endless hysteria.
This thing is going well, guys.
It really is.
And also go back to what I said five weeks ago that my feeling was at the end of this, one way or another, and I started saying this, I think, two days in, once Iran started shooting at all the other Arab Gulf nations, it just seemed obvious to me that this was going to flip the script on the alliances in the Middle East.
And now, what's happening?
Well, quite literally in D.C. right now, the Israeli and Lebanese.
Ambassadors are meeting for the first time in years and years, and they're admitting that they're on the same side.
They are on the same side because the problem is that an Iranian proxy Hezbollah has basically been controlling Lebanon.
Lebanon has a government, but it's basically subsidiary to Hezbollah.
Here's Trey Yinks on Fox talking about how these meetings could lead to an expansion of the Abraham Accords.
Historic opportunity unfolding right now in the Middle East.
Israeli sources telling Fox News they believe that talks between Israel and Lebanon could lead to Lebanon joining the Abraham Accords.
It's still early, but following direct conversations in Washington earlier this week, President Trump overnight on True Social posted, quote, trying to get a little breathing room between Israel and Lebanon.
It has been a long time since the two leaders have spoken, like 34 years.
We are about to overcome the southern Lebanon town of Benjabil.
We are, in effect, about to eliminate this great stronghold of Hezbollah.
At the same time, I gave instructions to the IDF yesterday to continue widening the security zone and to also spread it eastward toward the slopes of Mount Hermon.
Two countries that technically are at war, that share a border.
That have had that one of the countries, Lebanon, which, as I keep saying, everyone used to think that Beirut was going to become the Paris of the Middle East.
It was a Christian country.
It was leaning way more to the side of freedom.
If you want to know a little bit more about their civil war and the fallout from that, Gad Sad, who was born in Lebanon and had to flee, you can watch some of my early interviews with him.
Several of my interviews with Brigitte Gabriel, who is phenomenal, also a Christian who had to flee Lebanon.
She ended up, as a Christian, fleeing Lebanon, ended up in Israel.
Her story, I mean, both of their stories are absolutely incredible.
Gad's parents were.
Kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists.
I mean, psychotic stuff.
But in any event, the point is that after all of these years, because we went after Iran effectively, their proxies are in trouble now.
So the Lebanese might get, as Joe Biden used to say, a backbone like a ramrod and kick Hezbollah out.
And if they won't, well, Israel's going to go ahead and do it.
But the point is, these two sides are talking and they're realizing there's just no territorial dispute there.
The only territorial dispute, they have a border that's agreed upon in essence.
Well, you can see.
I mean, look how tiny.
Maybe we can even zoom out further than that.
But look how absurdly tiny Israel and Lebanon are.
They are tiny, smaller than New Jersey, both of them.
The point is they have that little border, yeah, so now you can border out and you can see how huge Iraq is, how huge Iran is, some of these other countries, Egypt, which is absolutely massive.
But the point is they have a little border there on the southern part of Lebanon that you can see and the northern part of Israel.
That's not really disputed.
It's just that Hezbollah has been firing crazy amounts of rockets into Israel.
So if Lebanon kicks them out, The Israelis will sign a peace deal like that, I guarantee you.
Okay, here is, uh, let's shift a little bit to more of the economic stuff on our side of things.
We dealt with, we dealt with the war part, we dealt with the economics of the war part, now there are some good things happening domestically on the economic side, and, and again, I'm very proud of what we've done around here.
Go back to my shows in December when I was in D.C. and we interviewed about 15 congresspeople and senators.
And everyone was saying, you got to wait to a little bit into 2026 when the big, beautiful bill starts kicking in and you start seeing the results of what will happen.
Through the working families tax cuts, the president has delivered a record.
Refunds to the American people.
More than 45% of the filers of the returns that we have seen have had at least one of the four president's signature policies no tax and tips, no tax and overtime, the deductions for our great seniors, and the deductibility of interest on auto loans for American made cars.
And I will tell you that the biggest one of those that Americans have taken is no tax and overtime.
Trump put in a few things saying that the government will take less of your money tax on tips, tax on overtime, et cetera, et cetera.
He just laid those things out.
Basically, half of the people who they've seen the returns are now taking advantage of that.
There's probably, I don't know what percentage it is, I don't know that anyone would know, but there's probably huge amounts of people that don't even realize that you're allowed to do these things.
So some of that will just take time, and over time, people will be like, wait a minute, you know, you're a waiter or you're a waitress, and you're going to be like, wait, I could have saved the tax money on all of that.
And this is a little bit of an anecdotal throwaway, but I just thought this was nice.
Here's a Florida waitress.
Talking about how this no tax on tip situation is affecting her life.
unidentified
It's made a very big difference in my life.
It's added a lot of money for me.
I was able to send my friends on some money.
I get to live my life a little easier.
I can eat better.
Life is just so much more better because I have extra money in my pocket at the end of the day.
You know, the movie My Blue Heaven with Steve Martin.
Maybe we can find the line.
I don't tip.
I over tip.
Like, if you do a good job, Dennis Prager has talked about this a lot over the years as well.
Like, if someone is giving you good service at a restaurant or at a bar, tipping is, you know, okay, so let's say back in the day it was 15%.
That was sort of standard years and years ago.
Then it jumped to 20%.
And I love over tipping.
If someone is really good at what they do and they're happy and they make you feel welcome there, what a joy to give a few extra bucks to somebody and now knowing that they're going to keep.
More of that money.
I also try when I can to tip in cash and then they can do what they want with it either way.
What do we have?
We have an image of Steve Martin over tipping.
It's not tipping, I believe in it, it's over tipping.
Great movie, great.
Steve Martin back in the day doesn't get much better than that.
So, anyway, it's just nice.
And you know what?
I've been a waiter, I've been a bartender, I've been in all of those jobs when I was in catering, all those things back in the day.
And when you have a couple more bucks when you're doing those jobs, yeah, it actually does matter.
Of course, if you're a Democrat, you're very upset that the people might have more of your money because you want their money because you're a Democrat.
And here is Tebu Obama very upset that people will have more of their own money.
And by damage the American people, he means that waiters will have more of their money, that you can deduct your car interest, that seniors will have a little bit of their money.
And then you know what happens?
This is the crazy part.
I'll speak slowly in case any Democrats are watching.
If you let people have a little bit more of their money, here, watch this.
Joseph, if you have a little bit more of your money, what might you do with it?
Buy more.
That's right.
You might buy more.
So let's say I pay this guy a salary.
And let's say suddenly he has more money because the government's going to take less.
He might buy a new pair of jeans.
I was going to say shoes, but jeans.
And then the guy who's selling the jeans has a more successful business.
And then what he does, he goes, Oh, I got a little extra cash.
I'm going to take my girl out for a nice steak dinner.
And then the guy who owns the steak joint goes, Boy, we sold an extra.
Steak tonight.
You know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to go buy some crack.
All right, you get the point.
You get the point.
That's what liquidity in the system does.
You give people, not give people, you allow people to keep more of what is theirs.
They will make choices that will be better for them.
But Timu Obama and the Democrats think that if you just would give them more money, they'll solve all your problems.
This is the Scott Besson show.
Here's a bit more from Scott Besson on how you, right now, hopefully, you've Fix some things with your accountant and you talk to your accountant before you file your taxes because there's all sorts of withholding things that you could have done which would have given you a wage increase.
I encourage everyone out there watching today to change their withholding if they haven't already done so because if you change your withholding, then you will get an automatic real wage increase on a weekly or a monthly basis and you will be able to keep more of your money this calendar year.
Do you realize how different having a Republican administration is than having a Democrat administration?
Think about that Timo Obama clip we just showed you right there.
It's the worst thing ever.
How could they do it?
They're patting themselves on the back for something that goes against the American people.
And there you have Scott Besant representing the Trump administration going, guys, if you fill out a couple forms a little bit differently, if you check this and you make sure that, that, do, do, do, talk to your accountant, you're going to save money.
It's abs.
The difference between these two parties is staggering right now.
And if you are one of the people on the right, and Tucker, I'm talking to you, who dedicated your life to destroying the Republican Party so you can usher in communism, well, I don't like you very much.
Here's Caroline Levitt on the Democrats that voted against the tax refunds.
Every single Democrat in Congress voted against these tax refunds.
The media has largely omitted this fact and other critical details in their stories covering the benefits of the Trump tax cuts.
If the Democrats in Congress had gotten their way and blocked President Trump's historic legislation, Americans would have faced the largest tax hike in history, nearly $4 trillion.
The average taxpayer would have seen a 22% increase in their tax rates.
Democrats in Congress have proven over and over again that they are the affordability frauds.
And I got to tell you, you may have noticed my lips are particularly moist today.
And people often say, Dave, you know, you lick your lips a lot.
When I'm playing basketball, if I hit a shot, I lick the lips.
Like, look at that swish.
Kobe used to do it.
Michael Jordan used to do it.
But I have been using their lip balm.
They've got a whole bunch of other stuff, soap and all kinds of things.
And I'm telling you, my lips, I'm just speaking more easily today.
It's just, there's no friction there.
There's just nothing.
Guys, if you think that brands like Dr. Squatch, Burt's Bees, or Native are still small, wholesome companies they once were, well, you got to think again.
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I'm going to moisten up the lips for the second half of the show.
I don't need to because this stuff works.
And I'm telling you, this soap, I have another one upstairs.
This pine soap, man, do we have smell-o-vision?
All the money I'm throwing into this program, there's no way I can if I put this to the, if they sniff their screen.
Next season on The Ruben Report, Smell A Vision.
All right, from, oh, well, I got a good segue here.
From delicious smelling soap to a city that smells like crap, New York.
Well, Zorhan Momdami, Momron Zamboni, you know, he wants to tax the rich and he wants to tax the elites and he wants to do free buses, except now he can't do it because he doesn't have the money.
And he wants free grocery stores, except he can't open one until 2029 and it's going to cost triple the price of a regular grocery store.
Well, now he is also coming after the people in New York who have a pied de terre.
And that is that when you are a wealthy person, you might have a small flat or condo in a fancy city that you occasionally go to.
And most likely, if you're going there, you are spending a lot of money in that city.
You're going to go to very fancy restaurants.
You're going to go to the theater.
You're going to go to the ballet.
You might see a fat woman sing.
All these things that are putting money into the economy.
So what does this guy want to do?
Well, he wants more of your money and to stop you from doing all those things.
When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich.
Today, we're taxing the rich.
I'm thrilled to announce we've secured a pied-a-terre tax, the first in New York's history.
This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million, whose owners do not live full-time in the city.
Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million.
This pied-a-terre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich, those who store their wealth in New York City real estate, but who don't actually live here.
But even so, they're able to reap the huge financial rewards of owning property in, dare I say, the greatest city in the world.
And most of the time, these units are sitting empty, since again, They don't actually live here.
This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working New Yorkers.
Now it's coming to an end.
This tax will raise at least $500 million directly for the city.
First off, the fact that he stands outside of Ken Griffin's building, like, here's the building, guys, so when you're burning it down, when Bain comes to town and you want to burn down a building, it would be, yeah, here you go.
This would be a good one $238 million.
It's none of your business.
How much he paid for that.
By the way, Ken Griffin, that's his pied de terre.
That's his temporary little, I'm going to come to New York City for a meeting place.
You know where he lives now?
Miami.
You know where he lived before Miami?
It's only in the last few months that he moved here.
He got the hell out of there, maybe because of the murdering and the taxing and everything else.
So he already got all his businesses out of there.
Miami continues to boom for all of the right reasons.
We are quite literally right now, it has already passed the Florida state legislature.
I think it goes to referendum, but we are not going to have property taxes.
In Florida, on top of everything else, we already don't have state income tax and we are flourishing because of it.
I don't need to glaze Florida, you guys get it.
But you see what he's doing here?
We are going to raise money by raising taxes on the wealthy.
And then, as you know, what happens?
The wealthy, who are usually pretty bright and they understand numbers and they carry the one, they go, Well, I'm looking at the numbers and I'm being punished, actually.
We already pay, and if you're rich, you pay a crazy amount in taxes.
Not only are you paying Federal income tax, but in blue places you're paying state income tax.
You most likely have businesses where you're paying all sorts of payroll taxes and all of those things which add up.
And then they'll be like, they don't pay any taxes.
It's just complete and utter nonsense.
But what will happen is first up, you're going to drive down the prices of those homes.
So those homes are now going to, people are going to try to sell them, but nobody's going to want to buy them because let's say it's a $5 million house or condo.
Someone that would normally maybe want to buy it is going to be like, you know, why would I buy that?
Because now I'm going to be taxed too.
So now the $5 million condo is worth $3 million, right?
So you're artificially driving down the prices of real estate.
But then the next part of this, of course, is that once you tax those people to the nth degree, there is no number where Zorhan and the communists are going to be like, well, guys, we looked at the numbers and we have enough money and everything's free and everything's just fine.
They will move down the field and say, we need from the next people.
Jason Kalkanisa, who is on the All In podcast, I've done his show, he's a great guy.
He made that point, and this is a billionaire funder, you know, founder who knows his stuff about economics and how business works.
He wrote, Don't worry, folks, after he drives everyone with homes over 5 million in New York City out, he will lower the extra tax to $2 million homes, then $4,000 rents, and he won't stop until the death spiral is complete.
And that, I mean, not only is that what I just said, but it's exactly right.
It is exactly right.
They always need more.
This, first off, the fact that he's not doing free buses on day one, which he was never going to be able to do.
He should resign in shame already.
So he can't do free buses, he can't do free grocery stores, and they can't even build a grocery store for years.
But the point is, they'll never be enough.
So, okay, we'll come for all of, and that's what class warfare does, right?
We're gonna come for all of these people.
Oh, there's no more of them.
We gotta come for somebody else, and somebody else, and somebody else, and somebody else.
As I illustrated right here, and by the way, we are signing these and dating them and sending them out to commentators.
So hang tight on that.
I thought this was interesting from Geiger Capital, and it's just important to note.
The top 50% of taxpayers paid nearly all the personal income tax in 2023.
You understand that?
So the top 50% basically paid 100% of the taxes.
The lower 50% of people paid basically nothing.
It's 0.2% of the taxes.
So if you, when they say fair share, it's just an absurd, what they mean is what we want you to pay.
They've already beyond paid their fair share.
So if you took I mean, and Elizabeth Warren does this all the time.
If we just took half of Elon's money, first off, his money is not just sitting there in a bank.
He's not diving into it like Scrooge McDuck in DuckTales.
It's in a lot of businesses, it's tied up in things and valuations, right?
He's not just rolling around in dough.
But if he was, he would have every right to it because he's created things when you, Elizabeth Warren, and your commie comrades have just created misery.
Alex Witkoff, who is a well known real estate developer in New York City, wrote this New York City real estate is being taxed to death.
transfer taxes, mansion tax, sky high annual property taxes, now another pied de terre tax on second homes over five million.
This isn't about fairness.
It's about covering up a reckless, covering up reckless spending and a growing deficit.
You cannot tax your way out of financial mismanagement.
Here's what happens next.
Buyers pause, investment dries up, prices fall, development stalls, jobs disappear, and the tax base shrinks even more.
You don't save a city by driving out capital.
You destroy it.
But perhaps that's their goal.
Alex Witkoff, yes, you are right.
Here is what I believe.
I've already laid out why their economics don't make sense.
You and Kalkanis already illustrated that as well.
I think he is intentionally trying to destroy the city.
As a communist, he wants everything to fail.
You can argue there's a reason that as an Islamist, he would want everything to fail too, but they want to drive out all of the good people.
They want to destroy it, and then they want a hyper-controlled communist utopia.
Which of course will just be a dystopia.
He does not, I genuinely do not think that in Zorhan's mind and heart that he believes he can tax his way out of this and it will succeed.
Sixth grade should have taught you that that would not work.
It does not make any sense.
Now I want to show you another video.
This is also interesting.
So this is real estate mogul Ryan Surhan.
This is March of 2025, where he is arguing.
That because New York City taxes are so high, so many people are going to leave that they'll only have P. de Terres there.
You understand?
So he's arguing, and this guy's good.
I'm playing this because he's pretty damn good.
His argument is so many of them will leave that they won't have their original homes there and their businesses there.
They're only going to have these kind of vacation second homes.
So now that's to the backdrop of how absurd it is that Mandami is coming for them as well.
He's making the argument in March of 2025, a year ago, that because of all of the bad policies, this is before Zorhan took office, right?
He's making the argument that because of all of the bad policies of these blue urban areas, people are going to want to get out.
Your tax tie, it's not safe, blah, blah, blah, right?
Now, so that happened.
We all know that happened.
The amount of billionaires that have now left California, have left New York, have left Chicago, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I think something like I think literally in the last, in 2026 alone, I think we've had like a dozen or 15 billionaires move to Miami.
Right?
You understand?
Like, think about the amount of wealth that then that generates here because they have a lot of things and they have staffs and then their staffs are paid well.
And again, it just puts liquidity in the system.
But his argument there was, so New York will become a pied de terre city.
And now Zorhan is going to destroy that too.
Absolutely insane.
Let me juxtapose some of the insanity of these lefty lunatics with a guy who knows a little something about something.
I'm talking about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Here he is talking about how we, we the people, better own this country or we are going to hand it to people who are much worse than us.
I think if we don't stand up and take ownership of our country and take responsibility for it, we are slowly letting others control how we think and what we think.
I think the beauty of going to school is that you learn how to think for yourselves.
You develop the discipline to think things through.
If you think it's losing confidence, then you get up and you participate.
You don't sit on the sidelines.
You think that the.
That the state is being run and inconsistent with how you feel, then you get up and you participate.
You prepare yourself.
If you think that the medical profession is not right, well, you become a doctor, a medical person, and you deal with that.
And that's why we are a country based on individual rights.
And individual liberty.
And what he's saying is don't hand it off to the people that want the government to control everything.
Government, in and of itself, is not inherently evil.
We happen to have a federal government right now that is obviously quite good and is doing the best to reverse so many of the bad policies of previous administrations.
However, the more control that you have over your life, the more control you have, the more dollars you have that you earn so that you can.
And the more you focus that energy on your family and your local community, that's how you'll fix things.
But it's interesting because even right there, he says, if you're not happy with the healthcare system, become a doctor.
Well, we know that less people want to become doctors now because once we had an explosion of Obamacare, there were many doctors.
I often mention my friend who's a GI in Dallas, who basically has said to me a million times, he's like, before Obamacare, He was seeing tons and tons of clients all the time, had a booming business, and now he's mostly doing paperwork.
It's mostly about checking off boxes to make sure that you're getting the reimbursements and all of those things.
So you want as much individual control over things.
That's the American way.
And I keep saying also that one of the reasons I'm more bullish on what will happen in the midterms than most people is I think an inherent burst of American pride and patriotism is coming.
Our 250th anniversary is only months away on July 4th.
And there are going to be all sorts of celebrations.
And then I think if we get some wins with the foreign policy stuff, if all of the economic stuff that we just laid out here keeps going well, if the Democrats keep attaching themselves to all of these horrible ideas, I think everything's going to be okay.
Here's Caroline Levitt on a new arch that we are building.
It's going to be built right now.
And you know, Trump's going to do it probably somewhat on the cheap and pretty quickly to celebrate America's 250.
As you know, this year we celebrate America's 250th birthday.
In honor of this historic occasion, President Trump and the Department of Interior will submit plans for the United States Triumphal Arc, which will be an architectural masterpiece to celebrate our history right here in Washington, D.C.
This is a rendering of the arc for you.
Thank you, Peter.
It's quite beautiful, as you can see, and this monumental arc will beam at 250 feet tall in honor of 250 years.
and stand on ground that is currently empty green space in Memorial Circle on Columbia Island, a man-made island in the Potomac River managed by the National Parks.
If Twitter or X and YouTube and everything just blew up one day, we'd still have you because we're on the rumble wires and you'd still have access to us and all of those good things.
Here we go.
Shelly says, You have several appearances each day.
How do you decide what to wear throughout the day?
Do you make several changes?
Who picks out your clothes?
Do you have a favorite designer?
And look, That's a nice break from the political stuff.
So, my favorite none of this, none of the things I'm about to mention are sponsors.
I'd be happy to be sponsored by any of these things.
So, in terms of suits and blazers, I love Ted Baker.
So, let's see, Ted Baker, it says it in there.
I don't know if you can quite see it.
Ted Baker's a British brand.
The Brits don't do much good these days, there's not much good happening over there.
Ted Baker, I think, you know, I think I saw Douglas Murray once in a Ted Baker suit.
We were in London.
I was like, what is that?
And he said, that's Ted Baker.
And there happened to be a Ted Baker store about a block away.
I don't know that they have many brick and mortars.
In the United States.
I think they're still in, like, you can go to Nordstrom or something like that.
That's usually where I get my stuff.
But you can get them online.
And they just make beautiful suits that I think fit right and whatever.
In terms of more casual stuff, I'm really, all my shirts these days and pants and, you know, if I'm workout stuff, I love Viore.
Viore, am I saying it right?
V U O R I.
It's more athleisure kind of stuff, but you can also, they have plenty of stuff that you can wear and go out to a nice restaurant and it just fits right and is comfortable.
And also, you know, Florida, everything.
You have to be like heat sensitive and sweat sensitive all the time.
So things that kind of breathe nicely.
But I pick out all my clothes.
I'm definitely overdue for like a full wardrobe change.
You know, I've got probably 10 blazer combo suit situations that I'm always going, all right, what did I wear yesterday?
Can I switch the color of the shirt, match it with a different jacket?
Sometimes my pants don't match at all, and I'm never wearing shoes during the show.
But you know, one of the things that I really do try to do, which is in line with one of the rules, one of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, is that if I'm out and about, I try to look my best pretty much everywhere.
If I'm going to Whole Foods just to pick something up or whatever, I'll throw on, you know, here's a mess, I'll throw on a backwards cap and I'm wearing a tank top.
But like if I'm out, if I'm just out anywhere, going out to dinner, You know, whatever it might be, going to the mall for something like that, I try to dress properly, and I think that, I think it's an, I just think it's like a little something extra that you can do that would be good.
But yeah, the suits are Ted Baker, most of the rest of my clothes are Biore.
Is there anything else that I like besides this incredible tallow soap?
What else am I wearing these days?
My underwear is Lululemon, but I'm trying to get off of that because of the, yeah, I'm trying to get off of that because of the plastics.
All right, Robert says, Dave, Virginia is the latest to pass the Popular Vote Act that will eliminate the Electoral College if only a few more states sign on.
Of course, this is all blue states that have passed this act.
This could be a catastrophe that would forever change the election process for presidents.
What do you think can change this momentum and what are your thoughts on this matter?
You know, we should do, we did it once a few years ago, about five years ago.
We did a full hour.
With an expert on the Electoral College, why it came into being, why it's important, how it distributes power throughout the country, and that people, especially back in the day when the country came to pass, before the internet and television and radio and everything else, if you would just go to city centers, you would have been able to win elections.
The rural areas would have never gotten any representation.
We should do another episode like that, so hang tight on that.
But what I would say broadly on all of these things is that the Democrats are trying to change every norm, and they're doing it slowly.
Right, so every it was we're Democrats, we're Democrat socialists, now we're socialists, and they will be communists.
They will be, and then eventually there will also be Islamists.
They are all these things already.
It's the insane Red Green Alliance.
So, whether it's them trying to change the popular vote from the Electoral College, whether it's trying to pack the courts, I mean, we can do the long list of things.
They're trying to change all of that.
It will not be good for the country.
And the real issue around this, around the crazier that the blue states go, is at some point, what Makes us the United States of America.
I don't like giving energy or entropy to that concept, but at some point, if New York repeatedly chooses all of the wrong things and California repeatedly chooses all the wrong things, not to say that they don't have 40% of good people there in those places, right?
Cali has more Republicans than I think any other state because it's so massive, they just never win.
But at some point, what unites us?
And we're going to have to grapple with that more and more as the mainstream flits away.
It's just the nature of the internet.
There'll be very few things that will bring us all together.
And there's going to be a lot of things that separate us.
And you're going to have to live in a place that is congruent with your beliefs.
Zane says, Who's your favorite Downton character?
Have you had the chance to visit High Clear Castle?
I have never been.
So High Clear Castle is Downton Abbey.
So that's the actual castle, and you can go visit it.
I have not been there.
How far is it from London?
I'm going to guess about two hours because they used to take the train there occasionally in the later years.
We are potentially, I think we're going to London for ARC in June.
We're going to take a drive.
I'm taking you guys, it's one and a half hours.
We're going to Downton Abbey and I'm going to force you all to watch the movies on the plane.
Yeah, you're ex.
Oh, you just want to watch Lord of the Rings over and over.
No, he's going to do it.
It's just a wonderful, wonderful show.
I like period pieces.
I like things that also, because I do love sci fi.
I love.
War things and fighting and all of those things, and now I'm playing with the kids, and we got Transformers fighting Star Wars, and I love all of that stuff.
But, like, if I need something to escape to, there is something very nice about period pieces.
You know, one of the things that sucks, I think I mentioned this a couple months ago.
The guy, Julian Fellows, who did Downton Abbey, also did another show that's on HBO Max now called Gilded Age, and it's about, well, the Gilded Age of America.
So, late 1800s into the early 1900s in New York, just as America is sort of coming to be, right?
And I, you know, it wasn't quite as good as Downton, but I was enjoying it.
But then that crazy Hamas lesbian with the snaggle tooth, what's her name?
Sure, she's married to a trans lesbian Hamas.
Her daughter, Cynthia Nixon, yeah, with the snaggle tooth over here, she's in it.
And I was just like, I cannot watch this crazy psychopath anymore.
The show wasn't, if the show had been an A, I probably could have tolerated it, but I just couldn't take it anymore.
So, but Downton's great.
And the other question was, who's my favorite character?
Interestingly, so here's many of the characters, and, you know, most people.
Of course, we'll say that it's the great actress Maggie Smith who was a phenomenal in it and she had all the best quips and everything else.
I'm going to say the man on the left, Carson.
He was the chief butler of the house.
And what's beautiful about Carson is he really, you know, I guess I really have changed over the years.
He's the most conservative of all of them.
He's always trying to keep everything the way that it was, that things were good and they were a certain way and you crazy people are always trying to change things.
But then he also realizes at times that things do change, but he's trying to have a certain set of principles and stick to them to the best that he can in a time when there were unbelievable changes, right?
The phone magically appears.
Think how that changed things.
Railways appear.
Cars, like all of these things.
And he's always trying to just keep things in best order as possible.
And I guess as you get older, you kind of start respecting that sort of thing.
Elizabeth says, any plans to have Douglas Murray on a Friday?
Well, Douglas is always welcome back anytime whatsoever.
You know, he was on real time last week.
We played a clip or two of it.
So I messaged him about that because he did a great job.
You know, I'd rather do, with Douglas, who's just been, you know, we've become such good friends over the years, I'd always rather have sit downs more properly in person than the Zoom thing.
So next time he gets down to Miami, I'm sure we'll do it.
Tappy Chef says kudos for trying to curb the swearing.
Not an easy task with all the crap going on.
Have you or David or any family member dropped the F bomb in front of the boys?
Mistakenly, of course.
I don't think that David or I have.
Um, if my mother-in-law is watching today, she definitely has a couple times.
Usually if Justin just runs right into her, he's big into like head bashing right now.
So he just puts his head down and BAM!
He'll just smash into you.
And I have heard a couple choice words out of that, which fortunately they have not repeated.
Uh, but you know, this three and a half age is just so great because these word bursts and really it's, for me, it's seeing the sense of humor.
Develop that, like when I start doing silly things, they're starting to laugh at the appropriate things, and then they're trying to make me laugh.
Is like that's as great as it gets.
And then, yeah, with our wars, I mean, we got massive wars.
We got we're building castles with magna blocks, magna tiles.
You know about magna tiles?
Get an image of magna tiles.
We're building these castles with magna tiles.
Sometimes we build ships with them, but it's usually a castle.
And then we got the transformers fighting Star Wars.
We're getting dinosaurs involved.
Uh, who else?
We got trucks.
The truck.
Sometimes you're going to get a dinosaur on a truck, will just plow himself right into the magnetile castle, blow up the whole thing.
So there's a lot of good stuff happening there.
Do you know what magnetiles are just great?
Like, they're such a do we have an image?
They're just so simple to put together, and you can build so many cool things with them.
We had blocks back in my day.
Yeah, that's magnetiles.
They're just nice and easy, and you can see why you could build great castles with those things.
We just had wooden blocks when I was a kid.
We had Lincoln logs.
That's what we had.
We had Lincoln logs.
K Mouse says, What do you think the Trump administration might do to now minimize horrible?
Consequences if we lose the midterms.
The Dems have openly said what they plan to do if they win.
Look, Trump just has to get wins now.
I don't know if there is a plan B.
Well, I don't know.
Let's try it this way.
Democrats take power.
They impeach, for sure.
It's not even a question, for sure.
They will dedicate more time to doing that than anything else.
What Trump will have to do is do literally everything by executive action, and that's no way for us to be governed.
They all do it too much, but they will leave him no choice because he will be a complete lame duck.
And then the most depressing part of that is that if he gets hung up in impeachment, and then he'll be a lame duck anyway, You're going to see Republicans start turning on him too, as they all jockey for position for 28.
So that's why I'm saying, guys, like if you have friends that are panickens right now, if you have people that think the war is going horrible and economically things are a mess, it's just not true.
Am I lying to you?
Is anything I've said on the show today a lie?
Has it become fairly obvious that we have competent people that are in charge?
And it seems obvious to me that they are leading a lot of the good stuff up, hopefully to peak before the midterms.
And it's going to be a pretty damn hard sell if there's an expansion of the Abraham Accords and the economy's doing well and the Iran war is over and maybe a couple other surprises.
It's going to be pretty damn hard for the Democrats to say, no, no, communism.
So we'll see.
Glenn says, How long do you think it'll take for Mrs. Swalwell to dump Mr. Swalwell?
Yeah, she's got to be out the door.
I know nothing about their relationship.
I don't even know what she looks like.
Do we have a picture of them, maybe?
I know nothing.
But my guess is she probably knew to some extent.
Definitely knew he was a meathead and a scumbag, but probably knew that he was cheating.
But, you know, politics make strange bedfellows, and they probably were on their quest for power together.
I'd say that's kind of like Gavin Newsom and his wife.
It's like, do they really love each other?
Or is it just like we are, you know, it's kind of like Bill and Hillary, right?
Like Hillary knew Bill was banging everybody and their sister, but she wanted power too.
So it brings people together.
Now that Swalwell will not have any power, is she that interested in just having a guy who's most famous for farting on MSNBC?
Probably not.
Do we have an image of them?
Yeah, so there she is.
All right, so that's her.
Probably not smiling as much today.
Mary says, you have interviewed Viktor Orban several times.
Has anyone asked him if Hungary would seek to leave the EU, like the UK Brexit?
The country pays a massive fine daily.
It seems like it would be better not under the decision-making power of the EU Parliament.
Well, unfortunately, obviously, as you know, Orban just lost the election.
The calculation that Orban did was they were willing to pay the fine, 1 million euros a day.
Because it would allow them to at least be trading with the EU.
So the amount of money that they made back in trade was worth the $365 million fine.
I think he would have argued that even if they didn't have the trade, paying the fine just so that the EU wasn't going to blow apart their border was probably worth it too.
You know, I'm going to cross my fingers when it comes to this new guy.
He is not a lefty, he's on the right, he's saying the right things about the border, but will he have the fortitude to stand up to the EU when they try to open the country's borders?
That's what it will all come down to.
It's almost nothing else.
And again, that's why it's like for whatever your frustration, if you're wildly against the war for whatever reason, you're a hardcore libertarian, you're just wildly against the war, you still shouldn't be against Trump.
You can say, you can express your frustrations, you could say, I wish we weren't doing this, do shows about it, whatever you want to do.
But the idea that you would try to take out Trump or I'm not going to vote for Trump or MAGA's over or the rest of it, it's like, okay, well, let's pick this up on November 6th, the day after the election when the Democrats are in power and see how it all worked out.
All right, one more question.
Olaf says, Do you have a favorite kind of cookie?
My favorite is cowboy cookies, homemade, of course.
You know, so I'm basically off the sugar.
Ice cream maybe once a month.
The kids love ice cream, so okay, once a month or so I'll have some ice cream.
We surprised Connor for his birthday a couple weeks ago, and we got, I wish we had pictures of him.
We don't have pictures of him, do we?
We got the craziest, biggest ice cream cookie sandwiches you have ever seen.
That was genuinely psychotic, and I did eat a lot of that.
However, if we're just talking straight up cookie, I'm going old school, black and white.
I told the guys we got a picture of the old school black and white cookie.
It's fluffy, if it's done right, it's moist, it's delicious, it's racially ambiguous, and it's what used to bring us all together, the black and white cookie, you know?
And I know you could say, what about your chocolate chip?
You might say, give me something with some MMs in there, something fancy, but just take me to a bakery or a bagel shop with a black and white cookie.
Oh, we do have images of those ice cream sandwiches?
Wow, you guys are working hard today.
We're looking.
They are, yeah, look at those things.
Look at those things.
Those are massive ice cream sandwiches.
That'll take you out for 48 hours.
Thank God we did that on Friday.
All right, guys, post game show 30 seconds.
I got a long day today.
I got actual friends after this, pre taping tomorrow's show.
We got some new guests on.
We're trying to introduce some new people to what we're doing over here.
I thank you guys for watching, as always, and we'll see you later.
unidentified
Ciao.
Zero zilch.
By the time I pay all my scientists, all the people in my research department, lab coach, It's a wash.