Feb. 26, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:19:36
3215 Republican Debate: Donald Trump vs. Ted Cruz vs. Marco Rubio
As Super Tuesday approaches - Republican Presidential candidates Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio took center stage in a fight to the political death. John Kasich and Ben Carson both played second fiddle as Cruz and Rubio went for the throat of the popular front-runner Donald Trump. Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Yes, we have taken the bullet so that you don't have to.
You can think of democracy as, you know, a.22 caliber bullet entering the front of her head.
The splatter marks on the back wall are kind of our thoughts on last night's Republican debate.
Mike watched it live and I watched it this morning.
So, Mike, I tried not to be colored by Mike's rather visceral reaction to the debate, which was what, Mike?
Well, I kind of like the last cage match in the back and forth, and this one, I kind of had the impression about this debate that many people had about the last one, where it's like, oh my goodness, you know, we need civility in this type of discussion, because this one was just Cruz and Rubio throwing as much muck towards Donald as absolutely possible, which is to be expected.
They're both not doing particularly well in the polls, and it's right before Super Tuesday, which is possibly going to be the deciding factor in who gets the nomination.
So this was not unexpected, but But there was something different to me, and I think the difference in this is that we did not have Jeb Bush in this debate.
And I cannot tell you how much I love Jeb Bush.
I am so thrilled that all his donators and lobbyists gave him $120, $150 million.
Jeb Bush...
Can we actually have a moment of silence for Jeb Bush in the ending of his campaign?
I think that's warranted.
Okay, that's enough.
But it's like if you take the clown out of the circus and you just get the elephants and the tigers and the trapeze or whatever, it's not quite the same.
And I think Jeb Bush was the clown in the comedic moments in the middle of debate as he would inevitably try and take down Donald Trump or say something and then fall on his face and look like a total cuck.
Without that, it just made the muck-throwing back and forth...
A little less tolerable.
And this was, I don't know, this may be the last Republican debate I can potentially tolerate, because everyone just came off as thoroughly unlikable.
Even Ben Carson and John Kasich, who, you know, at the beginning of the debate, they gave Carson the first word, which was kind of amusing.
And he's like, please, let's not fight everybody.
Let's all get along.
And then they proceeded to, you know, pull up in fisticuffs and start taking swings at each other.
And Kasich was pretty much the same thing.
Like, you know, let's get along.
That type of deal.
And then the cage match began.
So, yeah, it was pretty revolting watching people throw muck at each other for three hours.
And I don't know that it's going to have any major impact on Super Tuesday or where the polls are heading.
But it sure was unpleasant to watch for two and a half, three hours.
What did you think, Steph?
Well, it's not my preferred media consumption, to put it mildly.
I could have went out and saw Deadpool.
I didn't.
I watched Mario.
Yeah, I could have gone and seen the new Brad Pitt film about finance or something.
So, I think it's instructive.
You know, that's the best that I can sort of say about it.
It is very instructive.
Clearly, I think...
And Cruz, who's largely avoided attacking Donald Trump, went kind of full assault mode.
Sorry, Rubio.
Rubio's largely avoided attacking Trump, went full assault mode.
And Cruz, of course, they actually reached him in a commercial.
You can find this online.
We can put the link below.
They actually sort of reached around behind Donald Trump's back and shook hands with each other, Cruz and Rubio, like during a commercial break.
So clearly, I think the donors have looked and said, okay, well, Cruz, you've won one.
Rubio, you haven't won any.
Rubio seems poised to lose even his home state in Florida.
Cruz is now tied.
A poll came out right before the debate.
Cruz is now tied in Texas with Trump.
He was previously up like eight points.
So it's looking bad for Cruz in Texas.
Yeah, there's tens and tens of millions of dollars in play with people who've given money to these specific candidates in return for specific policies, and now it looks like they might have made a bad investment.
That's bad enough!
I mean, the $150 million that Jeb Bush spent was, I think, quite delightful in many ways because I love seeing fools and their money parted.
But these guys, not only does it look like a malinvestment for buying the regulators and buying the politicians by funding Cruz and Rubio, but also there's no plan B because Donald Trump isn't taking donations from corporations.
He's not taking any major donations at all.
So not only have they malinvested, but there isn't even someone else they can buy waiting in the wings.
So all of that is a pretty big problem for them.
more money behind Hillary.
You know, the establishment Republicans and the establishment Democrats ultimately aren't too dissimilar once they get into power.
And, you know, it might be the establishment versus Donald Trump, because at least they can control Hillary, you know, send a check to the Clinton Foundation and never know that policy that you want might just get enacted.
With Trump, whether it's free market or not, it's probably not going to be immediately what lobbyists and donators want.
So yeah, steady conveyor belt to sweet young things to Bill, Clinton's creepy uncle underground spanky fingers lair.
And I think Pete's pretty much set to go.
The one thing that I found, and it was so absent, it didn't even dawn on me until halfway through this debate.
So...
They talk about North Korea.
They talk about South Korea.
They talk about Israel.
They talk about Japan.
They talk about Mexico.
They talk about China.
They're just going all the way around the world.
Except for the one giant continent that actually gave birth to America.
Mike, I wonder if you can tell me which giant continent, which is going through one of its biggest transitions in its history, was not even mentioned during the entire GOP debate last night.
What is Europe?
What is Europe?
You are correct.
I win Jeopardy.
Europe is the giant blank spot in the Republican map of the world.
And I found that fascinating.
I mean, there are hundreds of millions of Americans, I would imagine, who have European heritage.
And they are very concerned about what is going on over in Europe.
It came up, like all the migrants coming in from North Africa, Middle Eastern countries and so on, all the Muslims pouring in, and it didn't come up even once, like not even once.
What would you do about Europe?
I mean, we're supposed to care about troop movements in North Korea, but we're not supposed to care about the greatest threat to European civilization since, I would suppose, the last Muslim invasion.
I just find that really, really remarkable how out of touch America is with its roots.
And, you know, Donald Trump is as responsible for that as everyone.
He didn't bring it up.
But none of these questions.
Yeah, you know, it's like, alright, everyone up here has fellated Israel in the past.
Everyone likes Israel, but do you really, really like Israel?
But nothing about Europe.
You know, Israel's an ally.
We must stand behind our allies.
Are European countries not also allies?
Can we talk about Europe?
No, guess not.
Guess not.
You know, there is that little thing called NATO.
There is that, you know, wee continent that America had to go to war to twice over the last, I guess, almost 100 years.
And because it was being threatened by internal chaos or external threats.
It would seem to me that it would be interesting to hear a little bit about Europe in the debates.
But no, no, it all has to be about every single other country rather than the country, continent and culture that gave birth to America.
I just wanted to point that out, that that is a remarkable erasure of history and one of the reasons I think why the middle class in America is kind of pissed at feeling excluded from these kinds of conversations.
Well, Steph, at least the positive in this debate is no one was giddy over excitement about war with Russia.
As in the previous debates where everyone's like, no way you can get along with Putin at all!
Absolutely not, and Trump's like, oh, we might be able to get along with Putin.
Everyone's like, no, we must fight Putin.
Putin's our enemy.
Okay, fine.
Let's go to war with Russia.
That sounds delightful.
But yeah, the focus on other countries at the expense of conversation about things happening in America here and now, it's pretty disgusting.
Oh yeah, Kasich just took it for granted that America is the world's leader.
Why?
Why?
Why is America the world's leader?
What has the world done for America that America should owe it so much in return?
And then it's like, well, you know, if America leaves Japan, Japan might get a nuclear weapon.
Okay?
So?
I feel relatively okay.
I can sleep at night.
Are we invading Japan now?
What's the plan here?
That war is pretty much over.
I don't think they're looking for vengeance on Connecticut.
Are we going to slap a tariff on the import of Hello Kitty products?
What's the goal?
I don't quite understand.
And Kasich, you know, he's got a weird totalitarian streak.
The two things sort of popped up, and I know we're kind of jumping all over the place, but first, he's fine with forcing bakers to cater gay weddings.
Yes, he's thrilled about that, apparently.
Totally fine.
No problem with that at all.
And, you know, what's next?
Might you not want to serve divorced people?
So, why can't they not serve divorced people?
I mean, the Catholic Church doesn't, theoretically.
So, is he going to start suing the Pope now for not serving divorced people or allowing gay people into the clergy?
Why is it that the Catholic Church gets to discriminate against divorced people and homosexuals and so on, and women, by not allowing them into clergy?
And nobody complains about that.
But that's because they have a lot more Voting blocks might empower and cultural sway than your average local baker does.
So, yeah, I just found that to be pretty, pretty sad.
I was also quite fascinated by...
By Kasich's goal of, you know, when it came to Apple and the FBI, you know, this is, can we get into the back door?
First of all, okay, just big picture people for those who don't understand technology, i.e.
all the moderators, all the politicians and every newspaper reporter who seems to be talking about it.
There's no such thing as only unlocking one phone, because they all have the same operating system, more or less, you know, different versions, different flavors.
There's no such thing as unlocking one phone.
It's just one phone.
Of course, even if it is just one phone, they're going to be asked to unlock more and more and more phones.
Of course, that's the natural creep of government.
That really needs to be understood.
Secondly, only Apple can probably do it because Apple has the source code for the operating system and other people don't.
Don't.
And this magic reverse engineering is not really as possible as people think it is.
And so this idea that it's only one phone and everything else is going to be fine, that's ridiculous.
Now, number two is that once the technology has been created, Through the engineers with access to the Apple source code, people know it exists.
Now, I'll tell you this.
If I was some senior engineer working at Apple and Tim Cook himself got down on his knees and begged me to work to create this, I wouldn't do it.
And I wouldn't do it for two reasons.
One is that It would compromise the security of the people who trusted my engineering expertise to keep their data safe.
And number two, once it was known that such a tool had been created, I would be, for the rest of my life, afraid of being targeted by other governments, by spies, by organized crime, digging up blanks.
Blackmail, digging up whatever they could get on me or bribing me or threatening me in order to get me to do the same thing for them.
Once that genie is out of the bottle and it's known around the world, it is a massive...
I would never ever...
I would quit.
I would just absolutely quit.
Anybody with any brains and the people who create this stuff are not dumb would quit because they would understand that it would put their lives, their families at risk because people would just do whatever they could to get a hold of this.
So creating that, once it's known to exist, the government will use it forever.
To get more access to more cell phones, they'll have to build that capability into every new operating system of the cell phone and every single engineer who had anything to do with it.
In fact, if I was working in the cubicle next to the guy who was developing that, I would quit too because I would be like, well, they don't know exactly who's working on it, but they know roughly the people.
They can read an org chart, so I'd be at risk of that as well.
It would cause a mass exodus of any reasonably smart engineers.
And then with the less smart engineers who didn't leave, they probably wouldn't be able to do it anyway.
So it's just a complete lack of, you know, once you've got a little tool, you plug it into a cell phone, and it no longer self-destructs until you guess a four-digit PIN. Well, they say, well, you know, Apple said that the FBI wanted a data decryption tool.
Okay, I don't care what you call it.
If it gives you access to a protected device, Phone, it's decrypting.
Whether that decryption is some hard decryption that comes in through a port, or the soft decryption of removing the delay and removing the 10x self-destruct option, which is, you know, how hard is it to guess from 1 to 10,000 which number you entered as your PIN or maybe even a password?
So it is a full decryption.
Whether the decryption occurs from the port or through bypassing security features in the operating system like the time delay and the 10 times self-destruct, it is a full decryption in that your data which is decrypted is being decrypted against your will.
And so this distinction, well, I thought that Apple wanted a full decryption.
Now it turns out they just want – well, it's got exactly the same effect and it would be completely catastrophic and I would expect very few politicians to have any clue about this.
But it tells me that either A, they don't have anybody with any kind of technical expertise on their staff or B, they do and they're all just playing to the – The fears of the masses, you know, well, we have to just decrypt this one phone, you see, to prevent another terrorist attack.
And it's like, come on, anyone that they were in contact with was using burner cell phones anyway, number one.
And number two, doesn't the NSA have a record of everyone they've called and contacted anyway?
They do have those phone records of outgoing calls and that type of stuff.
They already have that.
And also, how many months later is this?
It's not like it's the next day.
It's not like something else might happen tomorrow if we don't get this information.
But the degree to which people are absolutely certain about their position on this issue and they have zero technical knowledge or understanding of encryption.
And I think we have a better understanding of encryption in the fact that you come from a technical background.
And we've also done quite a bit of research into Bitcoin.
Just the technical understanding compared to people's certainty is pretty revolting.
Yeah, we've done a lot of research on technical staff encryption.
I got 15 years in IT, so you cannot create a master key that works on hundreds of millions of locks And then have it only ever work on one lock.
That's directly contradictory to the entire idea.
I'm going to monopolize the letter A, but I'm only going to monopolize it in one word.
It's like, nope, the letter A, in fact, shows up in quite a lot of words.
And the other thing I didn't like about Kasich was his basic...
You know, windowless van pedophile approach to negotiation, which is we're going to get the guys from the FBI and the guys from Apple in a room, and then we're going to lock the door from the outside.
I think that's called kidnapping.
I don't think you can legally do that, you fascist.
John, I don't know how they do things in Ohio.
I don't want to negotiate in his used car lot, you know?
Hey, come into this little unheated shack!
I want you to sign.
And then they go out and lock until you freeze your balls off and sign.
I mean, I think that's kind of called torture.
Don't let people out of a room until they agree.
That's kidnapping.
That's kind of torture and forcible confinement, kind of against the law.
So I just, this folks, you know, we're just going to lock them in the room until they work it all out.
It's like, I hope that you understand the law a little bit better than that after all your years in politics.
Or maybe you do.
I'm just being naive.
Yeah, the idea that the Republicans want to force a private company to make something that doesn't exist is still just amazing to me.
I don't know if it's age, I don't know if it's bad advice or whatever, but if the way we can prevent another terrorist attack, we just have to get five lines of code that apply to one phone.
Of course, who would, you know, that's a really tough position to argue against, right?
But when people understand the true ramifications of it, which these guys clearly don't, or maybe they do, but they say, well, look, I've got 30 seconds and I can't possibly explain it, plus the courts are going to decide it anyway.
But, yeah, I think they are, because, you know, oh, one phone, you know, a couple of hours of work, we can break into it, and it's only ever going to apply to one phone, and it might prevent another terrorist.
That's hard to argue against, right?
It's just one fingernail we've got to pull out of it.
Prevents the world from ending.
Well, most people think Apple has this information and they're just not giving it to the FBI. That's the level of understanding of this.
Apple has this terrorist phone information and they're not giving it to the FBI. They must like terrorists.
Okay.
All right.
Oh, you know, Apple is only concerned about their brand.
Yeah, that's right.
They're protecting a logo.
That's all they care about.
The brand is the thing.
We talked about this in a previous video, but if Apple provides keys to allow the government access to phones, people will stop buying Apple.
The company could go out of business in the long run.
And will people ever trust Apple again?
That's a permanent thing.
I mean, if they say, oh yeah, we did it for one phone, now we've destroyed it, and they won't believe them anymore, because they won't believe that that's the case.
And just because this can't get repeated often enough, there's this false story going around the internet that Apple has unlocked like 70 phones previously, and they're just refusing to do so in this case.
It's a completely different situation.
They have extracted data from phones previously when they've gotten court orders to do so, but these have been phones that run previous versions of operating systems that don't have all the data encrypted.
From iOS 9 and up, they have full encryptions.
You can't get anything off there.
And now it's a completely different situation.
The FBI is asking them to just create a whole new operating system so they can brute force attack a password.
And again, so they have never unlocked a phone before.
This is something completely unprecedented.
And unprecedented period.
You're forcing a private company to create something that doesn't exist.
They only have the technical knowledge to do so.
So it's a lot more complicated than people think on average.
And it's because the government screwed up the investigation, reset a password, erased cloud backups by accident, just completely screwed up.
And the thing is, too, that this is going to – the FBI is going to demand, of course, that Apple keep this technology in place so that they can, in the future, get stuff that they want from phones as well.
They're also going to demand that all new future operating systems that Apple develop this – it's going to be a permanent and ever-escalating relationship – And this isn't just Apple.
If this is applied to Apple, this is going to apply to every single American company that they will not invest in encryption on their devices because then they're going to have to have the financial overhead of potentially breaking that encryption.
If the encryption could just be broken, having encryption has no value because people aren't going to trust it or believe in it if they have to...
The FBI gives them a court order, and then the company has to break in immediately.
So you're going to have no American companies investing in encryption.
You're going to have foreign companies investing in encryption and foreign products being sold in the United States that have encryption that the FBI and the federal government doesn't have nearly as much overreach.
So you're going to hurt American businesses at the expense of foreign businesses, which seems to be a big conversation in the Republican debates, but no one brought up that point as it relates to the Apple case.
So I digress.
Sure.
Well, and you can do that in 30 seconds, but the other thing, too, is that it's like gun control, right?
I mean, if guns become outlawed, only outlaws have guns, and if all...
Big companies have to provide backdoor de-encryption services to the government, then nobody at all interested in criminal activities will ever buy one of those phones.
It will only ever be used on law-abiding citizens.
The outlaws will just buy burners or foreign encrypted phones.
It's all Just a bunch of nonsense and just shows the hysteria that you just, you wave around, oh, we're going to stop a terrorist attack and we just got to get into one phone.
Everyone, like the domino that this sets in motion, Apple understands because they've got something at stake, but the government doesn't.
So anyway, I just want to, we've got a presentation on that below, but sorry, go ahead.
And one last comparison, because they're going to be forcing people who really believe in strong encryption, the developers that worked on this, probably the best developers out there in the field of encryption, I got to imagine, are working for Apple.
So you're going to force those people who feel so incredibly strongly about encryption to break their own encryption.
This would be the equivalent of if we take Ted Cruz at face value, he's a staunch constitutionalist, and you force him at gunpoint to pass laws or legislation or do things that completely erode the Constitution.
That's the equivalent in this situation.
You're going to be forcing people to do stuff that they are morally opposed to doing at a deep visceral level.
Well, you mean like forcing Catholics to pay for birth control in healthcare plans or forcing people violently opposed to war to fund it through the income?
I mean, unfortunately, that bridge has been crossed quite many times, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be fought every time.
So, yeah, I think with Cruz and Rubio, the backers are basically saying, you've got to score some points over pulling funding because they don't want to throw bad money after good.
And they recognize that the way things are going, right?
There's some guy who's got a mathematical model that's predicted every single election since 1908, I think it is, some mathematician, and he's got 97, 98% Trump presidency, not Trump candidacy, right?
Trump presidency.
And so these guys are basically saying, you've got to stop this guy, or we're pulling your funding.
And that's why they snorted their coke and kicked it up into high gear during this debate.
And I think that's sort of the ugliness that you were experiencing.
Yeah, yeah, without question there.
So it wasn't surprising, but still wasn't exactly pleasant to watch.
And I don't know how many more Republican debates are scheduled, but I think I might, they might be down.
Well, they're going to become irrelevant, right?
I mean, because if Trump, yeah, if after Super Tuesday Trump's way ahead, then you don't need to watch anymore.
You just have to wait for Trump staring down Shilleri or Colonel Sanders.
Yeah.
One of the things that I don't think – again, this is how out of touch the Republican candidates are with the American people.
Donald Trump has donated to Democrats when he was a businessman.
Can you believe that?
I've never heard that before.
Why do they think that people care?
I've repeated it 50 times.
51, it's going to change the entire election.
I forgot that.
People don't care.
They simply don't care.
They recognize that he was, for most of his almost 70 years, not a politician and therefore had to survive in a political environment in New York State and other places where there's strong democratic presence.
And donated to a whole bunch of people.
And also, if donating to people that you disagree with is really, really bad, then, you know, I think the fact later that it came up that he donated to Cruz, I just felt really funny.
But this, Donald Trump has donated to Democrats.
Hillary Clinton, what is his daughter's wedding?
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
And the fact that this is all they've got and that they think people do care is really...
And also, for God's sakes, Donald Trump did not inherit millions of dollars.
I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars.
People keep repeating that lie over and over again.
Like, it's true.
Fact check, people.
Donald Trump's father died in 1999 after Trump was already worth billions and billions of dollars.
He did not inherit $200 million in 1982.
That was 17 or so years before his father died when he did get inheritance, but he'd already made more than his inheritance.
He borrowed a million dollars and turned it into more than $10 billion, which is pretty good.
And the value of his father's estate was $200 million, and that was split up amongst a bunch of siblings.
And many of the siblings, especially Trump, had worked in the businesses that his father owned previously.
So it's not like it was just an outright gift as well.
They were working and adding values to the company.
So, yeah, but again, people just continue to repeat this stuff as if it's fact, and it's absolute nonsense.
Can I tell you something else that's driving me nuts, Steph?
Ted Cruz leading the fight.
Are you aware that he's led the fight against several things?
I would like to lead the fight against Ted Cruz stating that he's led the fight against things that he hasn't led the fight against.
I've led the fight against amnesty and granting citizenship to illegals.
No, I'm sorry, that was Jeff Sessions, the guy that you use as a human shield when everyone brings up your very questionable doublespeak around immigration.
And for people that want more about Ted Cruz on immigration, great article on Slate.com, The Real Ted Cruz, which breaks down all his quotes about immigration and And the Gang of Eight bill in timeline form so you can see just how slimy he truly is.
But yes, he's led the fight against everything.
He's led the fight to defend the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
I've over and over led the fight to defend Israel and fight for Israel.
Oh my god, stop leading the damn fight!
Okay.
And K6, this is the road forward.
I don't know.
Is there a road that goes sideways?
Is there a road that goes backwards through?
And when you're going down a road, isn't it always leading where you – I don't know.
It's just – these cliches, it's almost too easy.
This – you know, one thing about Rubio, who is not – you know, he's a young guy, right?
Relative.
I don't know how old he is.
He's what?
44.
Cruises 45.
44.
Okay.
Okay.
Although the looks there, Cruise appears to be about 52 and melting and Rubio, you know, 19.
I love that heavily lacquered Ken doll hair.
I just, I think that is like, I really feel like if something fell from the roof, it would just bounce off it and nothing would move.
It's been so shellacked into place.
But anyway, it's like the youngest and thickest comb-over I've ever seen in my life.
But one of the things that...
I couldn't sort of help but notice is that when Rubio talks about lies, supposed lies or problems or whatever that came up from Donald Trump 38 years ago, all it does remind me that Rubio was six when it happened.
That's all that it – you know, like something to do with that 200 polls were hired by one of Donald Trump's company illegally 38 years ago or something like that.
Yeah, the deal – The deal on it is Trump Tower was built, and one of the contractors hired 200 illegal Polish immigrants.
You know that huge problem in America currently, all those illegal Polish immigrants coming in with their high IQs.
But yeah, so around 30 years ago, that happened, and it was a contractor that hired him, not Trump.
And Rubio also claimed that Trump paid a million-dollar settlement because of this.
Now, we have no evidence to indicate that that's the case.
There was a lawsuit brought against his contractor, and then by proxy, Trump.
And he settled it out of court after, I think, over a decade of litigation.
And it was sealed, so no one knows anything.
So he just pulled a million dollars out of his backside, which is normally what the lobbyists do for him.
But yeah, that's completely false.
Completely false.
Rubio.
We haven't talked a huge amount.
I know we're going to talk about him when you do your presentation.
But Rubio...
Oh, you know, with Cruz, it's obvious slime.
With Rubio, to me, it's a little bit more subtle.
So Rubio has this answer, which he repeats, you know, he's like the Ken doll, you pull, you got like four things he says.
But he's got this answer when asked about deportation, right?
Which is, you know, what are you going to do if America has to enforce its laws?
I don't know, I don't want to say that.
But he basically says, we'll seal off the border, and then we'll see what the American people want to do with regards to deportation, right?
In other words, we're going to close off the prison, but we're not going to put any prisoners back in the prison.
It's like, I'm pretty sure that that's why the prison, you know, they don't want the people here.
That's why they want the border sealed.
So, of course, if the more deportation, the better.
That's number one.
And number two is that anybody who knows, a moment's thought, right?
The moment you seal the border...
The wages and opportunities of the people who've made it across go up enormously because there's not new people flowing in to drive down wages and drive down opportunities and take jobs and so on.
So saying what we're going to see what's going to happen after the border is closed is ridiculous because after the border is closed, the incentive for those people to stay is going to go up enormously.
And they're going to fight much harder to stay because it's going to be worth that much more.
It's going to add a huge premium to what they're able to make and all the resources and opportunities available to them.
And I don't think there are any Americans out there.
It's just such an, who want that?
Who want that?
You know, like, why can't you do both at the same time?
It's important to build a wall, right?
And so I don't think any Americans have said that.
It's just his way of avoiding the deportation question, which, you know, Trump's a long time as well.
He recently changed his position to be more in favor of deportation to the point where he's saying that Trump is pro-amnesty because of his, you know, it's a touchback.
You know, they have to leave the country, but then they can come back in legally, which Trump has kind of wavered on a bit.
Previously, he's like, oh, you know, an expedited process.
We'll get him in here quickly.
And this time he said it might not be so quick.
That's the first time I've ever heard him say that.
So that's a bit of a change of position for Trump in this debate, as far as people coming back after being deported.
It might not be so quick if we let him in at all.
You know, first of all, for Trump, that's a change of the law.
As far as I understand it, the law is that if you've come in illegally, you're not eligible for immigration anymore.
I actually don't know that.
I read that somewhere, so I think that's true.
And the other thing, undocumented.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
Like, can we just...
There are no illegal people stuff.
He wasn't a rapist.
He was an undocumented lovemaker.
I mean, he's not a shoplifter.
It's an undocumented shopper.
Like, I just...
Undocumented?
I don't know.
Like, they've broken the law.
And listen, for those of you who know about my political views, let me just take a brief aside, sidebar, listeners, because people go nuts when I do this, right?
And, you know, when I speak within the status paradigm, people like, oh, my God, he's abandoned his beliefs.
No.
I've not abandoned any one of my beliefs.
I don't have the choice to abandon my beliefs because you've got to pursue reason and evidence.
I want to build a great road, but the only way to get to that great road, to where I want to build the great road, is to take a crappy road, right?
So then I say, okay, well, we're going to traverse this crappy road to get to where we're going to build the great road.
And people say, oh, now he's in favor of crappy roads?
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
We're just speaking within the paradigm.
This is the way that things exist.
They're not immigrants because immigrants is a legal process of entering a country.
So using the legal term to describe people who have committed not one but usually many more illegal actions, right, because it's not just coming across the border.
It's also often fraudulently applying for welfare or often fraudulently voting or often fraudulently.
Identity theft is a big problem.
It's a big problem.
And it's also not paying a lot of taxes but consuming a lot of resources, right?
I mean as they are wont to do, particularly the illegal immigrants, like 61% on welfare versus like 20% of the native population.
So there's a lot of crimes that are occurring.
And the idea – well, it's exactly the same as going through things completely legally.
I mean, that's like saying that a squatter on a property is an undocumented owner.
It's like, no, owner means that you have legal rights to the property.
Squatting means that you're going in there and occupying it illegally.
Okay.
And that's like, you know, when the guys in Oregon went into that wildlife refuge to protest the prison sentences and other federal incursions on their land, did anyone call them undocumented government employees legitimately living there?
No.
They were terrorists!
Because you see, what they had done is they had gone on to someone else's property, federal government property, without the federal government's permission, so they were terrorists!
Sir!
Because they were white.
Yehardists, right?
And now, when exactly the same is occurring with, you could argue, somewhat more deleterious effects of the American economy, particularly the income and wage opportunities of minorities, when people are doing – when tens of millions of people from Mexico are doing much worse than what the Oregon Ranchers did in coming onto federal land without permission, coming onto federal property without permission, which is the definition of crossing the border – Well, now you see, we've got to court their vote.
And this is the double standard for Hispanics.
Well, they're just...
Dream seekers.
And it's an act of love.
Because they're Hispanics, right?
But when white people occupy government property, they're terrorists.
And then you shoot them, apparently.
And that's, you know, everybody was like, yeah, that's legit.
You know, the FBI went, you know, this guy got shot.
And I don't know the circumstance.
It's hard to tell.
But that, you know, shooting those guys.
But boy, you start talking about deporting people who've done a lot worse than what the Oregon ranchers do.
Suddenly, the great Hispanic shield goes up.
And you can't talk about it.
And it's like, man, does anybody notice these double standards but us?
So Rubio won't talk about what the American people will bear regarding deportation until after the border is secured.
Well, at the same time, he's grilling Trump on his health care plan, not potentially realizing that if you take the 11 million people, if we take the government number, it very well may be more.
There are significant estimates it's a lot higher than 11 million.
But if you take 11 million of people that are likely not paying full market price for their health care, That's going to have a big impact on the entire healthcare system as a whole, and there's even some people that say the whole reason we have Obamacare currently is because of illegal immigrants and needing to insure them, not to mention the fact that it got passed because of Somali immigrants being the deciding votes to elect Al Sharpton and his seat, yada, yada, that whole thing.
We've talked about that before.
Not Al Sharpton.
Not Al Sharpton.
Al Franken.
Excuse me.
I'm getting my liberals confused.
They're so similar.
But yeah, we talk about that a bit in The Truth About Obamacare.
So, yeah, so turning to healthcare.
I mean, the American healthcare system is so messed up.
It's only, you know, how do you do it justice in 30 seconds?
Let me try.
Yeah, so, you know, my speech would be, you know, the healthcare system is so messed up.
We have licenses that restrict doctors from entering.
Doctors have used their political and emotional muscle to push out other healthcare providers like midwives, like pharmacists and so on.
It's only since the Second World War that you had to go to a doctor to get a prescription.
Before that, you could go into the drugstore.
In the 19th century, you could go into the drugstore and get any drug that you wanted.
It wasn't like people were dying in the streets back then.
Tort law needs to be reformed because of these crazy settlements and so on.
There's a huge amount that's wrong with American healthcare.
Instead of the health savings accounts and all this kind of crap, just let's liberalize it.
Let's take down the licensing restrictions, let people who are competent and chosen by the marketplace practice medicine, let people get access to medicines that they want without having to go through a doctor.
There's so many things that could be reformed to just make things better.
Of course, break down this lines around the state where the companies are not allowed to sell health insurance across state lines.
That will certainly help.
But I did.
So, you know, there's so much that would need to be talked about, but that would be politically explosive and would probably render you unelectable.
But that's and also one of the things is tort reform as well.
Tort reform is really important because insurance for health care providers in the United States is astronomical.
Ben Carson actually talks about this pretty significantly in his book.
He actually went to practice in Australia to get experience because they were going to pay him something similar.
But insurance costs were much, much, much lower in Australia.
So he went to Australia, actually made some money, gained tons of experience as a surgeon and then came back to the United States.
So the idea that he's not talking more about tort reform, given his own personal experience, and that's a little disappointing.
But Trump is one of the people who actually has talked about tort reform regarding health care.
Well, didn't Cruz get involved in one of these kind of court cases and make a lot of money from it?
So it would be a bit tricky for him to.
That's right.
He has talked about tort reform, but then he was working to get settlements against, I think it was, oh, what was it, a nursing home or something like that, at the same time?
Something like that, yeah.
While talking pro-tort reform, and then...
You know, exploiting tort reform to get large settlements for his clients, you know, not exactly the most.
You know, this idea of getting some special health savings account, it's just, you know, more government programs leading to more government programs.
You know, another thing that needs to be done in the US, and this has been talked about by a few people, It's uncoupling health insurance from your job, because that turns you into kind of a desperate health surf to your job, particularly if you work for the government, right?
So for those who don't know, the very brief history is that in the Second World War, you weren't allowed to give raises to your employees.
So the people who wanted to go, companies who wanted to keep good employees said to those employees, okay, we'll stop paying your health insurance instead of giving you a raise.
And you get tax breaks from all that.
So So that becomes that your health insurance is tied to your job.
Now, the way that health insurance is supposed to work, you're supposed to start paying it when you're young and healthy, and you can pay a little bit extra each month, which you can also do with life insurance, and then you're taken care of no matter what happens to you.
And the odds are worked out fairly well, and so you can get...
Lifelong health insurance just by starting off when you're young and paying the premium and so on, right?
And then, you know, the company can take some of the extra money invested and then use the profits from that to pay the remainder of the premiums.
I think with life insurance, I got it when I was real young and, you know, after a certain amount of time, it just starts paying for itself.
You don't have to pay anymore and you're fully covered and all that.
So that's, of course, the way that it should work.
But what happens now is that, let's say you're in a job and you get, I don't know, diabetes or you develop diabetes or something.
Well, then, If you leave the job, your health insurance stays with that job, and so you have to reapply for new health insurance.
Now, reapplying for new health insurance because you've left your job, and maybe it's because the company went bankrupt or moved overseas or whatever it is, right?
So now you have a pre-existing condition, and that's a big problem.
But it wouldn't be if you had a contract with the health insurance company that didn't go through your employer.
Then you could...
Your pre-existing condition wouldn't be a pre-existing condition because you would stay with the same insurance company over time.
So this idea or this reality that healthcare insurance is far cheaper if provided by your employer is a huge problem.
Not only does it not put the downward pressure on cost that individual purchases does, but it brings up this huge problem of pre-existing conditions which is really tough to unravel in the existing system.
And probably one of the more controversial statements of the debate was Trump coming out really strong for mandating coverage for pre-existing conditions, which essentially undermines insurance as a whole, because why would you buy insurance?
You just wait until you get sick.
Buy insurance then.
If they are mandated to cover people for pre-existing conditions, why would healthy people buy insurance?
Well, I'll tell you why.
because Donald Trump wants to bleed votes from Hillary.
I mean, I hate to put it.
He's taking on that liberal position because he is looking to gain votes from outside the Republican establishment.
That, you know, amoral and all that.
And yeah, look, the pre-existing condition thing is completely ridiculous.
As we've said a bunch of times on the show, it's like you only have to buy, you can buy fire insurance when your house is currently burning down.
Well, that just destroys the whole concept.
The whole concept is there has to be a risk.
There has to be an unknown.
Otherwise, it can't work at all.
So the fact that he wants to cover pre-existing conditions is… A mess, right?
But it's a mess caused by a whole bunch of other messes, not least of which is that Americans are very unhealthy as a whole, right?
I mean, if you're talking about Japanese people who seem to exist on kale, isolationism, and self-righteousness, then, you know, you're fine.
Because, not that I don't envy that, I'm just saying that's the way it is, right?
So, Japanese, you know, biologically, they just accumulate much less, or East Asians as a whole accumulate much less body fat and so on, but Americans are very unhealthy in aggregate, some of the highest obesity rates.
And I think they've been past Mexico's even worse, the highest diabetes rate in the world.
So, Americans are very unhealthy.
And so and of course, with an aging population plus bad health habits, saying to people, well, you can be denied for preexisting conditions would under the current system, if you made it sort of more of a free market environment without bringing down all the costs elsewhere in the system, like supply to doctors and restrictions on who can provide if you made it sort of more of a free market environment without bringing down That would be condemning people to a pretty ugly existence.
Like if you took away the requirement for preexisting conditions and didn't find significant ways to reduce the price of health care, yeah, a lot of people would be unable to afford their various medicines for chronic ailments.
And there would be significant casualties as a result.
I think Donald Trump is aware of that and obviously cares about that.
You know, as he oft repeated, don't want people to die in the streets and all that.
And the reality is, you know, like it or not, and maybe people can grit their teeth and push through this somehow themselves.
But if you don't require companies to take preexisting conditions and you don't fix the causes of costs in the health care system, There will be a lot of problems.
Now, one of the fixes which you pointed out, of course, is to get the illegal immigrants back out of the country, which will cause a significant drop in healthcare costs.
Well, the thing, too, is neither Rubio or Cruz are talking about eliminating Medicare or Medicaid, which I know this from people that I know that have had issues and then were able to get coverage under Medicare or Medicaid after the fact, after they had an issue and then Medicaid and Medicare went back and paid for it.
You essentially have mandated coverage for pre-existing conditions under those two programs currently.
So unless you're going to reform that or abolish that, you already have this, independent of anything else.
So unless you're going to take a strong position saying that that needs to be removed from Medicare or Medicaid, criticizing Trump for the mandated coverage, you're leaving something big out of the equation there.
Now...
Rubio is also facing a lot of criticism from Trump.
He tweeted on Friday, why would the people of Florida vote for Marco Rubio when he defrauded them by agreeing to represent them as their senator and then quit?
A 2005 study found Rubio to be the most absent member of the Senate.
And that is not inconsiderable.
And that...
I don't know.
Maybe he was just busy figuring out where to put his imaginary wall or whatever.
Maybe he was trying to convince cruise ships to call stowaways undocumented customers.
I don't know.
But now, have you looked into this, that Trump apparently hired a bunch of people for seasonal workers and just took jobs away from Americans?
All right.
So what's the story?
What's the criticism?
What's the story behind that?
Okay, so Trump, some of Trump's properties, and specifically they're talking about one in Florida, have used H-1B visas to legally bring in immigrants temporarily to fill seasonal jobs.
Trump said 90 to 120 days.
There's some evidence going out there from our friends at the Center for Immigration Studies that it's quite a bit longer than that in some cases, so Trump may have been stretching the truth there a bit.
But the idea that Trump legally brings in people on H-1B visas, okay, like, listen, if you are completely against H-1B visas and have been consistent on that position for a long period of time, and you want to say that you're stronger on immigration because you're against those visas and Trump uses those visas, okay, I can understand that.
And that would be, I think that would be a valid criticism if you're really strongly against H-1B visas.
Neither Rubio or Cruz have been very strong against H-1B visas.
So, Rubio's Gang of Eight immigration bill would have increased the annual H-1B visa quota by 45,000 slots.
Now, when that didn't pass, he was a sponsor of the Immigration Innovation Act of 2015.
I love the name of these bills.
I really do.
Which wanted to triple the number of H-1B visas to 195,000.
Okay?
And Cruz put an amendment onto the Gang of Eight bill, which was Rubio's main legislative accomplishment, which failed, where he wanted to take high-tech H-1B visas coming in and increase them by 500% from $65,000 at the time to $325,000 at the time.
So if you're going to throw, hey Trump, you brought in seasonal workers on H-1B visas legally into the country, For your properties, which is like the standard way things are done in those industries, whether you like it or not, that's the reality of it.
I can understand that, but not if you have been very pro increases in H-1B visas in the past.
And Cruise has walked that back as of late, but...
And it seems that...
Rubio, in particular, very, very concerned about a couple of hundred Polish workers that Trump may or may not have hired 30 or 40 years ago.
The potentially 30 million, I don't even know, illegal immigrants, again, is a sort of contradiction in terms, illegal occupiers is probably the best way of putting it, or squatters.
He doesn't seem to be quite as concerned about the 30 million of those, but a couple of hundred Polish people 30 years ago, wow, that's just terrible.
Why is it that when it comes to talking about Hispanics, you have to have a Hispanic?
I need to understand that.
Like, oh, we have to talk about something to do with Hispanics.
Let's go to the Hispanic lady who then can answer the questions in somewhat accented English.
That seems to me pretty funny.
I like how Carson couldn't understand her.
He was probably shocked they were asking him a question.
Do you come with subtitles?
He may have dozed off.
I don't know.
But that to me is really, really telling.
Because it says that the major issue that Hispanics are concerned about is illegal immigration.
And it says that Hispanics basically vote as one block and they want amnesty for everyone.
Now tell me how we're not supposed to then view Hispanics as a collective blob with one head.
I mean, this is something I talked about in a show recently, what pisses me off about political correctness.
But people say, well, you can't judge all Hispanics.
You can't view all Hispanics as having, oh, yes, no.
But you see, we've got to bring the Hispanic woman in to talk about how you've got to win the Hispanic vote.
And in order to do that, you have to cater to the mass Hispanic preferences for amnesty for illegal immigration.
So...
That, to me, is okay.
Well, which is it, right?
I mean, if we are not supposed to judge Hispanics collectively, then why is the Hispanic lady talking about three things that you need to do to appeal to the Hispanic voters?
Okay, well, then they are thinking collectively.
And therefore, they are considered to be an insurgent against people who oppose illegal immigration.
In other words, it's Hispanics versus whites.
And so how is it then that white people are not supposed to look at Hispanics and say, well, you all want amnesty for illegal immigrants, which we don't want, and so we're enemies on this, and we're going to judge you collectively as all wanting this?
I mean, doesn't this just confirm this whole approach?
I think those are very fair questions, Steph.
I'm willing to be corrected.
This is how it looks like from the place of reason.
Well, another bizarre thing about that entire question was it seemed to be based around, Donald Trump, you say that you're going to win with Hispanics and get lots of Hispanic support.
And while you did win 40%, 46%, I think, of Hispanics in Nevada, we're going to say that doesn't count because it was a small sample.
Why'd they take the poll?
That's what Trump asked.
That's an oddest and interesting question, but it's like, yeah, you say you're going to be supported by Hispanics.
Are you really going to be supported by Hispanics?
The reality is Republicans, on average, don't get supported by Hispanics.
This is just the way it works.
If you look at all the elections and voting patterns, we actually have this in The Truth About Illegal Immigrants.
We have voting patterns for Hispanics, legal and illegal, included in there, and they overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
Now, Trump is, looking at all the polls, he is getting more support from the Hispanic and black communities than any Republican in an eternity.
And there's tons of polls that show this.
Compared to Democrats, he's probably not getting a lot of Hispanic support.
But compared to any Republican in recent history, he's getting tons of support.
So the idea that we're going to ask an entire question criticizing Trump for getting support from Hispanics when he's getting more support from Hispanics than any Republican candidate in forever, it's kind of absurd.
Oh man, don't even get me started on this one.
A basic question was, Hispanics don't like you, Donald Trump.
Which, you know, I think was kind of funny.
I mean, did the other two Hispanics, I know not from Mexico, but did the other two Hispanics get a lot of support?
Well, if you just look at the center three guys on stage, Hispanics clearly didn't like Donald Trump, if we're using that small sample.
You are flanked by two Hispanics who don't seem to like you very much.
Do you have a response?
But this idea, they say, well, Hispanics want a politician to tell them or to reassure them that they're wanted in America, right?
This was the big, the woman said, you know, if Hispanics don't hear that they're wanted in America, then they won't listen to anything else that you have to say.
You have to make them feel wanted in America.
Do they say this about East Asian voting blocs?
You know, that the Japanese Americans really want to feel that they're welcome and wanted in America.
And the answer to that is nobody ever in American history has ever made that case, to my knowledge.
Because the Japanese Americans came legally.
I mean, the squatter in your house really wants you to tell him that he's welcome there.
Well, maybe if he wasn't squatting.
Now, of course, a majority of Hispanics in America, I don't know what the numbers are, but a good proportion of the Hispanics in America came over legally.
But 10 to 30 million came over illegally.
And so it's kind of weird.
And why people don't say this is like, I don't know, maybe they're not wanted in this country because they're here illegally.
Maybe that's got something to do.
Maybe we shouldn't try and make people feel wanted who broke the law to get into the country and currently nestle on welfare producing lots of children.
That really screw up other people's educational opportunities because now you need multilingual teachers everywhere.
So I just find that kind of weird It's like, how do we make the people who broke the law, entered illegally and are committing lots of crimes, including identity fraud and fraudulent voting and fortunately applying for welfare and putting their kids in schools and all that, how do we make people who've come in illegally feel welcome?
I mean, I just find that so completely bizarre.
What a strange question that is.
In the realm of strange questions, there was another one from Hugh Hewitt, directed at Ted Cruz.
Cruz, do you trust Trump to nominate conservative judges?
Boy, if that's not the biggest softball imaginable, I don't know what would be.
Why, yes.
Yes, I do, Hugh.
Let's move on.
No.
It's the one thing I do agree with him on, so thank you for that softball.
Oh, man.
But I guess after Donald Trump said that nobody listens to Hugh Hewitt, it was predictable that he'd come up with a tougher question.
It's always interesting, as someone who knows Ted Cruz and his support of Justice John Roberts in the past, to watch him so strongly distance himself from support whenever he's asked about this question.
It's like, dude, just own it.
You were one of the main people out there defending John Roberts against the criticisms that he didn't have much of a paper trail and a record.
He wrote an entire article.
You actually...
Hey, hey, this is one thing Ted Cruz actually led the fight on.
He led the fight on getting John Roberts nominated when there was criticism against John Roberts getting nominated to the Supreme Court despite the fact he didn't have a large paper trail.
And, yeah, he just...
Well, there's someone else I would have chose differently.
Okay, well, that's nice, but you wrote a long article defending this guy saying he'd be great, and you've pretty much said he's one of your heroes prior to this before, you know, the Obamacare decision, so, you know...
Your friend turned on you.
That's something worth noting.
You don't have to distance yourself from it just because he made a decision you don't like.
Own it.
Own the downside.
It's like being in a relay race.
The baton is actually the Constitution, and the guy you hand it to and trust runs it into a volcano.
That's sort of my approach to that.
This Planned Parenthood thing, too, I mean, Trump bothers me a little bit, and it's hard to Sort of expect otherwise, but, you know, millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood with cervical cancer and breast cancer and so on.
It's like, and which organization is there for men in this regard, exactly?
You know, he, again, this may be old school stuff, but it's hard for anyone to see this, right?
You know, breast cancer, you know, more men die of prostate cancer than women die of breast cancer in terms of proportion, and yet breast cancer gets many, many, many times the funding.
And, you know, the women's health centers and women's this and women's that, it's like, okay, well, can we get a couple of things for the balls in the room?
You know, they do actually do a huge amount of work, and they probably built those buildings and supply air conditioning, and they built the sewers that take the crap away.
So I just find it, you know, this is one of these things, it's a lot to ask, right?
For any sort of mainstream candidate.
But that just sort of bothers me.
It's like, well, we need this giant organization to help women with their health issues.
And the men get what?
Go back to work!
Pay taxes.
So that the women can get healthcare issues taken care of.
Trump said the war on women thing thrown at him from the second he got in the race.
And, you know, he's been talking nonstop about how he's very passionate.
And his wife wants him to talk about how he's very passionate about women's health issues.
Very passionate about women's health issues.
A sentence that I would never think to say.
But it's him pandering to women to try and show that he's not a misogynist, which is the common thing thrown at him because he said negative things about Rosie O'Donnell and other women in the past who've been, you know, less than kind to him, to put it mildly.
So that's all it is.
It's politics.
Donald Trump's kids doing very well.
One of Rosie O'Donnell's kids shows up in basically a heroin house.
Now, the one other thing that I really liked was, I think it was Wolf Blitzer, who, why he's not showing up in Castle Wolfenstein, I have no idea whatsoever, because he really, that name, you know, Blazkowicz, BJ Blazkowicz, and his companion, Wolf Blitzer, with the chain gun.
It just, that's my particular preference.
But the Independent Tax Foundation.
Okay, this is pretty funny.
So they say that the cost of Trump's tax cuts are $10 billion, Mike.
I think this is over a decade or something like that.
These guys, who are probably somewhat into the free market and not into central planning because nobody knows exactly how – nobody knows how to organize millions of people's millions of choices, private citizens.
They know exactly what's going to happen, Steph.
Exactly.
In 10 years, they know that if you return tens of billions of dollars to private citizens, they know exactly how much the economy is going to grow and they know exactly how much it's actually going to cost.
Like, so they said, okay, the cost of Trump's tax cuts, $10 billion.
Okay, you can make that calculation.
Mm-hmm.
You can make that calculation.
However, that's sort of like the cost to the mugger of not stealing to you from you.
The cost of the mugger not stealing you $50 is $50.
It's like, okay, but how about the benefit of me not having the money stolen from me?
That doesn't count.
So I can at least understand if they talk about the cost.
But when they say, but we also know, that's the cost, including all the economic growth that's going to occur.
So they know what happens when you transfer tens of billions of dollars.
I don't know what the sum total of his tax cuts are.
But let's just say tens of billions of dollars go from the government to the private citizens, invest and save and spend and start businesses and create new innovations, invent new products.
They know exactly what's going to happen over 10 years and how much...
That money going into the private sector is going to create.
I mean, how many jobs?
They know all of the things that are going to be invented, but all that private money going into entrepreneurial...
Given that they're so certain stuff, given that they're so certain about these economic models, I'm sure they're absolutely in step and believe the climate science models 100%.
Because if you can model all those variables so specifically when it comes to economic issues, then absolutely you've got to believe in the exact same thing for the climate model.
It's like...
It's like they believe in the climate model if every atom has free will as well.
I take the climate models.
These guys, why on earth do they have a tax foundation when they know enough about the economy?
They must be unbelievably great investors because they know – 10 years out, they know where the economic growth is going to go.
Man, what are their stock picks?
That's what I want to know.
Yeah, they know exactly what cell phones are going to look like in 10 years.
They know exactly what new innovations are going to be created.
They know exactly how fast the internet is going to be.
Like, they're incredible people and I just thought, who the hell can seriously say – because I know what they did probably.
They said, well, we're going to assume a growth of – right?
Right.
You don't know?
Come on, 10 years?
I mean, who knows what the economic growth is going to be next quarter?
Nobody.
So I just found that kind of funny.
Well, it's going to cost you $10 billion, and how are we going to cut that from the government, right?
Well, the other side of this, too, is they asked, you know, Trump, your plan's going to cost this.
How do you – can you explain that?
Well, both Rubio and Cruz have also proposed very significant tax cuts.
And I am sure somewhere someone has done calculations as to what their plans will cost as far as government revenue.
Are you asking, so Ted Cruz, so Marco Rubio, can you explain how you're going to make this up?
No, it's directed at Trump.
And, you know, again, you have the two guys on stage, Cruz and Rubio, taking swings at Trump nonstop.
You've got leading questions like this.
You're painting the guy with $10 billion or 43 years of media experience.
You're painting him as the underdog.
That's a challenge to do.
But you're somehow making that man the underdog by having everyone take him on.
And as long as he stays standing, he's going to come out looking great.
All the polls said he won the debate, and he took more incoming in this debate.
And there was a lot more things brought up, such as the Trump University, which we can get to in a second, and things that probably most people haven't heard of that are legitimate questions and criticisms of him.
But he stayed standing as all these people were assaulting him, and he looks like a sign of strength.
So optically, he's going to do well.
Cruz thinks that the IRS, like the tax collection agency, is so evil that it needs to be eliminated completely.
Like, it's so wrong.
Its powers of auditing and intimidation and coercion and threats are so evil.
You have to abolish the entire institution.
At the same time, The fact that Trump is being unjustly audited for the 12th or 13th year in a row is possibly a sign that he's got something to hide.
And I'm just like, how do you cognitive dissonance, bro?
I mean, unbelievable.
Like, the hemispheres have no connection whatsoever.
You can't have it both ways, you know?
It's a real evil institution with way too much power, and it's unjust, and it's bad, and they're investigating this guy.
Ooh, maybe they've got something on him.
We really shouldn't even listen to what they have to say.
And I'm like, oh my God.
I don't know.
We're just going to say, oh, he must be hiding something.
Not to mention the fact that his tax statement, which he posted a photo on his Twitter account of him signing his latest tax statement, and it's taller than the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal that Jeff Sessions took a photo of on his desk.
It's the idea that he'd get audited given the sheer magnitude of what he's sending in.
Not terribly surprising in that regard.
Well, and the fact that Carson says that when he criticized Obamacare, he immediately got audited multiple times.
I mean, for those who are older, back in the day, Richard Nixon kept a list of people and he considered using the IRS to audit them, to punish them for various things that he didn't like.
He never did it.
But he considered it, and that's one of the things that cost him his presidency, even thinking about using the IRS as a political tool or as a tool to punish enemies.
Obama plus Lois Lerner plus all of this stuff that goes on where people are just getting mysteriously audited for any kind of criticism.
That's actually happening.
I mean, the fact that Richard Nixon kept a little list that he never acted on was one of the things that cost him his presidency.
And the fact that it seems like Obama's using it as a pretty, like, Obama with the IRS is like watching one of those fail videos with a kid at a piñata party taking down a whole row of adults by the groin.
And, of course, there's nothing because white privilege.
And at least Nixon had the integrity to step down when they got him as opposed to everyone after that that just said, if I just say, nope, didn't do anything wrong and just stay there, no one's going to get me out.
No one's going to impeach me.
This delicacy too, like the delicacy that happens with regards to immigration, you know, there are other countries, like, you know, Japan, of course, is looking across at Europe and America, like no clue why the hell they're committing suicide so quickly.
But, I mean, just look at Australia, right?
So, in Australia, what happens is if you enter the country illegally, they go ship you off to a detention camp.
Not even in Australia, right?
But on, this is from Mark Stein.
This is a quote from Mark Stein.
He says, I've spent the last fortnight in a country where on illegal immigration, everybody electorally viable is a hard ass.
That's to say there's a bipartisan consensus that anyone attempting to enter the country without authorization should be warehoused in a detention camp, not in Australia, but offshore, either on Nauru, a pile of guano that fancies itself a nation state, or on Manos Island, which belongs to Papua New Guinea.
It's the equivalent of Trump imprisoning Mexico's in a camp in the Dominican Republic.
After years in detention, the migrants are generally either returned whence they came or resettled in a third country.
The squeamishness the Aussie Labour Party might feel about this is subject to the compelling political arithmetic that the voters are overwhelmingly at ease with it.
In America, by contrast, there is a cozy bipartisan consensus between the Democrat Party and the donor party that untrammeled, mass, unskilled immigration now and forever is a good thing.
The Dems get voters, the donors get cheap labor.
And so it's so funny.
I mean, because America doesn't know much about the immigration policies of the rest of the world, there's this ridiculous, you know, fainting counts, Victorian smelling sorts, healthy sensitivity about this issue.
But around the rest of the world, I mean, you know, try illegally entering Mexico and see what happens.
Try it with Japan.
Try it with Australia.
They'll ship you off to a detention camp that's housed on mountains of batshit, basically.
And everyone's totally fine with that.
It's like, oh, we got borders.
We're going to keep our borders and so on.
But in Europe and in America, there's this insane squeamishness about it that has the rest of their world looking at these people saying, are you insane?
You can't survive as a society like this.
Well, everyone touts Israel, and yet Israel's immigration policy is as strict as strict can be.
And, you know, some people have drawn some questions as to why people that are pro-Israel's immigration policy are not exactly pro-the United States' current immigration policy.
We had a call about that that just got released.
Yeah, just released it, so you can watch that in the feed.
Oh, yes, another interesting piece regarding Israel in the back and forth.
I thought this was kind of fascinating looking into Trump.
Trump talked about, he didn't want to take a strong anti-Palestine position, because he is actually interested in trying to negotiate peace in the Middle East.
He essentially proclaimed it as the ultimate deal to be negotiated.
You know, the odds of peace in the Middle East getting negotiated, just about zero.
But I gotta say, the idea of Trump at the negotiating table trying to make that happen, I'd pay to watch that.
It seems like it would be pretty entertaining.
And I just loved Rubio's back and forth saying, It's not a real estate deal, Donald.
It's not a real estate deal.
Actually, if you think about it...
Who gets to control land is real estate.
It is a real estate deal!
And actually, there was a couple of Jews who tweeted that as well, saying, yeah, it kind of is a real estate deal, so it's not way outside of his purview.
I thought that was really interesting, the idea that, you know, a guy that's really great at making deals, I mean, that's like the ultimate thing.
If you want to put a mantle, something on your mantle, you know, hey, did a negotiation for peace in the Middle East.
It doesn't get bigger than that when it comes to trying to make a deal.
Oh, I just, I remember this way back to the 70s, Jimmy Carter having...
The leaders of the Palestinians and the leaders of the Israelis, they're all shaking hands.
And basically what happens is Americans bribe both sides lavishly for some photo op and then claim to have solved the problem, which then immediately go back.
They use the money they got bribed to buy more weapons and go at it again.
There's no solution to the conflicts in the Middle East except for philosophy.
And philosophy is not about to erupt in that region of the world, at least outside of Israel, and take people's minds to a higher place.
So as long as people are dedicated to Irrational absolutist belief systems like fundamentalist religion, there's no peace.
There's no peace.
Because there's no central state you can separate religion from in that region.
So, yeah, I mean, it's not going to happen.
But, you know, we'll slowly build the consensus for philosophy.
Yeah, but it certainly is a real estate deal because it's who controls property.
And in that, I just thought, Marco Rubio, sometimes the sound bite is not your friend because it can kind of echo around the world and be proven wrong.
Oh, All right.
I got the Trump University.
I'm out of venom.
Trump University.
My facts need to refill.
Sorry?
We got to talk about Trump University.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so what's the story with that?
Alright, so Trump University, it's in trouble.
It was real estate seminars, with Trump's name on it.
And it got in trouble because it wasn't an actual university.
To run a university, you need licenses.
So by calling it Trump University, it's now in trouble.
And there's also civil lawsuits against it.
You know, real estate seminars.
Okay, here's the deal.
Among the key piece of evidence in the class action lawsuit is an infomercial by Trump, which he presents to university as his own.
In the infomercial, the billionaire claims he personally hired professors and adjunct professors that are absolutely terrific.
And honestly, if you don't learn from them, if you don't learn from me, if you don't learn from the people who are going to be putting forward and all these people are handpicked by me, then you're just not going to make it in terms of world-class success.
Alright, so then Trump was deposed and under oath told a different story, testified in 2012, that contrary to that commercial and all the Trump University sales materials and statements, he neither selected the instructors nor oversaw the curriculum.
So that's pretty much the biggest hook on this, is...
So he licensed out his name and said that he was personally involved when he wasn't.
Yeah, and further in depositions, he pretty much says, like, you're going to have to ask the guy in charge because I really didn't have much to do with it.
Question.
Sorry, just before we continue.
Did people have a lot of trouble with Trump University before the real estate crash in 2007-2008, or was it that they paid a lot of money and then the real estate market collapsed?
Yeah.
The New York State came after him for the university name in May 2011, and the depositions in the civil case took place in 2012, so probably 2011-ish, I gotta think, for when that case started.
So, after.
Okay, and that doesn't mean that the people don't have legitimate complaints.
Of course they do.
But if you spend a lot of money on a real estate course and then the entire real estate market goes down a sort of Florida sinkhole to hell itself, I can understand you having slightly more motivation.
In other words, when the real estate market was flying high, people probably had fewer problems with the college than when the whole thing collapsed and they might have been looking to get their money out of a bad investment, which again doesn't mean that they don't have legitimate claims.
I don't know, but it certainly sounds like, you know, go ahead.
Well, a student slash attendee had an interesting comment.
Trump has talked about, you know, people fill out these surveys and it has overwhelmingly great reviews.
I think he said 98%.
And I don't think that's disputed, but someone who's actually participating in lawsuits said he probably gave the program good reviews.
And he said some of the instruction was helpful and made sense.
It wasn't exactly original.
But the main problem was that it was grossly overpriced.
I paid as much of this thing that I would have needed for a full year's tuition at Iowa State University.
So this is what we call buyer's remorse.
You paid for a program.
I've never understood what it's overpriced mean.
If you're willing to pay for it, how is it overpriced?
You paid for something, and you took the class, and sorry, I mean, if this is the standard, people are unhappy after the fact with the instruction that was given to them, can college students of a sudden start suing the schools?
That offered them women's studies degrees and liberal arts degrees and this type of stuff that is now completely non-economically viable.
I give you the info.
I give you these headphones, which, you know, I don't want to use too much Bluetooth if I can avoid it, although this is quite convenient.
But these headphones, you know, I bought, bought headphones, supposed to stay in my ear.
They don't.
So, now, they told me when I brought...
The sound is good, and they told me when I went to buy them, they said, look, if you open this box, you can't return the headphones.
And I can understand that because a lot of people, they, you know, you can't hear the headphones until you open the box.
Maybe it doesn't have the sound you want.
You want to bring it back and so on, right?
It's tough to resell them.
So, I brought that.
Now, these headphones...
I'll find some way to use them, you know, but they're not going to be that helpful for this show.
So do I get to now scream and rail and complain?
I knew the deal when I was going in.
I don't know if they had a refund policy or finished the course or whatever, but...
They actually have offered a ton of refunds, too.
They apparently had a very generous refund policy.
So the whole case is kind of strange, and the thing that irks me about this is, like, yeah, you know, if Trump said he handpicked these people and then had nothing to do with it, that's bad.
We can say that.
That's bad.
And if there's some legal action because of that, okay, the courts will decide that.
But this whole guilty until proven innocent thing, which we've talked about constantly on the show, it drives me absolutely mad.
And, you know, okay, this is going to be decided, and Cruz was very upset.
He said, Can we put a Canadian flag up at this point, Mike?
Can we put just like up on the screen, big Canadian flag?
Not just that, which is guaranteed.
Even if the Supreme Court were to find that Ted Cruz is a natural-born citizen, despite lots of evidence of the contrary, it's going to be a case and it's going to be an issue if he were to get the nomination.
Do you really think if this man's a nominee, having a Republican nominee on the stand being cross-examined, you can apply it to him for natural-born citizen?
You can also apply it to him for his financial disclosures.
Or lack of financial disclosures.
I'll just read this little bit as to what the penalties may potentially be for his non-compliance from the Truth About Cruz presentation.
Sorry, just for those who don't know, that he didn't put down that he took out loans from big banks while running against the influence of big banks in politics.
Yes.
So, in addition to any committee action, the Ethics in Government Act authorizes the Attorney General of the United States to seek a civil penalty of up to $50,000 against an individual who knowingly and willfully falsifies or fails to file or to report any required information.
Moreover, anyone who knowingly and willfully falsifies or conceals any material fact in a statement to the government may be subject to fines, criminal prosecution and sentencing.
So if Ted Cruz is the nominee, do you really think that the primarily Democrat legal system isn't going to look into the complaints that have already been filed against him for nondisclosure?
The complaints are there, and they're working their way through the system.
Who knows how that's going to work out, but he could be subject to criminal prosecution and sentencing, in addition to the natural-born citizen case, which is assured to happen.
So there's two things on the docket where Cruz may be deposed under oath that the media won't go crazy about.
And the idea that that's an argument against Trump, again, can we just have the standard of innocent until proven guilty, which seems to be the foundation of the United States?
Can we please have that as a standard?
I mean, hey, I'm not saying right here that Ted Cruz intentionally falsified his financial documents.
I don't know.
Maybe he forgot.
It's, you know, kind of questionable.
But at the same time, I'm not going to say, hey, you know, let's drag the guy through the streets.
But, you know, he's willing to do that with Trump, which, eh, what can he say?
I like the very idea that Obama's Department of Justice is going to step over the smoking corpse of Hillary Clinton's security breaches to go after some guy for paperwork.
It's kind of inevitable, but it just shows you the state of the politicized state of American justice, I guess, for the one that would.
Yes, I think that's all I got.
I mean, the latest news.
Jeff dropped out.
Christie just endorsed the Donald, which is quite interesting.
Christie just endorsed the Donald.
Yes, he did.
He wants to be Attorney General.
I think that's pretty clear.
That might end up happening.
Yeah.
Oh, whoa, wait.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Are you picturing Chris Christie examining Hillary Clinton?
Wait, Chris Christie, Attorney General, Hillary Clinton.
Oh, now I need a cigarette.
And a change of clothes.
Not a cigar, because Bill Clinton will snatch it from me and insert it someplace unholy.
But Super Tuesday is coming up on Tuesday.
And that is going to be a pretty important deciding factor in who gets a nomination.
But it's looking, unless, you know, a meteor hits him or something, that Trump is going to get the Republican nomination.
And it's going to be Trump versus Hillary in the general election.
Another thing, too, and this, you know, this is a point that other people have made.
I'm going to make it very briefly.
Look, Donald Trump's life is not better because he's running for president.
And that, to me, is really interesting.
Like, the guy gets so many death threats every day that he has a security detail around him at all times and he has to wear a bulletproof vest every time he goes out of his bulletproof whatever, right?
Car or whatever.
That's not a lot of fun.
This isn't people going to give speeches in colleges and people smear blood or red paint on themselves or whatever it is.
This is like you have to wear a bulletproof vest every time you go out in public.
That is not a lot of fun.
The motivation behind doing that, you know, people can say, well, you know, he just likes attention.
Well, he got a lot of attention on his TV show, or he's an egomaniac, whatever that means, you know, or bloviating billionaire.
God, if I read that phrase one more time, it's just ridiculous.
But maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump really feels he has something to offer America that nobody else does.
And that's why he's willing to literally potentially take these bullets for what he believes in.
And, you know, you know, I myself have had to go up on stage with a bomb threat to the facility, right, when I gave a speech at a men's rights conference in Detroit, and Yeah, you know, you have to screw your courage to the stick in place, but I'm not doing that twice a day with a bulletproof vest and a security detail.
You know, when Karen Strawn goes out and gives speeches, she faces a lot of opposition and additional security.
Milo Yiannopoulos and Ben Shapiro have also gone out and are facing a lot of opposition.
That takes courage.
And what Donald Trump is doing takes a lot more courage because these guys don't have to show up in bulletproof vests and aren't getting daily death threats credible enough to get a security detail from the government following them around at all times.
If you're not out there doing even 1% of that kind of courage for the cause, whatever cause you believe in, if you're not out there doing 1%, you know, maybe something bulletproof for your nipple in case you get a nipple twist or something.
But if you're not out there doing a lot, it's kind of tough listening to people all bitch about Donald Trump, who is following the courage of his convictions with massive death threats against himself and with a bulletproof vest every day.
If you're not out there doing as much, it's kind of boring to hear you bitch about people who are pursuing their particular goals with enough passion that they're willing to take lead for their cause.
And if you're not doing that, you know, I don't care what you have to say.
I mean, the people who are out there really committed to what it is they believe in, okay, fine, launch some arrows.
But if you're not even on the battlefield, I really don't care what you have to say.
So if you like these kinds of chats, let us know in the comments below, freedomainradio.com.
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