Ep. 2087 - Here Comes The BOOM: Trump Exploding Status Quo
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Well, folks, it's a brand new week, and that means it's been an exciting weekend in Trump land. So Donald Trump has now become a cultural phenomenon. He always was a cultural phenomenon. All the TV shows in the 1990s make reference to Donald Trump, of course. But for a long period of time, when it came to the politics of Donald Trump, if you were in the middle, if you maybe lean left, it was just impossible for you to mention that you maybe supported Donald Trump.

Well, now that is all over. Donald Trump is a full-fledged cultural phenomenon. He's evident on everything from your NFL games on Sunday to the UFC. Of course, the UFC is very Donald Trump territory. He, of course, has shown up at many UFC fights over the course of the last year. Over the weekend, he entered the latest UFC championship to a hero's welcome. He was joined by a wide variety of his friends.

Including a very out of place looking speaker, Mike Johnson. I don't know whether he regularly attends UFC fights, but he's got the rest of his sort of normal crew there, which means Elon Musk and Don Trump Jr. And Joe Rogan and Dana White and Mike Johnson. Honestly, like it is it is a very, very funny thing. So here is what it looked like at UFC the other night. Who is now?

making his way to the world famous octagon, flagged by UFC CEO Dana White, 45, soon to be 47, President-elect Donald Trump. I wish the people at home could hear the sound in this room. It's so loud in here. It is so loud.

As Rogan announcing, as you will see, Donald Trump approaches him. They give him a big hug because, of course, Rogan endorsed him at the very end of the campaign. Now, here's the thing. Folks on the left, they may find this annoying. This is reality.

Donald Trump isn't just a president. He is, of course, a rock star. That is what makes him so appealing to, say, low propensity voters. You don't get 76 million votes in the United States of America as a Republican without being something of a rock star. And there he is approaching the announcers of UFC, including, of course, Joe Rogan. Big hug for Joe Rogan.

And why does that matter? Well, it matters because it used to be that it was just purely uncool to say that you were Republican or had voted for a Republican. And now, all of a sudden, you're seeing a breakthrough into the pop culture, the idea of not only being a Republican, but it's sort of rebellious and cool. I know, the left can't take it because they were brat and they were cool, but it turns out not so much. Over the weekend, for example, there were a bunch of NFL players who, after scoring touchdowns, proceeded to do the Trump dance, you know, the kind of strange shimmy that he does on

on stage. And it wasn't just one player. It was like five separate players on five separate NFL telecasts scoring touchdowns and then doing the Trump dance. Again, all that says is that the attempt to paint him as Adolf Hitler, the attempt to suggest that he is deeply abnormal or that he is so widely hated in the United States that he can't get his agenda must be ruled out of bounds. That obviously is untrue. Now, this is leading to despair among some people on the left. So, for example, one CNN guest was equating Donald Trump

at UFC to Caesar in Rome. I mean, and it really looks like ancient Rome here. This is sort of the conquering Republican Caesar who's going into the Coliseum and everyone's cheering and he's got his political gladiators with him. That appearance isn't just about him enjoying the applause. He's sending a message to the Senate. For sure. Like, not only are you entertained, but these are my people and are you willing to fight because here's who I have.

And now, again, the attempt to liken him to Caesar in Rome. What's amazing about that is that you never heard that same sort of language applied to Barack Obama. Barack Obama was constantly part of the celebrity culture. He was constantly ushering people from Hollywood into the Oval Office and then having them perform before him. He did his 2008 Democratic Convention speech on stage with giant pillars and smoke rising from the ground behind him.

So the sort of spectacle is not new in American politics. It's just it hasn't been applied to a Republican in our lifetime or probably ever. And that means something because it means that things are changing on a cultural level, on an emotional level in the United States of America. And that means that Donald Trump has an awful lot of steam. And you are seeing that, by the way, with regard to foreign policy.

You're also seeing it with regard to business. So on the business level, businesses are already adjusting. According to Axios, President-elect Trump will be a private citizen for another two months, but his impending presidential arrival is already changing the world in ways big and small.

So on one end, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is taking his golf clubs out of storage so he'll be ready if Trump wants to play. On the other, Taiwanese officials are considering massive arms deals to show Trump, who has said the self-governing island should pay us if it wants protection from China, that they're serious about their own defense. Now, that's a good thing. Taiwan increasing its own defense budget is a good thing because, of course, you want Taiwan bristling like a porcupine, thus to get rid of China's interest in conquering the place or incentive to conquer the place. And

In the private sector, companies are also changing how they do business. Apparently, the fashion company Steve Madden has revealed it plans to slash China-made products by 40 to 45 percent, shifting the production elsewhere. That is a good thing. And they're doing that in expectation that Donald Trump is going to increase tariffs against China because China, of course, is a geopolitical enemy of the United States.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has suggested one way to appease Donald Trump would be to buy more American natural gas. Now, again, why is that a bad thing? That's a very, very good thing. The rest of the world is already adjusting to Trump. And that is a good thing. Europe buying more American natural gas isn't just good for America. It's good for Europe because otherwise, guess who they're dependent upon? Russia.

And if the idea is that you want Europe standing up to Russia, you don't want them dependent on Russian oil and natural gas. Donald Trump was made fun of in his first term for saying this about the Germans. He said that the Germans were dependent on Russian oil and natural gas, that this was making them vulnerable on a security level. And he was mocked. He was laughed at. And of course, he was totally right. Meanwhile, European defense stocks have been shooting up after Trump's win because the Europeans are realizing, hey, maybe we ought to increase our defense spending, which of course is true.

There's even a cautious shift underway in Kiev where officials are preparing to take part in potential peace talks, according to Axios' Barak Ravid. Now, again, this is not a bad thing. Everybody knows that in Ukraine, pressure is going to have to be sufficient to force Russia to the table, but also to

Ukraine is going to have to actually come to the table at some point here. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's activity is actually spurring even President Biden to act in more solid ways with regard to Ukraine and Russia. So there are a lot of people on the right who are seeing the news today with regard to President Biden in Ukraine. And they're saying he's aiming for World War Three. He's upping the game. He's upping the ante. And this is going to escalate things with regard to Russia.

I don't think that's the right way to see what Joe Biden is doing. What Joe Biden is fearful of is that Donald Trump is going to cut aid to the Ukrainians and thus the Ukraine will collapse in the face of Russia. That's a misread of Donald Trump. Donald Trump is not going to so cut aid to Ukraine that Vladimir Putin strolls through Kiev. If there's one thing that President Trump does not want, it is that image. He does not like losing and that would be him losing.

In the same way that Donald Trump did not pull out of Afghanistan ignominiously, even if he wanted to pull out of Afghanistan, he wasn't going to do so. It meant the Taliban taking over Bagram Air Base. So, too, when it comes to Ukraine and Donald Trump really does not have an interest in Vladimir Putin dominating Ukraine, which is why what he has spelled out with regard to any plan with regard to Ukraine suggests that Ukraine remains a functioning state sans Donbass and Crimea.

with neutrality, but with enough military capacity to forestall any further Russian aggression. So what's actually happening here is that because Joe Biden sees Donald Trump coming and because Donald Trump has suggested that he is going to force the Ukrainians to the table, which does need to happen, by the way,

The United States has so far done two things. Slow walk to aid to Ukraine, meaning they don't actually have the military capacity to pursue some sort of total victory against the Russian. And second, they've not made clear to Vladimir Zelensky what the end game is. So it's like the worst of both worlds. You haven't made clear your goals and the means are not calibrated to reach those goals. Whenever you do a military action or even aid in support of a military action, there has to be a goal. And then what are the means to reach those goals?

Joe Biden did not define a goal in Ukraine other than victory, but he did not specify what victory meant. Did that mean freeing Crimea? If so, you have to give them F-16s. Did it mean freeing Donbass? If so, that means that you have to rush them tanks. You have to allow them to attack across Russian supply lines in Russia if you actually want those things to happen. He didn't do any of those things. So he wasn't defining victory and he wasn't defining the means. Well, now Donald Trump is coming in and he is going to be defining victory as the deal that was spelled out a moment ago.

And he's going to calibrate those means to that deal. And so Joe Biden, in advance of that, is accelerating military aid to Ukraine, which, by the way, is probably good for Trump. That is probably good for Trump because the harder Ukraine goes right now, the better the deal will be that they will cut on the other end of this thing. So apparently, President Biden, according to The New York Times, has now authorized the first use of U.S. supplied long range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia.

Those weapons are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops in defense of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of Western Russia, according to officials. Mr. Biden's decision is a major change in United States policy. The choice has divided his advisors. His shift comes two months before President-elect Trump takes office, having vowed to limit further support for Ukraine. President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine did not confirm the permission to strike, but suggested on Sunday more important than lifting the restrictions would be the number of missiles used to strike the Russians.

He said today, many in the media are talking about the fact that we have received permission to take appropriate actions, but blows are not inflicted with words. Such things are not announced. The rockets will speak for themselves. Again, he began to ease restrictions on the use of U.S. supplied weapons on Russian soil. Biden did after Russia launched a cross-border assault in May in the direction of Kharkiv. Officials said that while Ukrainians were likely to use the missiles first against Russian and North Korean troops that threaten Ukrainian forces in Kursk, Biden could authorize them to use the weapons elsewhere.

Some U.S. officials say they fear Ukraine's use of the missiles across the border could prompt Vladimir Putin to retaliate with force against the United States and its coalition partners. That is unlikely in the extreme. Vladimir Putin sees Donald Trump coming down the pike. He knows both that Donald Trump does not want to surrender and also that Donald Trump does not want to prompt a full-scale war. And what that means is that all of this is likely to actually advance a deal. We'll get to more on that in just one second. First, do you know where the companies that you use actually spend their money, like for charity purposes?

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presumably because a rush of aid to Ukraine in advance of a deal is not necessarily the worst thing in the world. And by the way, the Europeans are coming to grips with this. The Europeans have known for years that this is the way this conflict is going to end, which is why, according to the Wall Street Journal, President-elect Trump's push for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine is finding growing acceptance in Europe as one of the biggest aerial bombardments of the war added to growing concern about Ukraine's ability to withstand mounting Russian attacks.

Officials in many capitals recognize an off-ramp to the conflict appears increasingly necessary. Apparently, the increased alignment between Europe and the Trump administration over the openness for talks is a sharp turnaround from even six months ago. Back then, European officials looked in dread at the Trump team's pledge to end the war with swift negotiations amid fears the former president would cut a deal with the Kremlin at Ukraine's expense.

Now, again, I never believed that that was true. In fact, I'd spoken with European leaders who are much more sanguine about Donald Trump than the left wing press in the United States. They were saying the world was more peaceful. People were more scared of Trump and the deals that he was cutting looked more solid than anything like what Joe Biden has been doing. The world is already adjusting to the Donald Trump presidency and is getting stronger for that. By the way, it has now been confirmed by Khan 11, which is a channel news channel in Israel that Hamas has been booted out of Qatar. Those top officials are now in Turkey.

which should lead the United States, as the leading funder of NATO, to suggest that either Turkey needs to give up those Hamas officials and broker a release of the hostages being held in Gaza, including several Americans, or Turkey should be booted summarily out of NATO. NATO benefits should not be attached to a country that openly sides with terrorist groups. Certainly not a country that has the power to invoke NATO Article 5. That's insane.

Meanwhile, President Trump's picks continue to raise hackles on the left, particularly. There's a lot of chaos regarding these picks. And so much of this is personal. Now, a lot of this is political, obviously, but a lot of it is personal as well. Apparently, President Trump has been shifting his take on who he's going to pick as Treasury Secretary. He'd been expected to pick either Howard Letnick, chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, or Scott Besson, founder of the investment firm, KeySquare Capital Management and former money management for George Soros.

But apparently he's been having second thoughts about the top two candidates. He's now slowed the selection process. Apparently, according to Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, who's a frequent recipient of leaks from Trump World, Letnick, who has been running Mr. Trump's transition operation, has gotten on Trump's nerves lately.

You do have to love the reality TV aspect to this administration. You know, always it's like behind closed doors. There's some catfights going on. Trump has privately expressed frustration that Lutnick has been hanging around him too much and that he's been manipulating the transition process for his own ends. A person familiar with the process who spoke on condition of anonymity described the battle between Lutnick and Bessence as a knife fight with Lutnick as the primary aggressor. Bessence is still under consideration, but apparently Elon Musk is backing Lutnick.

So totally unclear which direction he's going to go with regard to treasury secretary. There's some other candidates whose names are in the mix.

Suffice it to say that the chaos in Trump world is not over. And again, what I've said to people with regard to chaos in Trump world for a very long time is watch the policy that emerges, not the chaos that surrounds the policy. The chaos matters a lot less than the actual hard-nosed policy that emerges from any Trump cabinet or the picks that emerge from Donald Trump himself. And what is the one common denominator among these picks? Well, Speaker Mike Johnson, who again,

Look like me at a UFC fight with a bunch of football players. I have sympathy for Speaker Johnson. Here he was explaining Jake Tapper that while a lot of people may not like these picks, the point of these picks is to shake up the status quo, which obviously is true. With some of these nominees, Gates, Hegsath, RFK Jr., I wonder, does it matter anymore for Republicans to think of leaders as people who are moral in their personal lives? Is that still important to the Republican Party?

Sure. It's an important issue for anyone in leadership. This is what I'll say about the nominees that the president has put forward, is that they are persons who will shake up the status quo. And I think what the American people believe and what they've delivered with the mandate in this election is the demand that we shake up the status quo. It's not working for the American people. So use the term in the opening about how these are disruptors. They are. I think that's by design.

Any president has the right to name their own cabinet, to nominate persons that they think will fulfill their agenda. And the people that are on this list will do that. They will go into the agencies that they're being asked to lead, and they will reform them. These agencies need reform. And I think the vast majority of the American people understand that. You can't have status quo appointments in a moment like this.

Now, again, he's not wrong about this. And we can argue over the various merits and demerits of these candidates. And I think that each one should be given a full Senate appointment process. I think it is very important, actually, that the American people be introduced to these candidates, know everything about these candidates. After all, these are going to be cabinet secretaries. And with a Republican majority in the Senate, certainly they're owed a fair hearing and they will get a fair hearing in the Senate of the United States. With that said, the thing that is very obvious about all of these picks

is that they are meant to shake up the status quo, and that is what is really driving the left nuts. They can say that it's all about Matt Gaetz's various accusations or Pete Hegseth's tattoos. We'll get to all that in a second. That's not really what it's about because we know for a fact that if these people were on the left, all of that would be ignored. Willy nilly. It wouldn't matter to them one iota. The one thing that is preeminent

perfectly obvious, however, is that the big objection is Donald Trump moving fast, not on nominees per se, but moving fast on the policies to be pursued by the nominees. That is the actual goal here is to obstruct all of that. So, for example, Joe Biden, the rest of the left, they've been touting the so-called green energy revolution. The problem with the green energy revolution, of course, is that it is utterly and completely failing. That doesn't mean that there can't be development of green energy.

It can't be electric cars. I own one. But it does mean that the so-called green energy revolution is not going to replace fossil fuels anytime soon. Fossil fuels are too efficient. They're too durable. And the attempt by Joe Biden to cut them off has been a mistake. Joe Biden over the weekend went apparently to Jurassic Park to speak about green energy. Makes sense. He's a dinosaur. So here he was just explaining how green energy can't be walked back. Back home.

I signed the most significant climate change law in history, a law that positioned us to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030. This generated $450 billion in new clean energy investments. It's no secret that I'm leaving office in January. I will leave my successor and my country and a strong foundation to build on if they choose to do so. It's true, some may seek to deny or delay

the clean energy revolution that's underway in America. But nobody, nobody can reverse it. Nobody. Well, I mean, good luck because actually somebody can reverse it. That person is President Trump. Not to reverse the so-called green energy revolution, but to actually rely on fossil fuels that are going to actually power the American economy. By the way, after that, my understanding is that they released Joe Biden back into the wild. Nature is healing. So I'm finally glad that they decided to untag the president

and let him stagger off into the woods where he prefers to be at the end of his life. In any case, President Trump, for example, is now pushing the shale boom. He selected on Saturday Chris Wright as the nominee for energy secretary. Wright was front and center for the fracking revolution, according to the Wall Street Journal, that reshaped the country as a band of scrappy wildcatters that reinvigorated U.S. oil and gas production to record heights. His $2.8 billion company, Liberty Energy, pumps water and sand underground to frack customers' wells.

Right. Selection elevates a pugnacious branch of the oil and gas industry that is skeptical of climate change science and mostly hasn't pledged to build out low carbon energy businesses, unlike giant ExxonMobil and Chevron. That is a very good thing. OK, the idea that we are going to up the ante on the fracking revolution is great. It is completely reshifted, not just the global balance of power economically, but geopolitically in terms of military power, in terms of leverage. The energy revolution in the United States has totally shifted the balance of power, and that is a wonderful thing.

And Donald Trump is reinvigorating that. The amount of energy production in the United States is going to skyrocket. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal before the election, Wright denounced what he called the hyper politicization of energy and singled out Democrats and, quote, they called a war on climate change, making it hard to produce oil and gas. That, of course, is exactly correct. Meanwhile, Wright is going to join the newly formed National Energy Council alongside North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, another staunch Trump supporter hailing from a shale state.

This is a revolution in how we are doing energy in this country, which is why the Wall Street Journal editorial board is calling it a U.S. energy renaissance. They say both nominees understand how energy markets work, unlike Joe Biden officials, whose primary goal was to lock up America's fossil fuel resources. Burgum's first charge at Interior will be to roll back the Biden regulations that have hampered resource development. Again, all of this means a booming American economy. The boom is here.

Well, folks, President Trump is starting to put his appointments in place. Nature is healing. Fall is such a beautiful time of year with all the changing colors. You know what's not so beautiful? Spending your weekends up on a ladder cleaning out clogged gutters. If you're tired of dealing with backed up gutters, or maybe you've been avoiding the problem altogether, it's time for a reliable permanent solution with Leaf Filter. With their biggest Black Friday sale of the year, you can save up to 35% when you visit leaffilter.com slash Shapiro. As somebody who enjoys tackling home improvement projects, at least sometimes, I know firsthand some jobs are best left to the professionals.

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details. Also, there are many different types of offices out there. One thing is for sure, choosing the right candidate for any office is a gigantic responsibility. Well, if you're hiring and you're going to find the best candidates for your office, you need ZipRecruiter. It's a lot harder than it looks. ZipRecruiter will help you out. Right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free.

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That's a great move. Brendan Carr is, of course, a senior Republican among the FCC's five commissioners. And just last week, as we talked about on the show, he announced that he was taking on what he called the censorship cartel, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft. He pointed out that these people have been coordinating via groups like Garm, for example, and NewsGuard in order to stifle advertising dollars going to alternative sources of information that are not legacy media.

President Trump put out a statement on Sunday evening saying, quote, Commissioner Carr is a warrior for free speech and has fought against the regulatory lawfare that has stifled Americans' freedom and held back our economy. He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America's job creators and innovators and ensure the FCC delivers for rural America. That, of course, is excellent. As we say, right before his appointment, he sent that letter off to Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, warning that he believed that they were improperly censoring certain opinions.

So Carr at the head of the FCC is a sea change from the sensorial attempts by the Biden administration. So energy, Trump's going to blow things up. Communications, Trump's going to blow things up. And then, of course, he's going to blow things up over at defense. So as the Wall Street Journal points out, the federal workforce contains 2.3 million jobs. How exactly do those jobs break down?

Well, apparently those 2.3 million jobs are largely in the Department of Veteran Affairs, Homeland Security, Army, Navy, Air Force, Defense. There are about 116,000 in Justice, 108,000 in Treasury, another 92,000 in Agriculture, 91,000 in HHS. Those are the civilian employees only that excludes active military personnel or reservists of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. President Trump is coming in pledging to cut an enormous amount of this stuff.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump, they have pledged that they want to cut federal spending by at least $2 trillion. And of course, Elon Musk is famous for having come into X and immediately slashing 80% of the workforce. There are rumors that one of the first moves that Trump is going to make upon entering office is to cut literally 100,000 jobs from the federal workforce. I promise you that there are 100,000 jobs that certainly can be cut from the federal workforce without very many people noticing out of 2.3 million.

There's a lot of dead weight inside the federal employee base. This is precisely the reason that they are very upset about Pete Hexeth in defense. They're afraid that he's going to come in and he's going to clean house. So, for example, Senator Alyssa Slotkin, the Senate elect from the state of Michigan,

She suggests that she is very, very upset about the possibility that Pete Hegseth will come in along with an executive order from Donald Trump and set up a board that will overview all of the various political generals that have been in place for a generation. She says, oh, no, they might just fire people. Yeah, that's that's the feature, not the bug. That's a good thing.

I think they've been very clear that they're putting together some sort of panel that's going to look at generals. People have served their nation, their entire lives over multiple administrations, Democrat and Republican, in combat. They are now openly talking about dismissing them like some sort of kangaroo court. You can imagine the stress in the Pentagon about that.

But also in the future of who we are as a military, right? Our military and the role of the military is in the Constitution for a reason. And I think we're really at risk of politicizing the military in a way that we can't put the genie back in the bottle. So we can't put the genie back in the bottle. Hold on. You politicize the military. You on the left had General Mark Milley out there explaining that white rage was the biggest problem in the military.

You and the left decided that the American military had to be turned into some sort of experimental laboratory for left-wing social policy. And we needed to fly the pride progress flag at military bases. The best way to recruit soldiers to serve on the front lines is to tell them they might get a sex change operation. Like this was your big idea, that wokeness was going to be the centerpiece. And not only that, you were going to be weak on defense. Then what was America's defense apparatus for?

He was really only for social engineering because, you know, America's mean and bad in the world. Well, Pete Hegseth is not going to do any of that. That's the real reason people are angry at Pete Hegseth. They're finding bad excuses to come after him. So apparently they're very upset at one of his tattoos, at least one of his tattoos. He has two tattoos that are apparently very, very controversial. So one of them,

is a tattoo on his bicep that shows the Latin words Deus Volt. According to Travis Akers, a naval intelligence officer, he told the Washington Post that when he saw that, he found it was a Christian battle cry from the first crusade in the Middle Ages, meaning God wills it. Though the phrase remains in use among some ordinary Christians, especially Catholics, Akers says his research showed that it had become popular with the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and other extremist groups that participated in the siege at the Capitol.

So apparently this led this particular naval intelligence officer to actually question whether Pete Hegseth should be included in the military at all. Akers posted the photos to the app known as Twitter, calling the tattoos white supremacist symbols. The tweet was then forwarded to the D.C. National Guard's head of physical security, who soon warned Commanding General William Walker. The Latin phrase suggested that Hegseth could be, quote, an insider threat as he was about to be deployed. This is for the last inauguration.

Hegseth received a call from his superior officer ordering him to stand down rather than report for duty for the inaugural events, according to an officer later briefed on the events, as well as Hegseth's own accounts in writings and interviews. Hegseth's removal from the mission became a seminal moment in his life. He has cited the episode in asserting that the military in which he'd served in two wars abroad and during riots at home following the death of George Floyd had become dangerously woke.

In his telling, guard officials were focused on a cross tattoo on his chest, not the Latin phrase that records and interviews show most concerned military officials. But of course, they're angry at the cross tattoo on his chest as well, which is, of course, a very common symbol, particularly in Catholic circles. This bizarre notion that Hegseth had to be drummed out of the National Guard because of his tattoos based on somebody doing a quick Wikipedia search is kind of insane. Now, again, it is really funny that they are acknowledging openly

that this is in fact the rallying cry of many Catholics. But then because some extremists use it, that's the thing that's scary. Also, apparently they're upset about his Jerusalem cross. Okay, but the reason that apparently Hegseth got that cross is Christians very often apparently get that cross in order to mark their voyage to Jerusalem. Hegseth went to Israel in 2019. It was made into a prominent Christian symbol by crusaders in the 11th century.

So, I mean, I'm sorry. This is this is your best shot. So they have one other shot. They're trying against Pete Hegseth. So The Washington Post is reporting that Pete Hegseth paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a nondisclosure agreement. We maintain their encounter was consensual, according to a statement from his lawyer Saturday and other documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Hegseth's attorney, Timothy Parlatore, said that Hegseth was, quote, visibly intoxicated at the time of the incident and maintained that police who were contacted a few days after the encounter by the woman concluded the complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter. Police have not confirmed that assertion. Hegseth agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the woman because he feared revelation of the matter would result in his immediate termination from Fox, where he was then a host. So they're now trying to bring up

This particular complaint, there is a complaint filed with the police alleging a sexual assault days after this October 7th, 2017 encounter in Monterey, California. But the local DA did not bring charges. Apparently, police investigated the incident and then she threatened litigation in 2020. So he paid her off.

So let me explain. This means nothing. OK, truly means nothing. The reason for that is that very often when someone threatens a civil suit, the last thing you want is the thing going public. And so you very often end up signing settlement agreements. This is incredibly common in businesses across America. And it's common for very prominent people as well. Now, does that mean that Hegseth acted well here? I don't know. Does it mean that she was the aggressor? I don't know. Nobody knows. And that's the entire point.

So if the idea here is that the accusation alone is tantamount to the crime, well, that's a problem.

The same thing, presumably, holds true with regard to Matt Gaetz. But the reason that Trump picked Gaetz, and this is the really underlying thing, the reason he picked Gaetz is obviously to blow things up. That is the goal. And the reason he wants to blow things up, we'll get to in just one moment. First, next week is Thanksgiving at the Daily Wire. We're getting you ready for that conversation with those members of the family. You know the one, the aunt with her unhinged Facebook post complaining about Trump's glorious return as the 47th president of the United States. The cousin proudly rocking his vintage white guys for Kamala t-shirt. Yeah.

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President Trump the first time around. If you want to know how you get Matt Gaetz, the answer is you keep elevating people like Adam Schiff, the representative from California who spent an enormous amount of time targeting Trump, targeted him in both impeachments, and now has been elevated to senator-elect from the state of California. Well, Adam Schiff over the weekend said that not only does he think he did nothing wrong, he thinks accusing Donald Trump of collusion with Russia was not actually an overstatement.

I wonder if you are feeling at all introspective at all about that was, according to the Mueller report and according to your Republican colleagues, an overstatement. And I wonder if you think in any way you helped set the table for these disruptors. First of all, it wasn't an overstatement. There is evidence of collusion. The Trump campaign manager was meeting with Russian intelligence and giving them internal polling data, just to give you one example.

And the Mueller report sets all this out. It does say, quote, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities, which doesn't mean that he didn't, you know, that there weren't meetings, but they didn't find evidence. He says that, too. He says the fact that we didn't find proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't mean there wasn't evidence of conspiracy or coordination. And it is just incredible. He's still maintaining this. Well, this is precisely how you get Matt Gaetz. This is how you get Matt Gaetz.

Here's Reince Priebus, former RNC chair and former chief of staff to Donald Trump, explaining precisely this. He made it very clear to me that the Matt Gaetz pick is not three-dimensional chess to help

Another nominee get through that. This was what he wanted to have happen. And when Republicans voted in impeachment against Donald Trump, he had a list of who those people were. And almost all of them in the House are gone. One couple of quick things, though. Number one, you have to remember, Donald Trump spent the last couple of years going in and out of courtrooms.

Getting Mar-a-Lago raided. I mean, part of the reason why the first lady, Melania Trump, didn't go to meet with Joe Biden was, hey, you raided my bedroom. I mean, you came. You want me to have tea with you? So he spent that and he feels like he's gone to hell and back 10 times. So this is also a big middle finger to the DOJ and the FBI.

Now, again, you may not like the nominees, but that is where this is coming from without any sort of doubt at all. And when you have people like Jen Psaki, the former press secretary for Joe Biden and now MSNBC host criticizing the picks, you know that she's not criticizing the picks because of their supposed personal immorality or personal foibles. You know that's not what this is about. It's about their politics, of course. These are the people who will be advising the president on every crisis that crosses his desk and representing the United States for some of them overseas.

And they're the people who have an impact also on your daily lives. See, these choices are, on the one hand, cartoonishly outrageous. But when that dust settles, it's not really just about the scandals and the personal lives of these nominees. And there are many. It's about what their positions and their lack of experience could do to our health system, our national security and the rights we have in this country.

That is the thing she's worried about. She says it right there at the end. It's not about all of these personal issues. It's not about Matt Gaetz and underage girls. It's not about Pete Hegseth and any accusations against him or his tattoos. It is just that they might do things to blow up the entire system the Democrats have been building on and counting on and manipulating for decades.

At this point, that's the point. That's the point, because the same Jen Psaki who's criticizing all of Donald Trump's picks is still maintaining that Democrats should pretend that boys are girls, girls are boys, and they should compete with one another. Here is Jen Psaki doubling down on the trans issues.

Another one of the lines that ran over and over again in those ads and throughout right-wing media is this idea that America is faced with a crisis of boys playing in girls sports. Now these ads created this perception that the issues of trans kids playing sports was dominating schools across the country, which is completely false. But if that were actually an issue at thousands of schools across the country, it would be worthy of a debate.

But there are just incredibly few examples of transgender girls playing in youth sports. And when we see those examples, there isn't evidence that these kids are a threat to safety or fairness. I mean, hold up. So you're pretending this isn't an issue? Okay, the reason it's an issue is not just because there are, in fact, boys competing against girls. It's because the very attempt to suggest that a boy can be a girl or a girl can be a boy is a violation of fact. It is a violation of reality. It is wrong. It is morally wrong.

And yet you keep pushing this. Well, then I do want things blown up. It's no secret that anti-gun legislation is on the ballot this election season. It is more important now than ever before to support those who are fighting for your Second Amendment rights. This is where my friends at Silencer Shop come in. They don't just sell silencers. They're fighting to protect your gun rights. They're actively pushing back against gun control, lobbying, fighting lawsuits, supporting pro-Second Amendment legislation nationwide. Yes, silencers are a complete

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And again, what does this mean? It means in terms of policy that the kind of stuff you end up pushing is more sex changes for children. So, for example, J.B. Pritzker, who's considered one of the future leaders of the Democratic Party, the governor of Illinois. Again, they keep saying that their bench is great. Their bench is not great by any stretch of the imagination. J.B. Pritzker and Gavin Newsom made it.

He tweeted out just this weekend, quote, this transgender awareness week, I want you to know that I see you and have your back as governor. Illinois has enshrined protections for gender affirming care to meet this moment. And because of that, you will have a home here always. First of all,

Why is every week Transgender Awareness Week? I'm aware. I think we're all aware at this point. How many weeks do you need? My goodness, I keep being informed that there are very few of you and that you have nothing to do with modern American life in any major way. And yet every week is Transgender Awareness Week or Lesbian Awareness Week or Transgender Lesbian Awareness Week. My goodness gracious. But this is the party that you guys have built. And this is the state that you wish to create. And then you wonder why the pushback is so strong.

I think most people are rooting for a vast change to the size and scope of government, particularly after COVID. And one of the things that people haven't talked about is the idea that the 2024 election was really not just a referendum on Joe Biden. It was a referendum on COVID itself, on the way that the entire West treated COVID, locking down entire societies, completely destroying economies, using COVID as an excuse to leverage up, spend oodles of dollars, completely restructure the relationship between individuals and their governments.

And people rejected that. They want something different. That actually the COVID regime for many people on the left was the apex of how they wish the world had worked. And it didn't work. And now the blowback is here, which is why I think a lot of people are rooting for Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk when they say that they're going to dismantle entire government agencies. Here's Vivek avowing just that over the weekend. Are you expecting to close down entire agencies like

President Trump has talked about the Department of Education, for example. Are you going to be closing down departments? We expect mass reductions. We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright. We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts among federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government. So, yes, we expect all of the above. And I think people will be surprised by, I think, how quickly we're able to move with some of those changes, given the legal backdrop the Supreme Court has given us.

Hey, I think a lot of people are rooting for that. Well, last week, as you will recall, speaking of government overreach and agency corruption, you'll recall the Daily Wire had a blockbuster report about FEMA.

that there are managers in FEMA who are telling people to literally avoid houses with Trump signs and flags on them. You remember this? Well, now the House is launching an oversight committee investigation. Last week, we had the opportunity to sit down with James Comer, representative from Kentucky and head of the House Oversight Committee, overseeing that investigation. Here's what it sounded like. Congressman Comer, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it.

My pleasure. So obviously, we here at The Daily Wire recently exposed this insane story about a FEMA employee telling hurricane relief workers in Florida to avoid homes displaying campaign signs or flags for President Trump. You've now announced at the House Oversight and Accountability Committee that there will be a hearing taking place Tuesday titled Oversight of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get to the bottom of this. So where do things stand in your investigation right now, Congressman?

Well, we want to hear from the director. We fear that this isn't an isolated incident. We believe this is a pattern. We've spoken with other employees who haven't yet come forward, but have provided some information that this is the way FEMA operates, that they do discriminate against

against Republicans, against conservatives, against people in more prominent neighborhoods. And it's a situation where this isn't the only agency that we've heard about.

stories about this. Throughout the entire Biden-Harris administration, there's been an effort to censor conservatives. There's been a discrimination against Republicans. We've seen a weaponized judiciary, a weaponized media that's coordinating very closely with the Biden-Harris administration to try to attack conservatives. So we want to know from the FEMA director's own mouth

what happened here, and then we'll go from there. But we certainly plan on bringing in that employee. I know she's given several interviews where, you know, she seems very credible in that she didn't think she was doing anything wrong because this is what

the way they were supposed to operate. You know, Congressman Comer, it really is an amazing expose on sort of the state of the quote unquote deep state. We were told for years there was no such thing as the deep state. There aren't career employees in these various positions who are doing anything political. That would be totally crazy. And now you see a case like this. How deeply do you think the rot goes throughout the administrative state?

I think it's throughout the entire government. I think every government agency, whether it's FEMA, whether it's the EPA, whether it's the FBI, whether it's the Securities and Exchange Commission, I believe every or I think every agency in the federal government is populated with left wing activists that have risen to the top. Now, not every federal employee is bad. There are good federal employees. There are good federal employees that are liberals.

But I think that what you've seen happen dating back to the beginning of the Obama administration through today in the Biden-Harris administration is that the left wing activists have risen to the top. They're the career employees and they have a vendetta. They have an agenda to punish conservatives, to censor conservatives, to do everything they can to.

enact their left-wing ideologies, whether it's through the Green New Deal or whether it's through censoring conservative speech. So this is just the tip of the iceberg, and it's coming at a perfect time because we're about to see a significant change

in Washington. And I believe so far, Donald Trump's announcing names that are serious about going in and rooting out the deep state actors that have created so much havoc against conservatives. So, Congressman, obviously, big week for Republicans, obviously, at the White House level, certainly at the senatorial and congressional level as well. It's been assured that Speaker Johnson will continue to maintain his speakership. He will indeed be leading a Republican majority. It's going to be a very slim Republican majority because there are a couple of seats that

that are now going to be have to be filled by special election because there are several Congress members who have been nominated to fill President Trump's cabinet as well. What do you think are sort of the big priorities for the House or what should they be going into the new term?

Well, first of all, we need to secure the border. I think the American people spoke loud and clear. That's what they want to happen. This can be done through executive order, but we're going to need resources. We're going to need, you know, a lot of legislation that will make sure that it's codified what he does. We want to not just deport the president.

criminals that are here illegally, but we also want to create a situation where there's a legal pathway and where people that want to come to the United States, that should come to the United States, can get expedited citizenship. So we can solve all the problems with a willing administration. Remember, the Biden-Harris

Southern border policy was an open border policy. Trump wants to secure the border, but he wants a legal pathway to citizenship. We're going to have the largest deportation in the history of America. We're going to start with all the criminals who were supposed to have been deported already but weren't because of the pitiful Biden administration. So that's going to be a priority. But then we're going to do what's called budget reconciliation. And the reason budget reconciliation is important is this bill only takes...

51 votes to pass the Senate. Remember, to get to 60 votes in the Senate, the way the Democrats stick together is very difficult. But you have a tool called budget reconciliation that you can use one time. And I think that we can enact a lot of good policies within this budget reconciliation bill that will address energy policy, that will address lowering inflation, that will get

make the Trump tax cuts permanent. So, you know, eliminating tax on tips, that was a big platform of Trump's administration. We can do all of this on a budget reconciliation bill. So securing the border and passing that major budget reconciliation in the first 100 days should be our priority.

Well, Congressman, I know your swamp, just like everybody else, it's drinking out of fire hose these days. Really appreciate the time. And of course, everybody should stay tuned for that big hearing on Tuesday in which Dan Criswell, the FEMA administrator, is going to be answering some tough questions. Congressman, really appreciate the time. Thanks for having me. All right, guys, coming up, we'll be getting into Pennsylvania Democrats trying to outright steal a Senate election. If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.