Ep. 2085 - Trump Meets Biden At The White House!
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Well, folks, Trump to electric boogaloo is upon us. So much news like drinking from a fire hose. We'll get to that in a moment. First, since its release, Am I Racist has held the number one spot on Daily Wire Plus. The only way to watch is with a Daily Wire Plus membership right now. Get 47% off with call.

with code Trump. Plus we'll throw in a free leftist tiers Tumblr today only. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code Trump to join right now. Alrighty, so lots of news. Yesterday, President Trump went over to the Hill. He had many visits, did Mr. Trump in Washington. So he began by going to the House of Representatives where he was met with raucous applause, of course. Everybody very excited over in the House. Certainly President Trump's coattails helped retain the House majority, which is incredibly slim.

That's going to make a difference when you talk about some of the cabinet appointments he's making. But he is responsible for House performance. He's responsible for additional Senate seats for the Republicans. President Trump had coattails. So he started his visit to Washington, D.C. with a House GOP leadership forum. A brief video from that House GOP leadership forum showed an excited President Trump talking about how much fun it was to win.

Well, thank you very much. This is a very nice gathering. Isn't it nice to win? It's nice to win. It's always nice to win. A lot of good friends in this room. So, you know, we had like historic kind of numbers, especially for the president, but we won't get into that. Obviously the president in an excellent mood. He then went up to the White House and he was only the second happiest man in the room. So I'm not sure I've ever seen Joe Biden this happy.

It's so good. It's so good. Okay, so if you go all the way back to 2016, when President Trump beat Hillary Clinton and then had to go to the White House and meet Barack Obama, and Barack Obama was clearly deeply perturbed by meeting with Donald Trump, the opposite is now true. Joe Biden despises Kamala Harris, despises her. So does Joe Biden. There is no question that both of them voted for Donald Trump. I have no doubt in my mind.

that they both voted for Donald Trump. So sitting next to a roaring fire, these two new best friends,

straight from Zewataneo. They're sitting next to one another and joking. It's as though Joe Biden didn't actually believe that that guy's Hitler. Almost as though all of that stuff about Donald Trump being Hitler, he knew it was crap because look how excited Joe Biden is to be there. Donald Trump is joking with him and behind them, the roaring fire, just enjoying, you know, a crisp Washington DC morning. Here we go. Here we go.

The media are yelling at both of them. And President Trump's like, get a load of them. And they cut over to Biden. Biden's doing big smiles. Super happy. Look at Joe Biden. What a glorious time he's having. They did release a photo of Jill and Joe with Trump, all grinning broadly. No one is happier in America that Kamala Harris lost than Joe Biden, who was stabbed in the back by Kamala Harris. And then

And then she replaced him and then she lost. And then everybody blamed Joe Biden anyway. So he is super happy that Donald Trump won. The pictures are just hilarious. The memes have been extraordinary. According to the Washington Post, the two met just after 11 a.m. Their first extended meeting since the fumbling debate performance that drove Biden out of the race for Trump.

It marked a triumphant return to an office where he sat for four years, a week after decisively winning an election by relentlessly attacking Joe Biden's mental capacity and then by casting the Biden administration as a disaster. Congratulations, Biden said at the start of the meeting. During the brief time reporters were in the room, he added he hoped it would be a smooth transition. Trump said politics is tough and in many cases it is not a nice world, but it is a nice world today. The meeting stretched for nearly two hours.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called it a substantive meeting and exchange of views. She said that Biden said that Trump was gracious and that he came to the meeting with a detailed list of questions. She said, quote, they discussed important national security and domestic policy issues facing the nation and the world. So again, they've got a new best friend. Maybe Donald Trump will not only pardon Hunter Biden, maybe he'll appoint Joe Biden to a position in his administration. You never know. I mean, Joe Biden was a loyal supporter during the latter part of this campaign.

So that was exciting news as well. Well, when all of the morning festivities were over and the enjoyment was done, then it was time to unveil more picks for the cabinet. And things got a little spicy. So there'd been a lot of rumors floating out of Mar-a-Lago that perhaps the Marco Rubio nomination for Secretary of State

was being held up for some reason. Those rumors were put to bed today when President Trump released a statement picking Marco Rubio formally. He said, quote, it is my great honor to announce that Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is hereby nominated to be the United States Secretary of State. Marco is a highly respected leader and a very powerful voice for freedom. He'll be a strong advocate for our nation, a true friend to our allies, and a fearless warrior who will never back down to our adversaries. I look forward to working with Marco to make America and the world safe and

and great again. And it's funny, there are a lot of people who are a little upset about Marco Rubio, which I frankly don't understand because Marco Rubio is just a simple advocate of peace through strength. See, there is such a thing as a Trump doctrine. There was a Bush doctrine that emerged after 9-11, which was about spreading freedom in the world. That is not the Trump doctrine. It's not Wilsonian in any way. In fact, the

The Trump Doctrine is really simple. So President Trump came on my show a couple of weeks before the election, and he said, quote, our policy is very simple. Peace through strength. We had no wars. I'm not an isolationist. I helped a lot of countries. I kept countries out of war. Well, if you were going to express this in a few key propositions, the Trump Doctrine, there would probably be four. So the first proposition would be that America's interests come first. America first. America's interests are paramount.

Now, America first doesn't mean that we ignore the rest of the world. It turns out that a lot of American interests are bound up in what's going on in the rest of the world. So, for example, if the sea lanes are threatened, that is a big problem for America. We rely on the freedom of the seas in order to ensure a free and open market economy so we can sell our goods, so we can receive the inputs, and so that we can trade with our friends and business partners. Freedom of the seas. That means we have to be involved in the world.

Or if you have American opponents who are solidifying their grasp on resources or on allies or threatening war, right? These are things where America does have a voice. So America's interests come first.

Now, that brings us to point number two. Second, America's interests actually have to be carefully calibrated to our investment in them. So what that means is we have to be very serious about how strong are our interests in an area. So something's bad happening somewhere in the world. And maybe it's not like amazing for America, but it doesn't really affect Americans in a serious way, either near term or long term. How much do we invest in that issue?

The Trump doctrine says, well, you calibrate the amount that you invest in that issue to the importance of the issue to the American voter and to the American citizen.

If we have a very weak interest in whether there's a democracy in a far-flung place that doesn't affect America, well, then we probably are not going to devote serious resources to that place because that is not a core American interest. And Wilsonian bromides about democracy and freedom don't make up for a lack of American interests in these places, right? This is one of the things that separates the Trump doctrine from the sort of freedom everywhere Bush doctrine that neoconservatives, so-called neoconservatives pushed during the Bush administration.

The Trump doctrine says that all resources are scarce resources. Money is a scarce resource. American military power is a scarce resource. The most scarce resource of all is, of course, American blood, the blood of our heroes who are out there fighting. We don't want to waste that on things that don't matter an awful lot to us. And we shouldn't deceive ourselves about how rough war is. War is incredibly rough. And that means that expending those resources in the wrong places is a mistake. That's principle number two.

Principle number one was America's interests come first. Principle number two is carefully calibrate what kind of resources you wish to expend to meet the strength of the American interest in these places. Third, once you've decided, you gotta go. Third, all measures and means necessary to achieve America's interests are on the table. So that means if we have to strangle the Iranian economy with sanctions, that's what we do. If it means that Donald Trump has to threaten Kim Jong-un with his little red button, that's

That's what we do. If it means that President Trump has to fire a missile and kill Qasem Soleimani, that's what we do. The ancient Latin adage, which goes something like, civis passum para bellum, if you want peace, prepare for war, that's a basic principle of the Trump doctrine, meaning you build up, you threaten, you have credible threat of the use of force, and you don't make nice. When it's time for war, you go. When it's time to stack bodies as the

nominee for secretary of defense says you stack the bodies. War is not nice. It's not meant to be nice. In fact, the most humane war is the shortest and the most victorious. So this principle would be shortly put F around, find out that's principle number three. And fourth, we ought to say all these things out loud. We ought to say what America's interests are. We ought to say what sort of means we are willing to use to actually achieve those interests. And we should say out loud that if we go, we are going to go, we're going to punch you so hard in the face. You will never recover.

If we say all those things out loud, then it reduces the risk that somebody is going to misinterpret what it is that we are doing in the world. Now, I don't see any of those things that Marco Rubio disagrees with. In fact, I don't see any of those things that Mike Walls, the NSA, disagrees with or John Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, or as we'll get to even Tulsi Gabbard over at DNI.

In fact, I don't see very much disagree with there. Broadly speaking, Donald Trump's foreign policy team is a peace through strength foreign policy team. He said it himself. That's why he picked them. And it's an excellent, excellent foreign policy team. OK, so Rubio was formally picked yesterday. And that was not the only pick. He also announced that he was going to be picking Tulsi Gabbard.

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So Tulsi Gabbard, of course, is a more controversial pick because she's a former Democrat, because there is a lot of

Kind of ill will back in 2019, she made some statements about the Assad regime, suggesting they weren't really America's enemy because we weren't fighting them at the time. And what she meant by that, if you go back and you actually read her comments, was not that Assad was not violating human rights. What she actually said at the time was, yes, Assad is violating human rights, but we don't have a significant American interest in what's going on over there. She's also taken a more dovish perspective on the Russia-Ukraine war, for example. She believes that it was Western countries

encroachments in Ukraine via the attempt to enter the Ukraine into the EU and into NATO that led to Russia making its move to invade. So she's got more controversial foreign policy views as opposed to some of the more traditionalists. But the reason that Donald Trump is picking her for DNI is not really because of those foreign policy views. The director of national intelligence,

That position coordinates between the CIA and the FBI. That's what that position is. So he's putting her as part of the intel community. Why? Well, because Tulsi Gabbard knows really, really well how many people have been targeted falsely by the intel community, including President Trump during his first term. In fact, she herself was apparently, according to her, put on a terror watch list just a couple of months ago.

Well, now she's in charge of the DNI. So I would assume she's coming right off that terror watch list. Here is Tulsi Gabbard speaking with Chris Williamson over a modern wisdom about the reality of a functioning democracy. And the most troubling part about there's so many things wrong with this, of course, but really at the most fundamental level, you look at.

you know, our country is the oldest democracy in the world, but the reality of a truly functioning and thriving democracy that has brought to life the vision that our founders had for us, that we really have a government of, by, and for the people, and that we have the ability and responsibility for that matter to ensure that the government we have only exists with the consent of the governed and

that becomes very hard to do to hold people accountable when the person that you voted for is certainly not the one making the decisions. Okay, she's pointing out the predations of the bureaucratic state, right? If you vote for a politician and then it ends up being the bureaucracy that rules everything, that's a problem. She had this to say, Tulsi Gabbard, with regard to the intelligence community and the manipulation of the intelligence community. This is back in 2022. I'll never forget when Chuck Schumer on television-

warned, Trump is an idiot to mess with the intelligence community because they can screw you six ways from Sunday. The highest ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate warning the American people, essentially, against messing with the intelligence community because of how badly they can screw you. As though they are some autonomous body of government that is accountable to no one. How...

How can this be America? This goes against the foundation of our government. This goes against these ideals of a government of, by, and for the people. And so the question I've asked myself is: Why? Why are they doing this? Why are they working so hard to squash any discussion, squash any debate, squash any questions about whatever war they happen to be wanting to wage at any given time? They're afraid.

So, again, the reason that she's being brought in is presumably to cleanse the intelligence agencies of, again, a lot of the dead wood, a lot of the procedures that presumably are allowing for the spying on American citizens. Presumably the FISA courts are going to come under a lot of scrutiny given the fact that the Trump campaign was in fact spied upon by the FISA courts in the 2016 election illegally.

It's a big deal to President Trump. That is why he wants somebody like Tulsi Gabbard in there. Now, she might face a bit of a confirmation fight. And the Senate is a is a fractious place. And the Senate has its own procedures. Now, President Trump had wanted the ability to sort of make recess appointments willy nilly. I really don't think that's how this is going to go. He has a Republican Senate. There is no reason he shouldn't be able to get his appointments through so long as they perform decently at their hearings, for example.

Tulsi Gabbard, you would imagine that some of the more hawkish senators will have questions about her foreign policy, what it means for how she approaches intelligence policy, for example. But again, Tulsi Gabbard, a perfectly expected pick from President Trump. She is, of course, a Democrat who came across the aisle to support him. The most controversial pick of the day was not Tulsi Gabbard. The most controversial pick of the day

was Matt Gaetz, Representative Matt Gaetz from Florida. Now, of course, Matt Gaetz is famous for a variety of reasons. He's incredibly colorful, shall we say. Matt Gaetz says a lot of inflammatory things, does a lot of things for the online crowd. Matt Gaetz, of course, is the one who led a rebellion against then Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and basically forced his ouster, not because he thought that McCarthy was doing a horrible job running the House, but

But McCarthy suggests because Gates didn't want him self-investigated, there's all sorts of accusations flying back and forth between McCarthy and Matt Gates. It is true that Matt Gates is not particularly well-loved by a lot of other members of the House. They think sometimes that he grandstands. There are some things that are true about Matt Gates, however. One of those things that when Matt Gates goes, he goes. I think the reason that President Trump wants him as AG is because Matt Gates is a passionate advocate against the predations of the DOJ against Donald Trump specifically.

Again, he's a very brash figure. Here's Matt Gaetz back at the RNC a few months ago. Under Biden-Harris, America has fallen sicker, lonelier, and poorer. Under Trump, we prospered. We were richer. Inflation was low, and there were two genders. The swamp draining will recommence soon, and I will be President Trump's strongest ally in Congress to pass term limits, to stop...

taxpayer funding for political campaigns, to ban members of Congress for life from becoming lobbyists, and for the same reason you don't let the referee bet on the game, ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks. We are on a mission to rescue and save this country, and we ride or die with Donald John Trump to the end. Thank you all so much. Thank you for having my back. Let's go get them.

Again, President Trump is looking for loyalty in his picks. He can expect that, I think, from anybody that he appoints, given the fact that there is a unitary executive branch. Here's Matt Gaetz going after the Department of Justice for targeting President Trump. Again, this is just a few months back. You can clear it all up for us right now. Will the Department of Justice provide to the committee all documents, all correspondence between the department and Alvin Bragg's office and Fannie Willis's office and Letitia James's office?

The offices you're referring to are independent offices of state? I get that. I get that. The question is whether or not you will provide all of your documents and correspondence. That's the question. I don't need a history lesson. I'm going to say it again.

We do not control those offices. They make their own decisions. The question is whether you communicate with them, not whether you control them. Do you communicate with them and will you provide those communications? You make a request, we'll refer it to our Office of Legislative Affairs. But see, here's the thing. You come in here and you lodge this attack that it's a conspiracy theory that there is coordinated lawfare against Trump. And then when we say, fine, just give us the documents, give us the correspondence, and

And then if it's a conspiracy theory, that will be evident. But when you say, well, we'll take your request and then we'll sort of work it through the DOJ's accommodation process, then you're actually advancing the very dangerous conspiracy theory that you're concerned about.

Again, Gates is very bright. He's a very loud advocate for President Trump. That's presumably why Trump wants him in there. By the way, if he actually gets confirmed as AG, half the DOJ just resigns the next day. So Trump's not even going to have to fire anybody. Everybody's just going to resign. So that's the upside. Whether he gets through a confirmation battle is another question. There are already several senators who have come out expressing serious doubts about Matt Gates.

It's very questionable just on a raw level whether he is going to get through that confirmation process. Again, I do not think that it is likely that the Senate is going to go to recess in order to allow President Trump to make recess appointments when, again, the Republicans have a majority. Right now, for example, Matt Gaetz remains under continued investigation by the House Committee on Ethics over allegations of sexual misconduct, illegal drug use and other allegations. He continues to deny any wrongdoing.

Suffice to say, a lot of senators, a lot of congresspeople are discomfited by Gates as the pick. President Trump's announcement says, quote,

and restore Americans' badly shattered faith and confidence in the Justice Department. On the House Judiciary Committee, which performs oversight of DOJ, Matt played a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and exposing alarming and systemic government corruption and weaponization. He's a champion for constitution and the rule of law.

Now, again, you can see exactly why Trump picked him. With that said, it's going to be a rough road for him in the confirmation battle because there are a lot of Republicans who look at the allegations surrounding him or they look at the sort of fractious way that he approached his fellow members of Congress. This sort of stuff does matter in confirmation hearings. That is an uphill battle for President Trump.

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That may have some sort of unintended good consequences, by the way. If it turns out that the entire Senate expends all of its ire on Matt Gaetz, it means that some of the other supposedly controversial nominees, like, for example, Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, who's a terrific pick, would probably get through relatively unscathed. Because if you're a Republican and you're going to reject one of Trump's picks and you have to prioritize, there are some Republicans in the Senate who are going to prioritize Gaetz over Hegseth. That would not be a giant shock.

So there may be some unintended side effects of Gates's nomination, even if he doesn't pass through the confirmation process. However, that is definitely going to be Trump's hardest pick in terms of getting that nominee through a Senate that is fairly closely divided. Remember, the Republicans in the Senate only hold 53 seats. So all it takes is four Republican senators dropping off and Gates is toast. Already, you have a multiplicity of senators who have signaled their discomfort with the idea of Matt Gates as attorney general. By the way, if it doesn't end up being Matt Gates,

Donald Trump has a wide plethora of different attorneys on the Republican side of the aisle who will be just as aggressive as Matt Gaetz in that position. Again, Gaetz may get confirmed. All I'm saying is that even if he's not, it's not like a mispick by Trump. It's not like Trump did something terribly wrong here. It just means that Gaetz would not be the guy. It would be someone else who would give you most of the benefits and maybe not some of the drawbacks that Matt Gaetz –

apparently presents to some of his colleagues. Matt Gaetz, by the way, has already resigned his seat effective immediately. There's a lot of speculation about why that is. Is he trying to still avoid this House investigation? What is it? His justification, the one that he gave to Mike Johnson, is that

He's trying to resign early so that Governor DeSantis in Florida can declare an early election as fast as possible because there's about an eight-week period to select and fill in a vacancy. And so the idea would be that if he resigns now, then his seat gets filled by another Republican. He's in a solid R district before this begins to be a problem for the Republican majority in Congress. That would be the justification Gates is giving. Now, meanwhile...

The congressional elections went forward yesterday. There was a lot of focus on the possibility that John Thune would be stopped as the majority leader. That did not happen. And I think there's a bit of confusion about what the Senate majority leader does. The Senate majority leader, as I've been saying, is not a Newt Gingrich figure. It's not a matter of just presenting a Republican vision. It's a matter of trying to cobble together majorities out of very, very slim majorities and then getting 80 percent of what you want.

So in other words, the harder you charge as a Senate majority leader, sometimes it backfires. The reason Mitch McConnell has been, whether you like him or not, a deeply effective legislator over the course of his career, the most effective Senate majority leader the Republicans have had in 100 years. The reason for that is because Mitch McConnell is really Machiavellian. It's because he actually knows how to wheel and deal. It's because he knows how to do all the things in politics nobody likes to see. The stuff that it doesn't play amazing on talk radio, for example. I know I'm on talk radio, right?

Like the stuff that always is sort of the seamy side of politics, the bargaining, the to and fro, all that stuff McConnell is good at. So that means that the qualities you're seeking in a Senate majority leader, somebody who actually is not going to be extremely loud, extremely brash, somebody very often who's able to get the thing done. Presumably, I would imagine that is why there is a secret ballot for Senate majority leader, specifically because all these senators have to decide who is best positioned to actually help cobble together the majority.

And you don't necessarily, I mean, it's sort of a different process than you voting for a bill. A bill is an up or down thing that the American public obviously has an interest in seeing. How you do your internal work is a little bit different. I mean, I see the case both ways, but that would be the logic in any case. In any case, Rick Scott, who is backed by a number of people who are in sort of conservative media, he was knocked out in the first round. Thune then ended up defeating Senator John Cornyn from Texas.

Thune has been serving as the number two to Mitch McConnell for six years and staked out a middle ground during the campaign. He agreed to listen closely to GOP colleagues, according to the Wall Street Journal, on the direction of the chamber and openly embraced the Trump agenda. He did so without explicitly repudiating the Senate's current operation under McConnell. He said, I promise to be a leader who serves the entire Republican conference. We'll have an ambitious agenda and we'll take each and every Republican working together to be successful. The first test flared up immediately because Trump,

Trump had suggested that candidates for Senate leader commit to allow at least some of the nominees to take office through recess appointment. Thune reacted saying he was open to ideas on how to confirm nominees more quickly. He said, what we're going to do is make sure that we are processing his nominees in a way that gets them into those positions so we can implement his agenda. He said on nominees, the Republicans would quote, explore all options to make sure they get moved and they get moved quickly. Now, with that said, obviously,

John Thune, he is committed to making sure that Republicans' voices are heard, meaning that if Republicans want to shoot down a nominee, it's doubtful whether he is going to allow a recess appointment to overrule the Republican caucus as a whole. Senator Joni Ernst said he's got his work cut out for him.

Yeah, you know, that is definitely true. So, you know, we'll see how all this plays out, but that's how the system of government is supposed to work. It's how the system of government is supposed to work. There should be this back and forth, this to and fro. You end up with better policy that way. President Trump knows that, which is why he sent congratulations to Senator Thune.

He said he moves quickly and will do an outstanding job. I look forward to working with him as well as Senators John Barrasso, Senate Majority Whip, Tom Cotton, Senate Republican Conference Chairman, Shelley Moore Capito, Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman, James Langford, Republican Conference Vice Chairman, and Tim Scott, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman, to make America great again. Meanwhile, President Trump endorsed Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, hours ahead of any potential speaker vote. He put that to bed. He said, I'm with him all the way, according to a couple of people.

That's smart. Again, what we don't need right now is a lot of Republican infighting. What we actually need is to move forward. That needs to happen forthwith. No more of the shooting inside the tent when it comes to policymaking. And I think Trump knows that, which is why, of course, he is moving along with Mike Johnson. And meanwhile, the Democrats are struggling to figure out what exactly to do.

One of the dirty little secrets, of course, is that in many of the circles of power, they're kind of happy Trump won. If you are in business, you are very, very happy that Donald Trump won. If you're a global leader, if you're a member of another country and you're looking at Trump, you are probably happy that Trump won. When I say that, I mean, I've spoken with leaders of other countries, people who have publicly denounced Donald Trump, and they are relieved at the idea that the Biden era is coming to an end. It's been fraught with chaos and insanity.

They liked Donald Trump's foreign policy much better than what they are seeing right now. Even Politico is noting that, quote, the Trump resistance goes flaccid. Donald Trump's 2016 election stutter sparked a global revolt. His 2024 triumph has been met with a weary shrug. The Republicans' first win saw millions of political opponents protesting on the streets soon after the vote, organizing themselves with hashtags like resist.

But since Trump's crushing victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in last Tuesday's election, the reaction from both Democratic voters and officials in European capitals has been less one of fiery outrage and more muted resignation. A European diplomat based in Washington, D.C., said, quote, I think we learned from last time it's important to talk constructively and confidentially instead of through social media. Well, yes, it is also true that Trump is part of a broader populist right movement that is emerging throughout the civilized world.

a right movement that is tired of the scavenger philosophy promoted by the left that says that open immigration, largely from places that do not like Western civilization, is a good idea, or that the best the West can hope for is cultural stagnation and economic decline. Turns out people don't like that very much, and they're rebelling against that all across Europe. They're rebelling in South America, and they're rebelling in the United States as well. There's been a profound mood shift in 2024 compared to eight years ago, said Aline Severs, associate professor in political science at the Free University of Brussels.

It's not unsurprising to witness a certain level of political burnout, of exhaustion, after the massive campaign, Severus said. I think a lot of activists are very tired. It's deflation after all these weeks of campaigning. Not just that, it turns out that Trump did a pretty good job the first time. A second European diplomat based in D.C. said, quote, people have reasonably fresh memories of what works and what doesn't work, and how you get on the right side of him, and how important, disproportionately important that is.

So again, the levels of anxiety for Trump are not high. Secretly, they're kind of happy. And it turns out that if you like your pocketbook, you're happy as well because consumer sentiment is bouncing around and now it is up. Again, it's not that difficult to get consumer sentiment up. All you have to do is tell people you're not going to take all of their money, regulate them out of existence, or inflate all their savings away. It's a pretty easy things to do. Joe Biden failed signally at all of them, but they're not all that difficult to do.

That's just one reason that Bitcoin is exploding. Bitcoin is up to 90,000. It's had a massive run from about 70,000 to 90,000 since Election Day alone. The election of a pro-crypto president, according to the Wall Street Journal, has sent Bitcoin prices up 30% since Election Day. Traders are wagering Bitcoin will reach $100,000 before the end of the year with $850 million worth of options contracts betting on the milestone by the December 27th expiration.

The crypto industry is now betting on a wave of deregulation and industry-friendly policies. Yes, it turns out that when you're friendly to industry, industry is friendly right back to you. Meanwhile, Democrats are struggling to come up with answers. It seems as though they're starting to realize they need to snap back into moderation. So for example, over in San Francisco, a person named Daniel Lurie was elected mayor, and he sounds like kind of an Eric Adams moderate now. He says, I'm a lifelong Democrat, but it's time for some common sense over here.

I am a lifelong Democrat, but we don't think of ourselves as progressives or moderates or conservatives here in San Francisco. We just want to get back to common sense. We have to deliver the basics. And that's my plan. That's the mandate that I was elected to fulfill. Again, moderation from the San Francisco mayor. He also added, you know what people actually want? They're not that concerned about all the crazy social policies. They just want to feel safe in their cities.

They want a mayor that is focused on delivering results. That's the mandate I was voted in with. And that's what I'm going to do. I don't believe that that is anything more than those are progressive values. And so I understand I'm talking to a national audience here. This is not a liberal, progressive, conservative. People want to feel safe walking down the street. And that is right. In fact, Democrats are starting to argue about all of this. There's a piece in Politico.

That charts out a new memo that is making the rounds, like a three and a half page memo pointing out how badly Democrats have botched this. We'll get to that in just one moment. Democrats are struggling, but you don't need to struggle when you're looking for a place to learn. Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose.

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This is the time to join. Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code Trump for 47% off. Just review. Join now. Get 47% off your membership. Watch Am I Racist? And get that free leftist tears Tumblr today. So now the Democrats are trying to figure out what their pathway forward looks like. The obvious pathway forward for them is to jettison the identity politics, politically speculating that they might actually have to do just that.

Peace in Politico by Jonathan Martin, their senior political columnist, quote, Democrats wonder, are we too correct? The depth of the 2024 defeat brings tough questions about a base built around identity groups. He says that the party might need an opening to rethink their orientation around affinity group politics.

The question is whether they'll be emboldened or cower when one of those groups, as identity-based organizations are invariably called, speak up. But the reward is alluring. Whoever can retain the party's traditional commitments to the most vulnerable and also appeal to voters who just rejected Harris will emerge as the Democrats' strongest 2028 nominee and perhaps the next president.

But again, the question is going to be whether they are actually able to wake up to that. So long as people, for example, like Joy Reid are out there, the answer will be no. Joy Reid over at MSNBC, she just gets more and more racist day in and day out. It's amazing.

Now, listen to this. Furthermore, I will direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination and schools that persist in explicit, unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity will not only have their endowments taxed,

but through budget reconciliation I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment. A portion of the seized funds will then be used as restitution for victims of these illegal

and unjust policies, policies that hurt our country so badly. Colleges have gotten hundreds of billions of dollars from hardworking taxpayers, and now we are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all. We are going to have real education in America. Thank you. So, in other words, reparations for white people

Any comments on that, Trump likes? That is not reparations for white people. That is people who are victimized by affirmative action policies that kept them out of colleges, for example. But again, keep doubling down on the racism. Please, just keep on doing it. Well, meanwhile, the attacks on Pete Hegseth, the Department of Defense nominee by President Trump, those continue. Whoopi Goldberg thinks she can get out of this simply by mocking Pete Hegseth. You know, I don't think this is going to work. He also picked...

You ready? Co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend. Not even like regular. Weekend. Pete Hegseth? Hegseth. Hegseth? Hegseth? Yeah. Okay. Pete Hegseth. And he's picked him to be U.S. Secretary of Defense. Now MAGA supporters and detractors are trying to figure out what? Because of this pick.

No, we're not. We know exactly why that pick was made. In fact, it turns out that the threats that we face are going to be amply facedown by Pete Hegseth. Mikey Gallagher, former representative from Wisconsin, who I very much hope will be in consideration for Secretary of the Navy because he's tremendously knowledgeable and he's a real hawk on China, like a super China hawk, super bright guy. He has a piece in the Wall Street Journal titled Pentagon Has Two Years to Prevent World War III.

He says Xi Jinping has ordered the People's Liberation Army to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. Whether he launches an invasion may depend on President Trump's defense secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump's nominee, will have to confront the collapse of deterrence in Europe and the Middle East, resource constraints on Capitol Hill, recruitment challenges, and a deteriorating balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.

The only way to promote peace is to go to war on day one, not with China, Russia, Iran, but the Pentagon bureaucracy. The first task is to fix the US Navy. America needs a maritime industrial base that can counter China's. Pentagon requirements for building maritime assets involve too many uncoordinated stakeholders. The Pentagon establishes war fighting requirements

such as the number of missiles on a ship, without regard to interdependent technical specifications, such as that ship's center of gravity. When those technical specs aren't tightly linked to warfighting requirements, the mismatch can cause underperformance or unplanned costs in time. The DoD should return to a board model that served the Navy well until the 1960s.

The Navy should also create an office focused on expediting the development and deployment of certain warfighting technologies similar to the Rapid Capabilities Office at the Air Force or Space Force. Again, he has all sorts of suggestions like this, and I think that Pete Hegseth is going to not only take those suggestions, he will do more than that.

He's going to be fighting the wokeness in the military. He is not concerned with a military that is focused on the sexual diversity of its membership. He's more concerned about whether they are good at, you know, killing bad people. That is the thing that he is mostly concerned about, the efficacy of the American military. Now, Hegseth has said China is building an army to defeat America. We need to build an army to defeat them.

China's building an army specifically dedicated to defeating the United States of America. That is their strategic outset. Take hypersonic missiles. So if our whole power projection platform is aircraft carriers and the ability to project power that way strategically around the globe, and yeah, we have a nuclear triad and all of that, but a big part of it. And if 15 hypersonic missiles can take out our 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict...

What does that look like? I mean, and when they're, if they've already got us by the balls economically, which you pointed out very well with our grid, culturally, there's plenty of elite capture going on around the globe. I mean, and then microchips and everything. Why do they want Taiwan? They want to corner the market completely on the technological future. We can't even drive our cars without the stuff we need out of China these days. I mean, they have a full spectrum of

a long-term view of not just regional, but global domination. And we are, we have our heads up our asses. Hey, he is right about all that. Again, this is the person who's apparently too ignorant to be the secretary of defense. He's also getting hit over the course of the last 24 hours because someone surfaced a clip of him saying that women shouldn't be fighting in combat roles. Again, like, um,

Why is that controversial? Really? Why? Why should young women be fighting in frontline combat roles? Does that make sense to anybody? Why? There are plenty of able-bodied men to do that.

And so he is not wrong about any of that. Like, again, if this is the controversial stuff about him,

I'm not really seeing it. And the other nominee who's getting a lot of flack, Mike Huckabee, as possible U.S. ambassador to Israel. That is because Huckabee is wildly pro-Israel. He's not just pro-Israel. He also understands certain basic facts like the idea that settlements are not illegal in the West Bank. That is true. They're disputed territory at very best.

And he maintains that the possibility of a two-state solution is basically a non-starter because that is the reality. There is, number one, he says correctly, that Israel does have a historic and legal claim to the West Bank

And not only that, he suggests that there is no actual peace partner for Israel. That's true. This, of course, has Democrats with their panties all in a twist because they're very upset about the fact that he's saying true things about the situation over there, that there is no peace partner and that Israel does, in fact, have a legal claim to the so-called West Bank, Judea and Samaria, the biblical homeland of the of the Jewish people. Here is here's Chris Van Hollen, senator, saying this is very, very bad.

He supports this concept of a greater Israel, Israel controlling the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. That's a Mike Huckabee vision. It's a vision that has been embraced by the far right in Israel, including members of the Netanyahu government like Smotrich and Ben-Gadir. So this is a recipe, if he continues to pursue these views, for continued instability

and violence in the Middle East. Okay, that is precisely wrong. The reason that is precisely wrong is that even if you wanted a two-state solution, Israel should be seen to have a claim to the thing that it is claiming. If I want to make a deal with you, any deal, let's say we're going to make a deal over this Tumblr. Okay, and I say, listen, I own this Tumblr. And you say, no, I own the Tumblr. Okay, well, if I say, you know what, you're right, you own the Tumblr. There's no deal to be made now. I have now acknowledged your right to the Tumblr.

So there is no deal to be made. The purpose of a negotiation is to settle mutually exclusive claims. The point Huckabee is making correctly is that Israel does have its own exclusive claim to sovereignty over a particular territory. And then Palestinians are making similar claims about the sovereignty of that territory. If it's a territorial dispute, that can be solved in a variety of ways. What cannot be solved is an exterminationist, eliminationist viewpoint that says the entire state of Israel has to go.

Okay, recognizing the quote-unquote legitimate claims on both sides would be a proper way to start. What would not be a proper way to start is by saying that one side, for example, the Israelis, have no legitimate claim at all to Judea and Samaria, which is not true. That is the position of people like Chris Van Hollen.

Meanwhile, Turkey continues to be a thorn in the side of NATO. Turkey was originally admitted to NATO as a bulwark against the Soviet Union because, of course, they're in a very territorially important area. However, Turkey has now turned into an Islamist dictatorship under Erdogan. They have now announced that they are severing all relationships with Israel. The Turkish president said he will not continue or develop relations with Israel in the future. This does beg the question as to why exactly Turkey is a member of NATO at this point.

Why precisely should Turkey continue to receive NATO protection under, for example, Article 5 if they are pretty much explicitly in a Cold War with an ally of the United States and still most of Europe? That seems weird. But again, NATO is poorly run. I'm looking forward to President Trump making some corrections over at NATO. NATO's military chief, Admiral Rob Bauer, for example, he was caught on tape yesterday asking why people are so against being spied upon. I mean, I have some answers to that one, actually.

And again, it's the me and the we discussion. Everybody says it's my privacy. Now, everybody has given away everything to the tech companies in the US by saying yes, yes, yes, when you wanted the app of Google and everything. If the government says, can I see your phone for 10 seconds, there's a revolution. But we've given away everything already. So it's a ridiculous discussion on privacy in many ways. So I think we have gone too far in many of these things.

we should look a little bit less to the individual and a little bit more to what does it mean for the group, for society. Yeah, I'm a little bit discomfited by the head of NATO saying that. He also specifically criticized Elon Musk, which is becoming sort of stock in trade for a globalist elite. In terms of disinformation and cyber attacks and all the things that are happening, influencing elections, I think it's a serious problem. And I think the

The use of social media is basically amplifying everything that is being done by bot factories. I'm very much in favor of freedom of speech, but I'm not necessarily convinced that what Mr. Musk is doing on X is the right approach. I'm very much in favor of freedom of speech, but there is a lot of things on Twitter that is not helping our societies at all.

Well, you know, I think that if you're worried about freedom of speech and if you actually pretend that you care about these things, you just have some quibbles with Elon Musk. You might want to talk to some members of NATO like Turkey, which again is an Islamist dictatorship. I'm also enjoying the revisionist history that you are getting from this military chief saying that Afghanistan was never of strategic importance. That's weird since NATO was involved there for nigh on 20 years. For me, there is a big difference between Afghanistan and Ukraine. Actually, Afghanistan was never...

of strategic importance. If we're really honest, Afghanistan was not of strategic importance. We spent 20 years there, we did a lot of things, and people lost their lives

If you ask the question, was it of strategic importance, Afghanistan, the answer is no. Okay, we're going to find out in really short order whether that's true, since Joe Biden pulled it out of there ignominiously, left them billions of dollars in military equipment, and al-Qaeda is reconstituting. So we'll find out whether, in fact, that is the case. And if that was the case, why wasn't anybody at NATO saying that earlier? Maybe you should have told all of us. All righty, coming up...

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