Ep. 2092 - Trump Makes His FINAL PICKS
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Well, folks, President Trump's cabinet has now taken its final form. We'll get to that in a moment. First, if you have not heard, our best deal of the year is happening right this very second. Get 50% off new annual memberships. No code needed. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join right now. So.

Matt Gaetz was President Trump's original pick for attorney general. He ran into severe headwinds in the Senate for a bunch of good reasons, including open ethics investigations over his activities in Florida. There had been accusations that he was involved in drug-fueled sex parties and the like. He was also widely disliked inside the House for his attempt to unseat, his successful attempt to unseat the then Speaker of the House,

Kevin McCarthy, which many people in the House felt was not driven specifically by political necessity, but was more driven by personal animus. And of course, Matt Gaetz had practiced law for approximately two years, which again, is not usually the sort of record of somebody who you then select

for attorney general. So Gates has now stepped out of the race, presumably at the behest of President Trump. It became very clear to both Trump and to J.D. Vance, who is sort of the Senate handler for Matt Gates, who's going around meeting with a variety of senators in the Senate, that the votes just weren't there for Matt Gates.

And President Trump, I think, wisely decided that he was not going to use his political capital to ram through somebody like Matt Gaetz when there was no need to do so. He could simply appoint somebody who is not going to be nearly as controversial as Gaetz and get exactly the upside without much of the downside. And that's precisely what has happened at this point. President Trump has now selected instead Pam Bondi, who is the attorney general of the state legislature.

of Florida. Bondi is a longtime Trump ally, as The Washington Post points out again and again. When Donald Trump has faced scandal and scrutiny, Pam Bondi was there to defend him. Bondi said the Justice Department's special counsel investigation into whether Trump associates coordinated with Russian interference in the 2016 election needed to be dissolved. She was, of course,

Correct about that. She declared the 45th of the president's first impeachment in 2019 was a sham. And she said that when Trump was indicted a multiplicity of times, that was BS as well. So she's a longtime Trump ally. She, of course, is a former Florida state attorney general, and she was tapped to replace Gates. Now, if you look at her sort of record, her record is very conservative. She's also endorsed by wide swaths of the Republican Party. Everybody from Jeb Bush to obviously Team Trump has endorsed Pam Bondi.

Alex Pfeiffer, Trump transition spokesman, said, quote, Attorney General nominee Bondi is looking forward to this confirmation process and answering any questions the senators might have. And of course, you know, again, she goes back really far with Trump. In 2016, she endorsed Trump in the Republican primaries.

And she's a solid pick. Pam Bondi is going to do precisely what needs to be done at the DOJ. In fact, Axios points out exactly what her plans are at this point. He's going to overhaul the Justice Department. So what is that going to look like? Well, apparently he's going to obviously she's obviously going to fire people like Jack Smith.

She's also going to look into cleansing the DOJ of the so-called deep state. And we'll get much more into the deep state in a bit because at the beginning, when people were saying deep state, they were using it to apply to pretty much everybody. Anything you didn't like, anytime you didn't like something, it was the deep state. Well, it turns out that the deep state is actually quite real. And what it means is career appointees inside various executive agencies who have been shielded from the hiring and firing process and thus have been able to substitute their own intuitions as to what the American people require to

as opposed to what the president of the United States requires of them. So what exactly does this look like? Well, in Project 2025, which of course is not the guide to the Trump administration, but has some good ideas in it, they talk about a top-to-bottom overhaul that would involve more closely aligning the DOJ with the president's agenda. And this sort of stuff is really necessary because as we saw during Trump team number one, if you have career appointees at the DOJ, those people can make an awful lot of trouble for the president-elect.

They can actually force him to spend reams of money, reams of time defending himself from completely spurious allegations because they decide to initiate a prosecution against the person they are supposed to be working for. What this shows, the substitution of Bondi for Gates, what that really shows more than anything else is that this is in fact a serious team.

Trump could have gone to the mattresses for Matt Gaetz. He could have. And maybe, maybe he would be able to sneak him through, although I think that's quite doubtful, given the fact there are only 53 Republican senators and three right off the top weren't going to vote for him. But what Trump wants is his agenda. And listen, what you want from a president-elect is the agenda. The personnel are the policy, and the policy is the personnel. So if the personnel get in the way of the policy, the personnel have to go. So as Kimberly Strassel points out, there are a bunch of lessons from all of this.

Lesson number one is that not all allegations against Republicans are partisan shams. And it may be that there were allegations against Gates that were not partisan shams. But not only that, there's a big lesson here. And the lesson is that you want to shake up the system. You need people who are willing to effectively shake up the system and not be a magnet for attention.

You can find people who are going to do the thing without creating all of the controversy. And that's why I think it's very smart what President Trump has done here in telling Matt Gaetz to step aside. And again, Pam Bondi is going to do precisely what Donald Trump requires of her. Here's The New York Times' Peter Baker, who, of course, is no friend of Trump, suggesting that Pam Bondi is going to perform admirably in the role that Trump has suggested for her.

She is a partisan. She is a loyalist to Trump. She may not be as flamboyant as Matt Gaetz, but she holds some of the same views about the Justice Department and how it should be used. She has more experience than Gaetz does. She was an attorney general of Florida. Gaetz really never has been much of a lawyer, certainly wasn't a prosecutor. So she brings a little bit more legal experience to the table, obviously.

And she's not as likely, I think, to, you know, offend in the same way that Matt Gaetz was willing, not only willing, but eager to do. But she again, yeah, you're right. She's going to look at the Justice Department very askance, very much from a Trumpian point of view, viewing it as, you know, a department that needs to be, you know, deconstructed in a lot of ways and reformulated to be an arm of Trump's White House.

And Kim Strassel, of course, is the author of that Wall Street Journal piece. She points out the same thing. She says there's a sigh of relief over Pam Bondi because this is a transition team that is on the rails. It's a transition team that obviously has a forward-looking vision that is disconnected from whatever the personal political ambitions are of the members of the team.

She's a much more conventional pick, Paul, than Matt Gaetz was. She was the attorney general of Florida, generally got pretty good reviews for doing that down there. The senators so far have been very excited by this pick. I think you can feel a

a sigh of relief of having someone. Look, I think she's gonna be an interesting combination of someone who will come in and do some of those things Donald Trump says he wants done, some reform, getting the department out of political engagement and politicized lawsuits, but also someone that doesn't have all the baggage that Matt Gaetz has had and had going into the office.

And again, this is all part and parcel of President Trump's plan to shake up the executive branch, which requires deep cuts. That's what Doge is for. That's the Department of Governmental Efficiency. They'll be led from the outside by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. And it's also his plan for inside the government. So when it comes to the FBI, for example, which was deeply involved in the whole Russiagate scandal,

which turned out to be more of a scandal about the corruption within the FBI than it turned out to be a scandal about President Trump. President Trump is going to shake up the leadership at the FBI, apparently, and fire both the director and install an experienced former agent and MAGA loyalist in the top two roles, which, again, makes a lot of sense. You want people who are going to perform the functions the FBI is supposed to perform, namely actually monitoring criminal activity inside the United States.

But also you want somebody who is not going to be militarizing the FBI against the people at the top of government. By the way, this has become an international tactic that is used by the left is the integration into a variety of government agencies inside all sorts of Western powers and then use of those government agencies weapons against the top guy if those people tend to be.

on the right. It's a major problem that pretty much everybody on the right is facing in international politics, because it turns out the administrative state is a tool for people who like bigger government. It is a tool for people who like to administer. That is not a giant shock. And so cleaning out the executive branch is mandate number one for President Trump. Well, over the weekend, President Trump made a bunch of other picks for his cabinet. Those include Scott Besant for secretary of the treasury.

So Besant has sort of an interesting past. He obviously is an investor. He was a protege of George Soros, and he gave money to Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama. He also was a strong advocate for gay rights and marriage equality, according to the New York Times. He's certainly not a man of the right. However, he has worked substantially with Wall Street. He is going to work to steer tax cuts through Congress. And he has sort of a heterodox view with regard to trade. As the Wall Street Journal points out,

As a hedge fund manager, first at Soros' firm and later at his own, Besson specialized in macro investing or analyzing geopolitical situations and economic data to wager on big picture market moves. He generated billions of dollars in profits betting on and against currencies, interest rates, stocks, and other asset classes around the world. He was motivated to step out from behind the desk and get involved with Trump in part because of a view that time is running out for the United States economy to grow its way out of excessive budget deficits and indebtedness.

He says in his first interview following this election with The Wall Street Journal, his policy priority will be to deliver on Trump's various tax cut pledges. He also said that he's going to be focused on enacting tariffs and cutting spending, as will be maintaining the status of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. So it's sort of, again, a sort of heterodox viewpoint.

Besant taught economic history at Yale University, so obviously his credentials are very strong. His association with George Soros sounds less political than investment involved. Soros, of course, is one of the most in his sort of prime era before he became the world's most notorious evil leftist who is funding every bad cause you could think of. George Soros is mostly known for being an extraordinarily aggressive currency trader who made a lot of money in the markets.

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in Japan, including wagering against the Chinese yen. So again, he is looking pretty seriously at tariffs. He's pursuing a policy he calls 3-3-3. That would include cutting the budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2028, spurring GDP growth of 3% through deregulation and producing an additional 3 million barrels of oil or its equivalent every single day. And he says that he thinks of tariffs as a negotiating tool. He says that, quote, the tariff gun will always be loaded and on the table, but rarely discharged.

And he says that maybe use them as a source of tax revenue if that means lowering taxes. So, again, that is a much more cohesive economic agenda. President Trump's talk about tariffs overall has been in glowing terms. I've been saying for months when President Trump talks about tariffs, he sees tariffs as leverage. If you look at his history, this is what he has used tariffs for. He is not going to slap a 20 percent tariff on everything across the board because that creates inflation. And Trump, most of all, does not want to be an inflation president.

What he will do is he will threaten to use tariffs in productive ways that force other nations to back down, which, again, is not a bad policy. This is a massive tool in the American arsenal. We are, in fact, the world's most productive market. Steve Moore was certainly no big state interventionist with regard to the economy. He's praised the pick of Scott Besant.

I've got a big smile on my face because I think this is an excellent pick. I've known Scott now for about 10 years. We've worked together. He's a supply sider, David. You'll appreciate that in the meld of Larry Kudlow and Art Laffer and Steve Forbes. You know, this is a huge job. This is one of the other than secretary of state. I'd say this is probably the most important cabinet position. Yes.

Okay, so again, it is a solid pick. It is all about the economic growth. That is the number one priority is the economic growth at this point. And that's what Trump is all about. All Trump wants in life is to be a successful economic president and a successful foreign policy president, which is, of course, exactly what we should want. By the way, his approval ratings for his transition thus far, 60%. Those are very, very high approval ratings for President Trump. And if his team does what they are supposed to do, President Trump could be one of the most transformative presidents

of our lifetime, probably the most transformative president of our lifetime if he is able to do all of the things that he's attempting to do at this point. Other good picks over the weekend, President Trump picked Sebastian Gorka as a deputy assistant to the president. Of course, Gorka is a very hawkish figure, particularly with regard to radical Islam. According to the Washington Post, he was tapped to serve as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism. He had been an advisor on national security matters for Trump for seven months. He

In the last administration, this doesn't require Senate confirmation. So he is going to be focusing on militant groups and immigration, according to the Washington Post. Trump complimented Gorka's qualifications. He said, quote, he has been a tireless advocate for the America First agenda and the MAGA movement. So again, this is a solid pick. Gorka is incredibly, as we say, harsh with regard to radical Islam, which is going to be a necessity in a time when radical Islam is on the uptick, thanks to the predations of Iran.

In an interview last year, he watched some of the videos of October 7th. He said, kill every single one of them, referring to Hamas. God bless Israel. God bless Judeo-Christian civilization.

Obviously, I'm a fan of that particular perspective when it comes to the war on terrorism, which does continue. It's not a war on terrorism. It's a radical. It's a war on radical Islam, which is something that Gorka totally understands. There's one more good pick that I think is worth noting. So as you will know from listening to our show, President Trump has now picked Marty McCary, who's an excellent pick. Marty McCary.

It is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He was sort of our go-to guy during the COVID pandemic. We had him on nearly every week during the COVID pandemic, explaining the ins and outs of COVID policy. Did masks do anything? The answer was pretty much no. Should vaccines be mandatory? The answer was no. Was COVID going to kill 2 million people in the United States if left unchecked? The answer was no. These sorts of

realities are things that McCary did an excellent job picking apart. So he was a lockdown skeptic. He was a vaccine mandate skeptic. And now he's been picked to head the Food and Drug Administration, which is a very solid pick. Again, McCary is a personal friend. He's a friend of the show. And he's going to do an excellent job over at FDA. President Trump said in a statement late on Friday, quote, FDA has lost the trust of Americans and has lost sight of its primary goal as regulator.

He will work under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to, among other things, properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our nation's food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our nation's youth so they can finally address the childhood chronic disease epidemic. But it's not just that McCary is going to be a critic of the way the FDA was run before. So, for example, he criticized the agency

And the way that they reviewed data leading up to the approval of Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and some of the claims that were being made by the FDA, including the claim that this thing would cut down on transmission of COVID, which turned out not to be true. And he also was pointing out, was Professor McCary, Dr. McCary, he kept pointing out throughout the COVID pandemic that their recommendations that everyone take the vaccine, including for children, were ridiculous.

He is not just going to be about shutting down the distribution of material in the United States. He's going to be about streamlining the process at the FDA to make sure that new treatments actually get into the system faster. One of the big problems in terms of investment in R&D is that the FDA's system is extremely haphazard. It takes for freaking ever for people to get a drug to market. And that means that people die in the meantime.

In 2021, he said, I'm pro-vaccine, but the issue of the appropriate clinical indication of the COVID vaccine is not an all or nothing phenomenon as we frequently see in American culture and politics. So again, McCary is an excellent pick right here, and he's going to do an excellent job at the FDA. Other picks that President Trump has now made, Dr. Jeanette Neshaiwat Fox, news medical contributor, picked as U.S. Surgeon General. So I'll admit I was sort of taken in by a lot of the early clips that were put out of her on X.com by critics of Neshaiwat. She's a fine pick. There's an

There's nothing wrong with her. The suggestion that she was in favor of, for example, COVID mandates with regard to vaccines, that is not true. She was following the data that was available at the time in 2021, and then she quickly became an advocate for using COVID vaccines only on the elderly or the severely obese. So again, the sort of notion that's being promulgated on X.com that she is some sort of COVID lockdown fanatic is not actually true. So that's a fine pick as well by President Trump, Jeanette Nashaiwatt for Surgeon General.

He also has picked a person named Scott Turner for housing and urban development. And and this has prompted some nice racism from the left because they're very they're very upset that they want it both ways. Trump's cabinet is both too white. And also, if he picks a black person, it's because Donald Trump is a racist. Here's the MSNBC panel laughing at Trump's HUD pick Scott Turner.

Scott Turner, he is a motivational speaker, and he's going to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ooh, black man leading HUD. I mean, first of all, why does everybody, I mean, every single president, has there ever been a white person who has been the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development? Not since the 1960s, I'm sure. It's a rhetorical question, but yes. I mean, what, y'all got something to say?

I was asking. And it's not just Republicans that do it. Okay. No, it's not. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is about HUD. What is it about HUD? They don't always want that job either. No. You don't have black folks lining up to be at HUD. Okay. So, I mean, the reality is that probably the reason for that is because it was set up as part of the civil rights initiatives. Okay.

under Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965. And a lot of those initiatives were specifically developed as almost affirmative action picks. The answer, by the way, is that there have been quite a number of white heads of HUD, including people like Jack Kemp, who was the HUD director under George H.W. Bush. You've had a Hispanic head of HUD, who was Julian Castro under Barack Obama. There's an acting head of HUD named Matt Ammon, who was the acting head of HUD very shortly between sort of the transition period between Trump and Biden.

Sean Donovan was the head of HUD. Yeah, again, the idea here presumably is that Republicans are racist for picking a black guy for HUD. He'll be fine. Okay, so now we get to the one bad pick in the cabinet, like truly not a good pick inside the cabinet. And that would be Representative Lori Chavez-Durimer for labor. This one is a problem. It really is. So again, I've praised virtually all of President Trump's picks. I even understood why he picked Matt Gaetz, though I thought that Matt Gaetz was not a good pick and I thought that he would probably be defeated by the Senate.

When it comes to Lori Chavez de Remmer, this is not a good pick by President Trump. She is not a good pick. And the way you can tell she's not a good pick is that she is endorsed by both Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, as well as Randy Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. If you are endorsed by Randy Weingarten, maybe the most pernicious actor in all of American politics, that is a good indicator you are a terrible pick.

She tweeted out, quote, it is significant that the president-elect and nominated represent Chavez de Remmer for labor. Her record suggests real support of workers and the right to unionize. I hope it means the Trump admin will actually respect collective bargaining and workers' voices from teamsters to teachers. So maybe this is an attempt by President Trump to buy off Sean O'Malley and the teamsters for having supported him. Whatever the case, this is a bad pick because the Department of Labor actually does have a significant impact on how business is done in the United States. The Department of Labor,

oversees all sorts of union activities. It oversees business activities with regard to unions and the Department of Labor can do awful damage to a capitalist economy.

President Trump's picks affect the economy. There's something else that affects all of us who are responsible and hardworking Americans. Taxes. The October 15th deadline has passed. Are you prepared for what's coming? Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled? Miss the deadlines? File for an extension? Well, now that October 15th is behind us, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement. Let me tell you, they don't play around. You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet.

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This election season, I visited six states. I've been traveling all over the place, a lot going on. Between all of that, other podcasts, our election coverage in Nashville, I'm on the go all the time. Between all that travel, I somehow need to maintain my health. That means hitting the gym, spending time with the family, and eating healthier. I thought I used to be able to power through on just the conservative willpower and the coffee, but I learned pretty quickly that performance requires peak nutrition, and that means eating enough veggies.

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This is how you can take your veggies out. You just stick those right in the smoothies. Keeps the gun show going strong. Go to balanceofnature.com and use promo code Shapiro for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Again, balanceofnature.com, promo code Shapiro. Here's Senator Patty Murray, who is one of the most left-wing members

of the Senate caucus for the Democrats and quote, Americans deserve a labor secretary who understands that building a stronger economy means standing up for workers, not billionaires and giant corporations. We need a labor secretary who will protect workers' rights, help ensure everyone can have a secure retirement, make sure every worker gets paid the full paycheck they've earned, and that all workers are treated with dignity and respect. As an original author of the PRO Act, I'm glad to see Representative Chavez-Dremmer is a co-sponsor of the bill I wrote with Representative Scott.

Again, the PRO Act is one of the most radical pieces of pro-union legislation in American history. It's called the Richard Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act. It would amend the National Labor Relations Act to essentially force through labor unions. It is a massive problem, the PRO Act. The fact that she was a chief sponsor of the PRO Act is a huge red flag, and there is no reason why she should be proposing this.

And joining onto the pro act. And one of the sort of core elements of a free market economy is the ability of people to negotiate freely with their employers without being forced into a union, without being forced to pay union dues, to be able to freely vote on whether or not to join a union.

The PRO Act, there's a reason why private sector unions are really pushing hard for the PRO Act. It invalidates nationally right to work laws. Those right to work laws allow people to work in particular sectors of the economy, whether they are members of unions or not. According to the Heritage Foundation, the PRO Act would invalidate 27 states' right to work laws and allow unions to take a portion of workers' wages directly from their paychecks without their consent and without regard to their stated opposition.

It would also undermine state lawmakers ability to enact laws leading to more employment opportunities, stronger income growth and faster growing economies. So, again, I think this pick was probably a reflection of President Trump's attempt to reach out to the labor sector. He'd won an outsized share of members of labor unions in this particular election cycle.

Sean O'Brien, who, of course, spoke at the Republican National Convention is one of those bizarre sites I've ever seen because he spoke and he basically laid out a Bernie Sanders economic plan at the RNC and Trump in an attempt to broaden the big tent, which, of course, is smart politically allowed that. That doesn't mean that you have to shape the Department of Labor around the desires of Sean O'Brien. He endorsed it, of course. He said North America's strongest union is ready to work with you every step of the way to expand good jobs.

She lost her reelect battle this year. And so now she will be joining the administration if she makes it through a Senate confirmation hearing. My suggestion is that you probably should not. Bottom line is that we are now reaching the sort of full fruition of the Trump cabinet. There are only a few open slots at this point in the Trump cabinet.

But when you take a look at the overall quality of these picks, this is a very strong cabinet. This is a cabinet with a serious MAGA agenda. It's a cabinet that is ready to go day one. It's a cabinet with a full commitment to breaking apart many of the ugly parts of these institutions and remolding them in the interests of the American people. So we are set for a transformative presidency, particularly in the first couple of years.

The media are not sure what to do about it. They're declaring that the cabinet is dangerous, of course. But the problem for them is this cabinet is eminently not dangerous. Again, if you go down the list of Trump's cabinet picks at this point, you're looking really at heavy hitters. The Trump cabinet, just to go through it really briefly, is Besant at the Department of Treasury. It is at the National Security. National Security Advisor is going to be Representative Mike Waltz, who's a hawk.

At Secretary of State, you have Marco Rubio. At Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. Seb Gorka is going to be a deputy assistant to the president. And the full cabinet looks good. He also selected, by the way, Brooke Rollins for agriculture secretary as well.

She is a co-founder and president of the America First Policy Institute, which is a sort of pro-Trump right wing think tank. It's very new. And many members of the AFPI have joined the administration, including Linda McMahon, who's going to be filling the secretary of education post. Again, it's amazing how dismissive people on the left are of people who've been picked here. Linda McMahon is treated as just the wife of Vince McMahon, as opposed to, you know, the head of the Small Business Administration for several years under Donald Trump.

The Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has many years of experience. Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior, is the governor of North Dakota. Howard Letnick is a major investor at the Department of Commerce. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of course, is probably the most controversial pick in this cabinet right now at Health and Human Services because on the right, there are people who object to his abortion stances. And on the left, there are people who object to his sort of heterodoxy on vaccination, particularly COVID vaccination.

But the reality is that he is going to be hemmed in by the strictures of the position. Transportation, Sean Duffy. Energy, Chris Wright. That's an excellent pick. Veterans Affairs, Doug Collins. Homeland Security, Christy Noem. This is a pretty strong cabinet. It really is. Now, not all those people might make it through. Maybe a couple of those people fall by the wayside. Again, the most controversial members who have been named right there presumably are going to be RFK Jr. and Hegseth.

The Hegseth accusations, by the way, the sort of attempt to get Pete Hegseth on the notion that Pete Hegseth is an alleged rapist. The allegations against Pete Hegseth are skimpy at best. I mean, really skimpy.

Doesn't mean that Pete has been a model citizen in his personal life. What it does mean is if you look at the actual police allegations that were brought to the police, the ones they did not prosecute over the supposed rape that Pete Hegseth allegedly committed. The reason they didn't bring charges is because the testimony of everyone surrounding the woman contradicted her own testimony. Basically, the woman suggested over and over and over that she was drunk as a skunk.

And then Pete Hegseth took advantage of her. He rigged her in his hotel room. And there are a wide variety of sources who testified that she was absolutely not drunk, that she was actually sober. And she brought him back to his room and he was totally drunk as a skunk.

The timelines don't match up. If you want like a very, very detailed and graphic exposition of those particular allegations, Megyn Kelly did a show last Friday in which she goes through those accusations in graphic detail. It's well worth listening. Of course, Megyn is a former prosecutor, so she knows what she's talking about. So go take a listen to Megyn's podcast if you want more details on that. Suffice it to say, the short form, if you don't feel like listening to, you know, an hour of going through those allegations in specific detail, is that the woman's account here is not particularly credible. And the reason...

that this rape allegation was never brought to court is because the police also presumably found it not credible. So that means that the most kind of colorful member of the Trump coterie who was picked for the administration was, again, Matt Gaetz. He is now out. So if you are a Democrat and you're hoping to knock down a couple of the picks, the people you're going to be aiming at presumably are RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth. Hegseth, I think, is going to get through.

Tulsi Gabbard, I think, will probably get through. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a heavier lift.

It'll be interesting to see how they approach the abortion aspect of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s sort of policy. I think President Trump is going to have to commit right now to reinstating the Mexico City policy, which is a government policy blocking U.S. federal funding for nongovernmental organizations that push abortion abroad. He's going to have to do that probably on his own if he wants to preserve Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Basically, he'll say, listen, RFK Jr. is a pro-choice guy, but that doesn't mean that's going to be the policy of my administration. It's my administration.

So it'll be fascinating to see how President Trump plays all of that out. So that's the that's the cabinet. By the way, I do think that Lori Chavez Deremer for Labor Secretary might go down in flames as well. So you're probably talking four nominees among all of these who will get some controversy. I think probably three of them skate through with with some opposition. And meanwhile, President Biden, he is leaving the world stage. We have reached the end of Biden times, which is a dangerous place in the world. It really is because this guy's been a lame duck.

since they ousted him from the presidential race. I mean, it truly is quite an amazing thing that the Democrats basically declared the sitting president of the United States non-compos mentis and then left him in place. They said he's too crazy and he's too addled to run for president, but he's certainly fine where he is, you know, running the world as the president of the United States. It is not a shock that in the last six months, the world has continued to become...

that it has continued to become more fiery. There have been more conflagrations. That is not a shock because President Biden is an empty chair. And yet here was President Biden stumbling and bumbling his way through a speech suggesting that he's leaving the world better off than they found it, which, no, the answer there is no, absolutely not. I believe we can be proud we're leaving America to a better place today than we came into office four years ago. This country is living through the worst pandemic we'd seen in over 100 years.

Our economy was in a tailspin. We had just witnessed something we thought we'd never, ever see in America: a violent insurrection on January the 6th, and so much more. We've come a long way since then. We passed historic legislation, often with some bipartisan support, laws that are literally going to change America, not just now, but for decades and decades to come.

Again, nobody believes he has left the world a better place. And then he says, who would lead the world if we did not step up? I mean, the answer is that he did not step up. And right now, that means that America's enemies are making hay while the sun shines. I know I've only been around a few days, a few years. I can't believe how long it's been. But I fully believe America's better positioned to lead the world today than any point in my 50 years of public service.

Hold a second as I say to my colleagues around the world when we meet, if not America leading the world, who leads the world? I mean that literally. Think about that question. Who would lead the world if we did not step up?

Again, he has not stepped up and no one is leading the world on behalf of the United States. That's about to change in pretty dramatic fashion, needs to, because chaos continues to engulf the world. We'll get to that in a moment. First, in a world where traditional values are under attack, the Candle Club stands as a beacon of truth. Started by a mom who refused to be silenced by cancel culture,

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You get it all. Uncensored daily shows with limited ads, live breaking news you can trust, premium entertainment reshaping culture. From the decade's number one documentary, Am I Racist? to exclusive series and hit movies, DailyWire Plus offers it all and more. Your support makes this fight possible. Don't wait. Join the fight. Save 50% today. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Speaking of lack of leadership, obviously things are escalating between Russia and Ukraine.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a half dozen U.S. ballistic missiles fired by Ukraine slammed into an ammunition depot some 75 miles across the Russian border early on Tuesday, setting off further detonations that turned the sky red. The following morning, 10 British-provided cruise missiles pounded the vicinity of a Kremlin-run sanatorium that was apparently used as a military headquarters, smashing one after another in the town of Marino, located in Russia's Kursk region, about 20 miles from the front line there. So...

Ukraine is now taking advantage of longer range U.S. munitions in order to attack inside Russia. Meanwhile, Russia the other day used an intercontinental ballistic missile to fire conventional weaponry. The goal there, obviously, was to sort of threaten the possibility of using nuclear weapons at some point using an ICBM because you don't have to use an ICBM in order to fire conventional weapons. Again,

Again, right now, the Biden administration presumably is trying to up the ante in Russia in an attempt to force Putin to the table. Now, again, do I think that's necessarily a bad thing? No, I just think it's delayed and it's belated. And right now, Putin is incentivized to hold out because he believes that the Trump team coming in might cut him a better deal than the Biden team would. But that's only because the Biden team was never looking for a deal. The Biden team had no actual end goal here. And that absence of leadership, the worst possible policy, by the way, a vacuum of leadership

No goal and no means aimed at the actual goal that Zelensky wanted, which, again, if you want to free the Donbass or you want to free Crimea, you need to give them more weapons. Biden wasn't giving them more weapons and then maintaining the goal of freeing those territories. And the result has been just a stagnating war with hundreds of thousands of people dead. The lack of leadership by the United States is obvious and clear. The same thing, by the way, holds true over the weekend.

Late last week, there was an announcement by the disgusting, corrupt, and anti-Semitic International Criminal Court. They issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his former defense minister, Yoav Galant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. They also, in order to suggest a moral equivalent, issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Daif, who is dead. He was the military chief of Hamas, and he was killed in an airstrike months ago.

The ICC arrest warrant is ridiculous and disgusting. The claim is that Israel was deliberately attempting to starve the Palestinians. And let me explain how insane that is. Israel has shipped in, I kid you not, a million tons of food aid into the Gaza Strip. Tons, not pounds, tons. Okay, you're talking about a billion tons.

pounds of food aid shipped into the Gaza Strip in the middle of a war in which Hamas, with the help, yes, of some civilians, is currently holding Israelis and Americans hostage. And the ICC decided that it was going to move forward with this arrest warrant. Now, part of this was an attempt by the prosecutor in this case to avoid the fact that he's now been hit with a sexual harassment allegation. Apparently members of both sexes, by the way. And so he was attempting to misdirect away from that by issuing an arrest warrant.

The ICC arrest warrant doesn't apply in a bunch of places that don't abide by the ICC. So, for example, the United States is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court. Why? Because we are aware that it is, in fact, a repository of evil dictatorial states and their European dupes. And so what we were concerned about as Americans is that they would then attempt to arrest, for example, men.

members of the American military who served in Afghanistan or who served in Iraq. And by the way, this is something the Trump administration should, in fact, be worried about, because if you are a signatory to the ICC and the ICC issues an arrest warrant, then you now have a legal duty under the ICC. They have no enforcement mechanism. How does someone actually get arrested? The answer is if you're a signatory to the ICC and let's say that Vladimir Putin, who also has been condemned by the ICC, he's also an arrest warrant.

target, if he lands in an ICC signatory state, that state now has the obligation, legal obligation as a signatory to the ICC to arrest that person.

So if you think that that won't be attempted on Donald Trump, you're out of your mind. This is why the United States is not a signatory to the ICC. This used to be a sort of bipartisan understanding that the ICC was a trash organization that manipulates the very idea of international law, which doesn't exist in the first place, in order to militarize and weaponize against the opponents of some of the world's worst regimes. So again, the proof is in the pudding. They're not just doing it against Netanyahu. They're doing it also against Joao Galant.

His defense secretary, his former defense secretary, who was basically fired by Netanyahu and became sort of an opposition figure for a while. The ICC attempt is now it's becoming very clear what they're doing. So yesterday, the International Criminal Court, after issuing these arrest warrants and a bunch of states said, we're not going to abide by this. Argentina said they're not going to abide by it. Hungary said they're not going to abide by it.

Because that happened, the ICC is now signaling that it may revoke the arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant if there is a what they call a credible investigation into charges of genocide and famine in the Gaza Strip by figures inside Israel. Which figures inside Israel? I'll let you guess.

And the answer is that there are figures inside Israel who are, in fact, allied with things like the ICC. Remember when I said earlier in the show, the deep state is present in an enormous number of jurisdictions across the globe. Whether you're talking about a deep state in Brazil that is currently targeting Yair Bolsonaro or a deep state in Israel that is, in fact, targeting Netanyahu. There are, in fact, career appointees in a wide variety of administrative agencies across the world who are directly opposed to the elected government's

of these particular places and will use their power in order to stifle the agenda of those particular elected governments. Now, the United States has said already that the Trump, the incoming Trump administration has already said that they're going to take severe measures against the ICC. Hamas is celebrating the ICC, by the way. This tells you exactly what you need to know about the International Criminal Court. They are so moral. They are so decent.

Again, in the International Court of Justice, which is another UN agency, the International Court of Justice, South Africa brought a case against Israel for genocide. South Africa did, which is a place of tremendous human rights violations. South Africa, they did so almost certainly because Iran was paying them.

And so all of these international institutions have been completely weaponized. And that will happen to President Trump. I promise you that as soon as President Trump is not, maybe while he is in office, the ICC at the behest of some corrupt state will bring some sort of prosecution against Donald Trump. And then they will try to get

The Europeans on the hook to arrest Trump if he were to arrive. Now, frankly, that would be the best thing that ever happened because no European country is going to elect, is going to arrest the sitting president of the United States. It just shows why this institution should be dismantled wholesale. It's vile and it's disgusting and it's obviously directed as part of a broader anti-Semitic

that is happening across the world's institutions. I mean, this is happening at the same time that Iran literally just killed an Israeli in the UAE, just a random Israeli in the UAE. He was a Chabad rabbi. His name was V Kogan, 28 years old. He went missing from Dubai on Thursday afternoon. He was murdered by agents of Iran. They just picked him up off the street. They took him 150 kilometers away from where he was kidnapped and they clearly murdered him. By the way, he must have been

mutilated in some way because they had to use methodologies in order to identify the body. The Israeli prime minister's office said, quote, the murder of Zvi Kogan of blessed memory is an abhorrent act of anti-Semitic terrorism. The state of Israel will use all means and will deal with the criminals responsible for his death to the fullest extent of the law. Israel suspects Uzbek citizens with ties to Iran were involved in Kogan's abduction and killing. According to a person familiar with the investigation, authorities in the Emirates have arrested three people in connection with the killing.

This, of course, is not a giant shock. Iranian agents all around the world have been attempting to kill Israelis for quite a long time. According to The Wall Street Journal, Iranian intelligence agents tried to kill Israeli tourists in Turkey in 2022. They've tried to kill Israeli diplomats. And of course, they've attacked people who are not Israeli either, including the author Salman Rushdie.

The targeting of Chabad is particularly egregious and again, not rare. Islamic terrorists, unfortunately, do tend to target Chabad. Chabad is a Jewish organization that does outreach, Jewish outreach, particularly for tourists. It's very useful. Chabad has emissaries. They're called Shulchim. They're all over the world. You'll recall that back during the Mumbai terror attack, maybe a decade ago, they actually went to a Chabad house and murdered everybody at the Chabad house.

This is not a giant shock, and it comes amid a growing wave of radical pro-Khomas anti-Semitism that has extended not just into places like UAE, of course, but also into the West. So over the weekend, there were large scale riots in the city of Montreal by pro-Khomasniks, people burning stores, people smashing up store windows, wearing face masks, chanting pro-Khomas slogans, setting parked cars ablaze in downtown Montreal, really, truly ugly stuff.

The protests were designed to coincide with the NATO summit in Montreal. And of course, according to the UK Daily Mail, it came on the heels of heightened tensions in the city following a wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including a significant protest at Concordia University on Thursday that involves confrontations between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrators. So where was Justin Trudeau, the pathetic prime minister of Canada, handsome Bernie Sanders?

Well, after he had already said that he would actually enforce their members of the ICC, that he would actually enforce the arrest warrant against Netanyahu, that it's Netanyahu, the head of state of a democratic country that is allied with the West, that if he visited Canada, Justin Trudeau would have him arrested. This is what Justin Trudeau said. Right after that, Justin Trudeau, while the city of Montreal was being burned by pro-Kamazniks, he was partying at a Taylor Swift concert like a little girl.

because he is in fact a little bit. So here was Justin Trudeau making the most of his time in the Taylor Swift crowd looking for all the world like a man who is, shall we say, comfortable with his sexuality. Look at this pathetic. He's so pathetic. At the Eros tour.

What a sad man. What a sad, how sad for Canada. Seriously. It's no wonder that Pierre Polievre is going to knock the living out of him in the next election. I mean, this guy has an approval rating in the toilet and he ought to. According to the UK Daily Mail, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was spotted shaking it off at a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto as Montreal descended into chaos with anti-Israel protests sweeping the streets.

So meanwhile, over in Toronto, Ezra Levant, who's a right wing political pundit, was arrested. Why? Because there's a pro-Khomas rally in Toronto and he was taping it. He was asking polite questions to members of the crowd. The police arrested him for supposedly being guilty of incitement because this is the way things work in Canada now. You're allowed to be a pro-Khomasnik who chants anti-Semitic slogans and maybe burns down stores and such. But if you ask a question to the pro-Khomasniks, you are now involved in incitement. Wouldn't want to incite the gentle fellows, would we?

No, I wanted to go out

I don't think you know. I'm going to tell you to move over there. And ultimately, I allowed you to take that video. I allowed you to take that video. So you're refusing to leave? I'm refusing to leave. Why? Because I'm a Jew, I'm a citizen, and I'm your boss. And I don't leave if you say Jews aren't allowed on the street. In the interest of keeping peace here and public safety, you're under arrest for breaching the peace. Take a minute. I'm good.

So, by the way, if you can't see the video, Ezra Levin is doing nothing. There's no way in which he's inciting a riot. He's literally standing there with a camera calmly talking to the police officers. He's not fighting them. He's not trying to hit anybody. He's not doing any of that stuff. Meanwhile, what was actually happening at the Toronto peaceful protest this weekend? It's all on tape. People carrying around posters with the upside down red triangle, which is used by Hamas to identify targets.

Somebody dressed up as Yahya Sinwar to cosplay Yahya Sinwar. He's sitting on a chair holding a stick because the last image of Yahya Sinwar is that he was sitting on an armchair holding a stick, which he threw at a drone before he got blown to kingdom come where he had an unfortunate, he had an unfortunate, I would assume, afterlife that did not meet with his prior expectations. All of that is totally fine in the city of Toronto. It's taping the stuff. That's really a problem.

This is the world that Joe Biden has helped create. This is the world the international left has helped create. And Donald Trump is going to come in and he's going to clean it up. And we are watching it happen in real time and it can't come too soon. All right, guys, coming up, we'll be getting into Democrats handling their time in the wilderness. How's it going? Well, if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shabiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.