Ep. 2302 - Mamdani’s Last Stand?!

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Speaker 9 Tons coming up on today's show the final new york mayoral debate between zoron mamdani andrew como and curtis sliela go through it in detail plus we discussed the latest on the government shutdown and that senate democrat from maine the candidate who who you know has the nazi tattoo well now he's covered it up wait until you see the cover-up of the tattoo it's quite terrible you know what isn't terrible daily wire lifetime memberships we had a feeling they would be popular well turns out having all access benefits for life with no renewals that's something that pretty much everybody wants apparently so here are your options you could buy one while they're still available, or you could win mine.

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Speaker 9 But before any of that happens, you actually do need to download the Daily Wire Plus app and follow me inside it right now in order to win. Well, last night was the second big New York mayoral debate.

Speaker 9 It involved, of course, the frontrunner Zoran Mamdani, the pro-Islamist, pro-jihadist, Marxist frontrunner who won the Democratic nomination versus Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, who had to resign office after, you know, getting a bunch of old people killed with his bad COVID policy and also grabbing ass.

Speaker 9 And he ran out of old people. And then he was ousted from office, which is why Kathy Hochul is now governor of New York.
He's running for mayor as well.

Speaker 9 He lost the Democratic nomination to Momdani and has been trailing him.

Speaker 9 in the polls ever since, largely because there's a third candidate in the race, Curtis Sleewa, a radio host from New York, longtime New York kind of mainstay.

Speaker 9 He's the head of an organization called the Guardian Angels, which back in the 1970s and 1980s did a bunch of work where they'd walk around with red berets on the subway, making the city safer for people who are living there by intimidating would-be criminals.

Speaker 9 And of course, he's become a pretty popular radio host, has been a big sort of iconic figure in New York's right-wing politics for half a century at this point.

Speaker 9 Well, the polls right now have Mamdani ahead, and it is unclear whether if Sliwa dropped out, the consolidated support between Cuomo and Sliwa would be enough to overcome Momdani.

Speaker 9 What is amazing is Momdani's base of support. According to a brand new poll out from the Patriot Polling Survey, Mom Dani has 62% of the foreign-born vote in New York City.

Speaker 9 For those who seem to believe that it makes no difference when you import a bunch of people to the United States who have different views of the United States, shall we say, than the sort of mainline, mainstream, average American view.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it makes a very, very big difference. In New York City, 62% of the foreign-born vote is moving toward Mamdani, Cuomo at 24%, Sliwa at 12%.

Speaker 9 Among American-born New Yorkers, Cuomo leads at 40%. Mamdani has only 32%.
Sliwa has 25%.

Speaker 9 So Mamdani is almost running in third among native-born New Yorkers, which says something about the importation of people, again, from places that do not share basic American values and are significantly warmer to Islamism and to Marxism.

Speaker 9 Now, this poll does show Mamdani at the top of the pack overall. He has 43% of the overall vote.
Cuomo is at apparently 34% of that vote, and Sliwa at 19%.

Speaker 9 But if that were true, then that would mean that Sliwa dropping out would mean that Zoran Mamdani likely loses.

Speaker 9 It also appears that TikTok has been putting its thumb on the scale in favor of Zoran Mamdani.

Speaker 9 The amount of online manipulation that is now just a part of our daily culture is astonishing, truly astonishing. We saw it during BLM.
We saw it during COVID.

Speaker 9 We've seen it most recently during the Israel-Hamas war, in which extraordinary amounts of propaganda were put out by foreign actors on TikTok and on X, deliberately designed to split the American body politic over that particular issue.

Speaker 9 And apparently now TikTok has been heavily, heavily promoting Zoran Mamdani, according to a brand new report from the New York Post.

Speaker 9 TikTok is allegedly putting its thumb on the scale to help Zorn Momdani win the New York City mayoralty.

Speaker 9 According to a new report, the Chinese-owned app's algorithm is distorting the playing field in New York City's mayoral race by amplifying pro-Mamdani content while suppressing videos backing his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, according to a Tel Aviv-based tech insider who cited a key leaked document from the social media company.

Speaker 9 Early evidence points to algorithmic influence that may be shaping voter perception in the New York City elections, according to this tech insider Johonatan Dodeles.

Speaker 9 He wrote that in a medium post published on Thursday. He noted TikTok's algorithm doesn't just determine which videos go viral.

Speaker 9 It's shaping what millions of people understand to be true about the world. And this, of course, has been true about TikTok for a very long time.

Speaker 9 It is not a shock that a Chinese-based app would prefer a Marxist-Islamist as the mayor of New York.

Speaker 9 Okay, well, last night featured the second debate and the last debate before the election between Mom Dani, Cuomo, and Sliwa. And it did not go amazing for Zara Momdani.

Speaker 9 It turns out that when questioned in any serious fashion about his views, dude has nothing.

Speaker 9 He's got that phony, phony, smarmy, pasted on smile that sends a chill up the spine of everyone who can identify basic authenticity, but seems to charm the pants off a bunch of wild left progressives who see Mamdani smiling and somehow think that's that's genuine.

Speaker 9 Cuomo and Sliwa went on the attack.

Speaker 9 According to the New York Post, the candidates sparred over President Trump, anti-Semitism and Mamdani's anti-Israel stance, mayoral control over the city's public schools, and much more with plenty of mudslinging.

Speaker 9 And it was, in fact, hot.

Speaker 9 The reality is that on the debate stage, Slee was the best. There's no question that Curtis is the best person on the debate stage.
The problem, of course, is that Curtis is a Republican.

Speaker 9 He's never going to break 25% of the vote, not for love or money. And he really should drop out.

Speaker 9 Now, this has been a major issue, at least for the last several weeks, where it's been clear the only way to beat Mom Donnie would be for there to be a consolidation of the vote.

Speaker 9 Curtis was asked about this by Sid Rosenberg, who's another host, sort of an iconic host in New York City.

Speaker 9 And Curtis basically melted down because Sid asked him, you know, you should really spend your time attacking Mom Donnie and you should get out of the race because you're not going to be the next New York mayor.

Speaker 9 And Curtis was having none of it.

Speaker 10 I have armed security guards now protecting my life and Nancy's life. I've been bribed by the billionaires to drop out of here.

Speaker 10 If anything happens to me or anything happens to my wife because of this frenzy that I hear constantly coming from some of your colleagues here at WABC. It's on you guys and you gals.

Speaker 10 That my life, my life is on the line here, Sid. My wife, Nancy, who has never harmed anybody who only cares about people and animals, is under threat now.

Speaker 10 Even when the Gottis and Gambinos put a hit on me, five Howell Point bullets, I never had armed security.

Speaker 10 The frenzy that is coming out of people's mouths.

Speaker 9 I mean, again, that is not an excuse for why you're staying in the race, Madute. I mean, like, many of us have armed security at all times.
Unfortunately, that is the nature of the beast right now.

Speaker 9 It is just an unfortunate point in American politics. There's a report yesterday that Barry Weiss, the new CBS news editor, has to have six armed security guards.

Speaker 9 And I will tell you that our team is very, very large when it comes to security. And that is an unfortunate result.

Speaker 9 of the fact that there are so many political actors these days who use unhinged rhetoric about their opponents and include in that unhinged rhetoric insane conspiracism that leads unhinged people to believe that

Speaker 9 prominent political commentators and politicians are controlling their lives and making their lives worse in such a way they can only be removed by force.

Speaker 9 Okay, but that's not a reason why Curtis should stay in the race. Putting all of that aside, the debate last night was not good for Mamdani.
If that matters, it was not good.

Speaker 9 Again, Curtis needs to drop out to give Cuomo a shot. Cuomo has run a particularly terrible race.
He has basically been somnambulant throughout this race, meaning a sleepwalker throughout the race.

Speaker 9 He has not run an energetic campaign. He seems to believe that the mayoralty should simply fall in his lap.
But last night, he was definitely more lively than usual.

Speaker 9 Here was Andrew Cuomo's opening statement:

Speaker 11 New York is the greatest city on the globe, but we are at a pivotal moment, and the voters are going to have to decide in this election what candidate has the plan to save this city and what candidate can get it done, not just talk about it.

Speaker 11 My main opponent has no new ideas. He has no new plan.
It's build a Blasio rehash and we know how that turned out. He's never run anything, managed anything.
He's never had a real job.

Speaker 11 I will hire 5,000 new police, build 500,000 new units. I will cut taxes.
I will grow jobs. And I will end.

Speaker 11 end

Speaker 11 this hate-mongering and division that is tearing this city apart because that's not who we are as a New Yorker, as New Yorkers. You know, I can make change.
You know, I can make government work.

Speaker 11 I've done it before. I'll be right here on day one.

Speaker 9 Now, again, not very good. I mean, like, yes, he's saying he's ready.
He's right, but he can't even get through the statement without kind of stammering his way through the statement.

Speaker 9 It's not particularly,

Speaker 9 I'd say, exciting. Alrighty, coming up more on the Mamdani debate.
He did not do amazing. We'll see if it matters.

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Speaker 9 Curtis Liwa's opening remarks were better than Cuomo's, for sure. Here was Curtis.

Speaker 11 It's us versus them.

Speaker 12 It's us versus the insiders and the billionaires. It's us versus Cuomo.
It's us versus Zorhan.

Speaker 12 This is a campaign not about power. This is a campaign about you, the people.

Speaker 12 And I know many of you hardworking New Yorkers, you tell me you've been pushed aside, you've been silenced. These are the people that have all the money, all the connections.

Speaker 12 They've made their backroom deals, but we have something more important.

Speaker 12 We have you, the people, and we're not going to be silenced anymore. We're going to fight.

Speaker 12 Tonight, I want you to look at the content of my policies, to know that I've served this city for more than 50 years, the city that I love.

Speaker 12 And I'm going to share with you my vision to make New York City safer again, to make New York City more affordable again, and where everybody once again can live. the American dream.

Speaker 9 Now, again, if Sleeve were not a Republican, you might have a shot at the Mayoral mirroral t he is a republican so he doesn't zor and mamdani uh all he could talk about zor mamdani has a couple of shticks again i cannot even deal with a smile i can't it's just it's so it is just so creepy and weird like the the fakeness the inauthenticity of this phony phony human being is sinister i mean it's like a sinister inauthenticity for zorin mamdani No normal human being smiles this much.

Speaker 9 It is not a natural thing for humans to do. Okay, like I know a lot of smiley people.
Zora Mamdani,

Speaker 9 like, you've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me.

Speaker 9 It's, it's so, but the things that he campaigns on are, he just says affordability and the future a lot.

Speaker 9 And what does he mean by affordability?

Speaker 9 He means that he is going to promise a bunch of things he can't actually fulfill because he doesn't have the ability to raise state taxes, as the Wall Street Journal points out.

Speaker 9 Quote, Mamdani has said he wants to generate $9 billion in new tax revenue by raising taxes on New York City's wealthiest residents and businesses.

Speaker 9 He's calling for a 2% tax on incomes over a million bucks, which would produce $4 billion in tax revenue. He wants to increase the state's corporate tax rate to $11.5%, generating $5 billion annually.

Speaker 9 There's only one problem. He doesn't actually control the state legislature.

Speaker 9 He is a mayor if he wins, not the speaker and not the governor.

Speaker 9 He wants to spend $6 billion annually on free childcare.

Speaker 9 He wants to spend $800 million annually on no fair bus service.

Speaker 9 He wants a complete rent freeze, which, again, I'm not even sure how he would effectuate that.

Speaker 9 He wants city-owned grocery stores and a $30 minimum wage. I mean, this is crazy crap.
Zara Mamdani is a weirdo creep Marxist who seems to believe that he can run a junior high

Speaker 9 presidential campaign in which you promise no homework and free candy every day and people will vote for it. Maybe it'll work.
Apparently, it's going to work.

Speaker 9 Which is a testament to how bad a candidate Andrew Cuomo is and how out of touch New Yorkers are, apparently.

Speaker 9 Here was Mom Dani's opening statement in which he said affordability in the future 2,619 times.

Speaker 11 While there are three candidates on this stage, you will hear only two messages.

Speaker 11 My opponents, who spend more time trying to convince the other to drop out than actually proposing their own policies, will speak only of the past because that's all that they know.

Speaker 11 I am the sole candidate running with a vision for the future of this city.

Speaker 9 By the way, his vision for the future very much approximates Vladimir Lenin's vision for the future circa 1917. So,

Speaker 9 no.

Speaker 9 Well, he was battered about Zor Mamdani. He didn't get out of this debate scot-free.
Andrew Kuomo in particular was on attack against Mamdani.

Speaker 9 He pointed out quite correctly that Zor Mamdani is a leech on the ass of society, that he has never held a job, that he has been a completely useless person his entire life, which is absolutely true.

Speaker 9 He is a trust fund baby who tried to make a career as a bad rapper before getting elected to the assembly, where he has ditched pretty much every major vote.

Speaker 9 He is 33 years old and is yet to hold a real job, and he's running for mayor of the financial capital of planet Earth. Here's Andrew Cuomo smacking him around.

Speaker 11 You have never had a job. You've never accomplished anything.
There's no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives.

Speaker 11 You don't know how to run a a government. You don't know how to handle an emergency.
And you've literally never proposed a bill on anything that you're now talking about in your campaign.

Speaker 11 You had the worst attendance record in the Assembly. And you gave yourselves the highest raise in the United States of America.
You went from $110,000 to $140,000.

Speaker 11 And then you never showed up for work and you missed 80% of the votes. Shame on you.

Speaker 9 Yeah, well, I mean, all of that is true, and Mamdani is trying to smile his way through it.

Speaker 9 Homo also slammed Mamdani on his anti-Semitism, which is clear and obvious to anybody who's been watching this race for more than two seconds.

Speaker 9 Mamdani is globalized the intifadashtik, his unwillingness to say that Hamas should disarm, his statements that he will arrest the sitting prime minister of the state of Israel, despite the fact he has no authority to do so.

Speaker 9 The fact that in his past he has made excuses for the Holy Land Five, people who are literally linked by law enforcement to terrorism and are in jail for those links.

Speaker 9 The fact that Zora Mamdani has campaigned alongside and taken pictures alongside people involved as uninductive co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Speaker 9 Like, that's just the beginning of the list of his pro-jihadism. Mamdani.

Speaker 9 Here is Andrew Como smacking him over it.

Speaker 11 You know,

Speaker 11 not everything is a TikTok video. You're the savior of the Jewish people.
You won't denounce globalize the intifada, which means kill Jews. There's unprecedented fear in New York.

Speaker 11 It was not several rabbis Errol. It was 650 rabbis who signed the letter, not several.

Speaker 9 Okay, and he then went on to go after Momdani over LGBTQ issues, because one of the weird things about Mom Dani is that Mamdani is the scavenger coalition, all in one human.

Speaker 9 I talk in my book, Lines and Scavengers, about the scavenger coalition, which would be the leeches, the Letchers, and the Barbarians. He's trying to appeal to all three.

Speaker 9 He really is more in the barbarian line, meaning he is somebody who is not originally from the United States, who does not believe in the basic ideals of the United States, but is using the free speech and freedom of thought and free politics in the United States to make his way to destroy the civilization from the inside.

Speaker 9 That's what Zora Mamdani is.

Speaker 9 But Zor Mamdani, of course, holds a lot in common with the jihadis, as we just mentioned. Zor Mamdani holds an enormous amount in common with the Marxists.
He is, in fact, a democratic social.

Speaker 9 He's called himself this. He is a Marxist who does not believe in capitalism, so he's a leech.
And he's made common cause with the Lechers, meaning radical LGBTQ activists.

Speaker 9 Now, the problem is that you can't hold all three of those things in one person. You can have a movement that contains voters from all three of those things.
That's his movement.

Speaker 9 But he's tried to be all of those things. How can you be a pro-Islamist and also a pro-LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign human?

Speaker 9 And this is the point that Andrew Cuomo is making at the same time you're trying to appeal to LGBTQ plus divided by sign voters.

Speaker 9 You are posing in pictures alongside people who would literally kill those people.

Speaker 11 You take a picture with Rebecca Kadaga, Deputy Prime Minister of Uganda. You take a picture with your father.
You're smiling. He's smiling.
She's known as Rebecca Gay Killer Kadaga.

Speaker 11 You're a citizen of Uganda. You took the picture.
You said you didn't know who she was. It turns out you did.

Speaker 11 How do you not renounce your citizenship or demand BDS against Uganda for imprisoning people who are gay

Speaker 11 just by their sexual orientation? Isn't that a basic violation of human rights?

Speaker 9 And again, he is right about that

Speaker 9 because Cuomo is sort of a traditional left-wing Democrat. Mamdani is something very, very different.

Speaker 9 Already coming up more from that debate between Zara Mamdani and Ru Cuomo and Curtis Liwant in New York. Plus, Grant Plattner is the bizarro world main Senate Democratic candidate.

Speaker 9 He's still leading in the polls, by the way. And yeah, dude, just got a cover up of a Nazi tattoo.
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Speaker 9 Cuomo also went out of his way to slam Mom Donnie on his economic proposals, which are totally crazy. He slams him over freezing rent.
He says, there's not even a way for you to do this.

Speaker 9 What are you even talking about? What does that mean?

Speaker 11 I'm going to freeze the rent.

Speaker 11 People think it applies to all of them. No, just the 25% of the units that are rent stabilized.
And by the way, it's all BS because the mayor doesn't have the power to do it anyway.

Speaker 11 The rent guidelines board does, and he doesn't control the rent guidelines board. So nothing is going to happen.

Speaker 9 And of course, Cuomo is right about that. Mamdani is making promises he has no intention of keeping.

Speaker 9 As I say, this is a junior high school presidential campaign in which he promises free cookies and milk, endless candy, and no homework.

Speaker 9 And if New Yorkers buy this, well, they're going to get to take the ride after they buy the ticket.

Speaker 9 Cuomo points out that Mom Dani is a great actor who missed his calling, which I mean, honestly, I think that's a little too complimentary to Mom Dani. I'm not sure he had a calling.

Speaker 9 He's been useless up until his mid-30s. So at that point, you start to wonder if your calling is just being useless.

Speaker 9 Here we go.

Speaker 11 I am going to increase that pilot program to more than 200 schools, and we're going to do it because we have to deliver for these children. Mr.

Speaker 11 yeah.

Speaker 11 Zoron is a great actor. He missed his calling.

Speaker 9 Okay, well, I mean, again, not wrong. I will say that, again, Sliwa had the best insult of the night.
He said that Mamdani's resume could fill a cocktail napkin.

Speaker 9 He said, Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City. And, I mean, that's true.
That's true. I just don't understand why Curtis is still in the race.

Speaker 9 Now, Cuomo and Sliwa both went after Mamdani. Again, Mamzani has been avoiding making any specific policy recommendations beyond these very broad and

Speaker 9 borderline, unachievable

Speaker 9 promises. And so he was asked about three specific referenda that are on the New York ballot.
And Mamzani tried to smile his way through it without giving an answer, which is his way.

Speaker 12 What is your opinion, Zoran?

Speaker 12 Come on. Yes or no.
What is your opinion? Yes or no, Zoran? True.

Speaker 11 I can be a politician. I got it.
I got it.

Speaker 11 They're pointing out what I was about to say.

Speaker 11 I think on the stage you can see two people appealing for the Republican Party's vote. What's your answer?

Speaker 11 Answer the question.

Speaker 11 Answer the question for once.

Speaker 11 Mike, my question to you was: do you support the three ballot amendment questions? I have not yet taken a position on those ballot amendments.

Speaker 11 What a shocker.

Speaker 11 What a shocker.

Speaker 9 You have to sort of enjoy the New York of all of this with the crowd going crazy and Mom Dani trying to smile his way through it. Again, Mom Dani is not great at this.
He's great in TikTok videos.

Speaker 9 And that's kind of it. He's great in TikTok videos.
He has a bunch of positions that are absolutely between incoherent and insane.

Speaker 9 And he has a population in New York City that is delusional enough to believe that they can endure another horrific mayoralty along the lines of Bill de Blasio and everything will suddenly be okay.

Speaker 9 What kind of stuff is Mom Dani proposing? Well, just to take from his apple tree of stupidity, one apple.

Speaker 9 At one point last night, he was asked about the police, and he said that dispatchers should decide whether it's appropriate to even send the police.

Speaker 9 Maybe they should instead send mental health professionals, and the dispatcher should decide.

Speaker 11 What I am proposing is something that will address the needs of New Yorkers in the present.

Speaker 11 We speak and hear from New Yorkers across the five boroughs who outline how the mental health crisis is one of the major challenges in this city.

Speaker 11 And yet, what we have in our city is asking those same police officers who are being asked to respond to shootings, respond to murders, to also respond to these calls.

Speaker 11 I trust the dispatchers who would be receiving these calls to make the determination as to whether there was any indication of violence.

Speaker 11 If there is no indication of a threat of violence, then we would set the mental health experts and providers to respond to those same incidents.

Speaker 9 So,

Speaker 9 no.

Speaker 9 I mean, the answer is no. So, you want the 911 dispatchers to be the people who are now determining whether to send a cop or whether to send a social worker.

Speaker 9 So, I asked our friends over at Comet, which is a project of perplexity, what are the qualifications for a 911 dispatcher in New York City?

Speaker 9 Since apparently Zorn Mandani now wants them to make judgment calls on the spur of the moment, whether to send a social worker or a cop.

Speaker 9 Apparently, according to Comet, to qualify as a 911 dispatcher in New York City, applicants must meet strict educational, experiential, and training standards set by the NYPD in New York State.

Speaker 9 So what are they? Well, first, you have to be a U.S. citizen

Speaker 9 and have a high school diploma or a GED. Wow.

Speaker 9 Also, you have to have one year of full-time paid clerical or customer service experience involving public contacts. So if you worked as like a customer service person at Walmart, cool.

Speaker 9 Civil service and assessments. You have to pass the New York City Civil Service Examination for a police communications technician administered by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

Speaker 9 I'm sure that is an extraordinarily challenging task, I'm sure.

Speaker 9 And then you have to complete 200 hours of training under the Emergency Services Dispatch Training Evaluation Program, which I assume is like a month of training or so, and includes courses in communications, radio operations, stress management, and legal aspects.

Speaker 9 You have 18 months to complete that.

Speaker 9 So that is

Speaker 9 okay.

Speaker 9 And then you have to have emergency medical dispatcher certification and also emergency fire certification and CPR certification.

Speaker 9 So I don't know where in there that qualifies you'd make a judgment call based on a loose set of facts about whether to send a cop or not.

Speaker 9 I'm not super comfortable with people with a high school GED and 200 hours of some form of training and a couple of state certifications being a person who decides whether or not a cop shows up with a gun or a social worker shows up with a a pencil and a clipboard when a nut is trying to push somebody in front of a train on a subway platform.

Speaker 9 How could it go wrong? Well, Mamdani's one bright shining moment is, of course, when he slapped at Andrew Cuomo over Cuomo's sexual harassment allegations.

Speaker 9 This, of course, is the thing that got Cuomo booted from higher office. Mom Dani pulled to Trump.
He said that some of the accusers were in the audience.

Speaker 9 And then Cuomo responded: Here was Mamdani's accusation:

Speaker 11 Mr. Cuomo,

Speaker 11 in 2021,

Speaker 11 13 different women who worked in your administration credibly accused you of sexual harassment.

Speaker 11 Since then, you have spent more than $20 million in taxpayer funds to defend yourself, all while describing these allegations as entirely political.

Speaker 11 You have even gone so far as to legally go after these women. One of those women, Charlotte Bennett, is here in the audience this evening.

Speaker 11 You sought to access her private gynecological records.

Speaker 11 She cannot speak up for herself because you lodged a defamation case against her. I, however, can speak.
What do you say to the 13 women that you sexually harassed?

Speaker 9 Okay, so Cuomo then responded to those claims. One of the big problems for Cuomo here is that the guy still hasn't come up with a great answer.
on this.

Speaker 9 Now, first of all, if you lodge a defamation claim against somebody because what you're saying is that they said something that is absolutely false, that

Speaker 9 I know that Mamdani is trying to claim that that's a form of silencing. That is a legal procedure because you are claiming the person lied about you.

Speaker 9 I'm not sure exactly what the alternative would be. Now, again, that's not a defense of Andrew Cuomo and his behavior with women.

Speaker 9 I just think that it's kind of legally pernicious to suggest that if there is, for example, an NDA, which is a normal employment thing, or if there is a defamation case that you lodge against someone you say is lying, and somehow this in and of itself amounts to an act of silencing.

Speaker 9 It can be used that way, but not necessarily. Anyway, here's Andrew Cuomo.

Speaker 11 If you want to be in government, then you have to be serious and mature.

Speaker 11 There were allegations of sexual harassment.

Speaker 11 They were then went to five district attorneys, fully litigated for four years. The cases were dropped, right?

Speaker 11 You know that as a fact. So everything you just stated, you just said was a misstatement, which we're accustomed to for...
Did you say it was a misstatement? Because

Speaker 11 the cases were dropped.

Speaker 9 Okay, now, again, that's not a horrible answer, but it's not a great answer. And herein lies the problem.
The reason that Momdani is winning is not just because, obviously, he's a TikTok hot thing.

Speaker 9 It's also because Andrew Cuomo is a crappy candidate. Andrew Cuomo has never been a wonderful candidate in the state of New York.
And he's run a really lackluster race.

Speaker 9 If Momdani ends up as the actual mayor of New York, yes, part of the blame goes to Curtis for not dropping out of the race, but a huge part of the blame goes to Andrew Cuomo, who should have been able to defeat Zorin Mamdani in a Democratic primary.

Speaker 9 Bottom line here is this:

Speaker 9 if you want an honest assessment of where New Yorkers stand, Curtis should drop out of the race. I've said it 10 times.
I'll say it again. He should drop out of the race.

Speaker 9 He does not have a path to victory.

Speaker 9 About one-fifth of New York City residents who are eligible for the election are registered Republicans.

Speaker 9 Most of the rest are registered Democrats.

Speaker 9 If Sleewa continues to pick off 15, 20% of the vote, there is no shot for Cuomo.

Speaker 9 Cuomo, he's a bad candidate. But if you are hopeful at all for the future of New York, Zoram Amdani as mayor is a bad idea.

Speaker 9 Now, again, I'm of divided mind about this because, to my mind, I still have the H.L. Menken phraseology.
And that is that democracy is the theory that people get what they vote for good and hard.

Speaker 9 And so if New Yorkers really, really want Zoram Amdani, they can have him. And then the prices in Palm Beach will go up.

Speaker 9 But, you know, as somebody who would actually like to see New York not become even more of a a bleep hole than it has become recently, I'm obviously rooting very hard for the defeat of this Marxist Islamist as mayor of New York.

Speaker 9 It says an awful lot about the state of the country, the state of Gen X and millennials, that this is even a close race, and that Mandani certainly is likely to win, which is wild.

Speaker 9 Already coming up, we have the Senate Majority Leader.

Speaker 9 We have the EPA administrator, plus our own White House reporter, Mary Margaret Olihan, stops by to talk about this White House reconstruction project. First, folks, the response has been huge.

Speaker 9 I did a signing on All Access Live with with some of you a little bit earlier this week. Since then, Lions and Scavengers have been flying off the shelves faster than we can even restock the book.

Speaker 9 And get this, it is a New York Times bestseller. It's not just another book, it's a very, very important book.
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Speaker 9 Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has its continued struggles with people who seem pretty warm toward both the sort of new Nazism in Hamas and also sometimes, I guess, the old Nazism.

Speaker 9 Graham Plattner continues to be a controversial figure. He, of course, is Bernie Sanders, endorsed candidate in that Maine Senate race.

Speaker 9 And he got caught on tape. He actually released the tape because he knew it was going to break.
He was caught on tape shirtless at a wedding a few years back.

Speaker 9 And the problem with that is not that he's shirtless at a wedding, although, you know, just as a general rule, dudes, keep your shirts on at weddings.

Speaker 9 But particularly, keep your shirt on at a wedding if you have a giant death's head tattoo, like a Nazi death's head tattoo.

Speaker 9 And for those who don't believe that that's what that is, I'm just going to point out that if you watch Schindler's list, okay, Ralph finds his character, literally wears it on his collar as a member of the SS.

Speaker 9 This is not like an obscure symbol here.

Speaker 9 So now Graham Plattner is trying to buy it back. He He says, no, I never knew that.
I didn't know it was a Nazi thing. I just thought it was like a cool pirate thing or something.

Speaker 9 And now he says that he is going to have, he had a tattoo redesign. This, by the way, is not like a tiny tattoo.
This very large tattoo on his chest.

Speaker 9 He had a tattoo redesign. The only thing worse than the media cover-up is the actual tattoo redesign, which is horrendous.
I don't know who his tattoo artist is.

Speaker 9 Apparently, they just got released from Rikers and they were using needle and

Speaker 9 ink that they swirled up in a toilet or something. I don't know who the tattoo artist here was.
Let's just say not very good. And also nobody needed to see Graham Plattner shirtless.
My God.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 he went for the

Speaker 9 fat, pregnant wolf cockroach. That's what he went for there.

Speaker 9 That's not ideal.

Speaker 9 Like this person's judgment, I think we've seen enough of Graham Plattner's chest and nipple there. I think we can move on with our lives.

Speaker 9 But this is the person who you want to be, the next senator from Maine. Idiocracy is here, folks.
Idiocracy is real. Mike Judge's movie was a documentary.

Speaker 9 Here's Bernie Sanders, another complete dunder-headed moron, defending Graham Plattner, of course.

Speaker 9 You said yesterday you are still supporting him.

Speaker 15 Why? I am not overly impressed by a squad of media running around saying, what do you think about the tattoo? on Graham Plattner's chest. He went into a dark period in his

Speaker 8 life.

Speaker 15 I suspect that Graham Plattner is not the only American to have gone through a dark period. But what he did was he has expressed his darkness on the internet.
Probably not a brilliant thing to do.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 15 And I think, as a nation,

Speaker 15 especially given the fact that we have a president who is convicted of 34 felonies,

Speaker 15 maybe we have to

Speaker 15 do a little bit of forgiveness.

Speaker 9 Oh, my God. Really, bernie really

Speaker 9 you really you seriously well i guess that the red brown alliance rides in tandem as per the usual arrangement meanwhile the government shutdown continues apace doesn't seem like it's going to end anytime soon democrats seem to think that this is winning issue for them despite the polling that doesn't demonstrate that in any way shape or form hakeem jeffries the house minority leader He is trying to blame this on President Trump, which is wild because literally Trump's position is, what if we just keep funding the government at the current rates we are funding the government?

Speaker 9 Here's Hakeem Jeffries. I love that Democrats are now saying that we have to save healthcare.
Wait, wait, why is it in danger? Why is it in danger? I thought that Obamacare saved healthcare.

Speaker 9 I was alive for Obamacare. I remember it because I'm more than like 13 years old.
So I remember when Obamacare became a thing.

Speaker 9 So, why didn't it save healthcare? Why aren't we done already? Wait, wait, are you saying Obamacare has been generally a fail?

Speaker 9 Anyway, Hakeem Jeffries says we have to save Obamacare by shutting down the government.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump has spent more time on the golf course than he has in talking to Democrats on Capitol Hill to reopen the government, to enact a spending agreement that's bipartisan, and to address the Republican health care crisis.

Speaker 3 His behavior, unpresidential, unhinged, unpatriotic, un-American, throughout this process, speaks for itself.

Speaker 9 Now,

Speaker 9 I think that actually what speaks for itself is the bizarre Democratic insistence that we shut down the government so that they can undo a bill they were unable to stop a few months back.

Speaker 9 Joining me on the line is the Republican Senate Majority Leader, John Thun. Senator Thun, thanks so much for taking the time.
Really appreciate it.

Speaker 16 Thanks, man. Always good to be with you.

Speaker 9 So let's talk about the latest on the government shutdown. Democrats seem to have shown very little sign that they are interested in caving.

Speaker 9 You have a few Democrats who are sort of moderates on the other side who have talked about the necessity to get past the government shutdown, Senator Fetterman being the most obvious.

Speaker 9 Where do you think we are at this point?

Speaker 16 Well, we'll find out. I mean, I think right now we've got to vote later this evening to open up the government again.
This will be the 12th. I assume the Democrats will vote it down again.

Speaker 16 Tomorrow, we're going to give them a different something else to vote on.

Speaker 16 We gave them a defense appropriations bill to vote on last week, which would have funded the troops, and they block voted against that.

Speaker 16 This one tomorrow is a Ron Johnson bill, which essentially what it does, Ben, is it basically just pays everybody who's working.

Speaker 16 So anybody in the federal workforce, you know, furloughed employees will obviously get back pay, but anybody today who is working in any government agency would get paid. And

Speaker 16 I don't know what they're going to do, but as you suggest, right now, it looks like they're sort of digging in. And I'm not sure why.
I think this is a real losing hand for them to play.

Speaker 16 It's certainly

Speaker 16 costing people all over the country big time, particularly federal employees. And the longer this thing drags on, the worse it gets.
But they, at this point, at least right now, don't seem prepared to

Speaker 16 want want to come to their senses and actually do the right thing for the American people, which is to keep the government open.

Speaker 9 Senator Thun, they've talked a lot about the idea that what they're trying to do here is lower the cost curve on health care, that premiums are too high.

Speaker 9 What they really mean by that, I assume, is that they want to continue to subsidize Obamacare at essentially pandemic levels, despite the fact that the pandemic has been over for several years at this point.

Speaker 9 Isn't this also sort of a tacit admission that Obamacare didn't do its job? We were told that Obamacare was going to radically bend the cost curve and bring down the cost of premiums.

Speaker 9 And here you have Democrats openly acknowledging that absent a gigantic infusion of more government subsidy from the federal level, the premiums are too high.

Speaker 16 Right. And they created this crisis, this COVID cliff, if you will,

Speaker 16 and these enhanced subsidies, which did go into effect, as you point out, during the pandemic. It was supposed to be a response to that.
The pandemic's long over. They created the expiration date.

Speaker 16 So this is really a problem of their own making. But the broader point is the right one, and that is that everything that Obamacare has done, including these enhanced subsidies,

Speaker 16 has added to the cost cost of insurance policies.

Speaker 16 In fact, if you look from 2013 to 2025 to where we are today, insurance rates in the exchanges, the Obamacare exchanges, have gone up about 221 percent, if you can believe that.

Speaker 16 And so it's done nothing but inflate the cost that people are paying for health insurance across this country. And that's because the fundamental program is flawed.

Speaker 16 And then the enhanced subsidies were flawed too. They didn't have an income limit, so you got people who are making $5,000, $600,000 a year qualified.

Speaker 16 They They have zero premium policies, so people don't even know they're covered.

Speaker 16 Insurance companies are incentivized to auto-enroll people, and so it's become a money maker, you know, just a factory for insurance companies to make money, because there are a lot of people out there that they enroll who don't even know they have coverage.

Speaker 16 And so you've got this flawed structure with no incentive to constrain costs. And as a consequence, you've got just the costs going up at astronomical rates every year.
So it's their problem.

Speaker 16 They created it. Now they're expecting Republicans to try and solve it for them.
And that's their price for opening up the federal government.

Speaker 16 And it's a price that is a very stiff one because you're looking at to do it the way they want to do it. It's about $400 billion.

Speaker 9 Senator Thun, Senator Fenderman has suggested that actually the filibuster ought to be nuked, which is, I think, unique.

Speaker 9 I've never seen a situation in which a member of the opposition party calls for the majority party to nuke the filibuster in order to get something done.

Speaker 9 Obviously, you have reservations about doing that.

Speaker 9 Every time the filibuster has been nuked in the past, it has led to a new precedent, which is is that it no longer exists for those types of scenarios.

Speaker 9 That's obviously been true when Democrats nuked the filibuster for judicial nominees.

Speaker 9 That led to the Republicans being able to actually get onto the Supreme Court a bunch of nominees they otherwise might not have been able to get through.

Speaker 9 Why do you think it's important to maintain the filibuster in cases like this?

Speaker 16 Well, I think that legislative, and by the way, the executive calendar, which is different, so that's judges, all the executive branch nominees are on the executive calendar.

Speaker 16 And we did change the rules. We changed the rules most recently here, just about six weeks ago, on nominees, Trump executive branch nominees.

Speaker 16 The Democrats had just completely filibustered and shut that process down. So we opened it up.

Speaker 16 The legislative filibuster is designed to protect the voice of the minority in this country, and it's been used effectively for a long time to do just that.

Speaker 16 And it's prevented a lot of bad things from happening.

Speaker 16 Republicans have used it in the past.

Speaker 16 And most recently, the Democrats tried to get rid of the filibuster for what they called their elections reform bill, which basically was consolidating all of elections in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 16 It would have taken power to regulate elections away from the states, would have done away with voter ID.

Speaker 16 And had it not been for Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, they would have succeeded in doing it at that time. They voted against it.

Speaker 16 But the Democrats have made it clear they would love to get rid of the filibuster to enact their agenda, which includes

Speaker 16 statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., an expanded Supreme Court up to 15 seats there, abortion on demand.

Speaker 16 As I said, federalizing our election system. Those are just a few of the list of horrible bowls that they put out there.
And they all campaigned on that.

Speaker 16 But if we tried to do it now, all 47 of them, I can guarantee you, would block vote against it. So it's just, it's situational for them.
It's all about political power.

Speaker 16 And, you know, now that they are on the outside, they're going to use this to their advantage.

Speaker 16 I just think that we ought to be able to do this the old-fashioned way, and that is open up the government by just having five more Democrats vote with us. And that's all it's going to take.
So

Speaker 16 we shouldn't be in this. Everything is harder than it should be right now because of Trump derangement syndrome.

Speaker 16 But I still think at some point there are going to be some rank-and-file Democrats who break with their leadership and do the right thing for the country, and that is open up the government.

Speaker 9 Senator, one of the other things is that you've been busy actually getting President Trump's nominees through. There was a lot of heartburn about the inability to get nominees through.

Speaker 9 You have been getting an enormous number of executive branch nominees through judicial nominees. You've been getting through.
Can you give us an update on the nomination?

Speaker 9 schedule and what's been going on there.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 16 We cleared the backlog. The Democrats have completely shut it down.
I mean, we were forced to be here.

Speaker 16 We've been here more days, more hours, cast more votes than any Senate in history, at least in the last 40 years, as a result of the Democrats' obstruction.

Speaker 16 And so we did make a change in the rules that enables us to start processing some of the executive branch nominations in batches, and that's enabled us to catch up. But there are more coming.

Speaker 16 And on the judiciary side, we're doing some this week. We're going to do a circuit court at the end of the week.
Nam.

Speaker 16 We're doing district court judges this.

Speaker 16 We had about 50 of those that were in the backlog and we still have to do those the old-fashioned way we didn't we don't we can't do those in batches but as you know the judiciary is an enormously important part of what we do here and we want to make sure that we are filling those positions with people who are constitutionalists who understand that the role of the a judge is not to

Speaker 16 you know write the laws but to interpret and apply them and so those are the kinds of judges that we're looking for and and we it's going to be really important for us to continue to fill the uh fill the judiciary and the executive branch.

Speaker 16 President Trump's nominees to the executive branch to be able to implement the agenda that he ran on and that the American people voted for.

Speaker 9 Senator Thun.

Speaker 9 Meanwhile, the Trump administration, obviously very active on the foreign policy front over the course of the last couple of weeks, the Trump administration has made some extraordinary moves in the Middle East, particularly with regard to Israel and freeing.

Speaker 9 Israeli hostages from the tender mercies of Hamas, trying to unite the rest of the world around extirpating Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Speaker 9 I had the privilege of actually being in the Knesset when President Trump made his speech at the invitation of Ambassador Huckabee.

Speaker 9 What do you make of what the Trump administration has been doing in the Middle East? What do you think is the future of the Gaza Strip right now?

Speaker 16 Right. Well, and I saw some of your coverage from over there, which I thought was great, Ben.

Speaker 16 And I just think that it is remarkable what the president has accomplished here and what his team has accomplished. And it builds on the success of the Abraham Accords.

Speaker 16 Obviously, we're far from being in a state where we can declare total victory because Hamas is still active.

Speaker 16 And in my view, they need to be completely obliterated or at least disarmed so that they are not a factor in governing the Gaza Strip. So there's still work to be done.

Speaker 16 But the way in which this administration has worked with the Israelis, with our Arab allies in the region, to bring about an outcome that I think nobody thought achievable just a few weeks ago, and that is getting these hostages released.

Speaker 16 And then, you know, now, obviously, the hard part begins in trying to come up with a security force to maintain security there and figure out what the next step is in order to make that a place in the world that people want to visit that enjoys some of the success and prosperity that folks in the neighborhood have.

Speaker 16 I think there is some tremendous opportunities there.

Speaker 16 It wouldn't have been possible had it not been for President Trump and his leadership. And so congratulations to him.
But we still have a lot of work to do.

Speaker 16 And Prime Minister Netanyahu and our president working together with our allies in the region, hopefully will continue to stabilize that area and make it a place that's attractive for people to live and work and invest.

Speaker 9 And Senator Thun, once once the government shutdown ends, and I have to assume that at some point in the future it will end.

Speaker 9 We won't be here a year from now with the government shutdown continuing, I would assume. Once it ends, what are the legislative priorities for you and for the rest of the Republican caucus?

Speaker 16 Well, obviously, you know, funding the government the old-fashioned way through the appropriations process.

Speaker 16 This is a short-term funding resolution that buys us some time, but we need to do the full year. But I think there are a lot of opportunities out there.

Speaker 16 There are things like permitting reform. There are things like AI, which has become become a very, very big issue in our lives.

Speaker 16 There are, we've got to do a farm bill. We've got to do a highway, a transportation bill.

Speaker 16 There's a lot of work for Congress to do that has been put on the, you know, kind of on the back burner while the government's been shut down.

Speaker 16 But, you know, the most important thing that we do is, you know, take care and make sure that we protect the country.

Speaker 16 I always tell people, if you don't get national security right, the rest is conversation. So we did get the defense authorization bill across the finish line in the Senate.

Speaker 16 We tried, as I said earlier, to put the defense appropriations bill on the floor,

Speaker 16 which funds all those priorities, and the Democrats blocked it.

Speaker 16 But taking care of America's national security interests in what is a very dangerous world is going to continue to be a big priority for us.

Speaker 16 And then, like I said, there are lots of other legislative priorities that I think, and there are some areas where we can work together.

Speaker 16 There's some things that we can do in a bipartisan way with Democrats, but we've got to get past this government shutdown and the Democrats holding the federal employees hostage, basically, if you will,

Speaker 16 to try and get a bunch of unrelated policy things that they want to get done.

Speaker 16 And I said, I'm perfectly happy to have the conversation and talk with them about some of those things, but we can't do that while the government's being held hostage.

Speaker 9 Well, Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Senator, really appreciate your time and your hard work on all of the aforementioned topics.
Thanks so much for your time.

Speaker 16 Good to be with you. Thanks, Ben.
Talk to you soon.

Speaker 9 Meanwhile, the Trump administration, they're actually doing their best to actually not make the American people feel the pain of the government shutdown.

Speaker 9 That is a different thing that has happened in the past.

Speaker 9 Typically, if it's a Republican Congress that shuts down the government because they want changes and a Democrat in the White House who's attempting to fight back against that, for example, usually Democrats try to maximize the pain to bring pressure on Congress.

Speaker 9 Republicans are not doing that this time. They're actually running the government in a responsible fashion.

Speaker 9 One of the people doing that is the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin. He joins us on the line right now.
Lee, thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 17 Always good to be with you, Ben.

Speaker 9 So why don't you tell me about sort of what the impacts are of the government shutdown? I know that for most Americans, this has become kind of a rote thing, actually.

Speaker 9 I think that if you went back 10 years, this would have been the top headline every day for the last several weeks.

Speaker 9 Now, because we've gone through it a few times, I think most Americans just figure it'll eventually peter out, but it is having real impacts. What are those impacts? How are you seeing it?

Speaker 17 Well, one, as you saw with Congresswoman Clark over the course of these last couple of days, talking about how they acknowledge Congressional Democrats that this is causing American families to suffer.

Speaker 17 And she refers to it as leverage that needs to be used in this negotiation. So there is an acknowledgement that this does cause suffering.
And as time goes by and

Speaker 17 snap payments start to be missed, paychecks start to be missed. I think more Americans will be feeling it in the days and the weeks to come.

Speaker 17 The other thing, too, is that this is a shutdown where the Republicans keep voting to have the government open and it's the Democrats voting no.

Speaker 17 I think if it was reversed, some of these outlets like New York Times, it might be above the fold front page every single day that the Democrats are having votes to have the government open and the Republicans would be voting no.

Speaker 17 So I think that if the shoe is on the other foot, we'd see different media coverage. For us here at the EPA, we operate off of a lot of carryover funding.

Speaker 17 It's not necessarily a fiscal year that ends on September 30th. We have funding that's multiple, that multiple years.

Speaker 17 We had a furlough that kicked in, a little over 4,000 people this past Monday. As we move forward in coming weeks, that will go up.

Speaker 17 If we had a total lapse of funding, that would be about an 89% furlough here at the agency.

Speaker 17 And the more you furlough this agency, the more that we are unable to fulfill our statutory obligations and work to implement the people's agenda of ensuring clean air, land, and water for all Americans, which gets to our core mission.

Speaker 9 My minister Zelda, one of the things that the Trump administration has done differently during this government shutdown than the Obama administration did during government shutdowns that happened under their watch.

Speaker 9 The Obama administration really attempted to maximize pain.

Speaker 9 And I'm old enough to remember when they attempted, for example, to shut down open-air World War II memorials and not let anybody into national parks and all the rest of it.

Speaker 9 You and the Trump administration, by contrast, have been attempting to minimize the impact on Americans' lives.

Speaker 9 You have a contingency plan for a shutdown that still allows your agency to continue functioning, even under these circumstances.

Speaker 17 Yeah, that's such a great point, Ben. We're trying to minimize, mitigate the impact of the shutdown as much as possible.

Speaker 17 When I said that we just had this furlough kick in of about 4,000 employees, this isn't something that we enthusiastically did on October 1st.

Speaker 17 We prevented it as long as we possibly could, as long as there was funding that was available. A total lapse of funding, as I pointed out, would be an 89% reduction in the services that we provide.

Speaker 17 I mean, listen, we could attempt to do that right now, but we're trying to mitigate the damage of this shutdown on the American people. That's an example of one agency looking to do its part.

Speaker 17 We're hearing the same thing from other agencies trying to accomplish the same.

Speaker 17 We want to mitigate impacts as much as we can and hope that congressional Democrats decide to vote yes on what is a clean CR.

Speaker 17 This is not something that is filled with a partisan wish list of conservatives. This is just a funding bill to keep the government open.

Speaker 9 And Minister Zeldon, I also want to talk to you about the fact that the EPA has done extraordinary work under your auspices in making sure that the economy functions.

Speaker 9 One of the things that's been kind of amazing to watch over the course of President Trump's second term, there have been a lot of crosswinds.

Speaker 9 I mean, obviously, the tariffs have roiled a lot of people. People have been worried about those.
You've had the concerns over the government shutdown. You've had the one big beautiful bill.

Speaker 9 It has not been, shall we say, like the smoothest economic road for people who are looking for consistent policy.

Speaker 9 But one of the areas that has really spurred the economy and ensured that the economy continues to grow, investment continues, has been the EPA's approach to the economy.

Speaker 9 The attempts to streamline and cut regulation is a massive thing you've been doing over at the EPA.

Speaker 17 Yes, sir. We choose to both protect the environment and grow the economy.
It's not a binary choice.

Speaker 17 There was this belief that in order to protect the environment, you had to strangulate entire sectors of the economy. We this year at the Trump EPA reject that notion.

Speaker 17 We are going through an amount of deregulation that, when finalized in one year, would be more deregulation than entire federal governments have done in the past across all federal agencies, across entire presidencies.

Speaker 17 That's just that one agency here at the EPA.

Speaker 17 One proposal alone, a proposed rescission of the 2009 Obama endangerment finding, if finalized, would be the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States.

Speaker 17 We are not just imposing our will on the American public and saying, this is what we believe to be right. This is our final decision, and we implement it.

Speaker 17 We have a proposal that goes out to the public. There's a public comment period.
We respond to those comments, and then we meet our final decision.

Speaker 17 Ben, you're somebody who follows Supreme Court decisions. You're well read in our law and our Constitution.

Speaker 17 The Supreme Court in recent years, they issued a decision in the Loperbright case overturning the Chevron Doctrine, saying essentially that agencies like the EPA can't use vague language in getting creative and giving themselves more power.

Speaker 17 If there's an absence inside of statute, it doesn't say that the agency can't, well, I guess that means we can. That was an interpretation of the past.

Speaker 17 Now that the Chevron Doctrine is overturned, we at the EPA will follow the plain language of the law.

Speaker 17 We will follow the law and we will not take creative liberty in giving ourselves more power because of it. That was one of the ironies, by the way, of this no kings protest that just took place.

Speaker 17 The president's directive to me at the agency is that every single day we should be reducing our powers, that we should be empowering states, empowering the people to be in charge of their own lives and to help the economy flourish.

Speaker 17 One other quick point I wanted to mention. You know, we've gone through substantial efficiencies over the course of this year to save tax dollars.

Speaker 17 The annual operating budget of EPA is about $10 billion.

Speaker 17 I've canceled over $29 billion worth of grants, $750 million annually in staffing reductions, money saved in media consolidations, real estate consolidations, I'm sorry, media cancellations of subscriptions, real estate consolidations, closed an EPA museum that no one knew about or even visited.

Speaker 17 And the savings just keep getting racked up on behalf of the American taxpayer. Another important thing to fight for Americans, American families, and also the American economy.

Speaker 9 Well, that is EPA Administrator Lee Zeldon. Lee, thanks so much for your hard work, and thanks for joining us on the show.
Really appreciate the time. Thanks, Ben.

Speaker 9 Meanwhile, Democrats are complaining ad nauseum about the White House redesign.

Speaker 9 Politico's coverage is typically over the top. Quote, it's your house and he's destroying it.
Trump demolishes White House East Wing. I'm just telling you, I've been to the East Wing.
It's not iconic.

Speaker 9 It's a bunch of office spaces. It is not the West Wing.
It's not what the oval is. It's not literally none of the rooms that you care about are in the East Wing of the White House.

Speaker 9 Let me just tell you that. Because I've been there.

Speaker 9 In fact, in order to get into the East Wing of the White House, they usually have to set up these giant tents outside if it's raining or snowing or something.

Speaker 9 And then the room where they hold these sort of

Speaker 9 events with foreign dignitaries hold like 200 people. It's tiny.
These are tiny rooms. Putting in a ballroom is not only not a bad idea, it's quite a good idea.

Speaker 9 And yet Democrats are freaking out over it.

Speaker 9 Images of a partially destroyed East Wing, according to Politico, first published by the Washington Post on Monday, sparked an outcry online and a quick defense from the White House.

Speaker 9 The National Trust for Historic Preservation added to criticism of the administration in a letter to the National Park Service and other organizations Tuesday, warning the current redesign of the ballroom threatens to overwhelm the White House and requesting a freeze on further construction until a commission that oversees the iconic urban landscape of the nation's capital is consulted.

Speaker 9 Hillary Clinton said it's not his house, it's your house, and he's destroying it. Madam, may I recommend that you sit down on this one?

Speaker 9 Your husband literally had oral sex with an intern in the Oval Office. We're talking about degrading the spaces of the White House.
I think you are not the person.

Speaker 9 You stole the silverware from the White House when you guys left.

Speaker 9 You are not a good person to talk about this, like not a good person to talk about this at all.

Speaker 9 Meanwhile, President Trump was showing photos and plans of the future ballroom, and frankly, it looks kind of nice.

Speaker 14 Nobody's actually seen anything quite like it. I think it'll be one of the great ballrooms anywhere in the world.
It's about $300 million.

Speaker 14 It's set to do many, many things, including meetings of foreign leaders, including the honoring of foreign leaders. You can see this.

Speaker 14 This is a plan. If it's got tables, so that you honor a foreign leader, we have a proper space.
Right now, we have a space that with tables holds about 79 people.

Speaker 14 And this is a proper kind of a thing. Now, what the White House was doing, as you know, is they were putting tents out on the lawn.
This is an interior shot of the ballroom.

Speaker 14 I think there'll be nothing like it.

Speaker 9 And so, again, I don't see anything wrong with this ballroom design, like, at all. And this idea that something historic is being destroyed.
It was built in 1942 by FDR.

Speaker 9 Again, it's a bunch of small offices. Very silly.
A reporter went after Trump over it. Trump then promptly body slammed the reporter, as is his wont.

Speaker 18 I just want a quick follow-up on that question. You're responding to people who said that you haven't been transparent.

Speaker 14 I haven't been transparent.

Speaker 18 That's some of your earnings feel it's not.

Speaker 14 I've shown this to everybody that would listen. Third-rate reporters didn't see it because they didn't look.
You're a third-rate reporter. Always have been.

Speaker 14 So third-rate reporters didn't look.

Speaker 9 Well, again,

Speaker 9 the fact that Democrats think this is a winning issue, they are so starved for a winning issue at this point. It really is amazing.

Speaker 9 Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said the obvious, well, you know, you're going to be able to use it as well, actually.

Speaker 2 President Trump's going to add the greatest improvement to the White House in the history of the building

Speaker 2 since it was originally constructed in 1800. The ballroom is going to be glorious.
It's going to be used for everybody.

Speaker 2 And by the way, hey, Democrats, if you win the White House back, you get to use it too. This is for the American people, and he's using private funds to do it.

Speaker 9 Okay, well, again, utterly uncontroversial. Joining us on the line to discuss is our own White House reporter, Mary Margaret Olihan.
Mary Margaret, thanks so much for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Speaker 19 Good morning, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 9 So as always, it's been a busy week at the White House. You're on the White House grounds.
You've obviously seen the construction that's going on over on the East Wing.

Speaker 9 Apparently, this is one of the great disasters of the modern era. It's equivalent to tearing down the Washington Monument or burning down the Statue of Liberty or something.

Speaker 9 Why don't you explain what exactly is going on over there? What is the White House saying about it?

Speaker 19 Yeah, so I don't know if you can see behind me over my shoulder, there is smoke, kind of a cloudy look coming from the demolition of the East Wing which the president is removing changing to make room for the ballroom that he and his donors are funding.

Speaker 19 So this is a huge costly endeavor but the American taxpayer is not paying for it. The president is and donors that he calls great American patriots.

Speaker 19 There has been a lot of hubbub about this around here, a lot of backlash. As I was coming in this morning, a lot of the photographers and videographers were getting footage of the smoke back there.

Speaker 19 I myself took videos of it because it's interesting.

Speaker 19 This is newsy, but what we're hearing from everyone is that how could the president do this? How could the president remove the East Wing?

Speaker 19 And you know, there's a lot of history, Ben, of different presidents making renovations to the White House, from Teddy Roosevelt to Harry Truman.

Speaker 19 All of these presidents have made changes to the White House, but this one in particular seems to have raised the ire of a lot of the reporters around here, a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill who do not want the president to do this.

Speaker 19 Now, Trump himself is saying that this is is a gift to the American people.

Speaker 19 He's saying this is something that will be long-lasting and that many generations of Americans and American presidents and their families and their guests can enjoy.

Speaker 19 And it does look beautiful. I was in the Oval Office last night.
He had a mock presentation of this new renovation out on the table that all the reporters could look at.

Speaker 19 And he had all the plans with him. So he kind of whipped them out and showed them to us and said, well, I've been talking about this the whole time.
I wanted to show this to anybody who would listen.

Speaker 19 And he showed us these pictures of what what he wants the new ballroom to look like.

Speaker 19 You know, Alex Pfeiffer, one of the president's former staffers, I saw him tweeting about this last night, how the president has always been putting these pictures out there.

Speaker 19 It's very clear that the East Wing wasn't there in the photos. In fact, the ballroom was.
So a lot of the hubbub around here seems more noise than actual concerns for reality.

Speaker 19 And I think as Josh Hawley said last night, the senator from Missouri, there's a lot of people who are upset about this that had no problem with pulling down monuments to history over the past several years.

Speaker 19 So

Speaker 19 another ruckus news cycle at the White House. There's a press briefing later today and I'm sure we will hear about it there.

Speaker 19 But in the meantime, it's an interesting news cycle to follow and I think we'll soon have a beautiful ballroom here on the White House grounds.

Speaker 9 You know, Mary Margaret, I think that most Americans, they don't understand kind of how the White House is laid out.

Speaker 9 They see these rooms, the interior of the rooms, they don't understand where they are in the building. So you've spent time in the East Wing.

Speaker 9 You actually typically have to walk through the East Wing in order to get into sort of the main part of the building, to get to the West Wing and all the rest of it. What is actually in the East Wing?

Speaker 9 Because I think people think that the Oval Office and some of the more famous rooms in the White House are in the East Wing of the White House.

Speaker 19 No, no, they're not. In fact, you know, I'm standing right now on Pebble Beach, which is right outside the White House.
The West Wing is where a lot of the offices of the comms team are.

Speaker 19 The main section of the White House is where a lot of these other important offices are, including the Oval Office, which is kind of, you know, we go back to,

Speaker 19 it's a little hard to explain a lot, but you go through the White House and it's on on the back on the right so it's not on the East Wing side of things

Speaker 19 and a lot of the ruckus that's been raised about this has been suggesting that there's some kind of historical significance that's being destroyed with this but again there's been renovations throughout the history of the White House for years there have been many presidents who have made changes or modifications you know updating the White House for modern appliances modern security endeavors I mean one thing that I found really interesting about the ballroom is that the president said it's going to have I believe a a steel-proof ceiling.

Speaker 19 So a lot of different security measures that are being put in that he said the army and the military is involved with. So it's really interesting on many levels.

Speaker 19 One thing that I find really interesting is that the man who is designing the ballroom is actually someone that I know that I've spent some time with, James McCreary, who's an architect.

Speaker 19 He's a Catholic architect. He's built some really beautiful churches around the country.
So I think that's, you know, if anything,

Speaker 19 very encouraging to know that we have a traditional classical architecturist who is taking this this plan into his hands and making a beautiful historic ballroom.

Speaker 19 And I, for one, hope that, you know, if there is a White House Christmas party for the media this year, it would be really cool if it was in there, and I would love to see it.

Speaker 9 So, Mary Margaret, obviously a lot of drama also over the course of the last weekend over this No Kings protest movement.

Speaker 9 Some 7 million people apparently showed up to these protests around the country. What has been the mood in the White House about all of that?

Speaker 19 Yeah, this is interesting because on the one hand, these No Kings protests were largely full of, I would say, elderly Americans who are very left-leaning Democrats protesting things that they did not really understand.

Speaker 19 So, for example, our colleagues Amber Joe and Brecca did a phenomenal job this weekend covering the No Kings protests in D.C.

Speaker 19 And they asked people, Why are you protesting no kings if President Trump is not a king? And it was a really great video, and if anyone hasn't seen it, you should check it out.

Speaker 19 But at the same time, there was a very radical element of these protests.

Speaker 19 And if you look at some of the footage in Denver, in Chicago, in Los Angeles, in even in Washington, D.C., there were individuals that came to these protests specifically to advocate for violence.

Speaker 19 One person that I noticed besides President Trump that was receiving a lot of these very violent, explicit calls to violence was Stephen Miller. So he is Trump's deputy chief of staff.

Speaker 19 He received a lot of hate, I would say, in D.C. I saw, but then also in different cities around the country, people explicitly calling for acts of violence against him.

Speaker 19 We just covered a story for this that's live on the Daily Wire site about how I talked to the FBI about whether they're investigating any of these specific calls for violence, explicit I would say, calls for violence.

Speaker 19 And you know, I was told the FBI can't confirm active investigations.

Speaker 19 They don't traditionally do that, but I was told they are aware of very specific instances and that they are keeping an eye on them.

Speaker 19 So you know, I think this is the closest we can get to confirming without actually confirming that there's investigations into these people.

Speaker 19 One that I found really disturbing and I just wanted to flag was this couple that were photographed in Denver. They're part of the Denver Communist group.

Speaker 19 And this couple, each of them were wearing a different shirt calling for violence against individuals, specifically Republicans, conservatives, and they kind of harkened back to the death of Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 19 One of the shirts said, make assassinations great again. And the other one said that not enough politicians are being killed nowadays.

Speaker 19 And that one I found particularly disturbing because on the graphic of the shirt, there's a little sign that says live, indicating that the person who was being killed on the shirt was being filmed as it happened live.

Speaker 19 So this is really sickening, disturbing kinds of content. And I think that, you know, our story is evidence that the FBI is looking into this.

Speaker 19 DHS may also be looking into this, and we're trying to get more answers from them on who exactly they're examining and when those people will be arrested or, you know, at least investigated at the bare minimum.

Speaker 9 Well, that's Mary Margaret Ohan. She's our White House press correspondent.
Mary Margaret, really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for the insight, as always.

Speaker 19 Thanks, Ben.

Speaker 9 All righty, folks, the show is continuing for our members right now. We'll get to President Trump blowing more ships out of the water, drug boats coming from Venezuela plus.

Speaker 9 President Trump has now canceled a planned meeting between Russia and Ukraine. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
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Matt, say something that'll get us canceled.

Speaker 16 If you really want me to, friendly fire is back. Should we ever do this again? No.
No No safe zones.

Speaker 9 Do not unify around your crazies.

Speaker 16 I don't want your olive branch. Screw you.

Speaker 17 It's absolutely despicable.

Speaker 16 Nothing off limits. You will get to sound off on whether or not black people are disabled as the Supreme Court reliable.

Speaker 16 Huge announcements.

Speaker 9 Brand new, massive, incredible series, the Pendragon Cycle. Ambitious and big and beautiful.

Speaker 16 And this is the thing that sets us apart. More revelations on the way.

Speaker 9 I just want to make one more point here, and then you can say whatever you want.

Speaker 16 I'm I'm not going to play that game with you. What makes you a conservative? No, I don't think that's right.

Speaker 4 Well, hold on.

Speaker 16 I just want to say I agree with that.

Speaker 17 I totally disagree with it.

Speaker 16 I have to say that. Friendly fire, October 29th, 7 p.m.
Eastern. The friendly fire should stop across the board.
You mean the show?

Speaker 4 They're not just the same. I think I'm missing out.