Truth About SCOTUS and Trump, EPA Fraud Uncovered, and Tariff Drama, with Lee Zeldin, Tom Bevan, and Carl Cannon | Ep. 1045

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Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.

Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.

President Trump's tariffs are now in effect and the media is seizing the moment to fan the flames of doom and gloom.

This is Trump says countries are calling him up and quote, kissing his ass, trying to make a deal.

Also, DHS Secretary Christy Noam finds another chance for a bizarre photo op.

She's very obsessed with having her flowing locks appear out of her little baseball caps as she tries to appear like a tough guy holding a gun in a way that's inappropriate and potentially dangerous.

And I just like, I'm over it.

I'm really over it.

Could you just please be the DHS secretary?

and stand by Trump's agenda and stop trying to make it about you and your weird glam shots.

Later in the show, we're going to be joined for the first time by Lee Zeldin.

I'm actually really looking forward to this.

He's administrator of the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency.

They're doing a lot right now, man.

They're embattled.

You know, the left.

That's one of their pet causes.

And Lee Zeldin is like, he's a tough mofo.

He's like, bring it.

So it's going to be fun to talk to him.

But we're going to start in a minute with a real clear politics crew.

I'll bring them on in one sec, but I'm going to start with a legal update for you.

Because one of the cases that we've been discussing at length here on this program is this case involving the Venezuelan gangs and Trump's effort to deport them using the Alien Enemies Act.

And we didn't get to this yesterday because we did maha with Dr.

Mark Hyman.

Well, worth your time if you haven't seen that episode.

But I really wanted to talk about what happened at the Supreme Court.

So, Trump won.

He's allowed to resume the deportations of these suspected gang members.

There is a silver lining of sorts for his opponents.

They will be getting more due process than they had been.

But make no mistake about it, Trump won this battle, and it was for really important reasons.

And while I've watched the media coverage over the past two days, I've seen what I think are in some cases dishonest declarations of victory by the left, and in other cases, just probably misinformed.

Declarations of victory by the left.

I think Trump got virtually everything he wanted.

I mean, really, he got everything he wanted in this Supreme Court ruling.

The one point on which the Trump administration, quote, lost or like didn't, I don't know, didn't get a sweeping declaration allowing them to proceed unbridled was on a point they had already conceded in their appellate briefs.

And it was whether these detainees have the right to any due process at all.

And the Trump administration's briefs, the DOJ in their briefs had had admitted, yes, they do get some due process, but it's about as minimal as one can demand under the law.

It's not the full due process you or I would get.

Let's say, God forbid, we got arrested and had to defend ourselves in criminal court.

It is something much closer to what we give your average suspected illegal before we kick him out of the United States.

You can file what's known as a habeas petition and go to immigration court.

You don't have the right to counsel.

You don't have really any of the rights that you would have, as we understand that term due process in our criminal courts.

So it is not the level of protection that the detainees, the alleged gang members, lawyers, the ACLU, wanted, nowhere near.

It is the level that the Trump administration had said, at best, this is what they get.

But it's also true, it is a level above what was actually afforded,

we believe, to most of these immigrants in this case.

I actually remain a little confused on that, to be honest with you, because we deported a bunch of people who we said are gang members.

Tom Holman, even yesterday, saying, let me assure you, ICE has investigated all the people who are on these flights and is without doubt that they are Trenda Aragua gang members from Venezuela.

Like, period.

They're not waffling.

They're not saying maybe.

That's what he is saying.

And many of the people who were removed, at least on that third flight, were not deported under the Alien Enemies Act.

They were just deported because they had removal proceedings already and they failed.

They failed to contest their removal orders.

You know,

an immigration judge listened to them and said, get out.

You don't have the right to be here.

I don't know whether they were gang members or what was adjudicated, but the point is that immigration judges had already heard them out and said, you failed to convince me.

You don't get asylum.

You have no right to be here.

Leave.

But what's been happening under the Biden administration is then there's no step two.

So it's like, get out.

Then they walk out the back of the courthouse and nobody looks for them.

No one stops them.

There's no bus.

There's no plane.

And then they continue living here.

So what's happened under Trump is we're not finding all those people.

Tom Holman's finding all those people who do have lawful orders of removal.

And at least some of them wound up on that third plane and were shipped out to El Salvador.

Bye.

Who cares?

Goodbye.

We could have put them right back into U.S.

prisons.

We could have continued detaining them in U.S.

prisons.

We didn't.

We let them go out the back door.

And now we shipped them off to Venezuela.

So the only ones who are controversial, I mean, everyone's controversial to the left, but between us normal people, are the ones who are said to be Venezuelan gang members, but haven't had a hearing, who Trump rounded up through home and et cetera, and put on planes and shipped off to El Salvador, some two plane loads of them.

And now it's going to resume, but under the Supreme Court ruling, they're going to have to, if the immigrants demand it, provide them with notice that this is why they're being removed and the opportunity for a habeas

review, which again is something that happens in an immigration court and provides a very low level of due process.

Now, you would not know that if you've watched or read a lot of the media coverage.

On the one hand, they want to lament the evil Supreme Court that Trump that

sided with Trump to allow the resumption of deportations.

That pulled the case away from the very strange Judge Boesberg, who really wants you to call him President Boesberg.

And that guy lost jurisdiction of this case.

Ha ha.

The Supreme Court was really clear on that and said,

wherever this is going to get decided for these immigrants, it's not going to be in Washington, D.C.

You have to decide these habeas claims in the jurisdiction in which the detainee is being held.

That's Texas, you idiots.

And that's what Trump had been saying all along.

But the ACLU, they didn't like that.

They knew exactly how things were going to go for them down in a Texas habeas court.

And I think we all know.

I don't dispute it.

Not a lot,

not the same as it's going to go in front of Judge Bozberg in a civil case,

a class action, which they brought.

They knew exactly how to play this, right?

Get it in front of this now leftist judge.

He wasn't always on the left.

He was originally a Bush appointee, but got elevated to the federal bench by Obama.

And

they played Judge Bozberg to perfection.

He did exactly what they wanted at every turn.

He gave them hook, line, and sink or what they wanted and ruled against the government at every turn.

And now the Supreme Court has said, this was forum shopping.

This did not belong in the D.C.

district court.

Judge Bozberg does not have jurisdiction.

Goodbye.

You've lost it all, sir, including they didn't rule this way, but it's going to be, as well as his stupid contempt hearing for the government.

And he's lost jurisdiction of this case.

It's going down to Texas.

if at all.

Now these individual plaintiffs, really, there's only five individual plaintiffs in this case, are going to have to re-file habeas claims in Texas.

And just let me tell you what they did, okay?

It's so annoying as I watch everybody misrepresent the facts of this case.

It drives me fucking nuts.

Anyway, what happened was these five plaintiffs,

they filed a class action purportedly representing, you know, all immigrants who fall under the Alien Enemies Act.

But the way it works is there are five who are named who you deal with.

Those five have never been deported.

They got pulled off of these planes pursuant to Judge Bozberg's order.

Those five originally filed a habeas action, only they did it in D.C.

And that was 100% because the plaintiffs, the ACLU, and so on, they wanted to get a judge like Boesberg.

They're all like Judge Bozberg at the DC federal court level.

So they filed a habeas position.

They knew that the case was going to be limited to habeas, given the nature that these are immigrants.

But they tried to swing for the fences by also making it into a class action and saying Trump has violated the Administrative Procedures Act, which is this federal act, and that would have potentially kept it in D.C.

in front of this D.C.

judge.

Well, the D.C.

judge understood, I think, that that was probably a no-go zone, that the latter claim.

He probably knew.

But in any event, he definitely knew that if it was a habeas case, it was probably going to have to stay in Texas, be refiled in Texas.

So he said to them,

you sure you want to keep the habeas?

piece of this?

You sure?

Like, might be better for you if that weren't in here.

In response to which the the ACO, SELU said, if we need to get rid of the habeas,

we'll do it, Judge.

We'll do it.

So he was like, wink, wink, yeah, you should do it.

So they dropped the habeas part of their petition and just kept it a class action based on this civil claim, which kind of removed the specter of the Texas court from,

you know, luring over them.

as they litigated before their very favorite judge, Judge Boesberg, with the illegal immigrant activist daughter who works with these groups trying to maintain presence in the United States, even if they're gang members, illegal gang members.

No conflict.

Okay, so they proceed in front of Boseberg and they get everything they want.

But then by the time it made it up

to the appellate court level, and I haven't gone back to look at all the briefs at the district court level, but definitely by the time it made it onto appeal, the U.S.

government was saying a couple of things.

One,

the reviewability of the Alien Enemies Act is very limited.

Go look at that case from 1948.

This is a 1798 statute.

But go look at that 1948 case, Ludecki.

In that case, the court, I've read you the excerpts many times, says

it's almost not reviewable.

There's a couple of small things that we could review, but they're limited.

And that's because we shouldn't be deciding political questions in the judicial branch.

And a question about, you know, invasion and whether we need to ban certain groups of people from the United States, that's up to the president, not up to unelected judges.

So the government maintained that.

Very, very limited justiciability

over this act.

That was number one.

And number two,

they do not in any world deserve the same due process as an American citizen would get.

Okay, so that was number two.

But then they made clear to the courts, but they can, the government conceded they can have due process in a habeas proceeding.

Okay, so what did the Supreme Court decide the other day?

Literally exactly what the Trump administration had been arguing.

I mean, I pulled it here just for some of the quotes, okay?

They say, let's see, this is from the U.S.

Supreme Court's decision the other day.

They say, first of all, we grant the application.

of the government, of the DOJ.

We vacate the temporary restraining orders that Judge Boesberg entered.

They say the detainees

want equitable relief against this Alien Enemies Act proclamation, and they don't want to be removed under this Alien Enemies Act.

They challenge the government's interpretation of the act and assert that they do not fall within the category of removable alien enemies.

They say we do not reach those arguments.

Challenges to removal under the Alien Enemies Act, a statute which largely precludes judicial review, citing Ludecki, must be brought in habeas.

So here's the court saying, if you have a challenge, you have to bring it in habeas, and they get to later saying that means Texas here.

But they notice, they note, in their own opinion, that this statute, quote, largely precludes judicial review.

The court didn't have to get to

what pieces of it are precluded entirely because they didn't really have to go there.

in this piece.

But here's some more of what they did say.

They touched on it.

They go on to say, although judicial review under the Alien Enemies Act is limited, we have held that an individual subject to detention and removal under the statute is entitled to judicial review as to questions of interpretation and constitutionality of the act.

So if you want to say this whole act is unconstitutional, you can bring that.

And interpretation of the act, like what does it mean?

a court is allowed to speak to that.

This is what it means.

It means

the president can invoke it when there's been an act of war, an invasion, an incursion, and there's still an open debate about

whether the court can second guess a president's decision that an invasion has happened.

That has not yet been decided.

And, you know, we'll see how that turns out.

I've argued that they should not second guess that.

How can a court decide what an invasion is more than a president?

We've had smart legal scholars come on and say they disagree.

So that one's still up for grabs.

And then they say you can also have a court review whether an individual is in fact an alien enemy 14 years of age or older.

That was what we said.

That's what the law said.

But Trump's order basically just said anybody who's a Trenda Aragua member from Venezuela and over 14.

He said alien enemies defined to include all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of Trenda Aragua within the United States and not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States.

Okay, so basically what they're saying is detainees are entitled to notice and an opportunity to be heard appropriate to the nature of the case.

And what that means here is habeas.

They say the notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.

Okay, that didn't happen here.

They were not given that here.

So that's progress.

That's some progress for the ACLU.

Now they definitely have something in writing saying it has has to happen beforehand, and that'll happen now.

But again, the government had already conceded that point in its briefs saying we'll do that.

But let's just be clear on what's happening here.

This is not in any way what the ACLU wanted.

They wanted a full due process-style

grant that would mirror what you or I would get in a criminal court before these people got labeled Venezuelan gang members and shipped off to El Salvador.

And the court has made really clear that's not going to happen.

And you don't have to take my word for it.

The advocate groups for the illegals themselves are making really clear that they're unhappy with this decision.

So the media may want to tell you that the Trump administration got slapped for not providing more due process.

That's not what happened.

They said they deserve

a little more due process.

But here's, for example,

the reaction from some of the immigrant groups who have been, their representatives who have been speaking out about this.

First of all,

they point out that the Supreme Court has ruled that due process in immigration cases is not the same as in criminal cases.

You get notice and opportunity to be heard, and that's it.

You don't get a lawyer, you don't get all this stuff guaranteed to you.

But here's an organization,

Vera, VERA.org, that says, okay, the Supreme Court affirmed notice and hearing are required, so good,

but

they limited it to

these small procedural safeguards.

And they said these limited procedural safeguards

do little to blunt the harm to immigrant communities who will have no meaningful way to defend their rights.

The Supreme Court's affirmation of due process rights in the habeas context is entirely, quote, hollow.

So that's where we are.

It's interesting to me because even in Sonia Sotomayara's dissent, she tries to overstate what the court has held.

Like, well, look, we have to be really clear now.

Everybody's getting total due process and we can review any part of the Alien Enemies Act that we want.

I mean, she totally overstates what the majority actually held in its opinion.

What they actually held was there's limited review,

very limited review under the Alien Enemies Act.

And when it comes, it's going to have to come in the context of a habeas proceeding that must be filed in the jurisdiction in which the

complaining person is being held.

That's it.

This is a very good ruling for Trump.

Now,

what he has to do is basically give these people notice.

If they do not say, I want a habeas proceeding, And let's face it, not all these illegals who are getting rounded up are in contact with the ACLU, ACLU.

Then he can ship them out.

He actually can ship them right out.

But if they demand a habeas proceeding, they will go to immigration court where they will not be entitled to counsel.

They will probably be representing themselves and they will be up against the government who says, or Tom Holman type people, this is why I think he's a Venezuelan gang member, immigration court judge.

And more than likely, they will be on the next plane to El Salvador.

That's how this is going to go.

Sorry if you don't like it, but that's how it's going to go.

They have very low, little due process rights.

That's been the law for a long, long time.

And while Trump may have pushed the boundaries of just how little,

little means, he's gotten a very, very favorable ruling here.

And you can bet there's going to be a bunch more plane, there's going to be many more planes that are going to be taken off with Venezuelan illegals very soon.

By the way, Judge Boesberg, you know, he was about to hold the Trump administration in contempt for sending those first two planes, notwithstanding the fact that he had issued an oral order saying, don't send and turn them around.

And Trump said, well, you know, they're in international airspace.

We're not turning them around now.

And they also said, you only issued that order orally.

By the time you'd

issued it, you know, in written form, it was too late.

Whatever.

Even after the Supreme Court's ruling, that guy kept the contempt hearing scheduled for yesterday morning for like over half a day.

He was actually still going to go forward with it.

Finally, he postponed it.

And now he wants briefing on whether he can still do it.

He will let go of this case with his cold, dead hands.

But Judge Bozberg, I have some advice for you.

If you want to be commander-in-chief, you should throw your hat in the ring.

Stephen A.

Smith was on the program a couple of weeks ago saying he's probably not going to be running for president.

Now he's already talking about maybe he will.

He's going to stop talking like that, he said.

Thinks maybe he has to do it.

You should throw your hat in the ring, Judge Bosberg.

Got a whole family of activists.

You got the wife who runs the abortion clinic.

You You got the daughter who spends her life trying to help illegals who are gang members stay in our country, reportedly.

And now you got you.

You're very politically active.

I love it.

You should do it, just not as a judge in a robe.

Okay?

So you've been reversed by the U.S.

Supreme Court in a pretty quick smackdown, all things considered.

And I really hope it's a lesson to all district court judges, because the thrust of Sodomayor's and the three liberals' main dissent was,

what are we taking this for so quickly?

We don't need to decide this now because they love the delay of the nationwide injunctions.

They're like, enjoin everything.

And maybe if we put it on the normal appellate and Supreme Court certainly schedule, we'll get to it in like three years after the Democrats have won the House in the midterms.

But thankfully, the majority of the court took it and the majority of the court reversed Boesberg.

And he's been slapped down.

And so have a couple of other district court judges this week.

Trump's on a little winning streak right now with the Supreme Court.

Three this week and one before, so he's gotten four good ones.

And I hope these district court judges are paying attention because they really don't like to get reversed.

Okay, that's where we kick it off today with our pals from the Real Clear Politics podcast, Tom Bevin, who's co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics, and Carl Cannon, Washington Bureau Chief,

who are here and they've been covering all this on their show too.

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Guys, great to see you.

Good to be with you, Megan.

Well, you did Albany Law School proud.

I'll tell you that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Carl.

I mean, I wanted to ask you, like, do you get it?

Like, I know it's very complex, but did you follow?

Yeah, Tom went to Princeton.

He got it.

I went to the University of Colorado.

I got about half of it.

Actually, Megan, I covered the courts for many years, and you did a good job summarizing.

You did.

It is complex, Tom.

I mean, and it's hard, you know, but we've been covering it like really in depth on the show, so I knew the audience could handle it.

But these nuances are important as the law affair plays out and as the media manipulations bubble up, you know, like we won.

No, we won.

No, you know,

understanding nuance is important.

Totally.

And, you know, I'm shocked that you are shocked that it didn't get reported that way in the media.

I mean, we've both, we've both been in this game long enough to know that the media is not always going to report everything in a sort of fair and objective way.

And this is another example of that.

But I think you're right.

And look, this is, I think it was important for the Supreme Court to step in here, not just in this case, but the other ones you mentioned,

to put some of these lower court judges sort of back in their lane, back in their place.

I mean, this has gotten out of control.

We've talked about this on our show.

The number of nationwide injunctions that have been issued.

just in the first two months of the Trump administration and two-thirds of all of them that have been issued were, you know, issued in the last nine years since Donald Trump took office.

So this was a real problem.

It had been getting out of control.

And I think John Roberts recognized that.

And so I think the Supreme Court was right to step in here and just, you know, basically, again, not,

as you point out, with some caveats and there's still some things that to be worked out in the court, but at least to get the system sort of back in balance, because it had gotten way out of hand with the way these judges had been just sort of trumping, no pun intended, all of Trump's policies at a a national level.

It's just ridiculous.

And Trump has accurately perceived a green light on the deportations of these Venezuelan gang members who are not.

I mean, some of the left-wing press would have you believe like your last name is Garcia and they're putting you on a plane.

That's not what's happening.

You know, the DHS group, ICE in particular, and Tom Holman, are being very careful in deciding who goes.

Will they be 100% perfect?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I know the one guy who got deported, who wasn't supposed to be deported, was totally fine to deport, just not to El Salvador.

That's what all the expenditure of energy is on that one guy

this week who they found.

And it was like, so he had a non-removal order to El Salvador, because that was the country that he sneaked in from.

And he had a deportation order issued against him, Carl.

They said, you're being deported, sir.

Get out.

And like within two weeks of having to leave only then did he try to claim asylum the actually it was too late for him to claim it so he just claimed please you can't remove me please don't send me back home to el salvador because there's this gang that's trying to kill me and my family and the immigration court had mercy on him and said all right

we'll give you a non-removal order to el salvador and he's been here ever since this is just a few years ago But by the way, you could still remove him to El Salvador if the conditions there that required him to have a non-removal order had changed favorably in a way that would be safer for him, and they have.

The gang that was totally devoted to getting this guy and his family allegedly has been eradicated by Maduro, so or whoever it was in El Salvador.

And

so, he likes this, even this guy, like their poster boy, was definitely deportable.

ICE is not making massive mistakes at it.

Like, we want you to believe that these are Keystone cops and they're not.

Well, his name was Garcia.

It is Garcia,

actually.

That's not the reason.

No, but your analogy.

So

look, he lived here in this case.

Let's talk about the politics of it for a second and we'll get back to the legal of it.

He's a dad of three.

He lives in Silver, not Silver Spring, in Prince George's County in a house.

You can look it up, you know, with Zillow.

You can find out where he lives.

His wife works.

He's got three children.

The youngest is five years old and is a nonverbal, autistic child.

He's apparently working.

It doesn't sound like he was really in any gang.

He was, and I'm not sure.

I'm also, I'm skeptical as you are that his life was threatened.

I'm also skeptical he was in MS-13, which the government keeps saying without any evidence whatsoever.

Well, wait, did you, are you aware of the fact that

a lower court judge, an immigration judge, and an appellate judge both found evidence to support his gang affiliation?

This was in 2019.

What they, they, well, there was, there was a, one person alleged he denied it.

It wasn't kind of, it wasn't a hearing, as you point out, these immigration courts don't have, they're not set up, you know, guilt or innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Right.

But,

but, but, but, America, look,

I'm talking about the politics of it, though.

Here's a guy taking care of this kid.

He, he's picked off.

He's got this Biden administration did nothing for four years now.

Maybe he should have paid closer attention to the election, to the campaign as it was unfolding, but he's there running an errand and suddenly he's in a el salvadoran prison and yes they could deport him to el salvador but he's never even been charged with a crime and whatever the government wants to say and the you know the justice department lawyers have been a little bit

they're not quite known what to say and one of them was removed for not being a passionate advocate they first said it was an administrative error then they said they're they couldn't do anything about it his his lawyer says well they couldn't do anything about it but they didn't try to do anything about it.

The idea that he's in a, that

because of the United States law enforcement, he's in a prison, a person in prison who's never even been charged with a crime.

I think it makes Americans very uncomfortable.

It makes me uncomfortable.

And could he have been deported?

Yeah, but he wasn't just deported.

He was sent to prison, you know, straight from the streets of Maryland to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

It seems Kafka-esque.

Well,

I don't know if you're right.

I'll give you the latest stats, which you, of course, already know because you are at Real Clear Politics, which does all the polling and posts all the polling.

But there is a Wall Street Journal poll just out, 1,500 registered voters.

And the question is, it does all sorts of approve or disapprove questions on illegal immigration.

And we'll get into some of them.

But here's this one.

In favor or oppose deporting illegal immigrants who are suspected foreign gang members to El El Salvador without a court hearing to determine whether they belong to a gang.

Total favor, 55% oppose, 43.

Okay, 43.

So, and then if you just boil it down to deporting illegal foreign gang members to El Salvador, 62% favor, 32% oppose.

But even like they got specific here, if illegal immigrants, who are suspected foreign gang members to El Salvador without a court hearing.

You got 55% of the American populace is in favor of that, Carl.

I don't know if this is a political problem.

Let me bring Tom in.

Is it?

Is it a, is this particular issue a problem politically for President Trump?

Well, the numbers suggest that it's not.

And

of all the issues that

people are polling on right now, the economy, inflation, foreign policy, he's got the highest marks on immigration.

And in part because of the work that he's done,

I think, securing the border and deporting folks.

So we'll see.

Does it become a problem if more cases like this arise?

Maybe.

But right now, I think,

I know it does.

Look, Carl, we talked about this on our show,

the students that Tufts University and some of these other folks.

And again, part of this too, Megan, is I don't think we're, as the public, we're not getting enough good information about exactly

who these people are, what they may have done, what they're accused of.

And I think the administration could actually do a better job of being a little bit more transparent.

Um, because,

you know, if we just rely on the mainstream media to inform us, I think we will end up being thinking to ourselves, my gosh, the administration's totally overstepped their bounds and they're just taking people off.

Yeah, you would think it's a bunch of gay hairdressers.

That's what, that's what the media wants you to believe.

It's just a bunch of innocent gay hairdressers that they threw on

planes.

Now they're in this.

I don't have to worry about that.

So,

well, here's the other thing: if you look down the list of polling in this Wall Street Journal poll, my God, it's very favorable for Trump on immigration.

There's only one area in which Carl is right.

The American public is against the deportations, and I'll get to it.

But just quickly: approve or disapprove of the job he's doing handling immigration.

52% approve, 47% don't.

Approve or disapprove of the job he's doing handling border security.

53% approve, 43% don't.

Favor,

do you favor detaining and deporting millions of undocumented migrants?

53% favor.

45% don't.

Do you favor detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants, even if they have lived in the U.S.

for 10 or more years, pay taxes on earnings, and have no criminal record?

Favor?

33% oppose 63.

That's where the American public draws the line.

Because

I read you the 55 and 62, they're like, any gang affiliation, get out.

We don't care, couldn't give a shit if you wind up in that El Salvadorian prison.

I mean, the American public's like really clear, like, get out.

But the one thing they don't want to see, Carl, is

immigrant, illegal immigrants who have lived here for 10 years or more, who pay taxes on their earnings and have no criminal record.

Oh, that's Kilmar Garcia.

He's right on the cusp.

I think he came here like

10 years ago,

2016.

So

he's close.

If they'd they'd let him alone for another six months,

he'd have been safe in the poll.

Well,

I haven't seen an individual poll on him, but I bet you they want him gone too, because when they find out that two, not one, but two judges, two courts have said, we find the gang evidence credible and you're getting deported.

Get out.

They found that in the context of saying, you got to leave, sir.

We don't really give a shit what your problems are.

We'll give you the solid, do you the solid of saying you don't have to go back to El Salvador?

But, you know, like they say at 4 a.m.

in the bar, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

Go ahead, Tom.

Well, I was just going to say, and look, a lot of this is

we have arrived at this place where Trump has the support to do this, the majority support across the board, even in cases where, you know, we're not holding hearings or whatever, because of what Biden did.

I mean, this is a clear reaction to four years of Joe Biden just throwing open the borders and, you know, denying it to the American people, saying, oh, the border is safe.

It's not a problem.

It's not a crisis.

And then also, once the folks are here, you know, denying that actual crimes were, you know, Lake and Riley and what was going on in Aurora, Colorado with the gangs and the like.

And so the American people just completely fed up with it and they wanted action taken.

And that's what Trump, Trump, that's what he ran on.

That's what he's doing.

And that's why he's still got majority support.

Okay, before we leave the topic of illegal immigration, can we talk about Christy Noam?

and these ridiculous photo ops?

Why?

Why does she have to keep doing this?

Just there, she's doing a great job.

Like her actual performance as DHS secretary, in my view anyway, has been amazing.

Just stop trying to glamorize the mission and put yourself in the middle of it as you cosplay ICE agent, which you're not.

I can't stand these photo ops, you guys.

I think they diminish ICE.

They

diminish DHS.

CPB, she's not an agent.

She is an administrative policy person appointed by Trump because she was very loyal to him.

Fine, but stop with the glam.

I mean, she looks like I look right now, but she's out in the field with her gun being like, we're going to go kick some ass.

No one wants you there.

First of all, nobody ever wants the extra lady who doesn't actually belong.

They just don't.

I just, pro tip, as somebody whose brother is a cop,

they don't want you there, even if you know you're an attractive lady who just wants them.

They don't want you.

They're alive on the line.

Like, they may say that you can come because you're DHS secretary, but these guys are going to be much safer if you have nothing to do with it.

And sure, sure enough, she went on one of these raids and somebody tried to kick her.

It's like she's looking for an opportunity to have that happen.

I have had it up to here with all of this.

Carl, am I wrong?

No, you're not wrong, but Christy Noam has a recent history of being very bad at public relations.

I happen to know something.

I have an inside knowledge about this.

You know, that thing she put in her book about shooting dogs or her dogs.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, she put that in her first book, which came out a few years ago, but the editors there took it out.

They said, what is wrong with you?

We're not putting that in your book about shooting dogs.

But what happened was that editor left and she went back to the same publishing house.

It was now run by kind of younger and they didn't stand up to her.

And she saw the opportunity, she said, ah, I'm going to put that back in.

Boy, that belongs in my book.

So

let's just say public relations is not her natural forte.

Well, why doesn't somebody save her from herself?

I mean, someone in the administration has got to pull her aside and say, enough.

All right.

Just stop.

Stop wearing the ice jacket.

Stop going on TV.

And by the way, Tom, a bunch of gun enthusiasts, and you know, you put this out to people on the right in particular.

they will look at everything you do with a gun, are ripping her because if you look at the gun, it's pointed right at the head of

that guy right next to her.

I think this is an ice worker right at his head.

Now, her finger's not on the trigger, but a bunch of, you know, gun enthusiasts are like, you don't point a gun at your compatriot's head for a photo op.

Right, it's not pointed as a dog.

Well, she actually, she actually knows how to handle a gun, as we know, from not just cricket, but but she's from South Dakota, pheasant hunting and the like.

I mean, just cricket.

Yeah,

she shot a coat, too.

But, you know, look, I totally agree with you.

And I'll forgive her the first, you know,

I guess when she went out on this, on this, you know, raid or whatever.

I think a lot of Trump officials wanted to show that they were sort of taking action and show themselves in action.

They're actually responding.

They're not just sitting behind a desk.

Pete Hegsteth went and worked out with the troops and things of that nature.

And so I think that was serving a purpose.

But, you know, standing at the prison again in front of all those guys, I mean, that was ridiculous.

This one's ridiculous.

And ironically, she's, you know, Trump hires or hired a lot of his people.

He likes people who have media experience, who can go on TV and handle, you know, questions from the mainstream media folks and the like.

And so I think maybe she thinks that this is what Trump wants to see her and for her to be out front and making headlines and being in the newspapers.

But to your point,

I think it's a bit over the top and not doing her or the administration any favors with these, the way that they're just sort of comically staged.

Here is a post from Jonathan T.

Gilliam.

He's been on the show.

Christian Navy CL, not this one, I think, but earlier ones multiple times.

Christian Navy CL, FBI agent, Air Marshall, among his other accomplishments.

These social media posts devalue everything you are doing right.

Secretary Noam, are you the Secretary of Homeland Security or are you a social media influencer?

Because if you are the boss, you wouldn't be slinging a weapon and kicking indoors.

So unless you are issued that weapon, you should not be holding it for posts and picks.

Screwing around with guns for social media would get anyone that works under you fired.

I can't understand why you and others in the administration continue to parade yourselves in such an unprofessional, juvenile, self-serving way.

You aren't running for office.

You're running a federal agency.

Do that or resign.

Here she was on because that photo op we just showed included video.

And here's how she described the big mission she was about to go on.

Here we are with Marco and Brian today.

They're letting me roll with them.

We're going to go out and pick up somebody who I think has got charges of human trafficking.

We earlier had an op that swept up somebody who was wanted for murder.

So appreciate the good work that they do every day and we appreciate them working to make America safe.

So Carl, she doesn't even know who they're arresting.

Someone who I think is wanted for human trafficking.

That's just a bad, that's just a dumb mistake.

This undermines, look at how we spent the first 40 minutes of the show, what we were talking about, right?

Like

are we getting the right people?

Who's on board those flights to El Salvador?

She's the secretary of DHS.

It is not helpful to team Trump in these courts every day to have the DHS DHS secretary being like, I think, I think he did human trafficking.

And next thing you know, that guy's in El Salvador in prison.

Well, that's what I hate to keep harping on poor Abrego Garcia, but that's the White House press secretary accused him of engaging in human trafficking.

He was never that just came out of nowhere.

This seems to be a go-to phrase for them because they think people hear it and go, well, gosh, yeah,

shoot him.

Don't even send him.

Don't even send him to El Salvador.

You know, human trafficking, murderers.

But to your point, in all seriousness, she should use very precise language.

They should be careful about the law.

And

she shouldn't even be standing there with a gun.

She should be doing

what you said, Megan.

I guess I'd nominate you for the job right now.

Could you take her job?

Well, you know what?

I would do it the way.

A prosecutor does it.

It's fine for a prosecutor to go to the scene as the cops are collecting evidence and doing the jobs that they are experts at.

But you don't see prosecutors trying to act like they're the forensic expert on the scene and dissecting the body or making sure that nobody gets near the scene.

They're there because they're the ones who are going to have to argue it in court and they just want to make sure they can say they were there, that there's nothing really

abnormal happening.

That's fine, but that's she's doing much more than that.

She's actually going on these raids with them.

She's cosplaying ICE agent.

And she, of course, is doing it with like 25 pounds of hair, only to be outdone by her 30 pounds of makeup and false eyelashes.

There's no false eyelashes on an ice raid.

I just, I can't, you guys.

I'm sorry.

I'm over it.

Okay, let's keep going.

Wait, wait, Megan.

Terrace, yeah, go ahead.

Wait, wait.

If you take that job, would you, and you have to give up this podcast, would you, you'll come on our podcast?

Yes, I will.

I will come on your podcast.

Okay.

I mean, look, that's the irony here is I don't really love Christy.

Noam.

My audience knows that.

She lost me with the,

well, a few things, but really shooting the puppy in the face was ridiculous.

And then the alleged affair with Corey Lewandowski, that's very bad.

While she's parading herself as this family woman, she came on the show and she really had me.

She had me as this like family woman.

And I read her book.

And then like, just so many things.

But anyway, I am past that.

I am totally rooting for her as DHS secretary.

But I wish she would stop this nonsense.

It's not about,

it's not a job in which she should showcase her vanity, right?

It's a job in which she should just keep us safe.

And she's doing a good job of that, but she's undermining it by this PR stuff.

Okay.

The tariffs.

Okay, it's everywhere.

You can't avoid tariff talk.

It's so hard.

It's like for those of us who just want to give it a chance, you can.

You can't.

You must talk about tariffs day and night, night and day.

Okay, so we're going to do that.

Trump went to the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner last night, and I would say he made some comments that are not particularly helpful

to those who have been critical of this whole thing.

Listen to SOT 4B.

And I do think that the war with the world, which is not a war at all, because they're all coming here.

Japan is coming here as we speak.

They're in a plane flying, lots of them, all tough negotiators.

But things that people wouldn't have given us two years ago, wouldn't have even thought of it two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, seven, they're giving us everything.

They don't want tariffs on themselves.

And it's very simple.

We're making deals and people are paying tariffs.

Countries are paying tariffs.

Right now, China is paying a 104% tariff.

Think of it, 104%.

Now it sounds ridiculous, but they charged us for many items 100%, 125%.

Many countries have.

They've ripped us off left and right.

But now it's our turn to do the ripping.

That's okay.

We're going to make our country even stronger, stronger than it ever was.

I'm not going to lie.

I'm amused.

I actually am very amused by him.

But, you know, the terms like war on the world.

And then he undid it.

And then it's our turn to do the ripping.

Like,

we're ripping people off.

That plays into the messaging that's coming from even his right-wing detractors.

And people, even Maria Bartaromo, who actually is one person I really trust on this.

It's hard to find somebody you really trust on because she's definitely not afflicted by TDS, but she totally understands the markets and has got a lot of, you know, presumably billionaire friends who are melting down over it.

So

I found her reporting to be very steady on it.

Politically, though, I haven't seen a recent poll, but I do wonder how this is going to affect him.

You guys have thoughts on that, Tom?

Yeah, I mean,

it's definitely the way that this has gone, the hysteria that's gone surrounded this over the last week or so with the market, the way it's gone down, can't be positive for Trump.

I mean, it just, I'm sure his supporters are going to be, you know, when you look at the internals of these polls, most Republicans are going to stick with him on this and give him at least the benefit of the doubt.

uh and and see how this plays out over the coming weeks and months but uh and democrats you know they hate him they'll always hate him him.

They hate him for this,

even though some of them actually supported tariffs not too long ago, but we'll leave that aside for now.

But I think independents are probably being,

you know, this creates a lot of anxiety and nervousness.

And,

you know, so I think it's probably a drag on his numbers overall.

If you look at his readings on the economy and inflation, they are underwater.

And again, that was

they've always been good,

which is a contrast, right?

Because they've always been good.

Yeah.

And so he's, he needs to, you know, and I think this is another thing about the administration.

When you're talking about Doge or you talk about this, I think the administration, you know, they could have benefited from prepping the public for what, you know, and saying, look, here's the problem, right?

Lay it out and say, okay, here's what we're going to do about it.

You know, on this date, we're going to impose these tariffs and then we're going to negotiate and we're going to do this and that.

Could have done the same with Doge.

Instead, they're just breaking stuff.

And there's a benefit to that, but there's also the downside to that, which is that, you know, you get reactions from the media, you get reactions from Democrats, things are portrayed.

If mistakes are made, those become bigger.

And so in that sense, they just went ahead with the tariffs.

I don't think the public was really prepared for what happened afterwards.

And now they're trying to play catch up

on the public relations aspect of this.

I mean,

there's pushback, Carl.

We saw Elon Musk does not seem to be a fan.

of the tariffs.

But there are a lot of defenders now.

We'll talk about this in a minute, but we have Kevin O'Leary out there defending, of course, Scott Bessant, Howard Luttnick, and so on.

Well,

the president hasn't made it very clear on what a country would have to do to avoid tariffs.

And I think this is picking up what Tom was saying.

You know,

he seems to think that if there's a trade imbalance with the United States, that's de facto evidence that they've been cheating.

And it might be that, or it might be that they just make a product we want, or we don't export to that particular country.

I think he should give an Oval Office address and explain his rationale, walk through what he hopes to gain by this, what countries can do to avoid tariffs and what his philosophy is on free trade versus fair trade.

I would listen to that speech.

I would be very curious because he's made all these statements and he hasn't put it together in a coherent policy.

He could do it himself.

He's been proselytizing on this issue for 40 years.

He actually would need no speech writer and no prep.

I think you're right.

He could be well served by it.

Stand by, guys.

We'll be be right back.

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Wanted to get that Kevin O'Leary sound bite in because it was interesting from CNN.

Watch.

104% tariffs in China are not enough.

I'm advocating 400%.

I do business in China.

They don't play by the rules.

They've been in the WTO for decades.

They have never abided by any of the rules they agreed to when they came in for decades.

They cheat, they steal, they steal IP.

I can't litigate in their courts.

They take product, technology, they steal it, they manufacture it, sell it back here.

I want to cheat on an airplane to Washington to level the playing field.

This is not about tariffs anymore.

Nobody has taken on China yet, not the Europeans, no administration for decades.

As someone who actually does business there, I've had enough.

I speak for millions of Americans who have IP that have been stolen by the Chinese.

I have nothing against the Chinese people.

The government cheats and steals, and finally, an administration, you may not like Trump, you may not like his style or his rhetoric, finally, an administration that puts up and says enough.

America is the number one economy on earth with all the cards.

We will not have that forever.

It's time to squeeze Chinese heads into the wall now.

So, on the front of the politics of the tariffs, this is the way to go.

Like, there's not a lot of Americans who are going to be crying in their soup over the loss of our relationship with China.

I think most Americans at this point would like far less of a relationship with China.

We would like China to stop owning our agricultural fields,

our movie industry, our sports industries,

produce every single toy that our children play with, and we have no idea with what standards.

So now they want to play hardball with Donald Trump, and they think somehow that's going to work to their benefit.

I don't think so, Carl.

Well, that what Kevin O'Leary said: this theft of intellectual property has been a problem for 20 years.

It's under-reported, under-discussed.

Everybody, people I know in business, I used to cover the Silicon Valley when I first came to Washington, San Jose Mercury was my home paper.

And this is what he said is literally true: that companies go there, they um, American companies,

the innovation is stolen and then sold back to us, you know, and we're supposed to think that, yeah, that's okay because China has, you know, a billion people and it was poorer than us and they're trying to catch up.

Well, I think they've caught up and they should be made to pay by the rules.

This is what I was saying before.

This is the kind of thing Donald Trump ought to talk about.

He had to leave Canada out of the discussion.

And, you know, and if Vietnam wants our help, you know, you got to figure a way to work with them and i think a focus on on cheating on on dishonest business practice that i think that's i think that's a winning argument and i think it's a truthful and effective argument

yeah no it's it's much harder to sell the to carl's example earlier tom like i don't know somebody's importing like

dragon fruit here or like some sort of weird papayas that we don't grow domestically.

And so there's a trade imbalance because we just don't export that much to them and we need their tropical fruits.

That's a little tougher to sell than look at these guys.

Everybody knows the Chinese have been taking advantage of us for a long time.

And now they decided to play hardball.

They actually came out because

Trump raised the tariffs on China.

And then they decided to raise a reciprocal 34% on us.

And Trump said, all right, I'll do you one better.

I'm adding another 50% on top.

And so now he's raised the levy on them to 104%.

And

China comes out and says we firmly oppose it.

It's a mistake upon a mistake.

And their ministry vowed to escalate their retaliation on the United States import or exports.

So I just don't see this going well for them.

And meanwhile, I don't know if you saw, but Scott Besson is out there today saying

our entire focus is on Main Street.

We don't really care.

All these Wall Street, you know, belly acres, you know, you had your day in the sun.

And I'm one of you.

And I'm telling you, you had your day in the sun.

Our mission focus on Team Trump for the next three plus years is going to be Main Street, Main Street, Main Street.

Yeah, I saw that clip of him, and that's, that's obviously a good message for the administration.

But he also said in another clip, I think it was this morning, might have been on Maria's show,

when he was talking about tariffs with the Chinese, he was like, listen, you know, we import five times more, right, than China imports of our goods.

So they're the surplus surplus country.

So they can raise their tariffs all they want.

Who gives a shit, right?

We're going to, we are the country that we have the leverage and the Trump administration is willing to use it.

I mean, this is like a high-stakes poker game where they're just shoving chips in, I'll raise you, no, I'll raise you back.

But we have more chips than they do.

They cannot stay with us if we continue to do this.

Now, is it going to cause pain?

Perhaps.

I mean, the other concern that people are talking about is, is this going to, you know, if we're, you know, if we're getting after Vietnam and some of these other countries, is that going to drive them into the arms of the Chinese and away from us those I think are legitimate questions but at the end of the day I mean I think Kevin O'Leary is right we have been and this is what Trump has been saying for a long time we've been taken advantage of by the Chinese in particular for so long we've just come to accept that that's the sort of normal course of things and so finally we're saying even as they have cheated and stolen not just IP, but the way they dump products, they manipulate their currency, I mean, they do a whole host of things which are really underhanded and not what you want in a

legitimate trading partner.

So we're trying to reset this.

And I think if we can do it, if the Trump administration can do it, it'll be a huge win for the country in the medium and long term.

I don't think the Chinese understand the American sentiment toward China right now, right?

After the balloon gate over the United States, about which we did absolutely nothing.

And Americans are, Americans are still wondering about that.

Frankly, I'm still wondering about all the drones over New Jersey.

I don't believe any of the explanations we've gotten so far.

I don't think they're particularly popular as a country in America.

And I think it actually is going to really work well for President Trump to take them on.

As far as if we zoom out, we read the polls on immigration.

He's doing very well.

The polls on tariffs, I haven't seen them lately, but you're telling me less well, which dovetails with what I would have expected.

Because the American populace is told over and over and over, they're bad.

He's ruining the economy.

It's a one-man wrecking ball on what was a healthy economy.

That's what you hear everywhere.

But overall, Trump maintains his popularity, which to me means he won't be changing any of these policies anytime soon.

Here's CNN's Harry Enton on that.

I think there was this concern among some folks that Donald Trump would come in for a second term and kind of be a lame duck.

He ain't no lame duck.

If anything, he's a soaring eagle.

What am I talking about here?

Let's talk about Trump executive orders in 2025.

He's already signed 111 so far.

That is the most at this point in a presidency in at least 100 years.

In fact, it's the most in any single year, more only in April, since Harry S.

Truman in the early 1950s.

86% of the American public believes that Trump's approach to presidential power is completely different from past presidents compared to only 14% who believe it is in line with precedent.

And we're talking about at least 79% of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.

So Trump's presidential power is too much, the right amount, too little.

Well, 47% say too much, but then you get 36% who say the right amount.

Then you get 17% who say too little.

So you're essentially dealing with a majority of the American public, 53%, who do not say that Trump has too much power.

They either say he has too little power or the right amount of power.

So the idea, that argument that Donald Trump is quote unquote a king, that I don't think holds with the American people.

That's really remarkable, Tom Bevin.

If you think about the number of outlets continuing to use words like fascist,

authoritarian, right, dictator, some of which we heard in these non-organic, hands-off rallies over the weekend, right?

They're doing all they can through law affair, through media, through protests to get the message out there that he's acting like a dictator.

It's not sticking.

The majority of the populace still thinks he's using presidential power appropriately.

And a hefty amount of them, nearly 20%, thinks he hasn't gone far enough.

Right.

And there is this disconnect between folks in the media and certainly the Democrats when they say, well, I don't think that this is what Trump voters voted for.

They're having buyers remorse.

And then you talk to your Trump voter.

They're like, this is exactly what I voted for.

And I would vote for it again, twice if I could.

I mean, they love what he's doing.

And that number about, he has taken a completely different approach.

It is a different political environment than he was in, obviously, in 2016.

He's got better people around him.

The machinery around him is more efficient.

He knows what he's doing.

They've been executing at a rapid pace.

And because I look, at some point, he is going to be a lame duck, right?

I mean, that's just a fact,

unless he ends up amending the Constitution and getting a third term.

But then that moment is rapidly approaching, especially if Democrats manage to take control of the House next November.

So he is trying to get a lot done and

as much and as fast as he can do.

And as Harry pointed out, and as the polls show, by and large, the public is with him.

And he has a lot more leeway this time around than he did in his first term.

This Chadwick Moore, who he's been on the program, he wrote a biography on Tucker.

He tweeted this out just today, yesterday, saying, this is what I voted for.

This and tariffs.

And the tweet was from Trump's Truth Social that reads as follows.

Sloppy J.B.

Pritzker, the rotund governor from the once great state of Illinois, who makes Chris Christie look like a male model

and whose family wanted him out of the business because he was so pathetic at helping them run it, has presided over the destruction and disintegration of Illinois at every level, never before seen in any state.

Crime is rampant.

People are sadly fleeing Illinois.

Unless a change is made at the governor's level, Illinois can never be great again.

Tom, that's your state.

I bet you agree with almost every word, if not every word.

Well, yeah, Trump obviously has a way with words, but I mean, he is right about the fact that Illinois is suffering.

It's suffering.

Chicago, largest city, obviously, is in not great shape.

And J.B.

Pritzker has been in office for two terms now and thinks of himself as presidential material.

And he has...

portrayed himself as this guy.

I'm going to be, Illinois is going to be the refuge for, you know, abortions and all the folks, the LGBTQ folks, like we're leaning into the woke stuff.

Meanwhile,

people are fleeing.

Taxes are high.

And it just hasn't been a great situation for the state of Illinois.

But nevertheless, I mean, to me, Pritzker is one of those guys that is sort of a classic example of a guy who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple, right?

He really hasn't distinguished himself.

If you look at the statistics in this state, and yet he is constantly mentioned as one of the top-tier candidates for the Democrats in 2028.

So we'll see how that plays out.

His family is dying to trans everyone's child.

That post, I'm told, was from this past June.

And that's how he's distinguished himself as far as I'm concerned.

I got to run because I have Lee Zeldin, EPA administrator.

I can't wait to ask him some questions.

Love listening to you guys.

Check out the Real Clear Politics podcast.

I really enjoy it.

And our regards to Andrew, who was not able to come today.

See you soon.

Thanks, Megan.

Okay.

Up next, as I said, Lee Zeldin of the EPA is here.

We've got a lot to go over.

Stand by.

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We've been telling you about Trump's efforts to dismantle the U.S.

AID agency that's funneling your taxpayer money all over the world to left-wing causes.

And the Department of Education, of course, is another target of Team Trump on the, to put it mildly, slimming down program.

But today we are going to take you inside what the administration is doing to fix one of the left's favorite agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.

We started learning about the rampant overspending and possible corruption in the waning days of the Biden administration.

That is when Project Veritas caught an EPA staffer on tape saying the agency was spending as much money as possible before Trump took office, likening it to throwing gold bars off the Titanic.

Watch.

Where are the gold bars going to?

Non-profits, states, or

tribes.

We gave them the money because it was harder.

If it was a government-run program, they could take the money away.

If Trump won, because

it was an external policy against Trump winning until the Trump people come in and tell us they can no longer give up money.

Unbelievable.

That EPA staffer is no longer with the agency.

And joining me now for the first time, the 17th administrator of the EPA, Lee Zeldon.

Lee, welcome to the show.

Great to have you.

Great to be with you, Megan.

So I think most of us in the Northeast are still in your debt, very much so for giving Kathy Hochul a run for her money and coming within a few points of actually beating a Democrat to become the governor of New York.

We're just crying in our soup that you didn't actually get it across the finish line in the end.

But what yeoman's work.

You're really the reason that New York started thinking maybe we could win here if they're Republicans.

And many people credit you with the five seats they picked up in the following, in that midterm.

Yeah, and that was actually four years ago yesterday that we started that campaign.

We started 19 months to the day before the election.

We worked hard.

It's a big state, but we made the rounds and found that there were a whole lot of independents and Democrats who were prioritizing issues that transcended partisan loyalty.

And they wanted to save the state, and we were happy to do it.

And things

happen for a reason.

It's funny how things work out.

And while the silver lining of that campaign was how we were able to keep the House for the two years, the final two years of President Biden's time in office, here we are now.

And obviously, I wouldn't have this opportunity to help fight for a strong, great

president and a golden age of America serving in his cabinet.

If I was up in Albany, I'd be watching from there.

Albany needs you so badly.

Like as a lifelong New York State gal, it's just so sad what's happened there.

It's becoming California in so many ways, even though it's got very deep pockets of red, like in upstate where I grew up.

Before we move on to EPA, let me just ask you two political questions, if you don't mind.

It was believed that

Andrew Cuomo would probably be your stiffest competition for that gubernatorial race, but his career ended in tatters after the Me Too allegations and after, you know, he basically killed a bunch of people in the New York nursing homes after ordering COVID positive patients to go in there and not be screened.

Lee Zeldon, he's coming back.

He now has decided to run for mayor of New York.

And as you know, The person who wins mayor of New York is the person who wins the Democrat primary, with all due respect to Curtis Leewa, who's running on the GOP side.

You know, that New York is just so Democrat, so blue.

And he's way up.

He's got 30% of the vote by the latest polls.

Mayor Adams down to like 4% or 8%.

His next closest somebody is 10%.

I can't believe New Yorkers are about to do this, but it appears they're about to restore this guy to power.

What do you think of it?

Shows how quickly people can forget.

He's out there talking about issues as if he wasn't the governor when so many of these laws were getting passed to protect criminals across the state.

And now he's out there advocating for public safety as if he wasn't the governor when they were pushing for cashless bail and these other laws like raise the age and qualified immunity, which was gaining legs under his watch.

And all these members of the parole board who've been releasing cop killers.

And you get this clean slate.

You know, he ends up resigning.

And then a few years later, he's treated as if none of that ever happened.

And the irony is that it's not just that he isn't owning his his past record.

He's taking the opposite position.

I think it's just important for voters to get informed on their options and to not forget, because we've been here once.

And don't come back to us a year after Andrew Como gets elected mayor of New York City and act as if his own record didn't give you forewarning.

Yeah, I'm honestly like I'm I shudder to think.

what, well, and I kind of know what my friend Janice Dean is thinking about this.

You know, she,

and her husband Sean can't stand this guy.

His both of Sean's parents were killed in New York City nursing homes because of him, because of that order for which he's taken no accountability.

He's lied over it.

I know you know, Janice a bit too.

That's who I think of.

I think of the actual families who suffered as a result of his inane decisions about which he was warned.

It's not like people had no idea.

They knew, they knew it would happen, and he did it anyway.

Yeah, and during the final days and weeks of Andrew Como's time as governor, there was this increased impeachment push amongst the ranks of the Democrats who were serving in the state legislature.

And they were talking about it as if the only cause of this were the sexual assault, abuse, harassment allegations.

And meanwhile,

we can't forget that what actually was taking root at even a bigger level at that time was an investigation that came out of the federal Department of Justice.

You had thousands of families.

You mentioned Janice Deen and her family and what they went through.

And there were thousands of families who wanted answers and justice for their deceased loved ones.

And I think that was part of the calculation of some of these members of the state legislature who were coming out in favor of trying to get Andrew Cuomo out under the cover of some of these complaints that were being brought forward by women who also didn't want to talk about the deadly nursing home order and cover-up.

Yes, I totally agree with you.

It's sad to me to see my city that I lived in for 17 years

take this leap off of a bridge with this guy.

It's just a stupid, reckless thing to do in my view.

And speaking of my New York roots, this is something else you and I have in common.

It was mentioned by my guest in the first hour, but you too are a graduate of the Albany Law School.

Right.

And of course, as I was going through Albany Law School, there was a tremendous amount of pride.

And in the years after I graduated for this famous alum, who I have the pleasure of being able to speak to right now live on air.

But yeah, and actually, just before I was at Albany Law School, I was at the State University of New York at Albany, which I believe that your family might have some roots

there as well.

Exactly.

Oh, that's so great.

Well, I love Albany Law School.

I always say, like, I loved my four years at Syracuse, but nothing prepared me for life life better than those three years at Albany Law School.

It was just a very special place.

It was extremely valuable when it came to legal education.

They were really practical and hands-on and smart.

And they continue to produce some of the best lawyers in the country, even though it's a small law school, but they mostly service New York State.

So these people wind up, in many cases, going to these big New York City law firms and ruling the world.

But I don't think I'd be where I am today had I not had those three years there.

I'm sure you feel the same.

Yeah, absolutely.

I had an opportunity to come back to Albany for four years when I was in the state senate, six years in the Army Reserve, but some of the best memories of life were during those years of college and law school, doing Army ROTC

at that time.

And Albany isn't what we remember it.

This is the same for a lot of these small cities across all of upstate, as you well know.

Unfortunately, it seems like their heydays are in the past.

And a lot of that are the consequences of these decisions that won't tap into economic opportunity, that won't reduce the cost of living.

So these jobs end up going, these big manufacturing companies that I'm sure you remember aren't there anymore.

And President Trump talks about it a lot because as you're a New Yorker remembering your roots, President Trump has experienced the same thing.

And he scratches his head wondering in the southern tier of New York, how can it be that we don't extract natural gas where right across the border in Pennsylvania, Republicans and Democrats together all got the memo.

They're tapping into it and they're prosperous for it.

So unfortunately, I think Albany and some of these other cities aren't what we remember it as not that long ago.

I know.

Well, I still go up there all the time because my mom lives there.

She lives in a suburb.

And my brother's still up there.

One of my brothers, my other brother's in Atlanta, and was a police lieutenant there.

My mom was a nurse.

So they went through all of this and watched the city go up and down.

Let's talk about Trump and the big announcement yesterday because natural gas is one thing.

And then there's coal, the forgotten coal miner.

And this is what I thought about when

Trump came out and prioritized this both during the campaign and

once he was president, I thought about Hillary Clinton and when he first was running for president against her.

And she promised to devastate the coal industry.

She wanted to kill coal.

Do we have that?

I'm just wondering if we have that on tape.

Yeah, we do.

Here it is.

Watch this.

I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country.

Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right, Tim?

And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people.

Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.

Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels.

But I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.

Okay.

The coal industry did not vote for Hillary Clinton.

Barbara Streisand would later say to me directly at a party, I don't understand.

She literally said, how could the coal miners vote for Trump?

I said, Barbara, Barbara, she promised to put them all out of work.

What are you saying?

But they didn't understand.

They thought Republicans, you know, people like Barbara Streisand say Republicans, well, they hate coal miners.

They hate working class.

So how would they ever vote for him?

Hello.

And in comes Trump.

And yesterday, I'll just play one soundbite.

There's so many to choose from, but take a listen to SOT 9.

Today we're taking historic action to help American workers, miners, families, and consumers.

We're ending Joe Biden's war on beautiful clean coal once and for all.

And it wasn't just Biden, it was Obama and there were others.

But

we're doing the exact opposite.

And all those plants that have been closed are going to be opened if they're modern enough or they'll be ripped down and brand new ones will be built.

We're going to put the miners back to work.

And I said I was going to do this.

And I've said it loud and clear.

And it's time to do it.

And we need it.

It's quite an image, Lee, of those guys in the hard hats who have been kicked around for far too long standing behind the president.

So what does this mean as a practical matter?

And you can feel it being in the room there with these workers.

They've been waiting a long time to have people out there like President Trump defending, sticking up for their livelihood, for their family, for their community.

And if you're sitting around a candidate and it's a campaign team, you're looking at the latest poll and you're trying to figure out the right message, strangulating the economy is never a good idea for anyone around that table.

And if someone is naive, dumb enough to talk about it, you would expect the rest of them to try to stop them.

And in this case, President Trump gets elected.

He campaigned on this issue.

So a mandate was earned and he won big, not just Electoral College, but also the popular vote.

And President Trump comes in, he declares an emergency, an energy emergency, signs an executive order, creates a National Energy Dominance Council with also Doug Bergham from Secretary from the Department of Interior, Chris Wright from the Department of Energy, myself, and other agencies.

And we're working together to unleash energy dominance and permitting reform, making America the AI capital of the world, all of these priorities and working together.

Four weeks ago today, EPA announced what amounts to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the country.

One agency, largest deregulatory action ever, trillions of dollars of regulatory relief coming over the course of 2025.

For which,

yeah, so coal.

Coal is certainly one.

It's a big one, but you also have it impacting mobile source energy, vehicles.

You have other forms of stationary source energy that Hillary Clinton was talking about in that segment to get rid of.

And what's so important in understanding what Hillary Clinton was saying was the concept of getting rid of baseload power and replacing it with what is intermittent sources of energy.

When Hillary Clinton says get rid of coal and natural gas and whatnot, she is, and talking about moving towards these other forms,

you're talking about something like wind.

Now, wind is an intermittent source.

You can use it to substitute, I'm sorry, to supplement your baseload power, but it's not a substitute for it.

So

these deregulatory actions that we announced are with regards to a number of Biden-era regulations from the last year or two of his time in office that didn't just accidentally result in these companies needing to go out of business.

It was intentionally drafted to destroy these coal plants.

It is to put them out of business.

You heard it in the Hillary soundbite.

The Democrats, Obama, Hillary, and Biden, and I'm sure Kamala too, have made it a mission to ruin coal.

They hate oil too.

I mean, they don't like any sort of fossil fuel energy.

Obviously, Kamala Harris had said she wanted to ban fracking and then lied and said that she had reversed herself on that.

But in any event, they've been on a mission to make us reliant on windmills and solar panels.

This is their big, and depending on the car, batteries, no longer Teslas.

But this is, you know, this is the backbone of American energy and industry since our founding and since the industrial age.

So, this is how the New York Times is pitching it, though.

This is in their write-up.

They talk about how coal is a pollutant, of course, the most polluting of all fossil fuels when burned, accounts for roughly 40% of the world's industrial carbon dioxide emissions, the main driver of global warming.

Then they say, over the past two decades, the use of coal has fallen precipitously in the U.S.

Like, gee, it just fell out of favorly.

I don't know.

Like, people just naturally moved away from it.

They say, as utilities have switched to cheaper and cheaper electricity sources like natural gas, wind, and solar power, that transition has been the biggest reason for the drop in U.S.

emissions since 2005.

Now, you tell me you know much more about this than I do, but my understanding is the reason that there has been a lot of switching to wind and solar is because the government has been propping up those industries, notwithstanding the fact that almost nobody wants them.

Amen.

And during the Obama administration, he was putting out regulations out of the Biden EPA that were intentionally trying to get rid of coal.

President Trump gets elected.

He comes in office.

He reverses it.

Supreme Court weighs in in West Virginia versus EPA.

They say that what the President Obama EPA did was unconstitutional.

President Biden comes in and then he goes back to what Obama was trying to do by design, getting rid of these sources of energy to force America to move towards wind power.

Now, what that does is it harms the economy, the people who can least afford it.

Americans who are faced with the decision of whether or not to heat their home, fill up their fridge with groceries, get prescription drugs that they need.

Instead of saying all of the above, they have to pick and choose.

If you want to get an electric vehicle, go get an electric vehicle.

But maybe for your neighbor, they don't want an electric vehicle.

They want a gas-powered vehicle.

One of the other consequences of this energy policy is that it's eliminating choice.

In a state like New York, they would ban gas hookups on new construction statewide.

We were just talking about how they wouldn't allow the safe extraction of natural gas.

They won't approve all sorts of essential new pipelines to transport these sources of energy.

This is all by design.

President Trump comes in, and when he talks about a solution for energy, we're talking about national security, the environment, the economy, considering it all.

We need to protect the environment and grow the economy.

This isn't a binary choice anymore.

All of the above also means choosing both protecting the environment and protecting the economy, protecting opportunity with a golden age for all of America.

This is the path I believe strongly, not the one that seeks to suffocate the economy, cutting out all these sources of energy with no substitute.

The last thing I would say is that some of these Democrats are now talking about how they agree with President Trump that we should make America the AI capital of the world.

Well, how the heck do you think that's possible if you keep getting rid of all of these baseload power?

Yeah, we need energy for that.

Okay, you mentioned wind.

We've got to spend a minute on it because this is the bane of my existence.

We spend our summers at the Jersey shore,

and there has been a massive dispute there.

You cannot go two feet without seeing a sign about the windmills that are coming, the wind turbines on the wind farm that are coming to South Jersey.

Unfortunately, I don't think this particular group of wind turbines is going to be stopped by President Trump's executive order, which he issued right upon taking office, saying anything that's not yet been permitted and that's still in process of being permitted is halted on wind turbines.

We're stopping.

He's the offshore ones in particular are stopping because, for among other reasons, they're apparently killing a bunch of whales and they're toxic.

Last summer in Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, one fell.

The blades of these things are the size of a 747.

Like it's longer.

The wingspan is longer than the wingspan of a 747.

Anyway, they fell into the ocean.

There was toxins everywhere.

People couldn't go swimming.

That's just one, one

windmill, one turbine.

So, how are we going to stop more of these things from polluting our land?

Because they take up so much land, polluting our waters, killing our animal, our sea life, like our whales, because it's full steam ahead for the ones that weren't swept up in the EO.

Right.

And at these different agencies, we're implementing President Trump's guidance to us that he doesn't want any more permits for any of these windmills.

Now, there have been a lot of windmills over the course of not just months and years, but even decades that have gone up around America.

And I think that there's somewhat of a difference in the way that some Democratic governors talk about this versus others.

We've spent a lot of time talking about how this is not a substitute for baseload power.

Some Democratic governors agree with that and they say that out loud.

Well, they need to get the memo to the rest of the people out there who are articulating this as if it's a substitute because it's not.

As far as some of those windmills that are already up or they're much further along with approvals already secured, that's not something that I received any guidance from President Trump that's different from what he's already put out.

We stand by ready to implement his agenda.

That's our job is to implement the Trump mandate.

And that's why there haven't been any new approvals since he put that EO out.

Good.

Let's stop it.

I don't care if they got the permit.

In this case, they got it right before Trump took office, but it's not yet built, and it shouldn't be.

It's such a pollutant.

It's a disgusting eyesore.

It's one thing you've put these off where nobody can see them.

But I mean,

the East Coast is...

It's absolutely gorgeous.

It's the gold coast of America.

It's spectacular.

Why would we litter it with these ugly, disgusting windmills that if they fall, because there will be accidents, ruin the swimming, endanger the sea life?

You heard Trump talking about how they kill the whales on Joe Rogan.

He's right.

They mocked him.

He was totally right about it.

It's torture for these poor whales who are underwater as they can hear the click, click, click, click, click, click, click of hundreds or thousands of these things.

It's just one of Trump's many right-headed priorities.

Let's talk about the Doge efforts at EPA because it seems like EPA is a big area for Doge, and that Elon and team have found

over $20 billion in waste fraud and abuse so far at EPA league?

I've canceled now $22 billion worth of grants.

And to give you an idea of how that compares to the agency's budget, our operating budget is about $10 billion a year.

Yet somehow, through Congressional Democrats and their Inflation Reduction Act and some of their other appropriations through Congress, over $60 billion

was obligated and spent through EPA in 2024.

And that number is going to go down by over 65% in 2025.

So $22 billion worth of grants.

Now,

you'll hear terms from Democrats like environmental justice or climate change, and they'll define it in a way that there might be Republicans and Independents that would agree with.

You say environmental justice, a great argument to be made in support of it is that there are communities that have been left behind and they need funding and support, attention in order to deal with it.

It's long overdue.

Okay, a lot of us can agree with a definition like that.

Here's the problem.

In the name of environmental justice, they will get a dollar appropriated and instead of spending that dollar to actually remediate that environmental concern, they will spend the money to some left-wing activist group to tell us that we need to spend a dollar remediating an environmental issue.

So we have been canceling all of these grants.

I'll give you one example.

$50 million went to the Climate Justice Alliance.

They say that climate justice runs through a free Palestine.

I come into office, I cancel that grant.

Yes.

Climate Justice Alliance said that through $50 million, we're not even talking about spending $100,000, which that would be too much.

They say that climate justice runs through a free Palestine.

I say that if you're going to spend $50 million in the name of environmental justice, the $50 million should be spent remediating environmental issues in communities, again, not not sending it to left-wing organizations.

I'll tell you, one of the other issues that we've seen in a bigger picture is with $20 billion

through the greenhouse gas reduction fund created in the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats parked $20 billion at an outside bank to give to eight pass-through NGOs.

Many of them were brand new.

The $2 billion NGO that is connected to Stacey Abrams, President Trump talks about a lot.

They only received $100 in 2023.

They got $2 billion in 2024.

Self-dealing, conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients, and less EPA oversight than what we need for the taxpayer with all sorts of different facts and evidence to back it up.

And yet congressional Democrats and the media, others in the media want to make believe like there are no problems with any of that.

We canceled that $20 billion.

Okay, let me ask you about this because Stacey Abrams responded to this on MSNBC on March 6th.

And this soundbite's going to begin with her discussing a program to replace energy inefficient devices in Georgia, a program that was run by Rewiring America.

One of the groups, including hers, was another one who got this huge grant, this $2 billion EPA grant.

Watch.

Okay, so

what is this organization?

What is your relation to it?

And what does it do?

In 2023 and 2024, I led a program called Vitalizing the Soda.

We worked in a tiny town in South Georgia to demonstrate that by replacing energy inefficient appliances with efficient appliances, you can lower your cost.

And in fact, we accomplished that.

For 75% of the community, they got appliances that are lowering their bills right now.

We had one woman who saw her electric bill cut in half from $180 to $98.

That's what we delivered.

And based on that program, a coalition of organizations,

famous organizations, came together and said to the EPA, if we can do this here, we can do this for millions more Americans.

Let us invest the money of America in lowering the cost for Americans.

And the EPA said, okay, great, go for it.

So her explanation in part is that it wasn't just her little group, but it was groups like the United Way and Habitat for Humanity.

And that's why this $2 billion grant made made sense.

Her organization received $500 million of the $2 billion.

What qualifies this NGO to receive $2 billion?

It didn't exist before

this Inflation Reduction Act.

They only received $100.

And then they get $2 billion.

Now, when the grant agreement was drafted by EPA, they put a provision on page seven that says that they have 90 days to complete training called how to develop a budget.

This isn't some standard requirement that went to every contract all of the time.

This was a decision by the EPA that this organization needed to complete a training called how to develop a budget.

If they need to still complete that training to learn how to develop a budget, how do you give them $2 billion?

On top of it, it gets even worse.

On page one of the grant agreement, it says that they have 21 days to start spending the $2 billion.

So let me get this right.

You have 21 days to start spending $2 billion, but then you're given an additional 69 days to complete your how to develop a budget training.

It's wild.

So EPA knew

that this was something that we should have a problem with, that these folks had qualification challenges.

The EPA said they couldn't spend the money themselves, so they had to park it at this outside bank.

And the problem is once the $2 billion goes through the NGO, EPA isn't even a party to the account control agreements after that.

EPA loses all sorts of oversight where I can't sit before you and answer all sorts of basic questions about what happens to the money.

Stacey Abrams just wants us to take her word for it.

But I don't know what in her qualification says that we should just be sending over $2 billion to her and her friends to let them spend as they wish

with reduced oversight.

One other example was $5 billion went to another organization that was the former employer of the director.

of the greenhouse gas reduction fund for the Biden EPA.

The self-dealing and conflicts of interest included Democratic donors, former Biden and Obama officials.

And as you pointed out here at the top of the segment, playing that clip of a Biden EPA official, it was in their their words that they were throwing gold bars off the Titanic.

Gold bars are tax dollars.

Off the Titanic meant they knew they were wasting it.

This is unbelievable.

So this is, are these just Democratic slush funds, rewards to Biden donors, that kind of thing?

Or is it more the green agenda?

Let's give out as much as we possibly can before we get kicked out so that people will continue pushing solar panels.

Yeah, it's kind of all of the above.

It's a green slush fund to their friends getting out the door as part of their agenda before President Trump gets sworn into office.

And that's why I am so upset and concerned and frustrated and motivated to do something about the abuse of these terms, climate change and environmental justice.

Don't tell me that you're advocating for some community that needs to have clean air, land, and water.

And in order to get there, you need to remediate environmental concern and then spend a dollar not on fixing that, but instead give it to your friends.

There are people who are talking about climate change in a way that is trying to justify what is

tens of billions of dollars or into the trillions of dollars, if you want to talk about the Green New Deal.

And they don't care about the fact that the people who can least afford it are the ones who get harmed the most.

They're not respecting choice and the ability of the American consumer to decide what kind of a vehicle to have, how they want to heat their home, or to be even able to afford to be able to pay the bills for for this stuff so this is about getting back to common sense and and i don't want i don't think that the wool should be pulled over the eyes of americans americans across the spectrum conservatives moderates liberals republicans democrats independents we all want a clean environment we all want clean air land and water stop trying to turn it into a wedge issue where you have to choose to either go with whatever bernie sanders is proposing or you're an outcast who wants to you know change the air back to the way it was a half a century ago.

Right, right.

Okay, a couple other points before we have to go.

This just hit very interesting news.

Donald Trump is suspending all tariffs except against China for 90 days.

Wow.

He just posted this on Troop Social, Truth Social.

Based on lack of respect that China has shown to the world markets, I'm hereby raising the tariff charge to China by the U.S.

to 125%.

125, effective immediately.

At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.

and other countries is no longer sustainable or acceptable.

Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 countries have called representatives of the U.S., including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to trade, trade barriers, tariffs, currency manipulation, and non-monetary tariffs, and that these countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against us, I have authorized a 90-day pause and a substantially lowered reciprocal tariff during this period of 10%, also effective immediately.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And the markets, of course, have just jumped up by thousands of points.

Not a shock, I guess.

Your thoughts on that, Lee?

That's breaking news.

The Dow's now up over 2,200 points.

Yeah, that's amazing news to hear about that reaction.

I think that it's an important message to the rest of the world.

And I think that we've already learned this lesson the first time President Trump was in office.

He wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, and he was told that that was impossible.

We weren't going to be able to get it done.

And we ended up with the USMCA, which was better.

He was engaged in tough negotiations with China, and he was told that that was impossible.

There's no way that you're going to be able to break this impasse that's been around for a long time.

And we were making tremendous progress.

And then, of course, COVID hit, and that impacted the trade between our countries.

President Trump is not looking at this stuff one move at a time.

When When it comes to trade, he's really thought through it and he's talked about it for decades.

So, for President Trump, I think it's something that he's earned more trust and faith as it relates to trade.

We're dealing with these deficits, these trade imbalances, and I believe that our American economy is going to grow stronger for it.

The message to these other countries is to work with us, to do your part on your end, and it will be the best for everyone.

A rising tide lifts all boats, and that certainly applies to trade and the economy.

All right, I have one more question for you on media bias, which I know you've been experiencing since taking this job a couple of weeks ago as part of your deregulation effort at the EPA, trying to roll back these incredible saddles and bridles that were put all over our energy industry.

Bill Weir,

a guy who admits that he's reading little letters to his infant child, who's now a couple of years old, and he renewed his terrible letter about how on your birthday, you'll be breathing dirty air and drinking dirty water.

I mean, this guy's a, he's a nutcase.

He's a, he's an environmental nutcase.

And they've, of course, the CNN thought he was an appropriate choice to cover the EPA and you.

So I'm sure you're going to get really fair and balanced coverage.

And here's an example of that where he decided to fact check one of your deregulatory announcements on March 12th.

They were putting out press releases with such a flurry about 31 different actions and rollbacks that some of them had typos or placeholders at the top.

We have one of those there.

Trump EPA announces zero, zero, zero.

You can see there, it's sort of shoot first, fill out the press release later.

You did something most administrators wouldn't do.

You went on X and said, this is completely fake news.

You corrected him and explained exactly what that was, that those weren't zeros, that this was an actual environmental regulation that you were trying to get at.

And eventually he issued a half-hearted, okay, you got me there.

But what do you make of Bill Weir and CNN and the media coverage you've gotten so far?

It was actually entirely about shooting first, coming from his report.

And he should have done his homework.

And quite frankly, if he's the expert, he should know because this is a big regulation and it's called quad OBC.

And he doesn't even know that we're talking O's.

He's talking about them as if they're zeros.

We're citing existing text, and this is what we're going back and looking at.

So, for him, you know, he decided that this was going to be an easy fact check because he didn't know what he was talking about.

And there was a whole lot of arrogance here.

It's important for people to do their homework.

We have been attacked with this deregulatory announcement, and in a way, where people will post pictures, videos

of land, water from the 60s or 70s, and they'll claim that this is what we're going to go back to.

We're talking about regulation from

the last year or two.

If the Biden EPA puts a new regulation in in 2023 and 2024, and we're talking about going back and revisiting it, if you want to be accurate, post pictures and video from a year or two ago.

You can't go back to showing us water quality from the 70s and say that's what's going to happen if we change some regulation from 2024.

So before I let you go, what's been the biggest surprise to you?

You have been in New York State politics, and then of course we're a New York State congressman, I mean, a federal congressman from the east end of Long Island, I believe, right?

And

you go, you do that for many, many years, and then you get tapped for this job, which is a very, very important job.

And you get in there, you start kicking the tires of the agency, you got Doge, you got a bunch bunch of stuff you got to help President Trump do to roll back the regulations.

So between all of that, the spending and the regulatory approach and so on, what's been like the biggest surprise?

The biggest surprise is how much we can do at once.

You know, I was coming in here.

I knew that there was a lot of work that we were going to have to tackle.

We have a four-year term to get it done.

And you wonder how much you can get done in the first 100 days, in the first year.

And everything that we're talking about here, whether it's canceling $22 billion worth of grants, it's the deregulatory actions that were discussed.

There's a whole lot of different actions that we are undertaking to better protect the environment that we're proud of.

The hazardous material removal response in Los Angeles after the wildfires is a perfect example of that.

The super fun cleanup that cleanups that we're involved in across the country.

The good work to protect human health and the environment and power the Great American Comeback, we're not picking and choosing what to tackle first we want to fix everything and we want to do it right now uh it's been a surprise just how much we're able to do it once and i'm all for it i'm here for it i'm happy to be and honored to be part of it uh part of this cabinet which i think president trump did a great job filling with talent and here at epa we have all the talent we need to make america proud yeah please come back and update us on your efforts it's great to see you and all the best to you thanks megan

wow don't you feel better knowing he's in there?

Gosh, I do.

I just like, we have been so strangled by especially environmental regulations.

I mean,

you wouldn't do it any differently if you really wanted to put a harness on the American economy.

And thank God now with Trump and Zeldin in there, I think we'll really start to see some changes.

And now, you know, look, Trump's trying this thing with the tariffs.

We'll talk more about that one tomorrow.

But he's doing so much in many areas to try to get the economy going, to try to rev up the engine that's powered America for decades now.

And this is just one great example, all the things that Lise Elden was talking about.

Okay, so that's it.

Would love to know your thoughts on that interview and on Andrew Cuomo.

Why are they doing?

Why are you doing this to us, New York?

Why?

Okay, we'll be back tomorrow with Stu Bergeer.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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